A beautiful or graceful woman might have thrown herself at her husband's feet, might have called to her aid the attitudes of grief;but to Madame Claes the sense of physical defects only added to her fears.When she saw Balthazar about to leave the room, her impulse was to spring towards him; then a cruel thought restrained her--she should stand before him! would she not seem ridiculous in the eyes of a man no longer under the glamour of love--who might see true? She resolved to avoid all dangerous chances at so solemn a moment, and remained seated, saying in a clear voice,"Balthazar."He turned mechanically and coughed; then, paying no attention to his wife, he walked to one of the little square boxes that are placed at intervals along the wainscoting of every room in Holland and Belgium, and spat in it.This man, who took no thought of other persons, never forgot the inveterate habit of using those boxes.To poor Josephine, unable to find a reason for this singularity, the constant care which her husband took of the furniture caused her at all times an unspeakable pang, but at this moment the pain was so violent that it put her beside herself and made her exclaim in a tone of impatience, which expressed her wounded feelings,--"Monsieur, I am speaking to you!"
"What does that mean?" answered Balthazar, turning quickly, and casting a look of reviving intelligence upon his wife, which fell upon her like a thunderbolt.
"Forgive me, my friend," she said, turning pale.She tried to rise and put out her hand to him, but her strength gave way and she fell back.
"I am dying!" she cried in a voice choked by sobs.
At the sight Balthazar had, like all abstracted persons, a vivid reaction of mind; and he divined, so to speak, the secret cause of this attack.Taking Madame Claes at once in his arms, he opened the door upon the little antechamber, and ran so rapidly up the ancient wooden staircase that his wife's dress having caught on the jaws of one of the griffins that supported the balustrade, a whole breadth was torn off with a loud noise.He kicked in the door of the vestibule between their chambers, but the door of Josephine's bedroom was locked.
He gently placed her on a chair, saying to himself, "My God! the key, where is the key?""Thank you, dear friend," said Madame Claes, opening her eyes."This is the first time for a long, long while that I have been so near your heart.""Good God!" cried Claes, "the key!--here come the servants."Josephine signed to him to take a key that hung from a ribbon at her waist.After opening the door, Balthazar laid his wife on a sofa, and left the room to stop the frightened servants from coming up by giving them orders to serve the dinner; then he went back to Madame Claes.
"What is it, my dear life?" he said, sitting down beside her, and taking her hand and kissing it.
"Nothing--now," she answered."I suffer no longer.Only, I would I had the power of God to pour all the gold of the world at thy feet.""Why gold?" he asked.He took her in his arms, pressed her to him and kissed her once more upon the forehead."Do you not give me the greatest of all riches in loving me as you do love me, my dear and precious wife?""Oh! my Balthazar, will you not drive away the anguish of our lives as your voice now drives out the misery of my heart? At last, at last, Isee that you are still the same."
"What anguish do you speak of, dear?"
"My friend, we are ruined."
"Ruined!" he repeated.Then, with a smile, he stroked her hand, holding it within his own, and said in his tender voice, so long unheard: "To-morrow, dear love, our wealth may perhaps be limitless.
Yesterday, in searching for a far more important secret, I think Ifound the means of crystallizing carbon, the substance of the diamond.
