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160 MADAME LUCE, OF ALGIERS.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
A Short Account Of The Life And Labors O...
was , and is , a different creature to the image we in England form to ourselves of the denizen of Paris . I have known- personally ,
, several French women of the middle class , born and brought up in the provincesand they have all possessed a certain shrewd ,
practical simplicity , of character which shows how much latent stuff there is in the French race in districts where Paris , with its talents and
its splendors , its unstable powers and treacherous brightness , is . comparatively unknown .
Thus , amidst strictly provincial influences , Eugenie Berlau was allowed to grow up in a very natural way . Her education was
somewhat irregular , she read indiscriminately from the books in her father ' s library , and mixed much with the country people ,
endeavoring to inoculate the shepherds on the estate with a love for the beauties of literature ; for which efforts they probably expressed
more gratitude than appreciation . However , she describes one old peasant woman who had been taught to readwhen a child , by no
, less a person than M . Voltaire . This old woman ' s son was Principal of the College of Blois , but she never could be induced to quit
her condition in life , persisting in cultivating a market garden with her own handsand taking the vegetables herself to market , with
the help of a donkey , . On one occasion Eugenie frightened her family out of their wits by a Quixotic absence of several hours ,
during- which she had mounted another tired old woman on her own donkey , and driven the beast into Montrechat , whence she did not
return till night . Notwithstanding her wild life , the little girl was , however ,
extremely sage . She made her premiere communion at eleven years of ageand was so well up in her Catechism that the cureinstead
of having , to teach her , made her a little moniteur to instruct , the other village children . Shortly after this she became a godmother !
The _fiEst of the many kindly adoptions of her after life . She was now growing up very tall and strong , giving early promise of the
personal vigor and beauty which distinguish her even now , after the lapse of more than half a century of manifold trials and labors .
The Berlau family were strong Royalists , and Eugenie ' s childhood was passed just at the most stormy timewhen the Bonapartists and
, the Legitimists were openly or secretly struggling for the supreme power . One day during the Cent Jours she was visiting a married
sister who resided some miles from Montreeliat . In company with several other children she went to see an old tower , situated in
the midst of a garden . In this garden was an outhouse , the door of which was fastened . The children , bent on discovering what
was inside , poked and peeped till they managed to see that it was full of armsiled up ; Eugeniewith characteristic daring , made her
way in , and , p there found , not , only the weapons , but an immense black flagon which glared in great white letters this sinister
, motto . La Nation Outragee _* It was a Bonapartist banner , and the ds d tit
little royalist , much offended , seized it with both hananore
160 Madame Luce, Of Algiers.
160 MADAME LUCE , OF _ALGIERS .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), May 1, 1861, page 160, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01051861/page/16/
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