How is it that you fear me?
Have I ever given you one word, one look, one gesture of reproach?
And yet, you have sold your last pictures, you have sold even the wine in your cellar, you are borrowing money on your property, and have said no word to me.

Ah! I go from life weary of life.

If you are doing wrong, if you delude yourself in following the unattainable, have I not shown you that my love could share your faults, could walk beside you and be happy, though you led me in the paths of crime?
You loved me too well,--that was my glory; it is now my death.

Balthazar, my illness has lasted long; it began on the day when here, in this place where I am about to die, you showed me that Science was more to you than Family.

And now the end has come; your wife is dying, and your fortune lost.