“Enough, Balthazar! you terrify me; you commit sacrilege.  What, is my love—­”

“An ethereal matter disengaged, an emanation, the key of the Absolute.  Conceive if I—­I, the first, should find it, find it, find it!”

As he uttered the words in three rising tones, the expression of his face rose by degrees to inspiration.  “I shall make metals,” he cried; “I shall make diamonds, I shall be a co-worker with Nature!”

“Will you be the happier?” she asked in despair.  “Accursed science! accursed demon!  You forget, Claes, that you commit the sin of pride, the sin of which Satan was guilty; you assume the attributes of God.”

“Oh! oh!  God!”

“He denies Him!” she cried, wringing her hands.  “Claes, God wields a power that you can never gain.”

At this argument, which seemed to discredit his beloved Science, he looked at his wife and trembled.

“What power?” he asked.

“Primal force—­motion,” she replied.  “This is what I learn from the books your mania has constrained me to read.  Analyze fruits, flowers, Malaga wine; you will discover, undoubtedly, that their substances come, like those of your water-cress, from a medium that seems foreign to them.  You can, if need be, find them in nature; but when you have them, can you combine them? can you make the flowers, the fruits, the Malaga wine?  Will you have grasped the inscrutable effects of the sun, of the atmosphere of Spain?  Ah! decomposing is not creating.”

“If I discover the magistral force, I shall be able to create.”

“Will nothing stop him?” cried Pepita.  “Oh! my love, my love! it is killed!  I have lost him!”

She wept bitterly, and her eyes, illumined by grief and by the sanctity of the feelings that flooded her soul, shone with greater beauty than ever through her tears.

“Yes,” she resumed in a broken voice, “you are dead to all.  I see it but too well.  Science is more powerful within you than your own self; it bears you to heights from which you will return no more to be the companion of a poor woman.  What joys can I still offer you?  Ah!  I would fain believe, as a wretched consolation, that God has indeed created you to make manifest his works, to chant his praises; that he has put within your breast the irresistible power that has mastered you—­ But no; God is good; he would keep in your heart some thoughts of the woman who adores you, of the children you are bound to protect.  It is the Evil One alone who is helping you to walk amid these fathomless abysses, these clouds of outer darkness, where the light of faith does not guide you,—­nothing guides you but a terrible belief in your own faculties!  Were it otherwise, would you not have seen that you have wasted nine hundred thousand francs in three years?  Oh! do me justice, you, my God on earth!  I reproach you not; were we alone I would bring you, on my knees, all I possess and say, ’Take it, fling it into