described as accidental circumstances. The friend whom he
consulted when in doubt concerning holy orders was one Canon Roland.
This good man had interested himself much about an orphanage for girls
at Rheims, which had fallen under bad management, and urgently needed
reform. Canon Roland was taken ill just before De la Salle's ordination,
and, dying not long after, left the young priest his executor,
commending to his special care the orphanage just mentioned. De la Salle
could not refuse the charge; it was not much to his taste, but it was
the bequest of his friend; it was the leading of God; and he girded
himself to the task. He applied through the Archbishop to the King for
letters patent recognizing the institution, and thus put it upon a
lasting foundation; he bore the expense of the whole transaction; then
he supplemented the funds out of his own means; and having thus
satisfied his obligations to his deceased friend, he returned to his
quiet devotional life. The thought that this orphanage for girls would
constitute a valuable training school for schoolmistresses seems already
to have crossed his mind.

Now comes the turning-point of De la Salle's life, and it comes in a
curious way. There was a certain rich, fashionable, and extravagant
married lady living in Rouen, who, like the rich man in the parable, was
clothed in fine linen and fared sumptuously every day, while Lazarus lay
at the gate. One day a poor beggar, who had been harshly repulsed from
the door, touched the heart of a servant by his manifest misery, and was
received into the stables, where he died the same night. The dead man
must needs be buried; so the servant went to the mistress, confessed his
fault, received some violent language and notice of dismissal, but at
the same time procured a sheet to serve as a shroud for the corpse. At
dinner-time the lady perceived the very sheet, which she had given for
the burial, folded up and lying in her own chair; some mysterious hand
had brought back the ungracious present, as though the deceased beggar
would not receive a favour in death from one who had been so cruel to
him in life.

This strange and apparently not very important occurrence changed the
whole course of the lady's life. She gave up all her old habits of
magnificence and extravagance, lived the life of a devotee, and soon
succeeded in separating from herself all her old companions and friends,
who, in fact, deemed her mad. After her husband