It is stated that on one occasion at Erlau Madame Meszlenyi found it necessary to apply for the use of a monastery for the purposes of a hospital. She went to the Superior and urged her request. In answer she was informed that the monastery was full. She thereupon urged that the inmates should crowd, so as to make room for the accommodation of the wounded. On the Superior still objecting to having the monastery turned into a hospital, Madame Meszlenyi desired to be allowed to see the rooms and suggested how the needful alterations could be made. At length her earnestness and energy prevailed with the lethargic ecclesiastics, the Superior not only consenting that everything should be done as she wished, but at once set about doing it. When the wounded were brought she did not allow her love of her countrymen to quench her humanity, but cared for Magyar and Croatian and Austrian alike, showing, however, her inborn delicacy and thoughtfulness in directing that they should be put into different rooms. Such was her careful attention to the needs and wishes of the poor sufferers that they said they were enveloped by the atmosphere of a mother's tenderness.
Nor were her qualifications for the skilled nursing of wounded soldiers less than those which distinguished her as an administrator. Her moral influence was great. The enthusiastic eloquence of her conversation with the sufferers, as they could endure it, went far to rob the pillow of its weariness and the wound of its pain. "She understood the importance of ministering to the imagination and heart when the excitements of the battlefield were exchanged for the bed of suffering."
The enthusiastic and grateful people strove in many ways to show their appreciation of the unselfish devotion of Madame Meszlenyi. It is recorded that during one of her journeys, having one night reached a village from which all the men had gone to the war, and being at the inn for the night, she was surprised by hearing music, whereupon she went to the window, and was astonished at seeing the village girls, dressed in white, carrying a rustic banner and baskets of flowers. Having heard of her presence in the village, they had come in procession to the house where she was staying to express in the best way they could their gratitude for the loving devotion shown by the sister of Kossuth towards their brothers and fathers in the war. Madame Meszlenyi kindly received her young admirers, and was much affected by the sense of their love. She accepted the little token of their gratitude, but took care to impress upon them strongly that she wished for no thanks; that she was doing no more than they themselves; that it was actual pain for her to receive any marks of personal honours in the time of their country's peril and need, when self should be lost sight of. This desire to sink and forget herself and her achievements for the sake of the principles which governed her actions was characteristic of her throughout. Sympathy in the cause for which she laboured, in the motives which animated her, she welcomed, whilst she invariably shrank from praise for individual exertion.