A LIFE SAVED BY FOUR PINS.

Northland Age, Volume 4, Issue 3, 3 September 1907, Page 5

A LIFE SAVED BY FOUR PINS.

In Paris there lived a Polish count and countess who had only been resident there for nine months. One day the count was accused of being an enemy of the Government, and he was roughly seized and carried before twelve sham noblemen, who, in less than ten minutes, condemned him to be imprisoned in a dungeon until such time as it should please the Government to give him a further trial. He could not tell when it was day and when night, for not a single ray of light penetrated his cell. The keeper of the prison brought him his food, and was not allowed to speak to the prisoner. Although months passed he was not brought up for further trial. The poor fellow was slowly losing his reason, when one day he felt over his coat and found four pins. He took them from his coat and threw them on the floor of his dungeon, and then went on his hands and knees and crawled all over the floor until he found them, when he would scatter them again, and again seek for them. When, after six years' imprisonment, his cell was opened to set him at liberty the Count was discovered crawling on the stones of his prison to find his four pins. He would not leave the cell without them, for they had been his best friends. The countess had them made into a brooch in the form of a star, encircled by twenty precious stones, on a ground of dark-blue stone, and this she always wore and valued more than gold, for the four pins had . been the means of preserving her husband's reason.