“What can you expect of a man who calls incessantly, like Richard III., ‘My kingdom for a horse’?” said Emmanuel. “He is pitiless; and in that you must imitate him. Pay his notes; give him, if you will, your whole fortune; but that of your sister and of your brothers is neither yours nor his.” “Give him my fortune?” she said, pressing her lover’s hand and looking at him with ardor in her eyes; “you advise it, you!--and Pierquin told a hundred lies to make me keep it!” “Alas! I may be selfish in my own way,” he said. “Sometimes I long for you without fortune; you seem nearer to me then! At other times I want you rich and happy, and I feel how paltry it is to think that the poor grandeurs of wealth can separate us.” “Dear, let us not speak of ourselves.” “Ourselves!” he repeated, with rapture. Then, after a pause, he added: “The evil is great, but it is not irreparable.” “It can be repaired only by us: the Claes family has now no head. To reach the stage of being neither father nor man, to have no consciousness of justice or injustice (for, in defiance of the laws, he has dissipated--he, so great, so noble, so upright--the property of the children he was bound to defend), oh, to what depths must he have fallen! My God! what is this thing he seeks?” “Unfortunately, dear Marguerite, wrong as he is in his relation to his family, he is right scientifically. A score of men in Europe admire him for the very thing which others count as madness. But nevertheless you must, without scruple, refuse to let him take the property of his children. Great discoveries have always been accidental. If your father ever finds the solution of the problem, it will be when it costs him nothing; in a moment, perhaps, when he despairs of it.” “My poor mother is happy,” said Marguerite; “she would have suffered a thousand deaths before she died: as it was, her first encounter with Science killed her. Alas! the strife is endless.” “There is an end,” said Emmanuel. “When you have nothing left, Monsieur Claes can get no further credit; then he will stop.” “Let him stop now, then,” cried Marguerite, “for we are without a penny!” Monsieur de Solis went to buy up Claes’s notes and returned, bringing them to Marguerite. Balthazar, contrary to his custom, came down a few moments before dinner. For the first time in two years his daughter noticed the signs of a human grief upon his face: he was again a father, reason and judgment had overcome Science; he looked into the court-yard, then into the garden, and when he was certain he was alone with his daughter, he came up to her with a look of melancholy kindness.