"Is it mine, then?" replied Morel. "All I ask for is peace and quiet enough to allow me to work myself to death for you all. God knows I labour alike night and day! Yet I complain not. And, as long as my strength holds out, I will exert myself to the utmost; but it is quite impossible for me to attend to my business, and be at once a keeper to a mad woman and a nurse to sick people and young children. And Heaven is unjust to put it upon me,--yes, I say unjust! It is too much misery to heap on one man," added Morel, in a tone bordering on distraction. So saying, the heart-broken lapidary threw himself on his stool, and covered his face with his hands. "Can I help the people at the hospital having refused to receive my mother, because she was not raving mad?" asked Madeleine, in a low, peevish, and complaining voice. "What can I do to alter it? What is the use of your grumbling to me about my mother? and, if you fret ever so much about what neither you nor I can alter, what good will that do?" "None at all," rejoined the artisan, hastily brushing the large bitter drops despair had driven to his eyes; "none whatever,--you are right; but when everything goes against you, it is difficult to know what to do or say." "Gracious Father!" cried Madeleine; "what an agony of thirst I am enduring! My lips are parched with the fever which is consuming me, and yet I shiver as though death were on me!" "Wait one instant, and I will give you some drink!" So saying, Morel took the pitcher which stood beneath the roof, and, after having with difficulty broken the ice which covered the water, he filled a cup with the frozen liquid, and brought it to the bedside of his wife, who stretched forth her impatient hands to receive it; but, after a moment's reflection, he said, "No, no, I must not let you have it cold as this; in your present state of fever it would be dangerous." "So much the better if it be dangerous! Quick, quick--give it me!" cried Madeleine, with bitterness; "it will the sooner end my misery, and free you from such an incumbrance as I am; then you will only have to look after mad folks and young children,--there will be no sick-nurse to take up your time." "Why do you say such hard words to me, Madeleine?" asked Morel, mournfully; "you know I do not deserve them. Pray do not add to my vexations, for I have scarcely strength or reason enough left to go on with my work; my head feels as though something were amiss with it, and I fear much my brain will give way,--and then what would become of you all? 'Tis for you I speak; were there only myself, I should trouble very little about to-morrow,--thank Heaven, the river flows for every one!"