e waking while I slept."

The courage with which these two young people fought with misery
received for a while its due reward; but an event which usually crowns
the happiness of a household to them proved fatal. Ginevra had a son,
who was, to use the popular expression, "as beautiful as the day."
The sense of motherhood doubled the strength of the young wife. Luigi
borrowed money to meet the expenses of Ginevra's confinement. At first
she did not feel the fresh burden of their situation; and the pair gave
themselves wholly up to the joy of possessing a child. It was their last
happiness.

Like two swimmers uniting their efforts to breast a current, these two
Corsican souls struggled courageously; but sometimes they gave way to
an apathy which resembled the sleep that precedes death. Soon they were
obliged to sell their jewels. Poverty appeared to them suddenly,--not
hideous, but plainly clothed, almost easy to endure; its voice had
nothing terrifying; with it came neither spectres, nor despair, nor
rags; but it made them lose the memory and the habits of comfort; it
dried the springs of pride. Then, before they knew it, came want,--want
in all its horror, indifferent to its rags, treading underfoot all human
sentiments.

Seven or eight months after the birth of the little Bartolomeo, it would
have been hard to see in the mother who suckled her sickly babe the
original of the beautiful portrait, the sole remaining ornament of the
squalid home. Without fire through a hard winter, the graceful outlines
of Ginevra's figure were slowly destroyed; her cheeks grew white as
porcelain, and her eyes dulled as though the springs of life were drying
up within her. Watching her shrunken, discolored child, she felt no
suffering but for that young misery; and Luigi had no courage to smile
upon his son.

"I have wandered over Paris," he said, one day. "I know no one; can I
ask help of strangers? Vergniaud, my old sergeant, is concerned in a
conspiracy, and they have put him in prison; besides, he has already
lent me all he could spare. As for our landlord, it is over a year since
he asked me for any rent."

"But we are not in want," replied Ginevra, gently, affecting calmness.

"Every hour brings some new difficulty," continued Luigi, in a tone of
terror.

Another day Luigi took Ginevra's pictures, her portrait, and the few
articles of furniture which they could still exist without, and sold
them for a miserable sum, which pr