head appear
disproportionately small; a sort of spasmodic movement kept up a
constant trembling in her thick, pendulous under-lip, while her whole
countenance offered the hideous model of ferocious stupidity. Slowly and
cautiously the idiot approached the lapidary's work-table, like a child
about to commit some forbidden act. When she reached the candle, she
held her two trembling hands over the flame; and such was their
skeleton-like condition, that the flickering light shone through them,
imparting a pale, livid hue to her features. From her pallet Madeleine
Morel watched every movement of the old woman, who, still warming
herself over the candle, stooped her head, and with a silly kind of
delight watched the sparkling of the diamonds and rubies, which lay
glittering on the table. Wholly absorbed in the wondrous contemplation
of such bright and beautiful things, the idiot allowed her hands to fall
into the flame of the candle, nor did she seem to recollect where they
were till the sense of burning recalled her attention, when she
manifested her pain and anger by a harsh, screaming cry.

At this sound Morel started, and quickly raised his head. He was about
forty years of age, with an open, intelligent, and mild expression of
countenance, but yet wearing the sad, dejected look of one who had been
the sport of misery and misfortune till they had planted furrows in his
cheeks and crushed and broken his spirit. A gray beard of many weeks'
growth covered the lower part of his face, which was deeply marked by
the smallpox; premature wrinkles furrowed his already bald forehead;
while his red and inflamed eyelids showed the overtaxed and sleepless
days and nights of toil he so courageously endured. A circumstance, but
too common with such of the working class as are doomed by their
occupation to remain nearly all day in one position, had warped his
figure, and, acting upon a naturally feeble constitution, had produced a
contraction of his whole frame. Continually obliged to stoop over his
work-table and to lean to the left, in order to keep his grindstone
going, the lapidary, in a manner petrified, ossified in the attitude he
was frequently obliged to preserve from twelve to fifteen hours a day,
had acquired an habitual stoop of the shoulders, and was completely
drawn on one side. So his left arm, incessantly exercised by the
difficult management of the grindstone, had acquired a considerable
muscular development; whilst the