FAITHFUL | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 2, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 34.

FAITHFUL.

SOME sixty or seventy years ago a kind-hearted man named Baron de Monthyon was living in France. His life was devoted to the good of his fellow-men, and after his death clauses were found in his will bequeathing large sums of money to the French Academy, in trust, the income to be expended in prizes for noble and unselfish deeds.

These prizes are still awarded, and many remarkable cases of self-sacrifice are in this way brought to light.

A fair example is that of Jeanne Parelle, a peasant girl, who went out to service until she was twenty-six. That year her mother was stricken with paralysis, and Jeanne came home to nurse her. Not long afterward her father was seized with convulsions, so severe that his life could only be saved by the strenuous efforts of his daughter. He was unconscious and even dangerous during this illness, so that she was severely hurt while attending him.

These attacks often recurred, with the same results, during the next ten years, yet Jeanne meanwhile "cheerfully went about her work all day, endeavoring to prevent her father from perceiving her injuries."

"The poor old man grew blind, sold his little house, and at last died, leaving his wife deaf, blind, and unable to move from her chair. Jeanne spun, made hay, and tended her with the utmost care and cheerfulness."

The account that is given of the years that followed is touching.

Think of it girls, when life at home sometimes seems dull and hard. Think of it when you are vexed at some task given you to perform; or when mother or father seems unreasonable, or you are weary with watching by the bedside of some one dear to you.

Of Jeanne's patience and sweetness with the poor old childish woman, the following testimony was given: One festival day, Mère Parelle wished to go to church, and Jeanne, now a hard-working woman of forty-five, made no difficulties, but petted and caressed her, promising that she should go; and on a hot August day she was seen with a great arm-chair on one arm, and her mother on the other. She dragged the old woman three steps, then sat her down in the chair to rest; then lifted her up, led her a little further, and put the chair down again. They were three-quarters of an hour in going the distance Jeanne would have walked in five minutes; and after the return was effected, Jeanne was full of delight. "Well, dearest, did you say your prayers well? Are you glad? You are not tired!" And this laborious journey was cheerfully renewed on the old woman's least wish. Sometimes Jeanne was advised to send her to the hospital, the last refuge of poverty in France, analogous to a workhouse.

"It breaks my heart when they say so," she said.

"But Jeanne, your mother would be well cared for."

"I know that; I do not say so from contempt of the hospital. She would be taken care of; but tenderness, who would give her that?" And another time she added, "God leaves us our parents that we may take care of them. If I forsook my poor patient, I should deserve that God should forsake me."

Jeanne and her mother lived on a ground floor, and many persons thus had the opportunity of observing that her tenderness never relaxed. She herself lived on the inferior bread provided by the charity, with a few turnips and potatoes, while she kept her mother on white bread, and if possible, procured butter, cheese, and milk for her. Once when the curate had sent her a pie, which had been scarcely touched, her friends were surprised to see how long it lasted. "Yes, I make the most of it for my mother; I cut off nice little bits for her at her meals, it gives them a relish."

"Do not you eat it, then?"

"It would be a great pity for me to eat it, and nibble away her share, poor thing—it is her treat, and she has so few pleasures, poor sufferer!—neither hearing, nor seeing, and always in pain."

In a great frost, when it was bitterly cold she was found trying to cover her mother with an old worn-out pelisse, and looking quite melancholy, so a good thick woolen wrapper was sent to her. On the next visit the old woman was found tied up in it, with strings over her shoulders, and the daughter beaming with delight. "Bless those who have warmed my mother," she said; "God will warm them in Paradise." A pair of old warm flannel sleeves were given to her for herself, but she was seen again with bare arms in the extreme cold. "Did not the sleeves fit you?"

"Oh, I picked them to pieces. My mother had pains in her knees, so I sewed the flannel onto her under-petticoat; it is warm, you see; she likes it, poor thing." And there the pieces were, laid out neatly so as to thicken the petticoat. Amid all her infirmities the delicate neatness and the fresh cleanliness of the Mère Parelle were a continual wonder.

One of the visiting ladies said, "Really your mother looks quite fresh and bright;" and the good daughter smiled, looking like a young mother complimented upon her child's beauty. "You think her so?" she said. "Ah! poor thing! she is fresher than I am, for she does not drudge so much;" and then with a sigh, "Ah! if she could but hear me!"

For the poor sufferer had at last grown so entirely deaf, that she did not hear her daughter at all, and was constantly calling Jeanne without knowing that she was answered. For two months in the winter the daughter had never gone to bed, and though her own health began to suffer, she never complained. For five and twenty years, when the prize was given in 1830, had Jeanne Parelle been the unwearied nurse and bread-winner of first two, then one, parent.

It seems a small thing that man should attempt to reward such exertions, yet on the other hand, there is something touching in this hard-handed, untaught, toiling, elderly woman being chosen out to receive honor due by the first men in intellect and position in her country, and all for the simple, homely virtues of humble life.