218 Biographical Memoir of' Count Rumford. 



It was not, however, the mendicants alone whose condition 

 was ameliorated. The bashful and honest poor were also ad- 

 mitted to ask work and food. More than one woman of rank 

 that had fallen into misfortune, obtained flax and soup from the 

 commissioners, without being ever questioned, and among the 

 brave of the Bavarian army, there were many who wore clothes 

 that had been spun by a noble and delicate hand. 



The success was such that not only were the poor completely 

 succoured, but their number was greatly diminished, because 

 they learned to support themselves. In one week two thousand 

 five hundred had been registered, and some years after they 

 were reduced to fourteen hundred. They even learned to feel 

 a sort of pride in relieving their old companions ; and nothing 

 prevented better their asking alms, than having enjoyed the 

 pleasure of bestowing them. 



Although Count Rumford had been directed in his operations 

 more by the calculations of a politician than by the impulses of 

 a man of feeling, he could not help being truly moved at the 

 sight of the change which he had effected, when he beheld on 

 those countenances, formerly shrivelled by misfortune and vice, 

 an air of satisfaction, and sometimes even tears of tenderness 

 and gratitude. During a dangerous illness he heard a noise 

 under his window, of which he enquired the cause. It was a 

 procession of the poor who were going to the principal church, 

 to implore of heaven the safety of their benefactor. He con- 

 fessed himself that this spontaneous act of religious gratitude, 

 in favour of a person of another communion, appeared to him 

 the most afi*ecting of recompenses ; but he did not dissemble 

 that he had obtained another, which will be more lasting. In 

 fact, it was in labouring for the poor that he made his most 

 important discoveries. 



M. de Fontenelle said of Dodard, who, in rigorously observ- 

 ing the fasts prescribed by the Church, made accurate experi- 

 ments on the changes which his abstinence produced in him, 

 that he was the first who had taken the same path for getting 

 to heaven and the academy. Count Rumford may be associated 

 with him, if, as may be believed, the services rendered to men 

 lead to heaven as surely as the practices of devotion. This 



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