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158 LA SCEUR ROSALIE.
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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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.
The In The Years Month Of A Of Long Octo...
whose influence was uppermost during the Reign of Terror ; but ¦ who neverthelesswere too well acquainted with sickness and
, , poverty , and had hearts to be touched by the devotion of those who knew how to cherish and forgive .
When Jeanne Hendu thus came under the care of La Sceur Tardy she was sixteen years and a half old ; her face beamed with
intelligence and feeling : firm and sensible , energetic and delicate , such is the picture drawn of the young girl who shortly became the
delight of the household , throwing herself into all its labors , and drawing the older nuns into the sphere of her joyous activity . At
the end of her novitiate they had become so fond of her that they could not bear the idea of losing her ; and La Sceur Tardy said
to the Superior , " Je suis tres contente de cette petite Hendu _, donnez lui F habitet laissez la moi . " So Jeanne Rendu took the veil at the
_Jkfaison , Mere received the name of Sceur Rosalie , to distinguish her from another sister , and then returned to the Faubourg Saint
Marceau to quit it no more . The Faubourg Saint Marceau was and is one of the worst quarters
of Paris : there the poor are poorer than elsewhere ; unhealthiness is more generalillness more fatal ; even the industry of this
quarter is chiefly , carried on by night , being of the lowest description . In 1802 immediately after the revolution , and its many years
of trouble , famine , , and sanguinary idleness , the Faubourg Saint Marceau was a great deal worse than it is now . In the
revolutionary orgies it had acquired a fearful celebrity , and when the ordinary social basis was restored , it had fallen into that state of
exhaustion which succeeds every kind of intoxication , and could with difficulty be brought back even to its former organisation .
The ephemeral sovereignty of its population had ebbed , leaving behind it a deeper misery than ever . In those narrow streets and
broken-down houses , in rooms too low and damp to be used as stables for brute beasts , whole families vegetated rather than lived ;
huddled together _pelemdle on the ground , or upon straw , without airlightwarmthor food . The moral and intellectual life of these
miserable , , people had , suffered in proportion . After so many stormy years it was difficult to find a child that knew how to read , or a
woman that could remember her prayers . The church and the school were equally needed with the workshop . Everything had to
be rebuilt , from its material and moral foundations . Such was the task which this Sister of Charity set herself to
accomplish ; and for which her pious fervor and clear practical intellect alike fitted her . We Protestants may learn a most
instructive lesson from the methods she employed , remembering that we also have a St . Giles and a Westminster to redeem . She
"began her career as a simple sister in the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois , and ended it as Superior of the Maison de la Rue de _l'Epee-de-Bois .
But in each post she was the _sdul of her associates _: she undertook
said carried on for more than half a century an energetic contest
158 La Sceur Rosalie.
158 LA SCEUR ROSALIE .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Nov. 1, 1859, page 158, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01111859/page/14/
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