Friday, August 28, 2009

Anecdotes on Madeleine Chasles

Her father’s two sisters became nuns of the sacred heart
Memories of Madeleine accompanying her father in mountain hikes. Father was silent. Both walking one behind the other. Madeleine enjoying the hikes and praying.
Madeleine had previously studied to be a nurse and therefore volunteers to work as a nurse in the military hospital of the Val-de -Grace. Among her duties (as described briefly in “Le reigne de la Terreur”) she comforted severely wounded soldiers. One who had lost all limbs and the eyesight displayed extraordinary courage as Madeleine was helping him smoke a cigarette.
At the end of 1915, physical and perhaps mental exhaustion forced her to give up her duties.
She turns to Art History attending courses at the Sorbonne, the Ecole des Chartres and the Ecole du Louvre and also attends religious courses Rue de Varenne
Since 1917 Madeleine organized study groups (Cercle d’Etudes) and lib raries for the benefit of the young women catholic workers of the railway maintenance personel and the Postal workers, starts in 1918 eight study groups. Madeleine includes studies of the Old and New Testament, in very clear and simple terms putting both texts in parallel and accompanies the presentations with examples of various religious art. After three years, she got sick and had to stop.
In the early twenties meets Pierre Nicolet, one of her faithful readers who happens to be completely paralysed with only the ability to speak, his sister Jeanne is his caregiver. She writes a book about his faith.
In 1928, trip to Palestine, must have been in a group at one point are in a convoy of more than twenty cars. Visits all of Palestine. Both Raymond and her are supporters of Israel as a nation, well before the start of the war and the news of the holocaust which she refers to in latter books

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