FLOWERS, &c. No. XXXI. CREPIS VIRENS. CREPIS is the name of a family of plants containing a great variety of species. The essential characteristics are that the calyx is calycled with deciduous scales; the florets are in several ranks; the receptacle roughish. Several species, known commonly by the name of hawkNo. 929, weed, or hawk's-beard, are found in England, and may be raised from seed sown in either autumn or spring. They will grow in most soils and situations, and the flowers produce a pleasing effect in the fronts of the borders of ornamented grounds. The Crepis virens is a native of France and Italy, and is found on walls and by the side of hedges. The root is annual. The stems are slender, and about a foot high. The flowers are yellow, and very small; the peduncles almost capillary. Her maiden name was Marie Bonneau de Rubelle she was born on the second of November, 1629. She lost her mother when about nine years of age, and fell ill with grief. Her father confided her to the contrary influences of a pious governess, who constantly spoke to her of God, and of a gay aunt, who took her to balls and plays. The teaching of the governess proved the most acceptable: Marie closed her eyes at the play, and kept her thoughts fixed upon death in the midst of the dance. Her delight was to hold communion with God through prayer, and serve him in the persons of the poor and the sick. Her aunt once gave a great ball, and vainly looked for her niece to begin the dance. Servants were sent for her everywhere, fruitlessly at length they found her in a retired part of the house, by the dying bed of a man-servant, who lay expiring in fearful convulsions. Marie was then twelve years of age. This one incident is a key to her whole existence. Young, rich, handsome, and summoned by all the pomps and alluring vanities of the world, the call fell on her ear unheeded. The promises of the gospel led along another path, and summoned her to a holier destiny. Her father died when she was about fourteen. With a prudence and wisdom above her years, mademoiselle de Rubelle undertook to superintend the education of her younger brothers, and rendered herself the real head of the family. In May, 1645, not being yet sixteen, she married M. de Mirauion, of the family of Beauharnois. The extreme seriousness and rigid piety of his bride annoyed M. de Miramion. "I renounced cards, dancing, and the theatre," she records in the brief memoirs of her written life, written at the request of her confessor, "which caused a good deal of surprise. on Our only discussions were the subject of my refusing amusements." But persuasion was amongst the gifts of madame de Miramion she soon won over her husband "to live like a Christian," as she expresses it, adding immediately afterwards, "We never spoke together of anything save death." Strange and gloomy ideal of a Christian life and marriage. Madame de Miramion had scarcely been six months a wife when she became a widow, on the eve of her sixteenth birthday. Spite of her Christian stoicism, she confesses that grief brought her to the very verge of death. A few months after * From "Women of Christianity, exemplary for Acts of Piety and Charity." By Julia Kavanagh. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1852. A very interesting volume, in which the histories of many females of the excellent of the earth, of various ages and nations, are narrated. The selection from the mass of materials offered seems to us good, the style pleasing, and the volume, on the whole, one that we can recommend.ED. the decease of her husband she gave birth to her only child, a daughter. The young widow lived in great retirement for two years. She was resolved not to marry again, and said so; but fortune-hunters were irresistibly attracted by a widow of eighteen, well born, still beautiful, spite of the small-pox, and wealthy. Bussy de Rabutin, the bold, satirical, and licentious cousin of madame de Sévigné, heard of ma dame de Miramion, and resolved that the wealthy widow should help to repair his broken fortunes. He saw her twice in a church, was pleased with her modest beauty, and resolved to carry her off, and force her into a marriage; to which he concluded that so gentle a woman would easily submit. His personal vanity-and he was perhaps the vainest man of his times-strengthened him in this conviction. In his memoirs, Bussy declares that he was deceived into the belief that madame de Miramion wished him to carry her off, and makes light of the whole affair. The abduction of heiresses, maids or widows, was a common practice of the age. Dubois, valet-de-chambre of Louis XIV., records in his memoirs how mademoiselle de la Tessonière was forcibly taken from her mother's carriage by M. de Fontenaille, who performed the exploit on horseback, in company of five or six friends. This careful ravisher had provided himself with a soft pillow, on which he placed the lady before him, then galloped off, spite of her screams and entreaties; but, having missed his way, and perceiving that it would not be in his power to keep her, he returned her unharmed to her friends on the following day. Madame de Miramion had spent the summer of the year 1648 in a country-house lying within a short distance of Paris. She received several warnings, which she disregarded, having no knowledge of Bussy de Rabutin's passion for her wealth and person; for that his attempt was not dictated by mere interest seems to be an acknoWledged fact. At an early hour on a fine August morning, madame de Miramion, accompanied by her mother-in-law, two female attendants, and an old squire, left Issy in an open carriage, in order to pay her devotions at the shrine on Mount Valerian. They were within a quarter of a league of the mount, when twenty men on horseback suddenly arrested them, changed the horses, and compelled the carriage to take another route. Madame de Miramion called out for aid; but the spot was lonely, and none heard her cries: the carriage went fast, and had soon entered the depths of the forest of Livry. The road, or rather path, along which they went, was so narrow that the horsemen, unable to ride on either side, were compelled to precede and follow the carriage. Madame de Miramion leaped out and ran away, through thorns and briers, which tore her face and hands; but, seeing that her ravishers had perceived her flight, and were pursuing her, and fearing they might compel her to ride on horseback for greater security, she retraced her steps, and lightly leaped back again into the carriage. It stopped ere long, to set down the elder madame de Miramion, her attendant, and the old squire; and her own attendant, and a footman, who declared he would not leave his mistress, alone remained with the young widow. 2 avishers offered her food, which she refused. They resumed their journey, changing horses from time to time. Whenever they passed through towns and villages, madame de Miramion renewed her cries for aid, and threw money to all the people she saw. Her escort declared she was a poor mad lady, whom they were taking away by order of the court: her dishevelled hair, disordered coif and kerchief, and the blood on her face and hands, seemed to confirm the truth of the story. On the evening of the following day they reached the castle of Launai-no modern château, but a real relic of feudal ages, with walls of massy strength, a dark and narrow court, and old draw-bridges, | that were lowered one by one, with great clanking of chains, for madame de Miramion to pass, and quickly raised again as soon as the carriage had been admitted. She peremptorily refused to alight, when a gentleman, whom his attire showed to be a knight of Malta, approached, and sought to persuade her to enter the house. "Is it by your orders that I have been carried away?" asked madame de Miramion. "No, madame, he replied very respectfully "it is by the order of monsieur Bussy de Rabutin, who has assured us that he had obtained your Consent." "Then he has spoken falsely," she indignantly exclaimed. "Madame," returned the knight, "we are here two hundred gentlemen, friends of monsieur de Bussy; but, if he has deceived us, be assured that we shall take your part against him, and set you at liberty." 66 meantime he entreated her to take some refresh- When madame de Miramion recovered, several The noble mien and respectful bearing of this other attempts to carry her off were made. They gentleman produced some effect on madame de failed; but frightened her so much that she Miramion: she consented, on his word, to alight, well-nigh resolved to marry again, in order to seand enter a low damp room on the ground-floor. cure a protector. She contented herself, however, A fire was lit for her; and she sat down on the with retiring into various convents: she thus recushions of her own carriage. Two loaded pistols sided for some time with mademoiselle Legras, and were lying on a table: she seized them eagerly. the Sisters of Charity. It was in their house that Food was brought her: she would not touch it, she privately consecrated herself to God, and reand vehemently asked for death or freedom. solved to divide her life between the education of Several persons came to intimidate or lure her her daughter and the care of the poor. "I am so into compliance: she heard them with disdain. comfortable; and the poor are so wretched," she Bussy de Rabatin himself appeared not: the un- often observed. Forsaken children interested her expected resistance of madame de Miramion en- deeply. She hired a house, filled it with twenty raged and mortified him. "I thought to find a orphan girls, fed and clothed them, paid mistresses lamb, and I have got a lioness!" he exclaimed in to instruct them, and frequently left her own his anger. After some hesitation, he at length home to go and teach them herself, sharing their sent the knight of Malta to assure her that he did meals, and sitting amongst them like a mother not mean to detain her against her will, and to with her children. Her mornings were devoted beg that she would hear him for a few moments. to the relief and visiting of the poor in their own He did not venture to appear alone before her, homes, her afternoons to the hospitals. She had but entered the room accompanied by a dozen of a natural repugnance to the sight of those ills and friends; and the bold profligate, renowned for his sufferings of humanity which she daily witnessed; daring and his wit, stood suddenly disconcerted yet, spite of those feelings, she once compelled in the presence of a woman of nineteen. On per- berself to attend, until she finally cured her, a ceiving him, madame de Miramion rose, and ex-poor girl so sadly afflicted with the scald, that no claimed: "I vow by the living God, my Creator and yours, that I will never be your wife." The passion with which she uttered this solemn protest made her fall back almost senseless on the cushions. A doctor who was present felt her pulse, which was so low that he thought her dying for forty hours she had not tasted food. Alarmed at the possibility of her death, and rendered still farther uneasy by the tidings that 600 armed men from Sens were coming to besiege the castle, and deliver madame de Miramion, M. de Bussy swore to set her at liberty; but in the one else would even so much as touch her. To these habitual tasks, madame de Miramion added frequent missions in the country to instruct peasant women, and establish schoolmistresses in the villages. Resolves written in her own hand, and found amongst her papers after her death, show the spirit which animated her: "To think of putting my temporal affairs in good order: to write down everything: settle with my daughter's guardian: pay all: retrench something: be very economical. To spend as little as I can on myself and my daughter: to give the rest of my in come to the poor: to give three thousand francs a-year from my daughter's property to the poor : to exhort my brothers to give to them also. to receive contradictions, contempt, and grief, with joy to thank God for these things, and beseech him to continue and increase them; to be quite satisfied under them, and grasp at humiliation like a treasure. To love a hidden life, known to none save God; and, whatever is done, to do it for him alone." She, who in the fervour of her faith spoke thus of "grasping at humiliation like a treasure," had yet enough human weakness to suffer keenly from the raillery of the light and worldly-minded, whose life and pleasures she renounced, in order to acquire a practical knowledge of medicine, and even, spite of ridicule, to bleed the sick. The office of treasurer to her parish gave her abundant opportunities of doing good, as the civil wars of the Fronde had filled Paris with poor. Thanks to her zeal and excellent management, two thousand indigent persons received soup daily. She often deprived herself of the innocent gratification of presiding over the distribution. "When I serve the poor," she said, "I have no merit: I am rewarded by the pleasure it gives me." But misery increased so rapidly around her that her income, though large, no longer sufficed to the wants of her charity. She sold her pearl necklace for twenty-four thousand francs. "God inspired me well," she observed to her confessor: "I got rid of an occasion of vanity, and at the same time found the means of assisting many poor creatures." Her plate was disposed of in the same manner, for the same purpose, in the following year. This ardent charity did not always meet with due gratitude. "How much trouble you take to oblige ungrateful people!" once observed a lady to her. "I have received more from God," replied madame de Miramion, "than those people have received from me. He therefore gives me a great proof of his mercy, in affording me those opportunities of satisfying his justice." This mortified spirit, the result of will more than inclination, did not render madame de Miramion quite dead to the vanities of life. She loved elegance, and once indulged her taste by causing her room to be newly furnished, and hung with black and white velvet. A single remark made by one of her friends, "that this magnificence was scarcely needed in the room of a Christian widow," sufficed to make her renounce this last lingering affection for the luxuries she had relinquished. At the age of twenty madame de Miramion had cut her hair short, and given up laces and coloured garments, wearing only plain woollen stuffs of grey or black hue: we have already seen the use to which she put her jewels. A dangerous illness interrupted those tasks of charity, and induced her to write thus to her daughter: : Ip I pray to God to give you his holy benediction. My last words to you are: love God with your whole heart, and serve him faithfully love and assist the poor: walk in the path of the gospel. Let that be your rule: keep it inviolate. Renounce the vanities of the world: God is not there. Confide in him: he will care for you. .... Adieu, my dear, and more than very dear daughter. I leave you God for a father: you are well thus; and to him I abandon you. Choose to die sooner than to offend him. Pray, and cause prayers to be offered up, for me. Farewell once more but only for a little while, since we shall meet before God. Your mother and best friend." Madame de Miramion recovered, but was afflicted with a painful cancer. She brought up her daughter in the spirit which had dictated this letter; with the tenderness of a mother, and the faith of a Christian. The health of her only child was so delicate that almost every year some severe illness brought her to the point of death. Madame de Miramion adopted every human remedy, then offered her up to God, saying: "If she is not to live and die a Christian, take ber from me, Lord." She educated her in her own principles and habits; took her with her everywhere; taught her to give alms, to instruct poor children, and visit hospitals. "The road of the hospitals leads to heaven," she often remarked. She made ber learn dancing, for the sake of the elegance it in parts to the carriage, and once took her to a ball, that she might know what sort of a thing it was, and learn to despise it. She urged her not merely to shun evil, but to do good; to be modest in her dress, moderate in following the fashions, neither to adopt extremes nor to censure those who did; above all, to love the poor. She once brought her two skirts, saying: "Choose one of them; if you take the least handsome of the two, you will have four pistoles remaining to give to the poor." The austere lessons thus inculcated were not distasteful to mademoiselle de Miramion, because they were never compulsory. From her twelfth year her mother treated her like a sister; never reprimanded her without giving her motives for so doing, and listened impartially to her remonstrances and justification. "If my reasons are better than yours," she said, "you will yield to them; but, if yours are the best, I shall give in." In this friendly spirit, mother and daughter discussed together the various offers of marriage which the latter received; until both decided in favour of M. de Nemond, an honourable ma gistrate. An act of Christian charity signalized their marriage: a thousand louis, instead of being spent on jewels, were given to the poor. Madame de Miramion had stipulated that her daughter should be allowed to govern and spend her own property. She presented her with an accountbook; and the first article of expense set down was the wide and paramount one of charity. Madame de Miramion now thought that her part with active life was done. She longed for the silence and repose of a cloistered solitude, and spoke of retiring to some provincial convent of the austere Carmelite order. All her spiritual advisers, who knew how admirably adapted she was for the practice of the highest religious duties, opposed the project so strongly, that she relinquished it, and thus added another act of selfdenial to the many sacrifices of her pure life. She resumed and extended all her tasks of charity, contributed largely to foreign missions, and for six months fed at her own expense poor nuns, whose convents had been ruined by the war. Grieved at the sight of all the abandoned women who then filled Paris with profligacy, madame de Miramion attempted to reform them. With the permission of the magistrates, she shut up seven or eight of those unhappy creatures in a house hired by her for that purpose, and placed two | the people, up to the first revolution, by the name discreet women over them. Madame de Mira- of "Miramionnes." mion often visited them herself, spoke to them of God, and endeavoured to wean them from vice by promises of liberty and a more honourable livelihood. Most of these women listened to her arguments, and turned away from evil. The success of this little establishment, which lasted two years, induced madame de Miramion to attempt on a larger scale, and at public cost, what she had effected from her own private resources. Three ladies of great liberality and charity, madame d'Aiguillon, niece of cardinal Richelieu, madanie de Farinvilliers, and madame de Traversal, to whom she suggested this project, met consider it. They admired it extremely, but thought it too difficult of accomplishment, and declined interfering. As they came to this decision, madame de Miramion entered the room where they sat. She belonged to those ardent spirits to whom the word "impossible" only imparts new zeal; and she spoke in favour of her design with so much force, conviction, and eloquence, that she carried away the hearts of the three ladies. When, at the conclusion of her brief address, she declared that she would give for her part, besides her time and labour, ten thousand francs to the new establishment, each of the ladies protested that she would give an equal sum. A contract was passed; the house was built; madame de Miramion drew up the regulations, and assumed the fatiguing task of governing this establishment: it rapidly improved and extended under her judicious rule, and was afterwards well known under the name of Sainte Pélagie. In the year 1662, the price of corn was so high that the general hospital of Paris, established by the ladies of the association, was on the verge of ruin. Madame de Miramion applied to madame Martinozzi, the illustrious princess of Conti. She painted to her the wants of the hospital in a strain so pathetic, that the princess presented her with the magnificent gift of a hundred thousand francs. In the course of the same year, this admirable woman, who had not yet reached her twentieth year, sold all her pearls and jewels for the sum of forty thousand crowns; which she caused to be distributed amongst the starving poor of Berry, Champagne, and Picardy. At the time that she thus exerted herself in favour of the general hospital, madame de Miramion was engaged in active and daily duties, which might have been supposed sufficient to engross her whole attention. For several years she had cherished the project of establishing, not a religious order, but a community or association of twelve women, who would undertake to devote themselves to the education of poor children, and the attendance of the sick and the wounded. After the marriage of her daughter, she went, in 1661, to reside in a house of the Faubourg St. Antoine, where five or six pious women shared her zeal and good works. This little community ultimately joined that of St. Genovefa, similar in its spirit and obligations. Madame de Miramion relinquished, with the joy of a lowly heart, the opportunity of spiritual pride and vain glory which the establishment of a religious order always affords; but, spite of her humility, the sisters, whom she supported for nine years at her sole expense, were always called by Under the guidance of this zealous superior, the Miramionnes, or daughters of St. Genovefa, fulfilled with admirable charity the duties of their institute. In the year 1673, troops quartered in the town of Melun introduced a contagious disease, so rapid and fatal, that upwards of a hundred persons died daily. All intercourse with the neighbouring towns was interdicted; and the terror in Melun was so great that the sick were thrust out of doors to die in the streets. Priests forsook their flocks, nuns left their convents, and the magistrates and civil officers of the town were on the point of deserting the place; when madame de Miramion arrived on the spot accompanied by surgeons and several sisters. She began by assembling the magistrates; a step which her wellknown virtue far more than her rank authorized. Her exhortations and unshrinking courage shamed them from their fears. A house was turned into an hospital; the sick, no longer left to perish in the streets, were conveyed to it; and madame de Miramion and her sisters entered it immediately. The priests and nuns who still remained in the town, ashamed to see a few women usurp the Christian charity they were bound to exert, endeavoured by tardy zeal to repair the disgrace of previous indifference. The contagion lasted two months: when it was over, madame de Miramion returned to Paris overpowered with fatigue; yet, when she learned on her arrival that a similar calamity afflicted the town of Senlis, it required the express prohibition of her religious superiors to prevent her from going to it immediately; so ardent was the zeal of her charity. . Indeed, madame de Miramion may be described as ever on the watch for doing good: this was both the aim and passion of her life. Thus the immodest language of a few idle girls, whom she overheard as she was returning home one evening, suggested to her the excellent project of workrooms, with mistresses to instruct and superintend girls who were ignorant and idle, but willing to learn and work. The plan was tried, and succeeded admirably: young girls came to those rooms in the morning, worked all day, received their dinner, and were paid for their work at the end of every week. At a period when commercial industry was so imperfectly developed, there was much in this idea. In the year 1694, corn became extremely dear: the hardship, of course, fell most heavily on the poor. Madame de Miramion used her influence with madame de Maintenon and the king to induce them to cause a large quantity of rice to be brought to Paris, and either given away or sold very cheap. She herself made for her establishment six thousand distributions of soup three times a week. It not unfrequently happened that those whom she thus relieved acknowledged her charity by coarse abuse; which she bore, and exhorted her sisters to bear, with heroic patience. "Courage, sisters!" she said, "the more you receive contradictions from men, the more does your merit before God increase*. Let them speak, and do you continue to serve them: your patience will prevail in the end." She is here commemorated, was a Roman catholic: her notions on justification seem to be very defective.-ED. * It will be observed that the lady, whose charitable zeal |