Some Examples of Filial Devotion

Evening Star, Issue 6808, 23 January 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

Some Examples of Filial Devotion

♦ On November 27 last, at the annual distribution by the Academic Francaise of the rewards of virtue, instituted by Moutyo and other benefactors, M. le President had the gratification of announcing that by a bequest from Mdlle. Camilio Favre, twentyeight annual prizes of L2O each hid been instituted as rewards for iilial devotedness, and that a generous benefaction for a like purpose had been made by Mdllc. Marie Lasne. Among the recipients of the former was an elderly woman named Marie Eugenie Coisel, who at the age of thirteen had been stricken with atrophy of the lower limbs, and had been bedridden for forty-one years. She took to embroidery, and by dint of incessant application she not only maintained herself, but her mother, who was an invalid. When the latter died, her bed-ridden daughter invited an octogenarian aunt, afflicted with poverty and sickness, to receive shelter and sustenance under her roof, while at the same time she continued to accumulate, centime by centime, the sum of LBO, which the poor embroideress looked upon as a provision for her old age. The person to whom she entrusted the money absconded with it, and the patient needlewoman took up the burden of her life again, although with enfeebled vision and tremulous hand. Another prizeholder, Marie Semon by name, is sixty-live years of age. She lost her mother at the age of fourteen, and assumed the parental charge of three brothers, younger than herself, whom she educated—although she was only a poor Breton -paysanne —trained them to habits of industry, and made good men of them. Not only so, but she became the protector and support of her father, who had fallen into second childhood, but was so querulous and passionate that his outbreaks of temper sometimes amounted to frenzy; and she would often sit by his bedside, throughout the whole of the night, inventing narratives to beguile his attention and soothe his violence. And whenever there was sickness or trouble among her poor neighbors, Marie Semon was the first to carry sympathy and consolation to the afflicted, together with such other trifling assistance as she could render. A novelist might find the materials for a story of real life in the career of Jeanne Depresle, who is now forty years of age. In 1864 she was engaged to be married to Claude Pagnon, the only child of two aged people, whose sole dependence was a small plot of land which they cultivated. He was drawn in the conscription, and fell on the field of battle at Philippeville in 186 S. " Since I cannot be his wife, I will at least be his widow," said Jeanne; and, adopting his parents, she has tilled their little patch of soil with her own hands for eighteen years, and stood between them and poverty. Pagnon pere died about eighteen months ago, and his widow is now bedridden. Jeanne is her nurse, and in order to procure her the extra comforts she requires, the brave woman earned forty francs by going out for as many days in the year that has just passed awav. She was awarded a prize of L6O. Among the domestic servants most remarkable for their fidelity and goodness, Rose Fontain deserves an honorable place. She has lived forty-seven years in one family, and besides paying out of her wages for the maintenance in a private asylum of two sisters who are incurable lunatics, she has contrived, by dint of indefatigable industry and by the practice of a rigorous self-denial, to preserve from want the nine children of a widowed niece. Another aged woman, Marie Joseph Lemoine, has lived forty years with the same mistress. When the latter was widowed, and rendered helpless by poverty and illness, Marie undertook to support her by the labor of her own hands, and there seemed no reason to doubt that the L4O bestowed upon her from the Montyon fund would be appropriated to the solace of her old mistress. Marie Poncet, sixty-six years of age, has been for many years the mainstay of the widow and daughters of her former master ; while Marie Pauline Roger has supported by her needle, ever since the year 1872, her aged mistress, who was then paralysed and has sinoe fallen into second childhood. Many similar caßes, it may be added, were made known to and rewarded by the Academie. Of the forty odd prizes distributed, nearly all tho recipients were poor persons whose benevolence and self-sacrifice were exercised for the benefit of people poorer than themselves. Their goodness was no sudden impulse, entailing very little personal inconvenience, but a prolonged, and, in some instances, life-long devotion to the welfare of others, looking for no reward and wishing for none.— * Argus.'