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 which covered the straw, and the children were inserted into this bed, or, rather, foul and noisome dunghill, the outer case serving both for sheet and counterpane. Two little girls, one of whom was extremely ill, shivered on one side, and three young boys on the other, all going to bed without undressing, if, indeed, the miserable rags they wore could be termed clothes. Masses of thick, dry, light hair, tangled, ragged, and uncombed, left uncut because their poor mother fancied it helped to keep them warm, half covered their pale, thin, pinched features. One of the boys drew, with his cold, benumbed fingers, the covering over their straw bed up to his chin, in order to defend himself from the cold; while another, fearful of exposing his hands to the influence of the frost, tried to grasp the bed-covering with his teeth, which rattled and shook in his head; while a third strove to huddle up to his brothers in the hopes of gaining a little warmth. The youngest of the two girls, fatally attacked by consumption, leaned her poor little face, which already bore the hue of death, languidly against the chilly bosom of her sister, a girl just one year older, who vainly sought, by pressing her in her arms, to impart comfort and ease to the little sufferer, over whom she watched with the anxious solicitude of a parent.
On another paillasse, also placed on the ground, at the foot of that of the children, the wife of the artisan was extended, groaning in helpless exhaustion from the effects of a slow fever and an internal complaint, which had not permitted her to quit her bed for several months. Madeleine Morel was in her thirty-sixth year; a blue cotton handkerchief, tied round her low forehead, made the bilious pallor of her countenance and sharp, emaciated features still more conspicuous. A dark halo encircled her hollow, sunken eyes, while her lips were split and bleeding from the effects of the fever which consumed her; her dejected, grief-worn physiognomy, and small, insignificant features, indicated one of those gentle but weak natures, without resource or energy, which unable to struggle with misfortunes, yield at once, and know no remedy but vain and ceaseless lamentations and regrets. Weak, spiritless, and of limited capacity, she had remained honest because her husband was so; had she been left to herself, it is probable that ignorance and misfortune might have depraved her mind and driven her to any lengths. She loved her 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 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 right arm, always inert and leaning on the table, the better to present the faces of the diamonds to the action of the grindstone, had wasted to the most extreme attenuation; his wasted limbs, almost paralysed by complete want of exercise, could scarcely support the weary, worn-out body, as though all strength, substance, and vitality had concentrated themselves in the only part called into play when toiling for the subsistence of, with himself, eight human creatures.