A QUEEN AMONG THE POOR.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 33, 10 December 1886, Page 18

A QUEEN AMONG THE POOR.

DURING two whole days of the part week, writes the PaTis correspondent of the Times, the Queen of Greece was not to be aeen. The " Queen of the Poor," as she has been called, devoted these two days to visiting some of the chief charitable institutions of Paris, and it has not been easy to trace her steps during the forty-eight hours thus snatched from amusements and pleasure and bestowed on the afflicted and outcast. Her first vioil was to the Asylum St. John de Dieu in the Rue Lecourbe, for deserted and incurable children. There 'are about 400 inmates, blind, lame, scrofulous, disabled in' every way beings miserable at the veiy birth and doomed to be miserable to the grave. Next her Majesty went io Passy.to the "Ouvre des Apprentis " conducted by the Abbe Koa*sil, who was under his care 400 or 500 boya rescued from idleness and povcity, and mostly deserted by their parents. Then came a visit to the " (Euvre dv Calvaire," where young widows of station tend patients suffering from the most revolting and incurable maladies. A more consoling spectacle awaited her next day on visiting the Central Sisterhood of St. Vincent de Paul (the Sisters of Charity). Here incognito was impossible, for except crowned heads, no "outsider ever enters the house. The Queen's visit was expected with the simplicity becoming the spot and the visitor was received by the 400 professed Sistcs ar-d 700 Novices and conducted to the chapel which was lighted up as on a grand festival. Having visited the Little Sisters of the f oor,the Queen concluded her rounds in the realm of charity by visiting the establishment of the Nursing Little Sisters, founded twenty-twoyears ago, and now number ing eighteen communities. These Sisters.says the Times correspondent go to the dwellings of the poor and carefully nurse them without even accepting a glass of water. The Queen was told that one of them had just died and was still unburied. •< I will see her," she said, and went down to a kind of mortuary under the chapel. The Sister still young, half reclining in an armchair, in her costunre, was surrounded with flowers and tapers. Otheis were watching round the remains calm and composed. The Queen asked whats^eet of paper was in her hand. Ihe paper was carefully taken from her. just as though from a living perso a. It was the paper on which she bad signed her vows which had been placed m her hand. Tue other Sisters spoke of her with the tenderness with which a sleeping child is referred to. " Has she not, madame, the appearance of sleeping the sleep of the happy ? Is she not beautiful iv her last dress ?" They contemplated the corpse with the envious look cast by a labourer on a sleeping comrade who has finished his task. <• Behold," said the Queen, " the secret of their unalterable cheerfulness. With us the idea of death is always like a dark veil. With them death has nothing but what is pleasing • they regard it as the end of every ill and the dawn of all felicity. Wbat faith there must be to march thus towards the Infinite I"

"Rough on Piles "—Why suffer Piles? Immediate relief and complete cure guaranteed. Ask for " Rough on Piles." Sure cure for itching, protruding, bleeding, or any form of Piles,

■

■

m