And yet, Balthazar's efforts to play the part of host, his constrained courtesy, his forced animation, left him the next day in a state of languor which showed but too plainly the depths of the inward ill.
These continual fetes, weak remedies for the real evil, only increased it.

Like branches which caught him as he rolled down the precipice, they retarded Claes's fall, but in the end he fell the heavier.

Though he never spoke of his former occupations, never showed the least regret for the promise he had given not to renew his researches, he grew to have the melancholy motions, the feeble voice, the depression of a sick person.

The ennui that possessed him showed at times in the very manner with which he picked up the tongs and built fantastic pyramids in the fire with bits of coal, utterly unconscious of what he was doing.

When night came he was evidently relieved; sleep no doubt released him from the importunities of thought: the next day he rose wearily to encounter another day,--seeming to measure time as the tired traveller measures the desert he is forced to cross.
If Madame Claes knew the cause of this languor she endeavored not to see the extent of its ravages.