The images of her whole life, her past efforts, her useless precautions, her childhood, her mother happy and unhappy,--all, even her little Joseph smiling on that scene of desolation, all were parts of a poem of unutterable melancholy.
Marguerite foresaw an approaching misfortune, yet she little expected the catastrophe that was to close her father's life,--that life at once so grand and yet so miserable.
The condition of Monsieur Claes was no secret in the community.

To the lasting shame of men, there were not in all Douai two hearts generous enough to do honor to the perseverance of this man of genius.

In the eyes of the world Balthazar was a man to be condemned, a bad father who had squandered six fortunes, millions, who was actually seeking the philosopher's stone in the nineteenth century, this enlightened century, this sceptical century, this century!--etc.

They calumniated his purposes and branded him with the name of "alchemist," casting up to him in mockery that he was trying to make gold.

Ah! what eulogies are uttered on this great century of ours, in which, as in all others, genius is smothered under an indifference as brutal a that of the gate in which Dante died, and Tasso and Cervantes and "tutti quanti." The people are as backward as kings in understanding the creations of genius.
These opinions on the subject of Balthazar Claes filtered, little by little, from the upper society of Douai to the bourgeoisie, and from the bourgeoisie to the lower classes.