Like a Titan he had lifted the world,
and the world fell on his breast and crushed him.
This gigantic grief, so manfully controlled, affected Pierquin and
Emmanuel powerfully, and each felt moved at times to offer this man
the necessary money to renew his search,--so contagious are the
convictions of genius! Both understood how it was that Madame Claes
and Marguerite had flung their all into this gulf; but reason promptly
checked the impulse of their hearts, and their emotion was spent in
efforts at consolation which still further embittered the anguish of
the doomed Titan.
Claes never spoke of his eldest daughter, and showed no interest in
her departure nor any anxiety as to her silence in not writing either
to him or to Felicie. When de Solis or Pierquin asked for news of her
he seemed annoyed. Did he suspect that Marguerite was working against
him? Was he humiliated at having resigned the majestic rights of
paternity to his own child? Had he come to love her less because she
was now the father, he the child? Perhaps there were many of these
reasons, many of these inexpressible feelings which float like vapors
through the soul, in the mute disgrace which he laid upon Marguerite.
However great may be the great men of earth, be they known or unknown,
fortunate or unfortunate in their endeavors, all have likenesses which
belong to human nature. By a double misfortune they suffer through
their greatness not less than through their defects; and perhaps
Balthazar needed to grow accustomed to the pangs of wounded vanity.
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