第28章

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 nobler sentiments.Is not such an avowal of weakness full of magical seduction? When the rings of the portiere had slipped with a muffled 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?""Dear friend, a confidence which puts me in your inner heart is the greatest of all pleasures for me; is it not a communion of souls which gives birth to the highest happiness of earth? Your love comes back to me not lessened, pure; I long to know what dream has had the power to keep it from me so long.Yes, I am more jealous of a thought than of all the women in the world.Love is vast, but it is not infinite, while Science has depths unfathomed, to which I will not let you go alone.I hate all that comes between us.If you win the glory for which you strive, I must be unhappy; it will bring you joy, while I--Ialone--should be the giver of your happiness.""No, my angel, it was not an idea, not a thought; it was a man that first led me into this glorious path.""A man!" she cried in terror.

"Do you remember, Pepita, the Polish officer who stayed with us in 1809?""Do I remember him!" she exclaimed; "I am often annoyed because my memory still recalls those eyes, like tongues of fire darting from coals of hell, those hollows above the eyebrows, that broad skull stripped of hair, the upturned moustache, the angular, worn face!--What awful impassiveness in his bearing! Ah! surely if there had been a room in any inn I would never have allowed him to sleep here.""That Polish gentleman," resumed Balthazar, "was named Adam de Wierzchownia.When you left us alone that evening in the parlor, we happened by chance to speak of chemistry.Compelled by poverty to give up the study of that science, he had become a soldier.It was, Ithink, by means of a glass of sugared water that we recognized each other as adepts.When I ordered Mulquinier to bring the sugar in pieces, the captain gave a start of surprise.'Have you studied chemistry?' he asked.'With Lavoisier,' I answered.'You are happy in being rich and free,' he cried; then from the depths of his bosom came the sigh of a man,--one of those sighs which reveal a hell of anguish hidden in the brain or in the heart, a something ardent, concentrated, not to be expressed in words.He ended his sentence with a look that startled me.After a pause, he told me that Poland being at her last gasp he had taken refuge in Sweden.There he had sought consolation for his country's fate in the study of chemistry, for which he had always felt an irresistible vocation.'And I see you recognize as Ido,' he added, 'that gum arabic, sugar, and starch, reduced to powder, each yield a substance absolutely similar, with, when analyzed, the same qualitative result.'

"He paused again; and then, after examining me with a searching eye, he said confidentially, in a low voice, certain grave words whose general meaning alone remains fixed on my memory; but he spoke with a force of tone, with fervid inflections, with an energy of gesture, which stirred my very vitals, and struck my imagination as the hammer strikes the anvil.I will tell you briefly the arguments he used, which were to me like the live coal laid by the Almighty upon Isaiah's tongue; for my studies with Lavoisier enabled me to understand their full bearing.

"'Monsieur,' he said, 'the parity of these three substances, in appearance so distinct, led me to think that all the productions of nature ought to have a single principle.The researches of modern chemistry prove the truth of this law in the larger part of natural effects.Chemistry divides creation into two distinct parts,--organic nature, and inorganic nature.Organic nature, comprising as it does all animal and vegetable creations which show an organization more or less perfect,--or, to be more exact, a greater or lesser motive power, which gives more or less sensibility,--is, undoubtedly, the more important part of our earth.Now, analysis has reduced all the products of this nature to four simple substances, namely: three gases, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, and another simple substance, non-metallic and solid, carbon.Inorganic nature, on the contrary, so simple, devoid of movement and sensation, denied the power of growth (too hastily accorded to it by Linnaeus), possesses fifty-three simple substances, or elements, whose different combinations make its products.Is it probable that means should be more numerous where a lesser number of results are produced?