the fireplace and a window looking on the garden.  There she passed her last days, sacredly occupied in training the souls of her young daughters, striving to leave within them the fire of her own.  Conjugal love, deprived of its manifestations, allowed maternal love to have its way.  The mother now seemed the more delightful because her motherhood had blossomed late.  Like all generous persons, she passed through sensitive phases of feeling that she mistook for remorse.  Believing that she had defrauded her children of the tenderness that should have been theirs, she sought to redeem those imaginary wrongs; bestowing attentions and tender cares which made her precious to them; she longed to make her children live, as it were, within her heart; to shelter them beneath her feeble wings; to cherish them enough in the few remaining days to redeem the time during which she had neglected them.  The sufferings of her mind gave to her words and her caresses a glowing warmth that issued from her soul.  Her eyes caressed her children, her voice with its yearning intonations touched their hearts, her hand showered blessings on their heads.

CHAPTER IX

The good people of Douai were not surprised that visitors were no longer received at the House of Claes, and that Balthazar gave no more fetes on the anniversary of his marriage.  Madame Claes’s state of health seemed a sufficient reason for the change, and the payment of her husband’s debts put a stop to the current gossip; moreover, the political vicissitudes to which Flanders was subjected, the war of the Hundred-days, and the occupation of the Allied armies, put the chemist and his researches completely out of people’s minds.  During those two years Douai was so often on the point of being taken, it was so constantly occupied either by the French or by the enemy, so many foreigners came there, so many of the country-people sought refuge within its walls, so many lives were in peril, so many catastrophes occurred, that each man thought only of himself.

The Abbe de Solis and his nephew, and the two Pierquins, doctor and lawyer, were the only persons who now visited Madame Claes; for whom the winter of 1814-1815 was a long and dreary death-scene.  Her husband rarely came to see her.  It is true that after dinner he remained some hours in the parlor, near her bed; but as she no longer had the strength to keep up a conversation, he merely said a few words, invariably the same, sat down, spoke no more, and a dreary silence settled down upon the room.  The monotony of this existence was broken only on the days when the Abbe de Solis and his nephew passed the evening with Madame Claes.