Sometimes, blaming herself for compliance with a passion whose object was futile and condemned by the Church, she would rise, go to the window on the courtyard and gaze with terror at the chimney of the laboratory.

If the smoke were rising, an expression of despair came into her face, a conflict of thoughts and feelings raged in her heart and mind.

She beheld her children's future fleeing in that smoke, but--was she not saving their father's life?
was it not her first duty to make him happy?
This last thought calmed her for a moment.
She obtained the right to enter the laboratory and remain there; but even this melancholy satisfaction was soon renounced.

Her sufferings were too keen when she saw that Balthazar took no notice of her, or seemed at times annoyed by her presence; in that fatal place she went through paroxysms of jealous impatience, angry desires to destroy the building,--a living death of untold miseries.

Lemulquinier became to her a species of barometer: if she heard him whistle as he laid the breakfast-table or the dinner-table, she guessed that Balthazar's experiments were satisfactory, and there were prospects of a coming success; if, on the other hand, the man were morose and gloomy, she looked at him and trembled,--Balthazar must surely be dissatisfied.
Mistress and valet ended by understanding each other, notwithstanding the proud reserve of the one and the reluctant submission of the other.
Feeble and defenceless against the terrible prostrations of thought, the poor woman at last gave way under the alternations of hope and despair which increased the distress of the loving wife, and the anxieties of the mother trembling for her children.