Alas! without that cruel care could I have lived so long?
But those poor children did not forsake me! they have grown beside my anguish, the mother still survives.

Spare them! Spare my children!" "Lemulquinier!" cried Claes in a voice of thunder.
The old man appeared.
"Go up and destroy all--instruments, apparatus, everything! Be careful, but destroy all.

I renounce Science," he said to his wife.
"Too late," she answered, looking at Lemulquinier.

"Marguerite!" she cried, feeling herself about to die.
Marguerite came through the doorway and uttered a piercing cry as she saw her mother's eyes now glazing.
"MARGUERITE!" repeated the dying woman.
The exclamation contained so powerful an appeal to her daughter, she invested that appeal with such authority, that the cry was like a dying bequest.

The terrified family ran to her side and saw her die; the vital forces were exhausted in that last conversation with her husband.
Balthazar and Marguerite stood motionless, she at the head, he at the foot of the bed, unable to believe in the death of the woman whose virtues and exhaustless tenderness were known fully to them alone.
Father and daughter exchanged looks freighted with meaning: the daughter judged the father, and already the father trembled, seeing in his daughter an instrument of vengeance.