I accompanied her in her charitable rounds through Paris, and at the sight of the misery I thus witnessed I felt I had never understood before to what an extent both misery and charity can extend. And yet poverty and humanity are to be found in all countries and in all climes. Certainly, we also have the poor amongst us, and Southern Italy is called, _par excellence_, the land of beggars and wretchedness. Nevertheless, when my imagination transported me to the gates of the convent where Don Placido daily distributed alms, without any great discernment perhaps, but accompanied with pious words, received by those to whom they were addressed as alms of almost equal value, I asked myself if this did not somewhat counter‐balance the excessive poverty and the lack of a more rigid and discriminating way of alleviating it. And when I witnessed the profound misery at Paris, augmented by the climate, and often embittered by hatred; when I saw this vast number greedy for the things of this world, but without any hope of those in a better, I asked myself if any possible compensation in the world could be given the poor who are deprived of the precious faith that would console, sustain, and ennoble them. Yes, _ennoble_ them; the word is not too strong to express the living exemplification of the Gospel I had often observed in accompanying Livia and Ottavia to the miserable habitations where they were welcomed so cordially. “Ah! signora,” these so‐called wretched creatures would sometimes say, looking at us with an air of compassion, “yes, we will pray for you, and our Lord will hear us; for, after all, _we poor_ are his favorites. He chose to take upon himself our likeness, and not that of the rich.” A thousand expressions of the same nature crossed my mind while accompanying my noble, saintly friend to the places where she exercised, and taught her young daughter to exercise, a double mission of charity. One day in particular, seeing the charming Diana kneeling beside the bed of a poor old woman whose infirmities were incurable, but who was without religion, I recalled the words that fell from the lips of a poor woman at Naples who had implored the cure of her malady through the intercession of some saint, _and had obtained it_, “Ah! mia cara signora, doctors are for the rich; as for us, we have the saints.” “You must relate all this to Gilbert,” said Mme. de Kergy, listening to me with a beaming face. “In spite of the absorbing interest he takes in discoveries and inventions of all kinds, he is not incapable of comprehending this solution—the highest and most simple of all—of the great problem repeated under so many different forms. He would readily acknowledge that, viewed in this light, the inequalities of social life assume a wonderfully different aspect.”