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    158 MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS.

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    A Short Account Of The Life And Labors O...

    religious establishment , the lad _^ grew up to tlie age of twenty , when it became necessary that lie should adopt a profession . While

    walking thoughtfully along a road considering to what career he should devote himself , the fatherless boy noticed a scrap of paper

    lying at his feet , whither it had been wafted by some chance wind , or dropped bsome careless passer-by . Stooping-he picked it up ,

    and found it y to contain a geometrical problem , , lost probably by some scholar on his way from school . Young Berlau took this

    incident to be a hint from Providence , and resolved to become a Professor of Mathematics . He did so , and secured a respectable

    _23 _bsition . His religious protectors obtained for him a good marriage ¦ with a de ? noiselle of a family of Touraine , by whom he had three

    children ; one of these was the father of Eugenie Berlau . This little girl was the twelfth child of her parents ; she had for

    playmates a little sister younger than herself and a niece of her own age . Her other brothers and sisters were away and settled in life ,

    and we only hear of one brother , who appears to have been a surveyor , having adopted the family taste for mathematics ; for he

    received a salary of twenty-five francs a day for assisting in the work of dividing France into departmentswhen the geographical

    , boundaries of the poetic old French provinces , so famous in the romance of history , were swej ) t away . When Eugenie was four years

    of age , she went to live with her parents at an old chateau in the environs of Montrechat . M . Berlau was anything * but a rich man ;

    the salaries of French officials are on so small a scale as to enable them with the greatest difficulty to bring up a family even _.. nmch

    fewer in number than was his large domestic circle ; and neither his profession nor his land appear to have raised his income to 5000

    francs , or £ 200 a year . How French households get on at all , and contrive to bring up their children , to settle their sons , and to marry

    their daughters , is a subject of constant astonishment to English le well acquainted with French interiors . M . Berlauhowever ,

    see peop accomp that lished he was it , besides as do hundreds a small 2 and _wop 7 thousands ; zetaire ; that of d o arling tliers , ; ambition and we , ,

    of the French citizen since the Revolution divided the land and threw . it into the hands of the people .

    At the old chateau Eugenie remained for many years , a dreamingstudious childconstantly wandering about out and in-doors ,

    much , given to botany , , and knowing every tree and plant and leaf native to the woods and fields of Touraine . But in order clearly to

    understand the influences which surrounded this remarkable woman in her young years , it is necessary to form a _concejDtion of provincial

    life in France , of which little or nothing is known ill England . We have a custom of constantly repeating that Paris is France , one of

    those shallow observations which come to pass current from sheer carelessnesslike a bad shilling . There are senses in -which , it is

    , only too true—the political sense , for instance ; Since the time of

    Louis XIV . the different governments have successively and _persiB-

    158 Madame Luce, Of Algiers.

    158 MADAME LUCE , OF ALGIERS .

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), May 1, 1861, page 158, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01051861/page/14/