To Madame Claes the sense of knowing nothing of a science which absorbed her husband filled her with a vexation as keen as the beauty of a rival might have caused.The struggle of woman against woman gives to her who loves the most the advantage of loving best; but a mortification like this only proved Madame Claes's powerlessness and humiliated the feelings by which she lived.She was ignorant; and she had reached a point where her ignorance parted her from her husband.
Worse than all, last and keenest torture, he was risking his life, he was often in danger--near her, yet far away, and she might not share, nor even know, his peril.Her position became, like hell, a moral prison from which there was no issue, in which there was no hope.
Madame Claes resolved to know at least the outward attractions of this fatal science, and she began secretly to study chemistry in the books.
From this time the family became, as it were, cloistered.
Such were the successive changes brought by this dire misfortune upon the family of Claes, before it reached the species of atrophy in which we find it at the moment when this history begins.
The situation grew daily more complicated.Like all passionate women, Madame Claes was disinterested.Those who truly love know that considerations of money count for little in matters of feeling and are reluctantly associated with them.Nevertheless, Josephine did not hear without distress that her husband had borrowed three hundred thousand francs upon his property.The apparent authenticity of the transaction, the rumors and conjectures spread through the town, forced Madame Claes, naturally much alarmed, to question her husband's notary and, disregarding her pride, to reveal to him her secret anxieties or let him guess them, and even ask her the humiliating question,--"How is it that Monsieur Claes has not told you of this?"Happily, the notary was almost a relation,--in this wise: The grandfather of Monsieur Claes had married a Pierquin of Antwerp, of the same family as the Pierquins of Douai.Since the marriage the latter, though strangers to the Claes, claimed them as cousins.
Monsieur Pierquin, a young man twenty-six years of age, who had just succeeded to his father's practice, was the only person who now had access to the House of Claes.
Madame Balthazar had lived for several months in such complete solitude that the notary was obliged not only to confirm the rumor of the disasters, but to give her further particulars, which were now well known throughout the town.He told her that it was probably that her husband owed considerable sums of money to the house which furnished him with chemicals.That house, after making inquiries as to the fortune and credit of Monsieur Claes, accepted all his orders and sent the supplies without hesitation, notwithstanding the heavy sums of money which became due.Madame Claes requested Pierquin to obtain the bill for all the chemicals that had been furnished to her husband.
Two months later, Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, manufacturers of chemical products, sent in a schedule of accounts rendered, which amounted to over one hundred thousand francs.Madame Claes and Pierquin studied the document with an ever-increasing surprise.Though some articles, entered in commercial and scientific terms, were unintelligible to them, they were frightened to see entries of precious metals and diamonds of all kinds, though in small quantities.
The large sum total of the debt was explained by the multiplicity of the articles, by the precautions needed in transporting some of them, more especially valuable machinery, by the exorbitant price of certain rare chemicals, and finally by the cost of instruments made to order after the designs of Monsieur Claes himself.
The notary had made inquiries, in his client's interest, as to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, and found that their known integrity was sufficient guarantee as to the honesty of their operations with Monsieur Claes, to whom, moreover, they frequently sent information of results obtained by chemists in Paris, for the purpose of sparing him expense.Madame Claes begged the notary to keep the nature of these purchases from the knowledge of the people of Douai, lest they should declare the whole thing a mania; but Pierquin replied that he had already delayed to the very last moment the notarial deeds which the importance of the sum borrowed necessitated, in order not to lessen the respect in which Monsieur Claes was held.
He then revealed the full extent of the evil, telling her plainly that if she could not find means to prevent her husband from thus madly making way with his property, in six months the patrimonial fortune of the Claes would be mortgaged to its full value.As for himself, he said, the remonstrances he had already made to his cousin, with all the consideration due to a man so justly respected, had been wholly unavailing.Balthazar had replied, once for all, that he was working for the fame and the fortune of his family.
Thus, to the tortures of the heart which Madame Claes had borne for two years--one following the other with cumulative suffering--was now added a dreadful and ceaseless fear which made the future terrifying.