Worse than all, last and keenest torture, he was risking his life, he was often in danger--near her, yet far away, and she might not share, nor even know, his peril.

Her position became, like hell, a moral prison from which there was no issue, in which there was no hope.

Madame Claes resolved to know at least the outward attractions of this fatal science, and she began secretly to study chemistry in the books.

From this time the family became, as it were, cloistered.
Such were the successive changes brought by this dire misfortune upon the family of Claes, before it reached the species of atrophy in which we find it at the moment when this history begins.
The situation grew daily more complicated.

Like all passionate women, Madame Claes was disinterested.