Lemulquinier came down a moment later, and said his master was following him. Madame Claes’s eyes never left the parlor door, but her husband did not appear until the ceremony was over. When at last he entered, Josephine colored and a few tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Were you trying to decompose nitrogen?” she said to him with an angelic tenderness which made the spectators quiver.
“I have done it!” he cried joyfully; “Nitrogen contains oxygen and a substance of the nature of imponderable matter, which is apparently the principle of—”
A murmur of horror interrupted his words and brought him to his senses.
“What did they tell me?” he demanded. “Are you worse? What is the matter?”
“This is the matter, monsieur,” whispered the Abbe de Solis, indignant at his conduct; “your wife is dying, and you have killed her.”
Without waiting for an answer the abbe took the arm of his nephew and went out followed by the family, who accompanied him to the court-yard. Balthazar stood as if thunderstruck; he looked at his wife, and a few tears dropped from his eyes.
“You are dying, and I have killed you!” he said. “What does he mean?”
“My husband,” she answered, “I only lived in your love, and you have taken my life away from me; but you knew not what you did.”
“Leave us,” said Claes to his children, who now re-entered the room. “Have I for one moment ceased to love you?” he went on, sitting down beside his wife, and taking her hands and kissing them.