When Joseph II., of Austria, visited Paris, he sought out De l’Epee, and offered him the revenues of one of his estates.  To this liberal proposition the Abbe replied:  “Sire, I am now an old man.  If your Majesty desires to confer any gift, upon the deaf and dumb, it is not my head, already bent towards the grave, that should receive it, but the good work itself.  It is worthy of a great prince to preserve whatever is useful to mankind.”  The Emperor, acting upon his suggestion, soon after sent one of his ecclesiastics to Paris, who, on receiving the necessary instruction from De l’Epee, established at Vienna the first national institution for the deaf and dumb.

A still more striking instance of the self-denial to which his love for his little flock prompted him is related by Bebian.  During the severe winter of 1788, the Abbe, already in his seventy-seventh year, denied himself a fire in his apartment, and refused to purchase fuel for this purpose, lest he should exceed the moderate sum which necessarily limited the annual expenditure of his establishment.  All the remonstrances of his friends were unavailing; his pupils at length cast themselves at his feet, and with tears besought him to allow himself this indulgence, for their sake, if not for his own.  Their importunities finally prevailed; but for a long time he manifested the greatest regret that he had yielded, often saying, mournfully, “My poor children, I have wronged you of a hundred crowns!”

That this deep and abiding affection was fully reciprocated by those whom he had rescued from a life of helpless wretchedness was often manifested.  He always called them his children, and, indeed, his relation to them had more of the character of the parent than of the teacher.  On one occasion, not long before his decease, in one of his familiar conversations with them, he let fall a remark which implied that his end might be approaching.  Though he had often before spoken of death, yet the idea that he could thus be taken from them had never entered their minds, and a sudden cry of anguish told how terrible to them was the thought.  Pressing around him, with sobs and wailing, they laid hold of his garments, as if to detain him from the last long journey.  Himself affected to tears by these tokens of their love for him, the good Abbe succeeded, at length, in calming their grief; he spoke to them of death as being, to the good, only the gate which divides us from heaven; reminded them that the separation, if they were the friends of God, though painful, would be temporary; that he should go before them, and await their coming, and that, once reunited, no further separation would ever occur; while there the tongue would be unloosed, the ear unsealed, and they would be enabled to enjoy the music as well as the glories of heaven.  Thus quieted, with chastened grief came holy aspiration; and it is not unreasonable to hope that the world of bliss, in after years, witnessed the meeting of many of these poor children with their sainted teacher.