“I have been to the laboratory.”
The chemist, forgetting everything about him, cast a terrible look on the old Fleming which meant, “You went before me to the laboratory!”
“Yes,” continued Lemulquinier, “I found the diamond in the china capsule which communicated with the battery which we left to work, monsieur—and see!” he added, showing a white diamond of octahedral form, whose brilliancy drew the astonished gaze of all present.
“My children, my friends,” said Balthazar, “forgive my old servant, forgive me! This event will drive me mad. The chance work of seven years has produced—without me—a discovery I have sought for sixteen years. How? My God, I know not—yes, I left sulphide of carbon under the influence of a Voltaic pile, whose action ought to have been watched from day to day. During my absence the power of God has worked in my laboratory, but I was not there to note its progressive effects! Is it not awful? Oh, cursed exile! cursed chance! Alas! had I watched that slow, that sudden—what can I call it?—crystallization, transformation, in short that miracle, then, then my children would have been richer still. Though this result is not the solution of the Problem which I seek, the first rays of my glory would have shone from that diamond upon my native country, and this hour, which our satisfied affections have made so happy, would have glowed with the sunlight of Science.”
Every one kept silence in the presence of such a man. The disconnected words wrung from him by his anguish were too sincere not to be sublime.
Suddenly, Balthazar drove back his despair into the depths of his own being, and cast upon the assembly a majestic look which affected the souls of all; he took the diamond and offered it to Marguerite, saying,—
“It is thine, my angel.”
Then he dismissed Lemulquinier with a gesture, and motioned to the notary, saying, “Go on.”
The two words sent a shudder of emotion through the company such as Talma in certain roles produced among his auditors. Balthazar, as he reseated himself, said in a low voice,—
“To-day I must be a father only.”