At last Marguerite was obliged to face her father, and charge him with
madness.

"Madness!" he cried, firing up and springing to his feet. There was
something so majestic and commanding in his attitude that made
Marguerite tremble at his feet. "Your mother would never have used that
word; she always attached due importance to my scientific researches."

She could not bear his reproaches, and fled from him. She felt that the
time had come, for they were now on the verge of beggary, to break the
seal of her mother's letter. That letter expressed the most divine love,
praying that God would permit her spirit to be with Marguerite while she
read the words of this last message; and it told her that the Abbé
Solis, if living, or his nephew, held for her a sum of a hundred and
seventy thousand francs, and on this sum she must live, and leave her
father if he refused to abandon his researches. "I could never have said
these words," Josephine had written; "not even on the brink of the
grave." And she entreated her child to be reverent in withstanding her
father, and if resistance was inevitable to resist him on her knees. The
abbé was dead, but Emmanuel held the money. In their discussions about
the management of this sum, the two young people drew closer together.
The poor father, brought to ruin, confessed his madness, and uttered the
terrible despair of a beaten scientist. To comfort him, Marguerite said
that his debts would be paid with her money. His face lit up. "You have
money! Give it to me; I will make you rich." Once more the madness
returned.

Emmanuel came with three thousand ducats in his pockets. They were
hiding them in the hollow column of a pedestal, when, looking up,
Marguerite saw her father observing them. "I heard gold," he said,