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His father had been a man of large property, but in consequence of being a Tory during the Revolution, his possessions were confiscated, and he and his family impoverished. Young Nicholas's childhood was passed in indigence, and it is said that he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, when a mere lad, to learn the trade as a means of livelihood.

But it was not the extreme indigence around her that afflicted the Venerable Mother; the example of her Lord and Saviour had on the contrary rendered this precious in her eyes and dear to her heart If her soul was rent, it was chiefly by the dread of having to dismiss her beloved pupils back to their native wilds.

To whom Paul said: Not only from thy corner I have gathered knights, but also I gather from the universal world to my Lord, to whom our king giveth such gifts that never shall fail, and granteth that they shall be excluded from all indigence and need; and if thou wilt be to him subject, thou shalt be safe, for he is of so great power that he shall come and judge all the world, and destroy the figure thereof by fire.

It is not at all difficult to indicate sources of happiness; the main stress of the problem lies in the contest with the positive evils of life, the great sources of physical and of mental suffering indigence, disease, and the unkindness, worthlessness, or premature loss of objects of affection.

At the end my courage very nearly failed. I reached the era of self-accusation; to make myself forget myself I took long, ardent marches into the open country; followed the authors I had worshipped through the localities they had made reverend; lost myself in dreaminesses, those precursors of death in the snow, and wished myself back in the ranks of the North, to go down in the frenzy, rather than thus drag out a life of civil indigence, robbing at once my brains and my stomach.

Of all imprisoned debtors, those who are confined for large sums may be deemed the most wretched and forlorn, because they have generally fallen from a sphere of life where they had little acquaintance with necessity, and were altogether ignorant of the arts by which the severities of indigence are alleviated.

"You ask me if they hope; what else than hope, what other comforter, could make such men as these live on in want and indigence, declining every proffer of advancement, refusing every temptation that should warp their allegiance?

On their arrival at the Salpetriere, the healthy are separated from the diseased; and the latter are sent to Bicetre, where they either find a cure or death. Your imagination will supply the finishing strokes of this frightful picture. These unfortunate victims of indigence or of the seduction of man, are deserving of compassion.

Let us, through these two thousand men, preserve this communion, and let us make use of it to free ourselves from the aimlessness and the deformity of our lives, and to free the condemned from that indigence and misery which do not allow the sensitive people in our ranks to enjoy our good fortune in peace.

"He was a philosopher equally removed from superstition and impiety; a voluptuary who had no less aversion from debauchery than inclination for pleasure: a man who had never felt the pressure of indigence, and who had never been in possession of affluence: he lived in a condition despised by those who have everything, envied by those who have nothing, and relished by those who make their reason the foundation of their happiness.