d smiles. He does not shout like the others, but his smile seems from
heaven. He is an artist. He draws always with a bit of charcoal, with
anything, and I think that he shall study, and, it may be, make other
beautiful things that may live in a new St. Etienne, or in some other
place in this Paris that I love; and I am happy.

"Then comes the time, madame, that one remembers and prays to forget,
till one knows that it may be the good God's way of telling us how wrong
we are and what we must learn. First it is Armand, who has become
revolutionary,--what you call to-day communist,--and who is found in
what are called plots, and tried and imprisoned. It was not for long. He
would have come to me again, but the fever comes and kills many; he dies
and I cannot be with him,--no, nor even see him when they take him to
burial. I go in a dream. I will not believe it; and then my father is
hurt. He is caught in one of those machines that my mother so hates, and
his hand is gone and his arm crushed.

"Now the children must earn. There is no other way. For Armand and
Pierre I could bear it, since they are stronger, but for Etienne, no. He
comes from school that he loves, and must take his place behind the
loom. He is patient; he says, even, he is glad to earn for us all; but
he is pale, and the light in his eyes grows dim, save when, night and
morning, he kneels with me under my window and feels it as I do.

"Then evil days are here, and always more and more evil. Month by month
wages are less and food is more. My mother is dead, too, and my father
quite helpless, and my brother that has never been quite as others, and
so cannot earn. We work always. My boys know well all that must be
known, but at seventeen Armand is tall and strong as a man, and he is
taken for soldier, and he, too, never comes to us again. I work more and
more, and if I earn two francs for the day am glad, but now Etienne is
sick and I see well that he cannot escape. 'It is the country he needs,'
says the doctor. 'He must be taken to the country if he is to live;' but
these are words. I pray,--I pray always that succor may come, but it
comes not, nor can I even be with him in his pain, since I must work
always. And so it is, madame, that one day when I return, my father lies
on his bed weeping, and the priest is there and looks with pity upon me,
and my Etienne lies there still, and the smile that was his only is on
his face.

"That is all, madame. My life h