er there is any good to be done, or sound advice to be given; mine
is to remain at home." This rare retiring and respectable conduct did
not disarm some hideous pamphleteers. Their impudent sarcasms were
continually attacking the modest wife on her domestic hearth, and
troubling her peace of mind. In their logic of the tavern they fancied
that an elegant and handsome woman, who avoided society, could not fail
to be ignorant and stupid. Thence arose a thousand imaginary stories,
ridiculous both as to their matter and form, thrown out daily to the
public, more, indeed, to offend and disgust the upright magistrate than
to humble his companion.

The axe that ended our colleague's life, with the same stroke, and
almost as completely, crushed in Madame Bailly, after so many poignant
agitations and unexampled misfortunes, all that was left of strength of
mind and power of intellect. A strange incident also aggravated the
sadness of Madame Bailly's situation. On a day of trouble, during her
husband's lifetime, she had placed the assignats resulting from the sale
of their house at Chaillot, amounting to about thirty thousand francs,
in the wadding of a dress. The enfeebled memory of the unfortunate widow
did not recall to her the existence of this treasure, even in the time
of her greatest distress. When the age of the material which had
secreted them began to reveal them to daylight, they were no longer of
any value.

The widow of the author of one of the best works of the age, of the
learned member of our three great academies, of the first President of
the National Assembly, of the first Mayor of Paris, found herself thus
reduced, by an unheard-of turn of fortune, to implore help from public
pity. It was the geometer Cousin, member of this academy, who by his
incessant solicitations got Madame Bailly's name inserted at the Board
of Charity in his arrondissement. The support was distributed in kind.
Cousin used to receive the articles at the Hotel de Ville, where he was
a Municipal Councillor, and carried them himself to the street de la
Sourdiere. It was, in short, in the street de la Sourdiere that Madame
Bailly had obtained two rooms gratis, in the house of a compassionate
person, whose name I very much regret not having learnt. Does it not
appear to you, Gentlemen, that the academician Cousin, who crossed the
whole of Paris, with the bread under his arm and the meat and the
candle, intended for the unfortunate widow of an