At a time when an anthology such as ‘The Pleasures of Poverty’ is published, for one thing perhaps to help stiffen the economic morale of the general public, it may be instructive and even interesting to learn how one of the Church's great women personalities reacted to the problem of material security.

Julie (now Saint Marie Madeleine) Postel might never have become so interested in the question of poverty had she not lived in the second half of the eighteenth century, in a France which was rapidly heading for economic disaster. She herself, belonging to good middle-class country stock, had always known a fair measure of security. But that was an exceptional experience in a country, where, for all but a privileged few, misery haointed the land in the form of famine and squalor.