"Accursed science!
accursed demon! You forget, Claes, that you commit the sin of pride,
the sin of which Satan was guilty; you assume the attributes of God."
"Oh! oh! God!"
"He denies Him!" she cried, wringing her hands. "Claes, God wields a
power that you can never gain."
At this argument, which seemed to discredit his beloved Science, he
looked at his wife and trembled.
"What power?" he asked.
"Primal force--motion," she replied. "This is what I learn from the
books your mania has constrained me to read. Analyze fruits, flowers,
Malaga wine; you will discover, undoubtedly, that their substances
come, like those of your water-cress, from a medium that seems foreign
to them. You can, if need be, find them in nature; but when you have
them, can you combine them? can you make the flowers, the fruits, the
Malaga wine? Will you have grasped the inscrutable effects of the sun,
of the atmosphere of Spain? Ah! decomposing is not creating."
"If I discover the magistral force, I shall be able to create."
"Will nothing stop him?" cried Pepita. "Oh! my love, my love! it is
killed! I have lost him!"
She wept bitterly, and her eyes, illumined by grief and by the
sanctity of the feelings that flooded her soul, shone with greater
beauty than ever through her tears.
"Yes," she resumed in a broken voice, "you are dead to all. I see it
but too well. Science is more powerful within you than your own self;
it bears you to heights from which you will return no more to be the
companion of a poor woman.
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