He loved to busy himself for others. To some
one who said that time lay heavy on his hands, he answered, "Then you
have never occupied yourself about other people?" "Take more thought
of others than of yourself" was his maxim. And he did so occupy
himself,--not out of curiosity, but to aid, to succor with advice and
with deeds. His time belonged to everybody,--to the humblest, the
poorest, the first stranger who addressed him and told him his sorrows.
Out of a very small income (at most, four or five thousand francs a
year) he found means to give much. He loved, above all, to assist poor
artisans, men of the people, who appealed to him; and he did it always
without wounding the fibre of manhood in them. He loved everything that
wore a blouse. He had, even stronger than the love of liberty, the love
of equality, the great passion of the French.
He spent the last years of his life with an old friend of his youth by
the name of Madame Judith. This worthy person died a few months before
him, and he accompanied her remains to the church. He was seventy-seven
years old when he died.
Estimating and comparing chiefly literary and poetic merits, some
persons in France have been astonished that the obsequies of Beranger
should have been so magnificently celebrated, while, but a few months
before, the coffin of another poet, M.
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