What am I to do ?" Balthazar did not come.

Weary of waiting for him, Marguerite went up to the laboratory.

As she entered she saw him in the middle of an immense, brilliantly-lighted room, filled with machinery and dusty glass vessels: here and there were books, and tables encumbered with specimens and products ticketed and numbered.

On all sides the disorder of scientific pursuits contrasted strongly with Flemish habits.

This litter of retorts and vaporizers, metals, fantastically colored crystals, specimens hooked upon the walls or lying on the furnaces, surrounded the central figure of Balthazar Claes, without a coat, his arms bare like those of a workman, his breast exposed, and showing the white hair which covered it.