r husband and her children, but she had neither
the courage nor resolution to restrain giving vent to loud and open
complaints respecting their mutual misery; and frequently was the
lapidary, whose unflinching labour alone maintained the family, obliged
to quit his work to console and pacify the poor valetudinarian. Over and
above an old ragged sheet of coarse brown cloth, which partially covered
his wife, Morel had, in order to impart a little warmth, laid a few old
clothes, so worn out, and patched and pieced, that the pawnbroker had
refused to have anything to do with them.

A stove, a saucepan, a damaged earthen stewpan, two or three cracked
cups, scattered about on the floor, a bucket, a board to wash on, and a
large stone pitcher, placed beneath the angle of the roof near the
broken door, which the wind kept continually blowing to and fro,
completed the whole of the family possessions.

This picture of squalid misery and desolation was lighted up by the
candle, whose flame, agitated by the cold northeasterly wind which found
its way through the tiles on the roof, sometimes imparted a pale,
unearthly light on the wretched scene, and then, playing on the heaps of
diamonds and rubies lying beside the sleeping artisan, caused a thousand
scintillating sparks to spring forth and dazzle the eye with their
prismatic rays of brightness.

Although the profoundest silence reigned around, seven out of the eight
unfortunate dwellers in this attic were awake; and each, from the
grandmother to the youngest child, watched the sleeping lapidary with
intense emotion, as their only hope, their only resource, and, in their
childlike selfishness, they murmured at seeing him thus inactive and
relinquishing that labour which they well knew was all they had to
depend on; but with different feelings of regret and uneasiness did the
lookers-on observe the slumber of the toil-worn man. The mother trembled
for her children's meal; the children thought but of themselves; while
the idiot neither thought of nor cared for any one. All at once she sat
upright in her wretched bed, crossed her long, bony arms, yellow and
dry as box-wood, on her shrivelled bosom, and kept watching the candle
with twinkling eyes; then, rising slowly and stealthily, she crept
along, trailing after her her old ragged coverlet, which clung around
her as though it had been her winding-sheet. She was above the middle
height, and her hair being so closely shaven made her