The more Jacquard thought how he could help the silk-weavers of France the more he became absorbed, and forgot that money was needed to support his family. Soon the looms had to be sold at auction, with his small home. The world ridiculed, and his relatives blamed him; but Claudine his wife encouraged him, and prophesied great fame for him in the future. She sold her little treasures, and even her bed, to pay his debts. Finally, when there was no food in the house, with tears in his eyes, Jacquard left his wife and child, to become a laborer for a lime-burner in a neighboring town. Claudine went to work in a straw-bonnet factory; and for sixteen years they battled with poverty. Then the French Revolution burst upon Lyons in 1793. Her crime before such murderers as Robespierre and Marat was that she was the friend of Louis XVI. Sixty thousand men were sent against her by the so-called Republicans, who were commanded to utterly destroy her, and write over the ruins, "Lyons made war upon liberty; Lyons is no more." Six thousand persons were put to death, their houses burned, and twelve thousand exiled; among them Jacquard. His only child, a brave boy of sixteen, had joined the Republican ranks, that he might fight against the foreign armies of England, Austria, and Naples, who had determined, under Pitt, to crush out the new government. At the boy's earnest request his father enlisted with him, and together they marched toward the Rhine. In one of the first battles a cannon-ball struck the idolized son, who fell expiring in Jacquard's arms. Covered with the blood of his only child, he dug a grave for him on the battle-field; and exhausted and heart-broken went to the hospital till his discharge was obtained. He returned to Lyons and sought his poor wife. At last he found her in the outskirts of the city, living in a hay-loft, and earning the barest pittance by spreading out linen for the laundresses to dry. She divided her crusts with her husband, while they wept together over their irreparable loss. She soon died of grief, but, with her last words, bade Jacquard go forward in developing his genius, and have trust in God, who would yet show him the way of success. Blessed Claudine! A sweet, beautiful soul, shining like a star in the darkness of the French Revolution.