Of course this story was much too good not to have a great success; it circulated not only through the Court, but all over Paris, and came at last to the ears of poor Mademoiselle de Gournay herself, who could not be consoled, as it revealed all the tricks to which she had been a victim. The illusions thus rudely destroyed were far more precious than the philosopher's stone she had so vainly sought, and involved a disappointment infinitely more painful. Who can help sympathizing with the poor woman, who thus saw all her fairy treasures resolved into their intrinsic worthlessness?
However, good came out of evil. Cardinal Richelieu—who had been especially delighted with the story of the three Racans, and was never weary of hearing it repeated—took the fancy of wishing to see her that he might try to make a good story out of her himself. He sent for her, and indulged in some very clumsy pleasantry, of which he had the grace to feel afterward ashamed. Willing to make her some amends, he settled a pension upon her, in order that for the rest of her days, she, and her friend, and her cat, might live on something better than dry bread.
Under the influence of this gleam of sunshine, Mademoiselle de Gournay edited another edition of Montaigne's work, with an abridgment of her former preface. She also published a fresh work of her own, entitled, "Avis et Présens de Mademoiselle de Gournay," which had a moderate success. Another edition of "L'Ombre" was also called for. All this, in some measure, consoled her for past humiliations.
Her prosperity lasted until the death of Cardinal Richelieu. Mademoiselle de Gournay, then in extreme old age, still survived him. When the list of pensions granted by the Cardinal was submitted to the king, her name caught his eye. Louis the Thirteenth—who might have had some grateful recollection of the many hearty laughs his royalty had enjoyed at her expense—declared that the Cardinal must have been mad to grant such a woman a pension, and ordered it to be suppressed! Mademoiselle de Gournay passed the few remaining years of her life in a state of poverty painful to reflect upon. She died somewhere about 1646, at the age of eighty.
Poor as she was, she made her will as became a person of her birth. She bequeathed her clothes to Mademoiselle Jamyn, who, old and infirm, survived her; a few books she left to different friends; and a curious old Map of the World, to the poet Gombauld—a personage as eccentric as herself, and one who lived and died in still greater penury, but who valued her legacy, and transmitted it to his heirs as the most precious treasure in the world.
DILIGENCE IN DOING GOOD.
Thomas Wright, of Manchester, is a worn but not a weary man of sixty-three, who has for forty-seven years been weekly servant in a large iron foundry, of which he is now the foreman. His daily work begins at five o'clock in the morning, and closes at six in the evening; for forty-seven years he has worked through twelve hours daily, to support himself and those depending on him. Those depending on him are not few; he has had nineteen children; and at some periods there have been grandchildren looking to him for bread. His income never has attained two hundred pounds a year. This is a life of toil. Exeter Hall might plead for him as a man taxed beyond the standard limit; but he had bread to earn, and knew that he had need to work for it: he did work with great zeal and great efficiency, obtaining very high respect and confidence from his employers. A man so laboring, and leading in his home an exemplary, pious life, might be entitled to go to bed betimes, and rest in peace between these days of industry and natural fatigue. What could a man do, in the little leisure left by so much unremitting work? Poor as he was—toiling as he did, a modest man of humble origin, with no power in the world to aid him but the wonderful spiritual power of an earnest will—Thomas Wright has found means, in his little intervals of leisure, to lead back, with a gentle hand, three hundred convicted criminals to virtue; to wipe the blot from their names and the blight from their prospects; to place them in honest homes, supported by an honest livelihood.
Fourteen years ago Mr. Wright visited, one Sunday, the New Bailey Prison, at Manchester, and took an earnest interest in what he saw. He knew that, with the stain of jail upon them, the unhappy prisoners, after release, would seek in vain for occupation; and that society would shut the door of reformation on them, and compel them, if they would not starve, to walk on in the ways of crime. The jail-mark branding them as dangerous, men buttoned up their pockets when they pleaded for a second trial of their honesty, and left them helpless. Then, Thomas Wright resolved, in his own honest heart, that he would visit in the prisons, and become a friend to those who had no helper.
The chaplain of the New Bailey, Mr. Bagshawe, recognized in the beginning the true practical benevolence of the simple-minded visitor. On his second visit a convict was pointed out, on whom Mr. Wright might test his power. It was certain power. From the vantage-ground of a comparative equality of station, he pleaded with his fellow workman for the wisdom of a virtuous and honest life. Heaven does, and Earth should, wipe out of account repented evil. Words warm from the heart, backed with a deep and contagious sense in the hearer of the high-minded virtue shown by his companion, were not uttered, like lip-sympathy, in vain. Then Thomas Wright engaged to help his friend, to get employment for him; and, if necessary, to be surety with his own goods for his honorable conduct. He fulfilled his pledge; and that man has been ever since, a prosperous laborer, and an upright member of society.