He soon
found, I say, that there were things he could not do without help,
and Nancy was his first perplexity. From this he was delivered in a
wonderful way.
One afternoon he was prowling about Spitalfields, where he had made
many acquaintances amongst the silk-weavers and their families.
Hearing a loud voice as he passed down a stair from the visit he
had been paying further up the house, he went into the room whence
the sound came, for he knew a little of the occupant. He was one De
Fleuri, or as the neighbours called him, Diffleery, in whose
countenance, after generations of want and debasement, the delicate
lines and noble cast of his ancient race were yet emergent. This
man had lost his wife and three children, his whole family except a
daughter now sick, by a slow-consuming hunger; and he did not
believe there was a God that ruled in the earth. But he supported
his unbelief by no other argument than a hopeless bitter glance at
his empty loom. At this moment he sat silent--a rock against which
the noisy waves of a combative Bible-reader were breaking in rude
foam. His silence and apparent impassiveness angered the irreverent
little worthy. To Falconer's humour he looked a vulgar bull-terrier
barking at a noble, sad-faced staghound. His foolish arguments
against infidelity, drawn from Paley's Natural Theology, and tracts
about the inspiration of the Bible, touched the sore-hearted
unbelief of the man no nearer than the clangour of negro kettles
affects the eclipse of the sun.
Pages:
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590