Venerable Pierre & Juliette Toussaint

The only clearly stated case of the complementarity of the couple’s gifts in charitable works is the case of a white Frenchman who had fallen on hard times, and could not afford the standard of living to which he was accustomed. So for several months, Juliette prepared for him a delicious French cuisine dinner each day (which she had probably learned well in her days as a domestic slave of French colonists in Haiti), and Pierre found a way to deliver it to him anonymously, so that he would not be humiliated in his own eyes if he discovered that he was the object of “charity” of a black couple of former slaves! And we only know of this case, because Juliette remarked on what the man had told her husband: that he had boasted to him “Oh yes, I have many friends, and one even sends me a delicious dinner each evening prepared by a French cook!” This story she allowed herself to recount for a bit of innocent laughter and to accredit her culinary abilities. But how many more of their generous works of mercy went unrecorded, unknown to others, or only attributed to Pierre, as the better known of the two?