For fifteen years, Balthazar had endeavored to make it a distinguished occasion, and had succeeded so well that the fete was talked of throughout a circumference of sixty miles, and the toilettes, the guests, the smallest details, the novelties exhibited, and the events that took place, were discussed far and wide.

These preparations now prevented Claes from thinking, for the time being, of the Alkahest.
Since his return to social life and domestic bliss, the servant of science had recovered his self-love as a man, as a Fleming, as the master of a household, and he now took pleasure in the thought of surprising the whole country.

He resolved to give a special character to this ball by some exquisite novelty; and he chose, among all other caprices of luxury, the loveliest, the richest, and the most fleeting,--he turned the old mansion into a fairy bower of rare plants and flowers, and prepared choice bouquets for all the ladies.
The other details of the fete were in keeping with this unheard-of luxury, and nothing seemed likely to mar the effect.

But the Twenty-ninth Bulletin and the news of the terrible disasters of the grand army in Russia, and at the passage of the Beresina, were made known on the afternoon of the appointed day.

A sincere and profound grief was felt in Douai, and those who were present at the fete, moved by a natural feeling of patriotism, unanimously declined to dance.
Among the letters which arrived that day in Douai, was one for Balthazar from Monsieur de Wierzchownia, then in Dresden and dying, he wrote, from wounds received in one of the late engagements.