Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 May 1875 — A Touching Story. [ARTICLE]

A Touching Story.

A very touching ud beautiful story comes from the Bast concerning the Princess Marccline Czaltoryska, who recently died in Gallic!*. Her little grandson fell ill and his life was despaired of. The Dowager in a sublime prayer asked God to take her life in piece of that of her grandson. By a sort of miracle the child was saved; almost immediately the Princess was attacked by a malady of languor of which it was impossible to ascribe any natural cause. ** It is a debt I owe to Heaven,” she smiled, faintly. A few days later, upon "a radiant afternoon, she had herself rolled out m her casy-chair on the lawn, and gave orders to have all the doors and gates of the garden opened so that every body might enter. When the villagers heard of it they at once left their tasks. Old men and women, young men and maidens and little children pressed about the dying Princess, who had long been like & mother to them, for she held the old-fashioned notion that the people are the family of the sovereign. Then began a most louching ceremony. The children came first . Drawisg the youngest one intA her arms she embraced it, saying: “ Let this kiss fall again upon you all, my dear friends.” Then she gave to each child a medallion bearing the evangelical words, “ Love one another.” After the children came the young girls and women. To each of them she gave a little case containing implements for needlework and a chaplet and an image of the Blessed Mary. To the men she gave an ebony cross, and for each gift and recipient'sbe had appropriate words. When she had extended her last present she was so exhausted that her son and daughter-in-law, who stood by her, wished to have her wheeled back in the house, but sbe said no. She then begged the people to recite in a loud voice thfe Dominical orison. Then at a sign from her hand they all knelt, and their voices in fervent tones broke out in the recital of the Lord’s Prayer. As the amen still echoed in the air she felt death invading her heart, and, whispering “ Marcel,” the name of her grandson, the child was brought, and as he was being carried to her lips her head drooped upon her breast, and without a sigh she rendered her soul to God. So much for a scene that seems taken from a poem—an ideal state of society that one can hardly reconcile with the present. —Paris Cor. H. Y. Graphic.