Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-12-17


the academy by their recital.
The truth is that the French state Is be-
hind hand with it's blind. There are 10000
blind persons in France of whom only 1900
receive government aid! Every now and
then devotion to blind relatives comes up IN
this report. Rosalie Boissonade, who gets
the second crown of virtue and 5000, began
at the age OF, ten to serve as guide for her
blind mother. She is now an old maid and
her mother is long dead; but during twenty
five years past she has rented and cultivat-
ed truck patch in order to support
brother who married and went blind, his
sickly wife (who died) and three children,
whom she has adopted. Marianne Mons,
who gets $780, supported until the day of
their death her blind father, her infrm
mother and her paralytic brother Josefa
Ugartemenda and Sidonie Desoin, two more
old maids are crowned and subsidized for
similar lives of devotion. Both were peas
ant girls, working the fields.
To a Servant Girl.
The French Academy has also crowned
and handed its check for 5000 to a servant
girl. Melanie Redaudin of Cherbourg earns
twenty cents a day. With this she has for
ten years kept her aged mother (the wit
nesses say ''in comfort How she got her
clothes remains mystery to the forty i'm
mortals. Another such, who was a servant
girl, but who rose in time to be one of the
chief nurses of the Salpetriere is Mademoi-
selle Marguerite Bottard, crowned and re-
compressed tSGG0) for sixty years of service
in that institution. Having her uniform and
other clothing free it is affirmed that dur
ing the last forty of the sixty years she
never spent dollar of her monthly pay on
herself. All went to the most embarrassing,
the most annoying of the always annoying
Salpetriere patients. Among other details
it is stated that she has treated them to
coffee with sugar
Let us not fear the triviality of words or
feel shame to cite. among the titles of this
virtuous woman, her propensity to treat
poor crazy girls to coffee with sugar ex-
claimed the orator. '.Ah. let us compliment
her for it highly, proudly. on the contrary,
to have spread around her the moral good
contained in such unhoped-for surprises,
such improbable attentions and in the hap
py vanities aroused in those who found
themselves their special object, The lost
souls toward which the bounty of Madem-
oiselle Bottard fiuttered with such coquetry
must have felt something pass them in their
hell. something, perhaps intangible to
their comprehension, but something that
had wings.'
A Strange Contrast.
AS he pronounced these words Paul Her
vieu, himself one of the youngest and most
fortunate of the immortals. contrasted
strangely with the humble lives he dragged
into the light for all France to admire.
He stood among his peers. arstocrats of
pure literature and utterly successful as
to artistic reputation, financial reward and
social place. Round the forty, in their gold
laced uniforms, were packed together on the
clrcllng benches all that most repre-
sentative of Paris brilliant grand danes of
the old nobility, Napoleonic families, and
preSent-day finance and industry, accompa-
MED by clubmen, men with racing stables
men whose word is law upon the bourse.
professors of the university, great army
chiefs and swell lieutenants gilded youth
about the town and statesmen of renoWn.
So they listened to the painful details of
these humble lives Of abnegation thrust
upon their notice by the young aristocrat of
salt sod 70 /,
what the Greeks and Romans would have
called his virtue. Paul Hervieu began life |
by getting himself admitted to the bar
Then he entered the ministry of foreign af-
there conducted himself well that before
he was twentyfour years Old he was serv-
ing in Mexico as secretary of legation.
His Rise to Fame
At the same time he was observing mi
nuteiy and writing painfully-as he has ever
since done, producing never more than
few hundred words per day. On his return
to Paris ne found himself In a highly gen
tlemanly position a functionary of the
foreign affairs. Society was open to him.
and ne had a taste for it. He has always
been very punctiious in mis- dress polished
in his manners, reserved in his speech self
possessed. He observed high Partisan So
ciety, so worldly, selfish, and he describ-
ed it in a hard and precise style that has
absolute clearIess and directness, in such
works as "Flirt' and painted by Them
selves" At the age of thirty-three he had
a great name. Al the age of forty-three
he was elected to the French Academy,
since when he has made great sums by
successful theatrical pieces, of which Les
Tenailles,' study of marriage in the
divorce. The husband refuses. Ten years
later it is he who wants the divorce; and
she says, mo, it is too late-I hold you
Les Tenailles' means The Pncers.''
Jean Charageat.
The representatives of Paris Brilliant
gathered under the dome of the institute;
all knew Paul Hervieu and his habtual
subjects. When he spread before them in
his hard and polished style the lives of
humble heroism he and his colleagues of
the committee had discovered, 1t was a
strange Christmas contrast all around
Nevertheless, when he held up poor Jean
Charge to the view of the rich and fash
ionable throng, a thrill ran through it that
communicated itself to all France.
At the age of fourteen years Jean Chara-
geat began supporting his mother, three sis
ter and four brothers To accomplish this he
had at his disposition piece of ground
which, in the language of the peasants
round about. was mot enough to nourish
two cows" The boy planted, tended and
gathered. He rose with the dawn and even
worked by moonlight. Years passed Two
Of his sisters and all four brothers grew
up, married and went Off But Jean, now
sixty years old, never quilted his old
mother and paralyzed sister AT the be-
ginning of 1902 the former took her bed for
good During the first months the paralyzed
girl took care of her by day. while at
night Jean, tired out by working the field,
got the meal and took his turn as nurse.
Then the paralyzed sister took to bed for
good, and Jean Charageat found himself |
During two years he prolonged their lives |
with invincible tenderness. with energy SO |
feverish that 1t kept him on his legs after |
day.o SAYS the elegant young Academician
to fashionable Paris, to-day Jean Chara-
geat allows himself the luxury of being |
sick, because his mother and his sister have |
al last died in his arms, and, therefore he |
feels no necessity to go on living
STERLING HELLO. |
The Highest Authority.