Between Hercules's jaws it was like grain under the miller's grindstone.

It did not crackle, it powdered.
Mrs.Weldon alone scarcely eat, and even Dick Sand's entreaties were vain.

It seemed to him that this brave woman was more preoccupied, more sad than she had been hitherto.

Meanwhile her little Jack suffered less; the fever had not returned, and at this time he was sleeping, under his mother's eyes, in a cell well lined with garments.
Dick Sand knew not what to think.
It is useless to say that Cousin Benedict did honor to the repast, not that he paid any attention either to the quality or to the quantity of the food that he devoured, but because he had found an opportunity to deliver a lecture in entomology on the termites.

Ah! if he had been able to find a termite, a single one, in the deserted ant hill! But nothing.
"These admirable insects," said he, without taking the trouble to find out if any one were listening--"these admirable insects belong to the marvelous order of newroptera, whose horns are longer than the head, the jaws very distinct, and whose lower wings are generally equal to the upper ones.