Claes, on the contrary, suffered from too much power. Stifling in the
clutch of a single thought, he dreamed of the pomps of Science, of
treasures for the human race, of glory for himself. He suffered as
artists suffer in the grip of poverty, as Samson suffered beneath the
pillars of the temple. The result was the same for the two sovereigns;
though the intellectual monarch was crushed by his inward force, the
other by his weakness.
What could Pepita do, singly, against this species of scientific
nostalgia? After employing every means that family life afforded her,
she called society to the rescue, and gave two "cafes" every week.
Cafes at Douai took the place of teas. A cafe was an assemblage which,
during a whole evening, the guests sipped the delicious wines and
liqueurs which overflow the cellars of that ever-blessed land, ate the
Flemish dainties and took their "cafe noir" or their "cafe au lait
frappe," while the women sang ballads, discussed each other's
toilettes, and related the gossip of the day. It was a living picture
by Mieris or Terburg, without the pointed gray hats, the scarlet
plumes, or the beautiful costumes of the sixteenth century. And yet,
Balthazar's efforts to play the part of host, his constrained
courtesy, his forced animation, left him the next day in a state of
languor which showed but too plainly the depths of the inward ill.
These continual fetes, weak remedies for the real evil, only increased
it.
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