A GRAND OLD PRIEST.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 22, 27 February 1891, Page 27

A GRAND OLD PRIEST.

(From the London Tablet.) The first Montyon "for virtue " has been this year adjudged by the Frencd Academy to an aged parish priest, the Abb 6 Belaud among eighty-six lauriats, We have pleasure in reproducing the touching bketch of this good priest's life as given by M. Leon Say at thp distribution of the Monty ou prizes. It is a beautiful picture of the career of a good, almost ideal, pariah priest. 11 This venerable priest, now eighty-four years of age, has never ceased to think of others. He has been, and he is yet, a model of the purest sslf -sacrifice and the moat intelligent charity. AH bis life has been spent in wishing and doin? good, and he has succeeded in it owing to a combination of lofty virtues and moral qualities, supplemented by physical capabilities of a really astonishing character ; and, thanks to this, he has created, under conditions which surpass all that could have been expected, two orphanages at Meplier and at Montferrorex, near Blanzy, in the Department of Saoae-et-Loire. These orphanages are rendering the greatest services to the hardworking populations of this mining district. But I atu inclined to thiDk that the examples he ha 9 given of absolute devotion to all who surrounded him ; of remarkably stronsr will which has supplied him with the power of overcoming all difficulties and complications ; of a modesty and discretion to be found only in those who are able to depend chiefly upon themselves ; of hard work broken by only four or fire hours Bleep, and pursued with such good hnmonr and energy as to put to shame those people who are claiming from tbe law a socalled eight hours day ; the example of his whole life, in fact, has done, aad will do. more good than even the works he has accomplished, and will remain in the memory of the inhabitants of tbe country he* lives in as a monument still more durable than the asylums he baa built for his orphans. " He has been for our peasants and our workpeople a striking model, and, in spite of his diguity. one on their own levef, a unioo of the great and the strong, the good and the beautiful. The time will come when his life at Montceau-les- Mines, of which he is the first cuie, will be told as a legend. Whenever there was an explosion, or any other accident, a great fire or an inundation, be has always been found in the thick of the danger. Tall, strong, resolute, he has never hesitated before danger, and has saved the life of many and many a workman. In the terrible accident of the Cinque Sous coalpit, in 1853, he went down the shaft repeatedly to bring up the dead and wounded, and, as in all similar circumstances, gave proof of unheard of presence of mind and daring. An indefatigable pedestrian, he used easily to walk from thirty to tbirty-oeven miles a day. He is a splendid swimmer, and is, as hi has always been, a a man of extraordinary strength. Like the high priest, Joaa, he fears God. alone. When he was cure of Blanzy, he also had charge of the parish of Montceau. To go from one church to another he had to cross a river, which for a bridge at that time had nothing but a plank, frequently under water and sometimes carried away by the enrrent. That never stopped him, however, and in mid-winter he not infrequently swam across the river with bis clothes in a bundle on his head. It is difficult to get from him any account of the lives he has saved in old times. If you ask him about them he will only tell you that he has always been a madman and has had a mania for pushing his way whenever there has been danger. Siuce leaving his parish in order to devote himself to his orphanage, he has become the sturdiest workman in the country.

He caji ply all trades ; he has been the mason and the carpenter of his own buildings. He gathered rounl him certain brave women to help him in the care of the orphans, and thus formed the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of Meplier. You should have seen him building ; carrying an enormous beam, himself all alone at one end, and all the nuns ani children a k the other He had no need of machinery for levelling the ground, and was able to replace the endless bands whi^h are U9ed to carry away the earth by a line of his good nun", who passed before the hole he was digging with their aprons outspread, to carry off, one after the other, the spadefnll of soil. He taught others not to spare themsslves. whilst his own iron health always allowed him to do anything. For more than half a century he has been giving what is called now-a-days an athletic education to all who surrounded him. "His moral and physical strength hag performed miracles in building, in improving the value of land, and in productive labour. The Orphanages of Mealier and Montferrorax very nearly pay of themselves for the keep of the children. As his modesty was threatened when he heard that he would probably be spoken of here to-day, he said : ' Tell the gentlemen to speak rather about my nuns, for I have made them work hard enousrb to deserve this little pleasure.' The pleasure is ours, gentlemen, for nothing can be more agreeable to us than to associate the nuns of Meplier with the honour we are paying to the Abbe Beraud."