Had I found the Absolute, the Unconditioned, I meant to have grappled with Motion.

Ah! while I am swallowing gunpowder and leading men uselessly to their death, my former master is piling discovery upon discovery! he is soaring towards the Absolute, while I--I shall die like a dog in the trenches!' "When this poor grand man recovered his composure, he said, in a touching tone of brotherhood, 'If I see cause for a great experiment I will bequeath it to you before I die.'-- My Pepita," cried Balthazar, taking his wife's hands, "tears of anguish rolled down his hollow cheeks, as he cast into my soul the fiery arguments that Lavoisier had timidly recognized without daring to follow them out--" "Oh!" cried Madame Claes, unable to refrain from interrupting her husband, "that man, passing one night under our roof, was able to deprive us of your love, to destroy with a phrase, a word, the happiness of a family! Oh, my dear Balthazar, did he make the sign of the cross?
did you examine him?
The Tempter alone could have had that flaming eye which sent forth the fire of Prometheus.

Yes, none but the devil could have torn you from me.

From that day you have been neither husband, nor father, nor master of your family." "What!" exclaimed Balthazar, springing to his feet and casting a piercing glance at his wife, "do you blame your husband for rising above the level of other men that he may lay at your feet the divine purple of his glory, as a paltry offering in exchange for the treasures of your heart! Ah, my Pepita," he cried, "you do not know what I have done.

In these three years I have made giant strides--" His face seemed to his wife at this moment more transfigured under the fires of genius than she had ever seen it under the fires of love; and she wept as she listened to him.
"I have combined chlorine and nitrogen; I have decomposed many substances hitherto considered simple; I have discovered new metals.
Why!" he continued, noticing that his wife wept, "I have even decomposed tears.