Mother Marie-des-Anges is
high in court favor, and there is nothing she cannot obtain in the
most august regions of power; but it is only just to add that she asks
nothing,--not even for her charities, for she provides the means to do
them nobly by the wise manner in which she administers the property of
her convent.

Her gratitude, thus openly shown to the memory of the great
revolutionist, has been of course to the revolutionary party a potent
recommendation, but not the only one.

In Arcis the leader of the advanced Left is a rich miller named Laurent
Goussard, who possesses two or three mills on the river Aube. This man,
formerly a member of the revolutionary municipality of Arcis and the
intimate friend of Danton, was the one who wrote to the latter telling
him that the axe was suspended over the throat of the ex-superior of the
Ursulines. This, however, did not prevent the worthy _sans-culotte_
from buying up the greater part of the convent property when it was sold
under the name of national domain.

At the period when Mother Marie-des-Anges was authorized to reconstitute
her community, Laurent Goussard, who had not made much by his purchase,
went to see the good abbess, and proposed to her to buy back the former
property of her convent. Very shrewd in business, Laurent Goussard,
whose niece Mother Marie-des-Anges had educated gratuitously, seemed to
pique himself on the great liberality of his offer, the terms of
which were that the sisterhood should reimburse him the amount of his
purchase-money. The dear man was not however making a bad bargain, for
the difference in the value of assignats with which he had paid and
the good sound money he would receive made a pretty profit. But Mother
Marie-des-Anges, remembering that without his warning Danton could not
have saved her, did better still for her first helper. At the time when
Laurent Goussard made his offer the community of the Ursulines was,
financially speaking, in an excellent position. Having since its
restoration received many liberal gifts, it was also enriched by the
savings of its superior, made from the proceeds of her secular school,
which she generously made over to the common fund. Laurent Goussard must
therefore have been thunderstruck when he read the following letter:--

Your proposal does not suit me. My conscience will not allow me to
buy property below its proper value. Before the Revolution the
property of our abbey was estimated a