ACTRESS WAITS FOR DEATH.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXIII, 23 June 1927, Page 4

ACTRESS WAITS FOR DEATH.

EVE LA\ r ALLIERE’S ONE HOPE.

VOAVS AS A NUN. In a humble little cottage in Toulon, Evo Lavalliere, once the brightest star on the Parisian boulevards, is awaiting a death that comes slowly. For two years she has tried hard to enter a Convent, but has been unsuccessful, and she js afraid that death may claim her before the can. mak? full atonement for her sins. Up till the beginning of the AA r orld War the name of Eve Lavalliere was on every Parisian’s lips. She was one of .the most successful aetdesses that the city had ever seen. But in 1914 she disappeared, and it was thought that her beauty had been marred as the result of some terrible accident and She was afraid to show her disfigured face to the world. *—7-

ANGUISHED CRY.

But the real cause of her absence from tlie fashionable parts of Paris was that she had fallen a victim to appendicitis. She feared that she might die, for peritonitis developed, and in her anguish she cried out: “I am not afraid to die, but first let me make restitution mo God.” Hoping against hope that she might recover she went to Lourdes, where so many remarkable cures have taken place. There tlie one-time idol of Paris knelt among disease-ridden men and women and prayed as she had never prayed before. Then, what seemed to he a miracle, happened. The illness appeared to have left her b fand she vowed that she would devote the rest of her days to her Maker.

Her next move was to try and enter the Carmelite Order of Nuns, an Order created for those who wish to leave the outside world entirely. But her spiritual adviser told her that she could not enter the Order until she had fully recovered her health. Eve Lavnllieie, therefore, sold most of b'w possessions and lived 1 in a poor lit*e cottage, altering it so as to represent a Carmelite oell. • , EVIL GOSSIP. She sold all her possessions and gavo the money thus obtained and the rest of her private fortune :J finance missionary work in Africa. Then a young Frenchman came to her village, and in the organ loft of the chuich the couple used to practise together the new chants that were to be sung on Sunday. Tlie village gossips got together and hinted that there was some illicit love affair going on between the two.

Although there .was no basis whatever for the allegation her spiritual adviser arranged lor her to go to Africa as a woman i Missionary, and she left France for two years! She remained at .ibis, work as long as she could, but her health gave way and she had to return to r ranee sail and dispirited. Back in her little cottage she now waits ip. the hope tiiat she will be admitted to- the Carmelite Order before she, dies. ‘