round of these prison-shops, the horrible state of the convicts, their half-naked misery, and still more their fiendish ferocity, went to the heart of the Count and of the Abbe de Paul; and, with full authority from the inspector, the tutor worked among these wretched beings with such good effect that, on his doings being represented to the king, Louis XIII., he was made almoner general to the galleys.

While visiting those at Marseilles, he was much struck by the broken-down looks and exceeding sorrowfulness of one of the convicts. He entered into conversation with him, and, after many kind words, persuaded him to tell his troubles. His sorrow was far less for his own condition than for the misery to which his absence must needs reduce his wife and children. And what was Vincent's reply to this? His action was so striking that, though in itself it could hardly be safe to propose it as an example, it must be mentioned as the very height of self-sacrifice.

He absolutely changed places with the convict. Propably some arrangement was made with the immediate jailor of the gang, who, by the exchange of the priest for the convict, could make up his full tale of men to show when his numbers were counted. At any rate the prisoner went free, and returned to his home, whilst Vincent wore a convict's chain, did a convict's work, lived on convict fare, and what was worse, had only convict society. He was soon sought out and released, but the hurts he had received from the pressure of the chain lasted all his life. He never spoke of this event; it was kept a strict secret ; and once when he had referred to it in a letter to a friend, he became so much afraid that the story would become known that he sent to ask for the letter back again. It was, however, not returned, and it makes the fact certain. It would be a dangerous precedent if prison chaplains were to change places with their charges; and beautiful as was Vincent's spirit, the act can hardly be justified; but it should also be remembered that among the galleys of France there were then many who had been condemned for resistance to the arbitrary will of Cardinal de Richelieu, men not necessarily corrupt and degraded like the thieves and murderers with whom they were associated. At any rate, M. de Joigni did not displace the almoner, and Vincent worked on the consciences of the convicts with infinitely more force for having been for a time one of themselves. Many and many were won back to penitence, a hospital was founded for them, better regulations established, and, for a time, both prisons and galleys were wonderfully improved, although only for the lifetime of the good inspector and the saintly almoner. But who shall say how many souls were saved in those years by these men who did what they could?

The rest of the life of Vincent de Paul would be too lengthy to tell here, though acts of beneficence and self

devotion shine out in glory at each step. The work by which he is chiefly remembered is his establishment of the Order of Sisters of Charity, the excellent woman who have for two hundred years been the prime workers in every charitable task in France, nursing the sick, teaching the young, tending deserted children, ever to be found where there is distress or pain.

But of these, and of his charities, we will not here speak, nor even of his influence for good on the king and queen themselves. The whole tenor of his life was golden " in

one sense, and if we told all his golden deeds they would fill an entire book. So we will only wait to tell how he showed his remembrance of what he had gone through in his African captivity. The redemption of the prisoners there might have seemed his first thought, but that he did so much in other quarters. At different times, with the alms that he collected, and out of the revenues of his benefices, he ransomed no less than twelve hundred slayes from their captivity. At one time the French Consul at Tunis wrote to him that, for a certain sum, a large number might be set free, and he raised enough to release not only these, but seventy more, and he further wrought upon the king to obtain the consent of the Dey of Tunis that a party of Christian clergy should be permitted to reside in the consul's house, and to minister to the souls and bodies of the Christian slaves, of whom there were 6.000 in Tunis alone, besides those in Algiers, Tangier, and Tripoli!

Permission was gained, and a mission of Lazarist brothers arrived. This too, was an Order founded by Vincent, consisting of priestly nurses like the Hospitaliers, though not like them warriors. They came in the midst of a dreadful visitation of the plague, and nursed and tended the sick, both Christians and Mahomedans, with fearless devotion, day and night, till they won the honor and love of the Moors themselves.

The good Vincent de Paul died in the year 1660, but his brothers of St. Lazarus and Sisters of Charity still tread in the paths he marked out for them, and his name scarcely needs the saintly epithet that his Church has affixed to it to stand among the most honorable of charitable men.

The cruel deeds of the African pirates were never wholly checked till 1816, when the united fleets of England and France destroyed the old den of corsairs at Algiers, which bas since become a French colony.

THE HOUSEWIVES OF LOWENBURG.

1631.

B

RAVE deeds have been done by the burgher dames of some of the German cities collectively. Without being of the first-class of Golden Deeds, there is something in the exploit of the dames of Weinsberg so quaint and so touching, that it cannot be omitted here.

It was in the first commencement of the long contest known as the strife between the Guelfs and Ghibellinesbefore even these had become the party words for the Pope's and the Emperor's friends, and when they only applied to the troops of Bavaria and Swabia-that, in 1141, Wolf, Duke of Bavaria, was besieged in his castle of Weinsberg, by Friedrich, Duke of Swabia, brother to the reigning emperor, Konrad III.

The siege lasted long, but Wolf was obliged at last to offer to surrender; and the Emperor granted him permission to depart in safety. But his wife did not trust to this fair offer. She had reason to believe that Konrad had a peculiar enmity to her husband; and on his coming to take possession of the castle, she sent to him to entreat him to give her a safe conduct for herself and all the other women in the garrison, that they might come out with as much of their valuables as they could carry.

This was freely granted, and presently the castle gates opened. From beneath them came the ladies,-but in strange guise. No gold nor jewels were carried by them, but each one was bending under the weight of her husband, whom she thus hoped to secure from the vengeance of the Ghibellines. Konrad, who was really a generous and merciful man, is said to have been affected to tears by this extraordinary performance; he hastened to assure the ladies of the perfect safety of their lords, and that the gentlemen might dismount at once, secure both of life and freedom. He invited them all to a banquet, and made peace with the Duke of Bavaria on terms much more favorable to the Guelf than the rest of his party had been willing to allow. The castle mount was thenceforth called no longer the Vine Hill, but the Hill of Weibertreue, or woman's fidelity. We will not invidiously translate it woman's truth, for there was in the transaction something of a subterfuge; and it must be owned that the ladies tried to the utmost the knightly respect for womankind.

The good women of Lowenburg, who were but citizens' wives, seem to us more worthy of admiration for constancy to their faith, shown at a time when they had little to aid them. It was such constancy as makes martyrs; and though the trial stopped short of this, there is something in the homeliness of the whole scene, and the feminine

form of passive resistance, that makes us so much honor and admire the good women that we cannot refrain from telling the story.

It was in the year 1631, in the midst of the long Thirty Years' War between Roman Catholics and Protestants, which finally decided that each state should have its own religion, Löwenburg, a city in Silesia, originally Protestant, had passed into the hands of the Emperor's Roman Catholic party. It was a fine old German city, standing amid woods and meadows, fortified with strong walls surrounded by a moat, and with gate-towers to protect the entrance.

In the centre was a large market-place, called the Ring, into which looked the Council-house and fourteen inns, or places of traffic, for the cloth that was woven in no less than three hundred factories. The houses were of stone, with gradually-projecting stories to the number of four or five, surmounted with pointed gables. The ground floors had once had trellised porches, but these had been found inconvenient and were removed, and the lower story consisted of a large hall, and a strong vault, with a spacious room behind it containing a baking-oven, and a stair-case leading to a wooden gallery, where the family used to dine. It seems they slept in the room below, though they had up stairs a handsome wainscoated apartment.

Very rich and flourishing had the Löwenburgers always been, and their walls were quite sufficient to turn back any robber barons, or even any invading Poles; but things were different when firearms were in use, and the bands of mercenary soldiers had succeeded the feudal army. They were infinitely more formidable during the battle or siege from their discipline, and yet more dreadful after it from their want of discipline. The poor Löwenburgers had been greatly misused: their Lutheran pastors had been expelled; all the superior citizens had either fled or been imprisoned; two hundred and fifty families spent the summer in the woods, and of those who remained in the city, the men had for the most part outwardly conformed to the Roman Catholic Church. Most of these were of course indifferent at heart, and they had found places in the town council which had formerly ben filled by more respectable men. However, the wives had almost all remained stanch to their Lutheran confession; they had followed their pastors weeping to the gates of the city, loading them with gifts, and they hastened at every opportunity to hear their preachings, or obtain baptism for their children at the Lutheran churches in the neighborhood.

The person who had the upper hand in the Council was one Julius, who had been a Franciscan friar, but was a desperate, unscrupulous fellow, not at all like a monk. Finding that it was considered as a reproach that the churches of Löwenburg were empty, he called the whole

Council together on the 9th of April, 1631, and informed them that the women must be brought to conformity, or else there were towers and prisons for them. The Burgomaster was ill in bed, but the Judge, one Elias Seiler, spoke up at once. "If we have been able to bring the men into the right path, why should not we be able to deal with these little creatures?"

Herr Mesnel, a cloth-factor, who had been a widower six weeks, thought it would be hard to manage, though he quite agreed to the expedient, saying, "It would be truly good if man and wife had one Creed and one Paternoster; as concerns the Ten Commandments it is not so pressing." (A sentiment that he could hardly have wished to see put in practice.)

Another councillor, called Schwob Franze, who had lost his wife a few days before, seems to have had an eye to the future, for he said it would be a pity to frighten away the many beautiful maidens and widows there were among the Lutheran women; but on the whole the men without wives were much bolder and more sanguine of success than the married ones. And no one would undertake to deal with his own wife privately, so it ended by a message being sent to the more distinguished ladies to attend the Council.

But presently up came tidings that not merely these few dames, whom they might have hoped to overawe, were on their way, but that the Judge's wife and the Burgomaster's were the first pair in a procession of full 500 housewives, who were walking sedately up the stairs to the Council Hall below the chamber where the dignitaries were assembled. This was not by any means what had been expected, and the message was sent down that only the chief ladies should come up. No," replied the Judge's wife, 66 we will not allow ourselves to be separated." this they were firm; they said, as one fared all should fare; and the Town Clerk, going up and down with smooth words, received no better answer than this from the Judge's wife, who, it must be confessed, was less ladylike in language than resolute in faith.

And to

"Nay, nay, dear friend, do you think we are so simple as not to perceive the trick by which you would force us poor women against our conscience to change our faith? My husband and the priest have not been consorting together all these days for nothing; they have been joined together almost day and night; assuredly they have either boiled or baked a devil, which they may eat up themselves. I shall not enter there! Where I remain, my train and following will remain also! Women, is this your will?"

"Yea, yea, let it be so," they said; "we will all hold together as one man."

His honor the Town Clerk was much affrighted, and went