The Alkahest Part 5

"My dear Marguerite, my darling child! I love you better than ever to-day."

"It is long since I have seen my father so kind," answered the young girl.

Lemulquinier announced dinner. To prevent Pierquin from offering her his arm, Madame Claes took that of her husband and led the way into the next room, the whole family following.

The dining-room, whose ceiling was supported by beams and decorated with paintings cleaned and restored every year, was furnished with tall oaken side-boards and buffets, on whose shelves stood many a curious piece of family china. The walls were hung with violet leather, on which designs of game and other hunting objects were stamped in gold. Carefully arranged here and there above the shelves, shone the brilliant plumage of strange birds, and the l.u.s.tre of rare sh.e.l.ls. The chairs, which evidently had not been changed since the beginning of the sixteenth century, showed the square shape with twisted columns and the low back covered with a fringed stuff, common to that period, and glorified by Raphael in his picture of the Madonna della Sedia. The wood of these chairs was now black, but the gilt nails shone as if new, and the stuff, carefully renewed from time to time, was of an admirable shade of red.

The whole life of Flanders with its Spanish innovations was in this room. The decanters and flasks on the dinner-table, with their graceful antique lines and swelling curves, had an air of respectability. The gla.s.ses were those old goblets with stems and feet which may be seen in the pictures of the Dutch or Flemish school. The dinner-service of faience, decorated with raised colored figures, in the manner of Bernard Palissy, came from the English manufactory of Wedgwood. The silver-ware was ma.s.sive, with square sides and designs in high relief,--genuine family plate, whose pieces, in every variety of form, fas.h.i.+on, and chasing, showed the beginnings of prosperity and the progress towards fortune of the Claes family. The napkins were fringed, a fas.h.i.+on altogether Spanish; and as for the linen, it will readily be supposed that the Claes's household made it a point of honor to possess the best.

All this service of the table, silver, linen, and gla.s.s, were for the daily use of the family. The front house, where the social entertainments were given, had its own especial luxury, whose marvels, being reserved for great occasions, wore an air of dignity often lost to things which are, as it were, made common by daily use. Here, in the home quarter, everything bore the impress of patriarchal use and simplicity. And--for a final and delightful detail--a vine grew outside the house between the windows, whose tendrilled branches twined about the cas.e.m.e.nts.

"You are faithful to the old traditions, madame," said Pierquin, as he received a plate of that celebrated thyme soup in which the Dutch and Flemish cooks put little force-meat b.a.l.l.s and dice of fried bread. "This is the Sunday soup of our forefathers. Your house and that of my uncle des Racquets are the only ones where we still find this historic soup of the Netherlands. Ah! pardon me, old Monsieur Savaron de Savarus of Tournai makes it a matter of pride to keep up the custom; but everywhere else old Flanders is disappearing. Now-a-days everything is changing; furniture is made from Greek models; wherever you go you see helmets, lances, s.h.i.+elds, and bows and arrows! Everybody is rebuilding his house, selling his old furniture, melting up his silver dishes, or exchanging them for Sevres porcelain,--which does not compare with either old Dresden or with Chinese ware. Oh! as for me, I'm Flemish to the core; my heart actually bleeds to see the coppersmiths buying up our beautiful inlaid furniture for the mere value of the wood and the metal. The fact is, society wants to change its skin. Everything is being sacrificed, even the old methods of art. When people insist on going so fast, nothing is conscientiously done. During my last visit to Paris I was taken to see the pictures in the Louvre. On my word of honor, they are mere screen-painting,--no depth, no atmosphere; the painters were actually afraid to put colors on their canvas. And it is they who talk of overturning our ancient school of art! Ah, bah!--"

"Our old masters," replied Balthazar, "studied the combination of colors and their endurance by submitting them to the action of sun and rain.

You are right enough, however; the material resources of art are less cultivated in these days than formerly."

Madame Claes was not listening to the conversation. The notary's remark that porcelain dinner-services were now the fas.h.i.+on, gave her the brilliant idea of selling a quant.i.ty of heavy silver-ware which she had inherited from her brother,--hoping to be able thus to pay off the thirty thousand francs which her husband owed.

"Ha! ha!" Balthazar was saying to Pierquin when Madame Claes's mind returned to the conversation, "so they are discussing my work in Douai, are they?"

"Yes," replied the notary, "every one is asking what it is you spend so much money on. Only yesterday I heard the chief-justice deploring that a man like you should be searching for the Philosopher's stone. I ventured to reply that you were too wise not to know that such a scheme was attempting the impossible, too much of a Christian to take G.o.d's work out of his hands; and, like every other Claes, too good a business man to spend your money for such befooling quackeries. Still, I admit that I share the regret people feel at your absence from society. You might as well not live here at all. Really, madame, you would have been delighted had you heard the praises showered on Monsieur Claes and on you."

"You acted like a faithful friend in repelling imputations whose least evil is to make me ridiculous," said Balthazar. "Ha! so they think me ruined? Well, my dear Pierquin, two months hence I shall give a fete in honor of my wedding-day whose magnificence will get me back the respect my dear townsmen bestow on wealth."

Madame Claes colored deeply. For two years the anniversary had been forgotten. Like madmen whose faculties s.h.i.+ne at times with unwonted brilliancy, Balthazar was never more gracious and delightful in his tenderness than at this moment. He was full of attention to his children, and his conversation had the charms of grace, and wit, and pertinence. This return of fatherly feeling, so long absent, was certainly the truest fete he could give his wife, for whom his looks and words expressed once more that unbroken sympathy of heart for heart which reveals to each a delicious oneness of sentiment.

Old Lemulquinier seemed to renew his youth; he came and went about the table with unusual liveliness, caused by the accomplishment of his secret hopes. The sudden change in his master's ways was even more significant to him than to Madame Claes. Where the family saw happiness he saw fortune. While helping Balthazar in his experiments he had come to share his beliefs. Whether he really understood the drift of his master's researches from certain exclamations which escaped the chemist when expected results disappointed him, or whether the innate tendency of mankind towards imitation made him adopt the ideas of the man in whose atmosphere he lived, certain it is that Lemulquinier had conceived for his master a superst.i.tious feeling that was a mixture of terror, admiration, and selfishness. The laboratory was to him what a lottery-office is to the ma.s.ses,--organized hope. Every night he went to bed saying to himself, "To-morrow we may float in gold"; and every morning he woke with a faith as firm as that of the night before.

His name proved that his origin was wholly Flemish. In former days the lower cla.s.ses were known by some name or nickname derived from their trades, their surroundings, their physical conformation, or their moral qualities. This name became the patronymic of the burgher family which each established as soon as he obtained his freedom. Sellers of linen thread were called in Flanders, "mulquiniers"; and that no doubt was the trade of the particular ancestor of the old valet who pa.s.sed from a state of serfdom to one of burgher dignity, until some unknown misfortune had again reduced his present descendant to the condition of a serf, with the addition of wages. The whole history of Flanders and its linen-trade was epitomized in this old man, often called, by way of euphony, Mulquinier. He was not without originality, either of character or appearance. His face was triangular in shape, broad and long, and seamed by small-pox which had left innumerable white and s.h.i.+ning patches that gave him a fantastic appearance. He was tall and thin; his whole demeanor solemn and mysterious; and his small eyes, yellow as the wig which was smoothly plastered on his head, cast none but oblique glances.

The old valet's outward man was in keeping with the feeling of curiosity which he everywhere inspired. His position as a.s.sistant to his master, the depositary of a secret jealously guarded and about which he maintained a rigid silence, invested him with a species of charm. The denizens of the rue de Paris watched him pa.s.s with an interest mingled with awe; to all their questions he returned sibylline answers big with mysterious treasures. Proud of being necessary to his master, he a.s.sumed an annoying authority over his companions, employing it to further his own interests and compel a submission which made him virtually the ruler of the house. Contrary to the custom of Flemish servants, who are deeply attached to the families whom they serve, Mulquinier cared only for Balthazar. If any trouble befell Madame Claes, or any joyful event happened to the family, he ate his bread and b.u.t.ter and drank his beer as phlegmatically as ever.

Dinner over, Madame Claes proposed that coffee should be served in the garden, by the bed of tulips which adorned the centre of it. The earthenware pots in which the bulbs were grown (the name of each flower being engraved on slate labels) were sunk in the ground and so arranged as to form a pyramid, at the summit of which rose a certain dragon's-head tulip which Balthazar alone possessed. This flower, named "tulipa Claesiana," combined the seven colors; and the curved edges of each petal looked as though they were gilt. Balthazar's father, who had frequently refused ten thousand florins for this treasure, took such precautions against the theft of a single seed that he kept the plant always in the parlor and often spent whole days in contemplating it. The stem was enormous, erect, firm, and admirably green; the proportions of the plant were in harmony with the proportions of the flower, whose seven colors were distinguishable from each other with the clearly defined brilliancy which formerly gave such fabulous value to these dazzling plants.

"Here you have at least thirty or forty thousand francs' worth of tulips," said the notary, looking alternately at Madame Claes and at the many-colored pyramid. The former was too enthusiastic over the beauty of the flowers, which the setting sun was just then transforming into jewels, to observe the meaning of the notary's words.

"What good do they do you?" continued Pierquin, addressing Balthazar; "you ought to sell them."

"Bah! am I in want of money?" replied Claes, in the tone of a man to whom forty thousand francs was a matter of no consequence.

There was a moment's silence, during which the children made many exclamations.

"See this one, mamma!"

"Oh! here's a beauty!"

"Tell me the name of that one!"

"What a gulf for human reason to sound!" cried Balthazar, raising his hands and clasping them with a gesture of despair. "A compound of hydrogen and oxygen gives off, according to their relative proportions, under the same conditions and by the same principle, these manifold colors, each of which const.i.tutes a distinct result."

His wife heard the words of his proposition, but it was uttered so rapidly that she did not seize its exact meaning; and Balthazar, as if remembering that she had studied his favorite science, made her a mysterious sign, saying,--

"You do not yet understand me, but you will."

Then he apparently fell back into the absorbed meditation now habitual to him.

"No, I am sure you do not understand him," said Pierquin, taking his coffee from Marguerite's hand. "The Ethiopian can't change his skin, nor the leopard his spots," he whispered to Madame Claes. "Have the goodness to remonstrate with him later; the devil himself couldn't draw him out of his cogitation now; he is in it for to-day, at any rate."

So saying, he bade good-bye to Claes, who pretended not to hear him, kissed little Jean in his mother's arms, and retired with a low bow.

When the street-door clanged behind him, Balthazar caught his wife round the waist, and put an end to the uneasiness his feigned reverie was causing her by whispering in her ear,--

"I knew how to get rid of him."

Madame Claes turned her face to her husband, not ashamed to let him see the tears of happiness that filled her eyes: then she rested her forehead against his shoulder and let little Jean slide to the floor.

"Let us go back into the parlor," she said, after a pause.

Balthazar was exuberantly gay throughout the evening. He invented games for the children, and played with such zest himself that he did not notice two or three short absences made by his wife. About half-past nine, when Jean had gone to bed, Marguerite returned to the parlor after helping her sister Felicie to undress, and found her mother seated in the deep armchair, and her father holding his wife's hand as he talked to her. The young girl feared to disturb them, and was about to retire without speaking, when Madame Claes caught sight of her, and said:--

"Come in, Marguerite; come here, dear child." She drew her down, kissed her tenderly on the forehead, and said, "Carry your book into your own room; but do not sit up too late."

"Good-night, my darling daughter," said Balthazar.

Marguerite kissed her father and mother and went away. Husband and wife remained alone for some minutes without speaking, watching the last glimmer of the twilight as it faded from the trees in the garden, whose outlines were scarcely discernible through the gathering darkness.

When night had almost fallen, Balthazar said to his wife in a voice of emotion,--

"Let us go upstairs."

Long before English manners and customs had consecrated the wife's chamber as a sacred spot, that of a Flemish woman was impenetrable. The good housewives of the Low Countries did not make it a symbol of virtue. It was to them a habit contracted from childhood, a domestic superst.i.tion, rendering the bedroom a delightful sanctuary of tender feelings, where simplicity blended with all that was most sweet and sacred in social life. Any woman in Madame Claes's position would have wished to gather about her the elegances of life, but Josephine had done so with exquisite taste, knowing well how great an influence the aspect of our surroundings exerts upon the feelings of others. To a pretty creature it would have been mere luxury, to her it was a necessity.

No one better understood the meaning of the saying, "A pretty woman is self-created,"--a maxim which guided every action of Napoleon's first wife, and often made her false; whereas Madame Claes was ever natural and true.

Though Balthazar knew his wife's chamber well, his forgetfulness of material things had lately been so complete that he felt a thrill of soft emotion when he entered it, as though he saw it for the first time.

The proud gaiety of a triumphant woman glowed in the splendid colors of the tulips which rose from the long throats of Chinese vases judiciously placed about the room, and sparkled in the profusion of lights whose effect can only be compared to a joyous burst of martial music. The gleam of the wax candles cast a mellow sheen on the coverings of pearl-gray silk, whose monotony was relieved by touches of gold, soberly distributed here and there on a few ornaments, and by the varied colors of the tulips, which were like sheaves of precious stones. The secret of this choice arrangement--it was he, ever he! Josephine could not tell him in words more eloquent that he was now and ever the mainspring of her joys and woes.

The aspect of that chamber put the soul deliciously at ease, cast out sad thoughts, and left a sense of pure and equable happiness. The silken coverings, brought from China, gave forth a soothing perfume that penetrated the system without fatiguing it. The curtains, carefully drawn, betrayed a desire for solitude, a jealous intention of guarding the sound of every word, of hiding every look of the reconquered husband. Madame Claes, wearing a dressing-robe of muslin, which was trimmed by a long pelerine with falls of lace that came about her throat, and adorned with her beautiful black hair, which was exquisitely glossy and fell on either side of her forehead like a raven's wing, went to draw the tapestry portiere that hung before the door and allowed no sound to penetrate the chamber from without.

CHAPTER VI

At the doorway Josephine turned, and threw to her husband, who was sitting near the chimney, one of those gay smiles with which a sensitive woman whose soul comes at moments into her face, rendering it beautiful, gives expression to irresistible hopes. Woman's greatest charm lies in her constant appeal to the generosity of man by the admission of a weakness which stirs his pride and wakens him to the n.o.bler sentiments.

Is not such an avowal of weakness full of magical seduction? When the rings of the portiere had slipped with a m.u.f.fled sound along the wooden rod, she turned towards Claes, and made as though she would hide her physical defects by resting her hand upon a chair and drawing herself gracefully forward. It was calling him to help her. Balthazar, sunk for a moment in contemplation of the olive-tinted head, which attracted and satisfied the eye as it stood out in relief against the soft gray background, rose to take his wife in his arms and carry her to her sofa.

This was what she wanted.

"You promised me," she said, taking his hand which she held between her own magnetic palms, "to tell me the secret of your researches. Admit, dear friend, that I am worthy to know it, since I have had the courage to study a science condemned by the Church that I might be able to understand you. I am curious; hide nothing from me. Tell me first how it happened, that you rose one morning anxious and oppressed, when over night I had left you happy."

"Is it to hear me talk of chemistry that you have made yourself so coquettishly delightful?"