The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-01-11 00:00:00

A ROMANTIC STORY.

Never did the doctrine of chances receive suck fullxton.
lineation as in the example of its influence we have to record
this week writes the Paris correspondent of the Court
Journa/. who proceeds to tell the following story, prefacing
It by saying that it Is so strange that it reads Aimee& like an
Eastern apologue, being just as complete In allits component
parts, and bearing with it as high.toned and flue moral).—

In a little haberdasher's ehop not far. from the Rue
St. Honore, in Paris, might be.seen a young,ladx. sit-
ting, weary and dispirited, behind the counter, wait-
ing to attend upon the English customers, who,
unable to speak trench, required assistance of a native
of their own country to explain their needs. The
young lady, of frail and delicate appearance—fair,
although faded in countenance—was employed in
translating the demands of the customers, and in
carrying out the parcels. She VMS gradually dying
with the anxiety and fatigue incidental to the situa-
tion, which was evidently unsuited to the weak state
of her health and the delicacy of her frame. Not long
ago an English lady entered the shop to make a trifling
purchase. She was struck by the patient sadness of the
shopwoman ; and as sympathy begets sympathy, the
latter let slip in the course of conversation that her
birth and education belonged to a far different sphere
to that in which she was now compelled to move. The
lady, much interested in the revelation, invited the
poor sufferer to come to her house, and listened to her
narrative with the wildest degree of amazement. The
poor eeming-woman in the haberdasher's shop proved
herself to be the daughter of a noble English house of
the highest rank. Her father's name is historical, and
the wealth of the family unbounded. She had married
a French nobleman of equal rank and fortune, but
both were young and reckless, the wife extravagant,
the husband prodigal, and before many years were over
the inheritance of each had been dissipated so tho-
roughly that nothing remained. The husband fled to
London, overwhelmed with debt and difficulty, and
here he resided until the failure of a political enter-
prise drove him to America. Here he died; and the
poor young wife, with her two children, crept back
to France in the hope that the father's rich rela-
tions would help them out of the misery into
which they had fallen. But the rich relations of
the old prejudiced blood of the Middle Ages could
otter no help but that of depriving her of her
children on pretext of religious motives, and the
French law giving them into the hands of the nearest
relative, they were spirited away to a coneerit ! Now
did you ever read a story by Mrs. Gore, published,
many years ago, in her book of Hungarian Talcs?
The whole history is here. The children fed aml
clothed with luxury, cared for and educated carefully,
the mother pensioned grudgingly so long as she sought
not to see or hold communication with the children,
and then the disobedience to the order and consequent
ruthless privation of the pension and removal of the
children beyond her reach! It was thus she had been
struggling on, sinking lower and lower in the abyss
until she became assistant in the small haberdasher's
shop where the English lady found her. The brave,
noble, and valiant English heart which now crowed
her path beat with sympathy. The London days of
friendship with the husband were recalled to the
Emperor. He who has never forgotten an .old com-
rade listened with the greatest distress to the story, and
immediately requested the Empress to attend to the
first wants of the poor laity; and after all her troubles
she is at this moment handsomely lodged and care-
fully tended in an upper story of the Tuileries, while
an investigation is proceeding .to establish the right
claimed by the family of detaining the children.

-
LITERARY NEws.—The success (if the pretty
book called "The Six Sisters of the Valleys" has
induced the author to announce "The Seyen.ktrothers
of the Lady's Maids."—Punch.