In the morning when his children came to
his bedside and kissed him with an affection which the sense of coming
death made day by day more ardent and more eager, he showed none of
his usual satisfaction at these signs of their tenderness. Emmanuel,
instigated by the doctor, hastened to open the newspaper to try if the
usual reading might not relieve the inward crisis in which Balthazar
was evidently struggling. As he unfolded the sheet he saw the words,
"DISCOVERY OF THE ABSOLUTE,"--which startled him, and he read a
paragraph to Marguerite concerning a sale made by a celebrated Polish
mathematician of the secret of the Absolute. Though Emmanuel read in a
low voice, and Marguerite signed to him to omit the passage, Balthazar
heard it.
Suddenly the dying man raised himself by his wrists and cast on his
frightened children a look which struck like lightning; the hairs that
fringed the bald head stirred, the wrinkles quivered, the features
were illumined with spiritual fires, a breath passed across that face
and rendered it sublime; he raised a hand, clenched in fury, and
uttered with a piercing cry the famous word of Archimedes, "EUREKA!"
--I have found.
He fell back upon his bed with the dull sound of an inert body, and
died, uttering an awful moan,--his convulsed eyes expressing to the
last, when the doctor closed them, the regret of not bequeathing to
Science the secret of an Enigma whose veil was rent away,--too late!
--by the fleshless fingers of Death.
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