shaken. In a word, Frances Baudoin was one of those pure, but
uninstructed and credulous beings, who may sometimes, in skillful and
dangerous hands, become, without knowing it, the instruments of much
evil.

For some time past, the bad state of her health, and particularly the
increasing weakness of her sight, had condemned her to a forced repose;
unable to work more than two or three hours a day, she consumed the rest
of her time at church.

Frances rose from her seat, pushed the coarse bags at which she had been
working to the further end of the table, and proceeded to lay the cloth
for her son's supper, with maternal care and solicitude. She took from
the press a small leathern bag, containing an old silver cup, very much
battered, and a fork and spoon, so worn and thin, that the latter cut
like a knife. These, her only plate (the wedding present of Dagobert)
she rubbed and polished as well as she was able, and laid by the side of
her son's plate. They were the most precious of her possessions, not so
much for what little intrinsic value might attach to them, as for the
associations they recalled; and she had often shed bitter tears, when,
under the pressure of illness or want of employment, she had been
compelled to carry these sacred treasures to the pawnbroker's.

Frances next took, from the lower shelf of the press, a bottle of water,
and one of wine about three-quarters full, which she also placed near
her son's plate; she then returned to the stove, to watch the cooking of
the supper.

Though Agricola was not much later than usual, the countenance of his
mother expressed both uneasiness and grief; one might have seen, by the
redness of her eyes, that she had been weeping a good deal. After
long and painful uncertainty, the poor woman had just arrived at the
conviction that her eyesight, which had been growing weaker and weaker,
would soon be so much impaired as to prevent her working even the two or
three hours a day which had lately been the extent of her labors.

Originally an excellent hand at her needle, she had been obliged, as
her eyesight gradually failed her, to abandon the finer for the
coarser sorts of work, and her earnings had necessarily diminished in
proportion; she had at length been reduced to the necessity of making
those coarse bags for the army, which took about four yards of sewing,
and were paid at the rate of two sous each, she having to find her own
thread. This work, being very har