Madame Claes foresaw the dangers of that moment.

Her love for Balthazar impelled her to justify in Marguerite's eyes conduct that might, to the upright mind of a girl of sixteen, seem faulty in a father.

The very respect which she showed at this moment for her husband, making herself and her condition of no account that nothing might disturb his meditation, impressed her children with a sort of awe of the paternal majesty.

Such self-devotion, however infectious it might be, only increased Marguerite's admiration for her mother, to whom she was more particularly bound by the close intimacy of their daily lives.

This feeling was based on the intuitive perception of sufferings whose causes naturally occupied the young girl's mind.