Relying on his intimacy with Felicie, Pierquin tried to
discover the secret of Marguerite's journey, and to know if it were
really a question of her marriage, and whether he must renounce all
hope; but, notwithstanding his clumsy cleverness in questioning them,
neither Balthazar nor Felicie could give him any light, for the good
reason that they were in the dark themselves: Marguerite in taking the
reins of power seemed to have followed its maxims and kept silence as
to her projects.
The gloomy sadness of Balthazar and his great depression made it
difficult to get through the evenings. Though Emmanuel succeeded in
making him play backgammon, the chemist's mind was never present;
during most of the time this man, so great in intellect, seemed simply
stupid. Shorn of his expectations, ashamed of having squandered three
fortunes, a gambler without money, he bent beneath the weight of ruin,
beneath the burden of hopes that were betrayed rather than
annihilated. This man of genius, gagged by dire necessity and
upbraiding himself, was a tragic spectacle, fit to touch the hearts of
the most unfeeling of men. Even Pierquin could not enter without
respect the presence of that caged lion, whose eyes, full of baffled
power, now calmed by sadness and faded from excess of light, seemed to
proffer a prayer for charity which the mouth dared not utter.
Sometimes a lightning flash crossed that withered face, whose fires
revived at the conception of a new experiment; then, as he looked
about the parlor, Balthazar's eyes would fasten on the spot where his
wife had died, a film of tears rolled like hot grains of sand across
the arid pupils of his eyes, which thought had made immense, and his
head fell forward on his breast.
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