Then, when life is in full activity, when its hearths glow, man lets the fire burn without thought or discussion, without considering either the means or the end.
No daughter of Eve ever more truly understood the calling of a wife than Madame Claes.

She had all the submission of a Flemish woman, but her Spanish pride gave it a higher flavor.

Her bearing was imposing; she knew how to command respect by a look which expressed her sense of birth and dignity: but she trembled before Claes; she held him so high, so near to God, carrying to him every act of her life, every thought of her heart, that her love was not without a certain respectful fear which made it keener.

She proudly assumed all the habits of a Flemish bourgeoisie, and put her self-love into making the home life liberally happy,--preserving every detail of the house in scrupulous cleanliness, possessing nothing that did not serve the purposes of true comfort, supplying her table with the choicest food, and putting everything within those walls into harmony with the life of her heart.
The pair had two sons and two daughters.

The eldest, Marguerite, was born in 1796.