The Alkahest

When Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks arrived, they found Claes living at an inn. His successor had not been kept waiting, and was already in possession of his office.

CHAPTER XV

Through all the preoccupations of science, the desire to see his native town, his house, his family, agitated Balthazar’s mind. His daughter’s letters had told him of the happy family events; he dreamed of crowning his career by a series of experiments that must lead to the solution of the great Problem, and he awaited Marguerite’s arrival with extreme impatience.

The daughter threw herself into her father’s arms and wept for joy. This time she came to seek a recompense for years of pain, and pardon for the exercise of her domestic authority. She seemed to herself criminal, like those great men who violate the liberties of the people for the safety of the nation. But she shuddered as she now contemplated her father and saw the change which had taken place in him since her last visit. Monsieur Conyncks shared the secret alarm of his niece, and insisted on taking Balthazar as soon as possible to Douai, where the influence of his native place might restore him to health and reason amid the happiness of a recovered domestic life.

After the first transports of the heart were over, – which were far warmer on Balthazar’s part than Marguerite had expected, – he showed a singular state of feeling towards his daughter. He expressed regret at receiving her in a miserable inn, inquired her tastes and wishes, and asked what she would have to eat, with the eagerness of a lover; his manner was even that of a culprit seeking to propitiate a judge.

Marguerite knew her father so well that she guessed the motive of this solicitude; she felt sure he had contracted debts in the town which he wished to pay before his departure. She observed him carefully for a time, and saw the human heart in all its nakedness. Balthazar had dwindled from his true self. The consciousness of his abasement, and the isolation of his life in the pursuit of science made him timid and childish in all matters not connected with his favorite occupations. His daughter awed him; the remembrance of her past devotion, of the energy she had displayed, of the powers he had allowed her to take away from him, of the wealth now at her command, and the indefinable feelings that had preyed upon him ever since the day when he had abdicated a paternity he had long neglected, – all these things affected his mind towards her, and increased her importance in his eyes. Conyncks was nothing to him beside Marguerite; he saw only his daughter, he thought only of her, and seemed to fear her, as certain weak husbands fear a superior woman who rules them. When he raised his eyes and looked at her, Marguerite noticed with distress an expression of fear, like that of a child detected in a fault. The noble girl was unable to reconcile the majestic and terrible expression of that bald head, denuded by science and by toil, with the puerile smile, the eager servility exhibited on the lips and countenance of the old man. She suffered from the contrast of that greatness to that littleness, and resolved to use her utmost influence to restore her father’s sense of dignity before the solemn day on which he was to reappear in the bosom of his family. Her first step when they were alone was to ask him, —

“Do you owe anything here?”

Balthazar colored, and replied with an embarrassed air: —

“I don’t know, but Lemulquinier can tell you. That worthy fellow knows more about my affairs than I do myself.”

Marguerite rang for the valet: when he came she studied, almost involuntarily, the faces of the two old men.

“What does monsieur want?” asked Lemulquinier.

Marguerite, who was all pride and dignity, felt an oppression at her heart as she perceived from the tone and manner of the servant that some mortifying familiarity had grown up between her father and the companion of his labors.

“My father cannot make out the account of what he owes in this place without you,” she said.

“Monsieur,” began Lemulquinier, “owes – ”

At these words Balthazar made a sign to his valet which Marguerite intercepted; it humiliated her.

“Tell me all that my father owes,” she said.

“Monsieur owes, here, about three thousand francs to an apothecary who is a wholesale dealer in drugs; he has supplied us with pearl-ash and lead, and zinc and the reagents – ”

“Is that all?” asked Marguerite.

Again Balthazar made a sign to Lemulquinier, who replied, as if under a spell, —

“Yes, mademoiselle.”

“Very good,” she said, “I will give them to you.”

Balthazar kissed her joyously and said, —

“You are an angel, my child.”

He breathed at his ease and glanced at her with eyes that were less sad; and yet, in spite of this apparent joy, Marguerite easily detected the signs of deep anxiety upon his face, and felt certain that the three thousand francs represented only the pressing debts of his laboratory.

“Be frank with me, father,” she said, letting him seat her on his knee; “you owe more than that. Tell me all, and come back to your home without an element of fear in the midst of the general joy.”

“My dear Marguerite,” he said, taking her hands and kissing them with a grace that seemed a memory of her youth, “you would scold me – ”

“No,” she said.

“Truly?” he asked, giving way to childish expressions of delight. “Can I tell you all? will you pay – ”

“Yes,” she said, repressing the tears which came into her eyes.

“Well, I owe – oh! I dare not – ”

“Tell me, father.”

“It is a great deal.”

She clasped her hands, with a gesture of despair.

“I owe thirty thousand francs to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville.”

“Thirty thousand francs,” she said, “is just the sum I have laid by. I am glad to give it to you,” she added, respectfully kissing his brow.

He rose, took his daughter in his arms, and whirled about the room, dancing her as though she were an infant; then he placed her in the chair where she had been sitting, and exclaimed: —

“My darling child! my treasure of love! I was half-dead: the Chiffrevilles have written me three threatening letters; they were about to sue me, – me, who would have made their fortune!”

“Father,” said Marguerite in accents of despair, “are you still searching?”

“Yes, still searching,” he said, with the smile of a madman, “and I shall FIND. If you could only understand the point we have reached – ”

“We? who are we?”

“I mean Mulquinier: he has understood me, he loves me. Poor fellow! he is devoted to me.”

Conyncks entered at the moment and interrupted the conversation. Marguerite made a sign to her father to say no more, fearing lest he should lower himself in her uncle’s eyes. She was frightened at the ravages thought had made in that noble mind, absorbed in searching for the solution of a problem that was perhaps insoluble. Balthazar, who saw and knew nothing outside of his furnaces, seemed not to realize the liberation of his fortune.

On the morrow they started for Flanders. During the journey Marguerite gained some confused light upon the position in which Lemulquinier and her father stood to each other. The valet had acquired an ascendancy over his master such as common men without education are able to obtain over great minds to whom they feel themselves necessary; such men, taking advantage of concession after concession, aim at complete dominion with the persistency that comes of a fixed idea. In this case the master had contracted for the man the sort of affection that grows out of habit, like that of a workman for his creative tool, or an Arab for the horse that gives him freedom. Marguerite studied the signs of this tyranny, resolving to withdraw her father from its humiliating yoke if it were real.

They stopped several days in Paris on the way home, to enable Marguerite to pay off her father’s debts and request the manufacturers of chemical products to send nothing to Douai without first informing her of any orders given by Claes. She persuaded her father to change his style of dress and buy clothes that were suitable to a man of his station. This corporal restoration gave Balthazar a certain physical dignity which augured well for a change in his ideas; and Marguerite, joyous in the thought of all the surprises that awaited her father when he entered his own house, started for Douai.

Nine miles from the town Balthazar was met by Felicie on horseback, escorted by her two brothers, Emmanuel, Pierquin, and some of the nearest friends of the three families. The journey had necessarily diverted the chemist’s mind from its habitual thoughts; the aspect of his own Flanders acted on his heart; when, therefore, he saw the joyous company of his family and friends gathering about him his emotion was so keen that the tears came to his eyes, his voice trembled, his eyelids reddened, and he held his children in so passionate an embrace, seeming unable to release them, that the spectators of the scene were moved to tears.

When at last he saw the House of Claes he turned pale, and sprang from the carriage with the agility of a young man; he breathed the air of the court-yard with delight, and looked about him at the smallest details with a pleasure that could express itself only in gestures: he drew himself erect, and his whole countenance renewed its youth. The tears came into his eyes when he entered the parlor and noticed the care with which his daughter had replaced the old silver candelabra that he formerly had sold, – a visible sign that all the other disasters had been repaired. Breakfast was served in the dining-room, whose sideboards and shelves were covered with curios and silver-ware not less valuable than the treasures that formerly stood there. Though the family meal lasted a long time, it was still too short for the narratives which Balthazar exacted from each of his children. The reaction of his moral being caused by this return to his home wedded him once more to family happiness, and he was again a father. His manners recovered their former dignity. At first the delight of recovering possession kept him from dwelling on the means by which the recovery had been brought about. His joy therefore was full and unalloyed.

Breakfast over, the four children, the father and Pierquin went into the parlor, where Balthazar saw with some uneasiness a number of legal papers which the notary’s clerk had laid upon a table, by which he was standing as if to assist his chief. The children all sat down, and Balthazar, astonished, remained standing before the fireplace.

“This,” said Pierquin, “is the guardianship account which Monsieur Claes renders to his children. It is not very amusing,” he added, laughing after the manner of notaries who generally assume a lively tone in speaking of serious matters, “but I must really oblige you to listen to it.”

Though the phrase was natural enough under the circumstances, Monsieur Claes, whose conscience recalled his past life, felt it to be a reproach, and his brow clouded.

The clerk began the reading. Balthazar’s amazement increased as little by little the statement unfolded the facts. In the first place, the fortune of his wife at the time of her decease was declared to have been sixteen hundred thousand francs or thereabouts; and the summing up of the account showed clearly that the portion of each child was intact and as well-invested as if the best and wisest father had controlled it. In consequence of this the House of Claes was free from all lien, Balthazar was master of it; moreover, his rural property was likewise released from encumbrance. When all the papers connected with these matters were signed, Pierquin presented the receipts for the repayment of the moneys formerly borrowed, and releases of the various liens on the estates.