“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 I found the means of crystallizing carbon, the substance of the diamond. Oh, my dear wife! in a few days’ time you will forgive me all my forgetfulness—I am forgetful sometimes, am I not? Was I not harsh to you just now? Be indulgent for a man who never ceases to think of you, whose toils are full of you—of us.”
“Enough, enough!” she said, “let us talk of it all to-night, dear friend. I suffered from too much grief, and now I suffer from too much joy.”
“To-night,” he resumed; “yes, willingly: we will talk of it. If I fall into meditation, remind me of this promise. To-night I desire to leave my work, my researches, and return to family joys, to the delights of the heart—Pepita, I need them, I thirst for them!”
“You will tell me what it is you seek, Balthazar?”
“Poor child, you cannot understand it.”
“You think so? Ah! my friend, listen; for nearly four months I have studied chemistry that I might talk of it with you. I have read Fourcroy, Lavoisier, Chaptal, Nollet, Rouelle, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac, Spallanzani, Leuwenhoek, Galvani, Volta,—in fact, all the books about the science you worship. You can tell me your secrets, I shall understand you.”
“Oh! you are indeed an angel,” cried Balthazar, falling at her feet, and shedding tears of tender feeling that made her quiver. “Yes, we will understand each other in all things.”
“Ah!” she cried, “I would throw myself into those hellish fires which heat your furnaces to hear these words from your lips and to see you thus.” Then, hearing her daughter’s step in the anteroom, she sprang quickly forward. “What is it, Marguerite?” she said to her eldest daughter.