e."

The poor little child, whose consumptive appearance we have before
noticed, had expired gently, and without a sigh, her looks fixed
earnestly on the sister she so tenderly loved.

No language can describe the cry which burst from the lips of the
lapidary's wife at these words, which at once revealed the dreadful
truth; it was one of those wild, despairing, convulsive shrieks, which
seem to sever the very heart-strings of a mother.

"My poor little sister looks as though she were dead!" continued the
child; "she frightens me, with her eyes fixed on me, and her face so
cold!"

Saying which, in an agony of terror, she leaped from beside the corpse
of the infant, and ran to shelter herself in her mother's arms, while
the distracted parent, forgetting that her almost paralysed limbs were
incapable of supporting her, made a violent effort to rise and go to the
assistance of her child, whom she could not believe was actually past
recovery; but her strength failed her, and with a deep sigh of despair
she sunk upon the floor. That cry found an echo in the heart of Morel,
and roused him from his stupor. He sprang with one bound to the
_paillasse_, and withdrew from it the stiffened form of an infant four
years old, dead and cold. Want and misery had accelerated its end,
although its complaint, which had originated in the positive want of
common necessaries, was beyond the reach of any human aid to remove. Its
poor little limbs were already rigid with death. Morel, whose very hair
seemed to stand on end with despair and terror, stood holding his dead
child in his arms, motionlessly contemplating its thin features with a
fixed bloodshot gaze, though no tear moistened his dry, burning
eyeballs.

"Morel! Morel, give Adele to me!" cried the unhappy mother, extending
her arms towards him; "she is not dead,--it is not possible! Let me have
her, and I shall be able to warm her in my arms."

The curiosity of the idiot was excited by observing the pertinacity with
which the bailiffs kept close to the lapidary, who would not part with
the body of his child. She ceased her yells and cries, and, rising from
her mattress, approached gently, protruded her hideous, senseless
countenance over Morel's shoulder, staring in vacant wonder at the pale
corpse of her grandchild, the features of the idiot retaining their
usual expression of stupid sullenness. At the end of a few minutes, she
uttered a sort of horrible yawning noise, almost re