She ran to the laboratory
and found it filled with scientific instruments, the same as ever. Then
she returned to her own appartement and ordered the door to be broken
open--her father had respected it!
Marguerite burst into tears and forgave her father all. In the midst
of his devastating fury he had stopped short, restrained by paternal
feeling and the gratitude he owed to his daughter! This proof of
tenderness, coming to her at a moment when despair had reached its
climax, brought about in Marguerite's soul one of those moral
reactions against which the coldest hearts are powerless. She returned
to the parlor to wait her father's arrival, in a state of anxiety that
was cruelly aggravated by doubt and uncertainty. In what condition was
she about to see him? Ruined, decrepit, suffering, enfeebled by the
fasts his pride compelled him to undergo? Would he have his reason?
Tears flowed unconsciously from her eyes as she looked about the
desecrated sanctuary. The images of her whole life, her past efforts,
her useless precautions, her childhood, her mother happy and unhappy,
--all, even her little Joseph smiling on that scene of desolation, all
were parts of a poem of unutterable melancholy.
Marguerite foresaw an approaching misfortune, yet she little expected
the catastrophe that was to close her father's life,--that life at
once so grand and yet so miserable.
The condition of Monsieur Claes was no secret in the community.
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