owed up? Shall we,
then, refuse to cooperate with all the powers of our mind and body with
those generous and enlightened spirits, who ask but a little sunshine
for so much misfortune, courage, and resignation?

* * * * *

Let us now return to the, alas! too true specimen of distressing want we
shall endeavour to describe in all its fearful and startling reality.

The lapidary possessed only a thin mattress and a portion of a blanket
appropriated to the old grandmother, who, in her stupid and ferocious
selfishness, would not allow any person to share them with her. In the
beginning of the winter she had become quite violent, and had even
attempted to strangle the youngest child, who had been put to sleep with
her. This poor infant was a sickly little creature, of about four years
old, now far gone in consumption, and who found it too cold inside the
mattress, where she slept with her brothers and sisters. Hereafter we
shall explain this mode of sleeping so frequently employed by the very
poor, in comparison with whom the very animals are treated luxuriously,
for their litter is changed. Such was the picture presented in the
humble garret of the poor lapidary, when the eye was enabled to pierce
the gloomy penumbra caused by the flickering rays of the candle. By the
side of the partition wall, not less damp and cracked than the others,
was placed on the floor the mattress on which the idiot grandmother
reposed; as she could not bear anything on her head, her white hair was
cut very short, and revealed the shape of her head and flat forehead;
while her shaggy, gray eyebrows shaded the deep orbits, from which
glared a wild, savage, yet crafty look; her pale, hollow, wrinkled
cheeks hung upon the bones of the face and the sharp angles of her jaws.
Lying upon her side, and almost doubled up, her chin nearly touching her
knees, she lay, shivering with cold, beneath the gray rug, too small to
cover her all over, and which, as she drew it over her shoulders,
exposed her thin, emaciated legs, as well as the wretched old petticoat
in which she was clad. An odour most fetid and repulsive issued from
this bed.

At a little distance from the mattress of the grandmother, and still
extending along the side of the wall, was placed the _paillasse_ which
served as a sleeping-place for the five children, who were accommodated
after the following manner:

An opening was made at each side of the cloth whic