The House of Claes was so richly supplied with furniture, pictures, and objects of art of priceless value, that it was difficult to add anything worthy of what was already there.The tastes of the family through long periods of time had accumulated these treasures.One generation followed the quest of noble pictures, leaving behind it the necessity of completing a collection still unfinished; and thus the taste became hereditary in the family.The hundred pictures which adorned the gallery leading from the family building to the reception-rooms on the first floor of the front house, as well as some fifty others placed about the salons, were the product of the patient researches of three centuries.Among them were choice specimens of Rubens, Ruysdael, Vandyke, Terburg, Gerard Dow, Teniers, Mieris, Paul Potter, Wouvermans, Rembrandt, Hobbema, Cranach, and Holbein.French and Italian pictures were in a minority, but all were authentic and masterly.
Another generation had fancied Chinese and Japanese porcelains: this Claes was eager after rare furniture, that one for silver-ware; in fact, each and all had their mania, their passion,--a trait which belongs in a striking degree to the Flemish character.The father of Balthazar, a last relic of the once famous Dutch society, left behind him the finest known collection of tulips.
Besides these hereditary riches, which represented an enormous capital, and were the choice ornament of the venerable house,--a house that was simple as a shell outside but, like a shell, adorned within by pearls of price and glowing with rich color,--Balthazar Claes possessed a country-house on the plain of Orchies, not far from Douai.
Instead of basing his expenses, as Frenchmen do, upon his revenues, he followed the old Dutch custom of spending only a fourth of his income.
Twelve hundred ducats a year put his costs of living at a level with those of the richest men of the place.The promulgation of the Civil Code proved the wisdom of this course.Compelling, as it did, the equal division of property, the Title of Succession would some day leave each child with limited means, and disperse the treasures of the Claes collection.Balthazar, therefore, in concert with Madame Claes, invested his wife's property so as to secure to each child a fortune eventually equal to his own.The house of Claes still maintained its moderate scale of living, and bought woodlands somewhat the worse for wars that had laid waste the country, but which in ten years' time, if well-preserved, would return an enormous value.
The upper ranks of society in Douai, which Monsieur Claes frequented, appreciated so justly the noble character and qualities of his wife that, by tacit consent she was released from those social duties to which the provinces cling so tenaciously.During the winter season, when she lived in town, she seldom went into society; society came to her.She received every Wednesday, and gave three grand dinners every month.Her friends felt that she was more at ease in her own house;where, indeed, her passion for her husband and the care she bestowed on the education of her children tended to keep her.
Such had been, up to the year 1809, the general course of this household, which had nothing in common with the ordinary run of conventional ideas, though the outward life of these two persons, secretly full of love and joy, was like that of other people.
Balthazar Claes's passion for his wife, which she had known how to perpetuate, seemed, to use his own expression, to spend its inborn vigor and fidelity on the cultivation of happiness, which was far better than the cultivation of tulips (though to that he had always had a leaning), and dispensed him from the duty of following a mania like his ancestors.
At the close of this year, the mind and the manners of Balthazar Claes underwent a fatal change,--a change which began so gradually that at first Madame Claes did not think it necessary to inquire the cause.
One night her husband went to bed with a mind so preoccupied that she felt it incumbent on her to respect his mood.Her womanly delicacy and her submissive habits always led her to wait for Balthazar's confidence; which, indeed, was assured to her by so constant an affection that she had never had the slightest opening for jealousy.
Though certain of obtaining an answer whenever she should make the inquiry, she still retained enough of the earlier impressions of her life to dread a refusal.Besides, the moral malady of her husband had its phases, and only came by slow degrees to the intolerable point at which it destroyed the happiness of the family.
However occupied Balthazar Claes might be, he continued for several months cheerful, affectionate, and ready to talk; the change in his character showed itself only by frequent periods of absent-mindedness.
Madame Claes long hoped to hear from her husband himself the nature of the secret employment in which he was engaged; perhaps, she thought, he would reveal it when it developed some useful result; many men are led by pride to conceal the nature of their efforts, and only make them known at the moment of success.When the day of triumph came, surely domestic happiness would return, more vivid than ever when Balthazar became aware of this chasm in the life of love, which his heart would surely disavow.Josephine knew her husband well enough to be certain that he would never forgive himself for having made his Pepita less than happy during several months.
She kept silence therefore, and felt a sort of joy in thus suffering by him for him: her passion had a tinge of that Spanish piety which allows no separation between religion and love, and believes in no sentiment without suffering.She waited for the return of her husband's affection, saying daily to herself, "To-morrow it may come,"--treating her happiness as though it were an absent friend.