Madame de Fleury was aware that neither a benevolent disposition nor a
large fortune were sufficient to enable her to be of real service,
without the constant exercise of her judgment. She had, therefore,
listened with deference to the conversation of well-informed men upon
those subjects on which ladies have not always the means or the wish to
acquire extensive and accurate knowledge. Though a Parisian belle, she
had read with attention some of those books which are generally thought
too dry or too deep for her sex. Consequently, her benevolence was
neither wild in theory nor precipitate nor ostentatious in practice.
Touched with compassion for a little girl whose arm had been accidentally
broken, and shocked by the discovery of the confinement and the dangers
to which numbers of children in Paris were doomed, she did not make a
parade of her sensibility. She did not talk of her feelings in fine
sentences to a circle of opulent admirers, nor did she project for the
relief of the little sufferers some magnificent establishment which she
could not execute or superintend. She was contented with attempting only
what she had reasonable hopes of accomplishing.
The gift of education she believed to be more advantageous than the gift
of money to the poor, as it ensures the means both of future subsistence
and happiness. But the application even of this incontrovertible
principle requires caution and judgment.
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