e poor to help the poor the poor would not
be able to live, and this old woman lived by the work of Jeanne's
hands for many a year, Jeanne going every morning to the
market-place to find some humble employment, finding it sometimes,
returning at other times desperate, but concealing her despair from
her bedridden companion, telling her as gaily as might be that they
would have to do without any dinner that day. So did they live until
two little seamstresses--women inspired by the same pity for the
poor as Jeanne herself--heard of her, and asked the _cure_, in whom
this cruel little village had inspired an equal pity, to send for
Jeanne. She was asked to give her help to those in greater need than
she--the blind beggars and such like who prowled about the walls of
the churches.

On leaving the priest it is related that she said: "I don't
understand, but I never heard any one speak so beautifully." But
next day when she went to see the priest she understood everything,
sufficient at all events for the day which was to take to her garret
a blind woman whom the seamstresses had discovered in the last
stages of neglect and age. There was the bedridden woman whom Jeanne
supported, and who feared to share Jeanne's charity with another, and
resented the intrusion; she had to be pacified and cajoled with some
little present of food, for the aged and hungry are like animals--
food appeases them, silences many a growl; and the blind woman was
given a corner in the garret. "But how is she to be fed?" was the
question put to Jeanne next morning, and from that question the
whole Order of the Little Sisters of the Poor started. Jeanne,
inspired suddenly, said, "I will beg for them," and seizing a basket
she went out to beg for broken victuals.

"There is a genius for many things besides the singing of operas,
painting pictures, and writing books," Evelyn said, "and Jeanne's
genius was for begging for her poor people. And there is nothing
more touching in the world's history than her journey in the
milk-cart to the regatta. You see, dear Mother, she was accustomed to
beg from door to door among squalid streets, stopping a passer-by,
stooping under low doorways, intruding everywhere, daring everything
among her own people, but frightened by the fashionable folk _en
grande toilette_ bent on amusement. It seems that her courage almost
failed her, but grasping the cross which hung round her neck, she
entered a crowd of pleasure-seekers,