"I want that! and that! There! there!" replied the idiot, making a desperate effort this time to possess herself of a heap of rubies she particularly coveted. Morel firmly, but gently, repulsed her,--all in vain; with pertinacious obstinacy the old woman kept struggling to break from his grasp, and snatch the bright gems, on which she kept her eyes fixed with eager fondness. "You will never manage her," said Madeleine, "unless you frighten her with the whip; there is no other means of making her quiet." "I am afraid not," returned Morel; "but, though she has no sense, it yet goes to my heart to be obliged to threaten an old woman, like her, with the whip." Then, addressing the old woman, who was trying to bite him, and whom he was holding back with one hand, he said, in a loud and terrible voice: "Take care; you'll have the whip on your shoulders if you don't make haste to bed this very instant!" These menaces were equally vain with his former efforts to subdue her. Morel then took a whip which lay beside his work-table, and, cracking it violently, said: "Get to bed with you directly! Get to bed!" As the loud noise of the whip saluted the ear of the idiot, she hurried away from the lapidary's work-table, then, suddenly turning around, she uttered low, grumbling sounds between her clenched teeth; while she surveyed her son-in-law with looks of the deepest hatred. "To bed! to bed, I say!" continued he, still advancing, and feigning to raise his whip with the intention of striking; while the idiot, holding her fist towards her son-in-law, retreated backwards to her wretched couch. The lapidary, anxious to terminate this painful scene, that he might be at liberty to attend to his sick wife, kept still advancing towards the idiot woman, brandishing and cracking his whip, though without allowing it to touch the unhappy creature, repeatedly exclaiming, "To bed! to bed,--directly! Do you hear?" The old woman, now thoroughly conquered, and fully believing in the reality of the threats held out, began to howl most hideously; and crawling into her bed, like a dog to his kennel, she kept up a continued series of cries, screams, and yells, while the frightened children, believing their poor old grandmother had actually been beaten, began crying piteously, exclaiming, "Don't beat poor granny, father! Pray don't flog granny!" It is wholly impossible to describe the fearful effect of these nocturnal horrors, in which were mingled, in one turmoil of sounds, the supplicating cries of the children, the furious yellings of the idiot, and the wailing complaints of the lapidary's sick wife. To poor Morel such scenes as this were but too frequent. Still, upon the present occasion, his patience and courage seemed utterly to forsake him; and, throwing down the whip upon his work-table, he exclaimed, in bitter despair, "Oh, what a life! what a life!" "Is it my fault if my mother is an idiot?" asked Madeleine, weeping.