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"See her full of anxiety and sorrow, yet calm and resigned to the will
of Heaven. Notice the dejection; the eyebrows rise towards the middle of
the forehead more than towards the cheeks; the eyeball appears full of
perturbation; the white of the eye is turned yellow; the eyelids are
drawn down, and a little swelled; all about the eye is livid; the
nostrils are drawn downwards; the mouth is half open, and the corners
are drawn down; the head carelessly leaning on one of the shoulders; the
face is of a lead colour; the lips pale.
"Who," my dear children, "can view this amiable countenance, without
feeling interested for the object, a mother, and in sorrow--a mother in
want--a mother in despair.
"The poor dear woman seems to be without the most distant prospect of
relief; without the most remote chance of meeting with a friend; without
means of extricating herself and her little ones from ruin; yet she
ought not to despair, for _Providence, when none appears, can find
itself a way_.
"There were two of those unhappy beings in the world, whose profits and
enjoyments arise out of the distresses of their fellow-creatures--two
huissiers, as they are called in France, or what we call sheriff's
officers; yet these people, my dear children, are necessary in the
community, to preserve property, and to cause us to act with justice to
each other; and when their unpleasant office is performed with decency
and mildness, they do not deserve disapprobation. It happened, however,
that the two officers who were in the poor widow's room were of that
description who debase the very nature of man, by rapacity and cruelty,
and who, hardened by constant scenes of misery, commit every possible
outrage on the distressed and friendless.
"See them busily employed, taking an inventory of the little effects of
the poor widow, with an unfeeling composure, that disgraced even their
profession. Here is the portrait of one of them, full of officious
consequence and contempt for poverty. To the applications which are made
to him by the poor widow for lenity, his hard inflexible features
present only the face of