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.