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GREAT PENITENTS

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS
ATLANTA ¦ SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON - BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
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TORONTO

GREAT PENITENTS

By REVEREND HUGH FRANCIS BLUNT, LL.D.

Mtto f?orb
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921
All rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Copyright, 1921
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Se; up and printed. Published October, 1921

FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY
NEW YORK

JJffjil ©6stat REV. PATRICK J. WATERS, PH.D., /
CensoT LibTorum,
imprimatur WILLIAM CARDINAL O'CONNELL, Archbishop of Boston.

August 23, 1921.

Ah ! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must —
Designer infinite! —
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
— The Hound of Heaven.

PREFACE
Christianity is a religion of hope. It was one of the
bitter reproaches against Jesus Christ by some of His
Pharisaic contemporaries that He received sinners and even
ate with them. They affected to be scandalized at the
teaching that it was possible for one who had sinned to be
redeemed. The parable of the prodigal son, of the lost
sheep, and other stories, told for the purpose of bringing
home to men the knowledge of the mercy of God, were lost
upon them. To them there could be but one treatment for
fallen women, for instance, — stone them to death.
The reclamation of Magdalen is a glorious argument
for the divinity of Christianity. It is only God that could
work such a change in the human heart. Her example
has ever been an inspiration in the Christian Church.
After Magdalen, why despair ? Hers is the deathless story
of hope. And for that reason she has ever been chosen as
the patroness of the houses (never wanting, where the re
ligion of Christ has been preached) whose doors are open
to those who wish to imitate the great penitent in her
penance as they had imitated her in her sin. One such
house in the Italy of the sixteenth century was aptly called,
"OE THE ILLUMINATED AND CONVERTED
WOMEN". There is a wonderful beauty in the word
"illuminated" as applied to the penitent. It is as expres
sive as that definition of penitence given by St. Clement
of Alexandria. He called it "tardy knowledge", which
has something of the ring of the cry of the converted Aug
ustine — "Too late have I loved Thee, 0 Beauty so ancient
and so new !"

PREFACE
The Middle Ages are justly called "The Ages of Faith".
It is not that the faith has failed in other times; but so
great were the accomplishments of those days in every field
of endeavor, all due to the fact that the whole of Europe
was filled with the spirit of religion, that they are best
described as "ages of faith", par excellence. In like manner
the third and fourth centuries may be called the ages of
penance. It was then those great exemplars of the peni
tential life, the Fathers of the Desert, nourished. There
is no more romantic reading than the lives of these men,
and women, too, who fled from the riches and the pleasures
of the world, some of them sacrificing rich estates and posi
tions of power, to give themselves to the practice of austeri
ties, the very relation of which makes us weaker ones quail.
Those were days of glorified penance, when the world
was amazed at the sufferings of these "holy criminals", as
St. John Climacus calls them. Many a book of great
penitents could be compiled from the Lives of the Saints.
We have passed over most of those whose lives are readily
accessible, who may be called the traditional penitents, like
St. Mary of Egypt, St. Augustine, St. Thais, and St.
Pelagia. In this selection of penitents there is the design to show
that every age is the age of penitence ; that every day the
Prodigal Son is coming back home to his Father, in the
twentieth century as well as in the third, joyfully testify
ing to the old truth that it profiteth a man nothing to gain
the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul. These
men whose stories are told here are witnesses to the wis
dom and the beauty of the penitential life. Their sacrifices
were heroic. Possessed of the genius or the wealth that
got for them the flattery of the world, their one care, once
they were "illuminated", was to atone for past sin and die
well. Yesterday their lives a scandal, today an inspiration
to all who, like St. Teresa, see in the penitent sinner an
incentive to renewed searching for the mercy of God.

PREFACE
The author hopes that these stories of "GREAT PENI
TENTS" will be of service in providing spiritual reading
to the individual and to communities ; that priests may
find therein many hints for addresses to sodalities and
other societies ; and finally, that the book may find a place
on the "mission table" to help in the great work of re
claiming souls to god.

CONTENTS PAGE
The Fool of God  1
The Jesuates  19
The Gambler — St. Camillus De Lellis  31
Abbot De Ranee  51
Silvio Pellico  76
Paul Feval  99
Father Hermann : Musician and Monk  120
J. B. Carpeaux  137
Francois Coppee  148
J. K. Huysmans  169
Paul Verlaine  194
A Litany of Penitents  224

GREAT PENITENTS
THE FOOL OF GOD
IT is not by that name that this great man is known in
history. His intercession is sought under the beauti
ful, God-given name of St. John of God. But somehow
we like to think of him as the mad penitent, wandering
through the streets as a poor fool, the sport of a sneering
populace. The proud world of John's day, time of Spain's
glory when new worlds were being discovered every day
and men had the lust for power and money, considered him
a poor harmless sort of creature, if not a burden to society.
Public penance for sin ! Who ever heard of such vulgarity,
such utter simplicity ? Why, of course, he must be a fool.
A fool, indeed! Yet he was God's own fool, Heaven's
court jester ; he had learned the folly of the Cross If he
went through the streets of our own cities today he would
be locked up as a vagrant, and learned boards would be
called upon to pass upon his mental powers. But the fool
became a very wise man. It was just because he found out
what a fool he had been in following the wisdom of his
very wise contemporaries that he was able to establish his
great work of charity and finally win the gratitude of those
who once had laughed at him. The man who considers
himself the worst of sinners, who offends the sensibilities
of the dainty with the sound of his self-scourgings, is al
ways the one that has the gentlest touch for others. The
greater the penance, the greater the charity. The greater
the realization of sin, the greater the effort to atone by get
ting nearer to Christ. And the nearest way to Christ
leads through the alleys of the poor and the sick. The fool
of God became St. John of God by following that path.
John was born at Montemor o Novo in Portugal in the
1

2 GREAT PENITENTS
year 1495. The day of his birth was March the eighth,
and by a strange coincidence March the eighth was also
the day of his death. It was not a high position in the
world to which he was born. He who later on was to be
the friend of kings and nobility was of the poorest of the
poor. His parents had nothing of the world's goods. They
belonged to a low peasant class. But poverty was no
burden to them. It did not prevent them from being
especially devout in their service of God and in sharing
their little with those who had less. His biographers tell
us that there were signs at his birth indicating the future
greatness of the child. However that may be, the little
John was brought up by his sainted mother as one who
was particularly favored by God. He might never be
great, but he must be good. So his boyhood years up to
the age of nine were lived under her watchful eye in
innocence and great piety.
It may have been this very piety which was the cause
of the beginning of his wanderings. For some reason
which we do not know the boy one day left his home and
followed a Spanish priest to Oropeza in Spain. It may
have been with the knowledge of the mother or it may have
been without it. We rather believe that neither the priest
nor the good mother knew of the lad's plans, for the
biographers speak of his "mysterious" disappearance. She
was heartbroken anyway at his absence and died shortly
after he had gone from her.
Why the priest did not send the lad home at once when
he came to him at Oropeza it is useless now to seek to
discover. What he did was to find a home for him as a
servant in the house of the mayor of the place. It was a
good home for the boy. The mayor was exceedingly kind
to him and gave him every opportunity to advance, being
won to the lad by his fine manly character, his devoted-
ness to duty, and above all his great piety. John spent his
boyhood there and grew into manhood. So fond did the

THE FOOL OF GOD 3
mayor become of him that he was willing that John should
marry his daughter. Willing? He even insisted. But
John could not see things that way. Why he turned down
the offer of the lady's hand we cannot guess. It was very
likely for the very good reason that he did not love the
girl ; or it may have been that deep in his heart he felt that
he was called to other things in God's good time. But the
more he tried to put off the match the more the mayor
insisted. It speaks well for the character of John in those
days that he was considered such a desirable catch. But
he was not going to be caught that way, and, thinking to
settle the matter, he enlisted in the army of Charles V.
That did not settle the matter, however. John was now
more appealing as a soldier. The young lady's infatuation
increased at sight of the military grandeur of the man
she loved and the eager father again came to him with
the proposal which meant position and money. John was
sick of the importunities. If he was going to marry he
would marry the girl of his choice ; he would not have his
wife picked out for him, even if that wife was the daugh
ter of the mayor. He determined to get away from the
man who wished to make him his son-in-law, and put miles
between him and the grieving lady by going to Hungary
to fight against the Turks.
That act was the undoing of John. It was a far cry
from the quiet life of the mayor's house to that of the
camp. He was then twenty-seven years of age in the
full vigor of manhood. He had come into a school which
did not make for sanctity. Many of his new companions
in the army were youths to whom licentiousness was as the
air they breathed. It was a corrupted society where a
youth with pretence to piety and morality was a strange
being. The evil examples daily before his eyes did their
work. In time John's piety wore off and he became as
easy a liver as the rest of the soldiers.
During those thirteen or fourteen years that he served

4 GREAT PENITENTS
in the army there was little good in his life. He was a
soldier of fortune, wandering about from country to
country, filled with the restless spirit which characterized
those days of great discoveries. Yet we can well believe
that all the while his conscience was bothering him as he
sought to find his pleasures in this free and easy life. He
got tired of the army life eventually and left it. It was
the beginning of his conversion. He knew well the destruc
tion which the army had worked in his soul; his piety
gone, his morality gone, the great things for which as a
lad he had had ambition impossible now of attainment.
He was over forty years of age, the best part of his life
had been lived, and it was all wasted.
To one in distress the first thought is that of home. Out
of the mists of his evil years there came the face of the
mother who had instilled her piety into his soul. He
would go back to her and seek to atone for the long years
of suffering which he had caused her. But there are
some things a man never can restore. The ex-soldier came
back to Montemor; she was not there waiting for him to
make good all the years of neglect. The grass had been
growing on her grave for more than a quarter of a century.
John did not remain long in his home town. There
was nothing there to keep him. Every day brought him
fresh memories and more bitter tears for his rank ingrati
tude, his forgetfulness of her. So he set off again, back
to Spain, and next we find him working as a shepherd for
a rich lady near Seville. It was a menial position for
the once gallant soldier, but he felt in his heart that it
was better than he deserved. The thoughts of his youth,
of the mother he had treated so shamefully, burned into
his soul. He saw himself as he was — a wastrel. His
sins rose up in all their enormity before him there as he
tended his sheep, and he wept bitterly for them. The real
ization of his wasted life made him determine to do pen
ance. He lost no time in making plans. He set about

THE FOOL OF GOD 5
the work at once, and gave most of his time both day and
night to prayer and acts of mortification. Ever before
his eyes was his past ingratitude to God, and he lamented
it from the bottom of his heart, wondering how best he
might show God that he wished to make up for the wasted
years. To do something for God; that was his desire.
The years of service in the army had made known to
John what misery there was in the world. In his contin
ual travels for those twelve years or more he had witnessed
the sufferings of others. One class of afflicted that ap
pealed strongly to his tender heart were the slaves who
were carried off into Africa by the Moors. He immedi
ately made the resolution that he would leave his place as
shepherd and go into Africa to attend to those afflicted
ones, and in so doing win, perhaps, the crown of martyr
dom. But God had other work for him to do. When he ar
rived at Gibraltar, from which place he was to take passage
for Africa, he fell in with a Portuguese gentleman who
was being exiled with his wife and children to Barbary
after his estate had been confiscated by King John III.
What the man's offense had been we do not know, but
whatever the cause the only thing that John knew was
that here was a fellow being in distress. His new idea
of the service of others was strong within him and he in
sisted on serving the man and his family without any
remuneration during the voyage to Africa. So earnest
was he in that charity that when on landing in the country
of his exile the gentleman became very ill and was obliged
to dispose of what property he had remaining in order to
care for his family, John went out to work as a day-
laborer in order to support them, and even sold whatever
he himself possessed to help in the work of charity. It
was, though he knew it not, a prophecy of the days to
come when he would take the very clothes off his back to
give to the needy.

G GREAT PENITENTS
But John did not win his crown of martyrdom. Hie
confessor, to whom he opened his heart, assured him that
his desire to lay down his life in this way was an illusion.
Perhaps he was not over-impressed with this ex-soldier
who at forty years of age yearned to lay down his life.
Go back to Spain, was the common sense advice of the
priest, and John immediately went back, disappointed no
doubt that God had not accepted the offer of his life.
John was in earnest in his wish to help in God's work,
but what that work was to be he had not yet discovered.
He wasted no time in useless pining, however. As soon
as he arrived at Gibraltar he became a pedlar. He can
vassed the towns about Gibraltar selling pious pictures
and books of devotion. He was thus one of the earliest
apostles of the press. There was very little profit on his
wares, but the new avocation brought him in contact with
people and gave him a chance to do missionary work by
exhorting his customers to virtue, confessing to them very
likely the miserable defection of which he himself had
been guilty. But though there was next to no profit in
his small line of business, he saw the demand for his wares
increase so much that he decided to open a small shop in
Gibraltar. Perhaps he thought himself settled for life,
content in this small way — for the humility of the man
did not permit him to aspire to big things — to help the
cause. Meanwhile he had time to give to prayer and to
the works of penance begun when he was a poor shepherd.
Up to this time John was what may be called an ordinary
penitent. He became a great penitent in this way:
One day while he was engaged in this work of apostle
ship the Infant Jesus appeared to him and affectionately
called him "John of God," and directed him to repair to
the city of Granada. Without knowing why, John closed
his little shop and set out for that city.
The celebrated Father John of Avila, now known as
the Blessed John of Avila, was at that time preaching in

THE FOOL OF GOD 7
the city of Granada. One of the most eloquent preachers
of all times, burning with zeal for the salvation of souls,
his sermons were known to convert whole congregations.
It was the feast of St. Sebastian, the beautiful soldier-
saint, and John who had been a soldier, too, but in a man
ner far different from the martyred Sebastian, listened to
the great orator as if the occasion were for his special
benefit. His eyes were now fully opened. He saw him
self in all his misery ; saw that the penance with which up
to now he had been satisfied was but a life of luxury
compared with that which his sins demanded. At the
melting words of the great preacher he could not restrain
himself. He burst into tears, raised his voice in lamenta
tions, beat his breast in sign of his sorrow, and begged
God for mercy to him a sinner.
The congregation was amazed at this exhibition and
pitied the poor fellow as a bit touched. But John cared
little for their commiseration. He knew only that he was
a great sinner and that it was necessary for him to atone.
Out of the church he came and, carried away by his senti
ments of self-humiliation, ran through the streets like a
madman, tearing his hair and crying out what a sinner
he was. It was a strange sight, the man running wild
with a crowd at his heels throwing sticks and stones at
him and abusing him in such a way that he came home
covered with blood and dirt. To the crowd he was nothing
but a poor fool. John did not resent that; rather it
was music in his ears to hear himself called a madman.
The occurrence gave him a hint as to how he might do
penance. He immediately gave away all he had, reduced
himself to absolute poverty, and then went running through
the streets again confessing his life of sin and begging
God to have mercy upon him. Surely he must be mad,
thought the onlookers, and some of them, taking pity on
him and wishing to protect him from the abuse of the
rabble, brought him covered with blood and dirt to the

8 GREAT PENITENTS
preacher whose words had stirred him to this strange
method of doing penance. At once the holy man saw that
in this strange penitent there were extraordinary signs of
virtue. He allowed John to make his general confession
to him and then gave him good advice. Evidently the
good advice did not include the prohibition to do the
peculiar public penance, for soon after that John was
again running through the streets as a madman doing the
ridiculous things which had attracted the attention of the
public to him. Now he was deemed truly mad, and the
authorities had him arrested and confined for observation
in a madhouse where he was treated with the utmost
severity in order to curb his insane propensities. But
severe as was the treatment John did not resent it. It
was truly very little suffering for one who had so deeply
offended God.
John's one earthly friend at that time was Father John
of Avila, who alone understood him. He came to the mad
house to visit John and found the poor penitent near unto
death from his sufferings, covered with wounds and sores,
yet longing for still greater penance. He knew that the
madness of the man was the searching for sanctity. He
told John that he had done penance enough of this kind
and that now it was his duty to give himself to a course
of life that would be of more benefit to his own soul and
to the good of his neighbor. John listened to him as to
the voice of God, and immediately became calm, much to
the astonishment of his keepers, who very likely thought
that a miracle had been done by the great preacher. He
put off his madness, ready as always in his humility to fol
low the advice of the holy priest. He remained for some
time longer in the hospital, devoting himself after his
own recovery of strength to the other patients.
That short period of caring for the sick was the begin
ning of the work which has made the name of St. John
of God a blessing among the afflicted. On leaving the

THE FOOL OF GOD 9
hospital he was advised by Father John of Avila to make
a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady in Guadalupe in
order to ask her advice as to the work that God wished him
to do. It was during that pilgrimage that Our Lady mani
fested to him that the rest of his life he should devote to
the sick and the poor. As he returned to Granada he
knew not how that work was to be done, but, as if he must
be doing something for the poor while waiting for God's
will to be made manifest to him, he began to collect wood
in the forest and carry it to the marketplace, where he
sold it to get money to supply his own little wants and to
help the needy.
In this condition of destitution there came to him the
inspiration to found a hospital. One would think that
John was not yet over his madness. He had nobody to
vouch for him, he had not a cent in the world, yet he felt
that his life work was to care for the sick and that in
order to do so he must have a hospital. One day as he
was walking through one of the streets of Granada he
chanced to see a house to let with the sign, "House to
let, to lodge the poor". It was like a divine invitation to
him. He sought out the owner, who, judged by the stand
ards of the world, would seem to be as mad as John him
self, for without finding out whether John had money or
not he let him the house. And John knew just as much
as the proprietor when the rent would be paid. It was
rather an uncertain beginning of a life-work, but strange
to say this unbusinesslike method of procedure was the
beginning of the great hospital of Granada. John had
his hospital; the next thing necessary was the patients.
But to get enough patients was the easiest part of the
work. The humble little hospital was soon discovered
by the unfortunate and John was impatient for the place
to be filled. He was the only attendant for some time,
but, after working hard all day long about the hospital,
he would go out into the city at night to bring in new pa-

10 GREAT PENITENTS
tients, carrying them on his back if they were too weak
to walk with him. At night also he would go begging
the necessary supplies, but after a while it was unnecessary
for him to worry about the means to carry on the hospital.
It was soon discovered that John was not mad after all ;
that he who once had been followed by the rabble in the
streets of Granada could now be seen in the darkness of
the night carrying some helpless individual to his home.
Before long the good people of the city, seeking to have a
share in the pious work of the holy man, brought him
more than enough of supplies. And in addition to that
many of the priests and physicians, seeing that the new
work must be of God, nobly seconded him in his efforts
and gave him invaluable assistance. The archbishop of
Granada, seeing what an excellent institution this new
refuge was, gave it much material aid and, greater than
all, his protection and approval, and the king's chaplain
sent him enough money to supply the place with suitable
beds. Everybody, in a word, wanted to have a share in
the charitable work. As John used to say as he went
through the streets, rain or shine, begging, "Do good to
yourselves, my brethren," so they felt that in helping him
to help the sick they were conferring an everlasting benefit
upon themselves.
With John it was first of all a spiritual work. To re
lieve the physical distress of the patients was not his only
concern ; he wanted to save their souls. So no matter how
vile the applicant was he was received into the hospital ;
the viler the better. That course, however, brought criti
cism upon him, and even the archbishop spoke to him of
the danger of such a course to the good name of the hos
pital, telling John that he had heard how he received
tramps and fallen women. John admitted that he had
taken in such persons but, said he, "If my illustrious pre
late and superior will condescend to visit the hospital he
will find no abuse, and he will be convinced that there is

THE FOOL OF GOD 11
no one in it who deserves to be driven out but myself.
Were I to receive only the just our infirmary would soon
be empty, and how should I be able to convert sinners ? I
confess that I do not acquit myself as I ought of such a
ministry and that I do not correspond to the grace of my
vocation, and, therefore, I say to Your Grace that I
deserve to be driven out from this holy house." Even the
archbishop could find no argument against that, and John
was permitted to receive whomsoever he wished, and that
was anyone with ills of body or soul to be cured.
The work of the hospital was an assured success from
the beginning. The patience, the charity, the simple mod
esty of John impressed everybody. It was an honor to
help him. The hardest thing was to restrain his gener
osity. He actually gave the clothes off his back. If he
met a beggar poorer than himself he was not content un
less he exchanged cloaks with him. The bishop of Tuy,
an admirer of the humble servant of God, thought out a
plan to prevent that. He designed a habit for him and
ordered him to wear it. This dress became later on the
religious habit of the Order which was founded for the
followers of John. He himself in his humility had never
thought of founding an Order, and it was not until six
years after his death that the rules which now bear his
name were drawn up. Not only did the bishop give him
his new habit but he ordered him to be known by the
name which the Infant Jesus had given him — John of
God. It is related that the Marquis of Tarif a who had heard
such wonderful stories of the charity of John determined
to put him to the test. He came to the hospital repre
senting himself as one in distress who needed money to
carry on a necessary lawsuit. John gave him all the
money he then had. This so impressed the marquis that
he sent him a great sum of money and ordered that every
day he remained in Granada there should be sent to the

12 GREAT PENITENTS
poor in the hospital one hundred and fifty loaves of bread,
four sheep and eight hens.
Not from his neighbors only did John receive help. We
read in his biography that help came to him in those early
days of struggle even from Heaven, and that St. Raphael
appeared in person to aid in the work. The worldly wise
might sneer at such stories, but there is nothing incredible
in them to one who reads of the ceaseless devotion of this
poor penitent. Surely God Himself was there in the
midst of that devotion to the sick and poor; why scruple
to believe that the angels also delighted to be there ?
It is related in the life given in his office that one day
the hospital took fire. Fearlessly he rushed into the midst
of the flames and carried out on his back every patient
and, even though at one time he remained in the burning
building a full half hour while the flames seethed about
him, he came forth unharmed.
But the humble man was not master of the elements
only. Not only did he conquer the flames ; he conquered
also the more destructive passions of men's hearts. Short
ly after its establishment the hospital of Granada was the
scene of such a victory. The story is told by Digby in
his Mores Gatholici. Antony Martin had imprisoned Don
Pedro Velasco on the charge of having killed his brother,
and had come to Madrid to hasten on the prosecution.
Antony, though a proud knight, abandoned to a life of
worldly pleasure, had nevertheless become known to St.
John of God by means of a practice of visiting his hos
pital, and the holy man had recourse to prayer in hopes
of reconciling these two enemies. Meeting Antony in a
street he presented him with a crucifix which he always
held in his sleeve, and urged him to pardon his enemy if
he himself wished to be pardoned by Jesus Christ. "If
your enemy." said he, "killed your brother, our Lord died
for you and me; and if the blood of your brother cried
for vengeance much more should the blood of your Saviour

THE FOOL OF GOD 13
move you to forgiveness." These words pronounced with
a pathetic tone pierced the heart of Antony Martin ; fall
ing on his knees before the servant of God he promised
with tears that, from that moment, from being the mortal
enemy and the proud grandee he would become the friend
of Velasco and the servant of the poor. "I will now lead
you to the prison," said he, "where I shall embrace Velasco
in your presence and then deliver him; and do you in
return lead me to your hospital where I may consecrate
myself to God."
After these words they walked together to the prison
where Velasco was each day expecting death. Great was
his terror on seeing Antony Martin enter, but the servant
of God gave him speedy encouragement. The two knights
embraced and gave each other the kiss of peace ; they mu
tually vowed an everlasting friendship; and thenceforth
their hearts were wholly fixed on Heaven. They both de
clared their resolution to serve the poor in the hospital with
St. John of God during the remainder of their lives. It
was an admirable spectacle shortly afterwards, as soon as
Velasco could leave the prison, to behold the holy man
walking through the streets of Granada having on each
side those two friends, once such implacable foes, now so
closely knit together in bonds of grace ; they were on their
way from the prison to the hospital which they never left
afterwards. A long retreat and a course of instruction de
veloped and completed the conversion of these two noble
men, who became eminent servants of Jesus Christ.
And thus these two men, who had once been the scandal
of the city on account of their dissipated lives and their
enmity to each other, became models of virtue, all through
the kind example of John of God. So much did Pedro
Velasco humble himself that he used to call himself "Peter
the Sinner," while Antony became so devout, so earnest
in his charitable work, that John recommended him as

14 GREAT PENITENTS
his successor in the management of the affairs of the new
society. The charity of John, however, was not confined to his
own hospital, much as he loved it. Wherever there was
distress there was he to alleviate it. All the poor were
his brethren. He sought to save them from the sins to
which their poverty might lead. Thus one particular class
of people that claimed his attention were poor young girls
who through poverty might be induced to fall into evil
courses. Others who claimed his special care were the
fallen women. He took pity upon these poor outcasts,
sought them out and, holding his crucifix before them, ex
horted them to turn back to God as he wept for his sins
and theirs. No wonder that by such wonderful kindness
and compassion he was able to make many converts. No
wonder that the movement of which he was the head suc
ceeded miraculously. The beautiful sight of this man de
voting himself for the love of Christ to the poor was a
perpetual sermon, a sermon all the more effective in that
he who silently preached it was too humble to think that
he was doing anything extraordinary.
The poor soldier, who once had been a wanderer over
the face of the earth, was now sought out by the kings
and queens who, knowing his great virtue, wished him to
be their almoner. But great as was their confidence in
him, it never turned his head. He was ever in his own
eyes the unworthy sinner to whom should be given no
glory, only humiliation. The story is told that once a
woman who had imagined that she had reason to have
some grievance against him called him a hypocrite and
loaded him with abuse. John quietly slipped her a piece
of money and begged her to repeat in the market place
all her abusive language. In another that would be a fine
bit of sarcasm; in John it was merely the desire of the
saint to have greater humiliations. It was an echo of the
early days of his conversion when he would insist on being

THE FOOL OF GOD 15
regarded as a madman. Nothing is said as to the woman's
subsequent action, but we may wager that she was too
much ashamed of herself to do as the holy man entreated
her. Thus was John of God the helper of the poor, the friend
of tramps, of poor students, of widows and orphans, of
the fallen women, the friend of everybody indeed, but
more than all he was the penitent, the seeker of his soul's
sanctification. "What doth it profit a man if he gain the
whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?" were
the words that directed his life. His was a life of action,
but with the action went prayer and meditation. He was
forever tending the sick, yet he was forever practising the
most severe austerities. He never forgot that there were
long years in his life for which he must make atonement.
The years were short in which to do penance; he must
make up for lost time. His meditation was ever Christ
crucified. "Lord," he would say, "Thy thorns are my
roses, Thy sufferings my Paradise."
It was a short time, indeed, as years go. Ten years
he had labored in his work of superhuman charity and at
last the worn-out body succumbed. It was fitting that his
final illness should result from an act of heroic charity.
A great flood had come upon that part of the country and
John as usual was in the midst of the distress caused by
it. He had overworked in helping the poor by saving
wood and other necessaries, and in this weakened condition
had jumped into the water in order to save a drowning
man. He had failed in the attempt, but wet to the skin
had kept on working, making light of his condition.
His companions in the hospital insisted on putting him
to bed even though he rebelled at the enforced inactivity.
He could not imagine why a man with only a slight cold
should be compelled to coddle himself while there was so
much to be done for others who were so much worse off
than he. He was not inactive at any rate, for he took

16 GREAT PENITENTS
the time of what he considered an enforced vacation to
straighten out the accounts of the hospital and to settle
many matters about the government of the institution.
But everybody else knew how serious the illness was
even though John himself made light of it. Quickly the
news spread through the city that he was dangerously ill,
perhaps near unto death. To the hospital hastened the
sick and the poor who had been the object of his benefac
tions. They found him in his cell, lying in his poor habit,
his only covering an old coat and his pillow the old basket
in which he used to collect his alms, now taking the place
of the stone which had ordinarily served him for a pillow.
Among those who came to see him was a noble lady, Anne
Ossorio, who had always been one of his benefactors.
Seeing him in such a pitiable state, pitiable to her though
it was a delight to the man who so loved penance, she se
cretly sent word of the conditions to the archbishop and
begged him to command the sick man to do her bidding.
Thus armed with the authority of the archbishop she
made John consent to leave the hospital and suffer himself
to be brought to her home where he might receive the
proper attention. It was far from pleasing to the dying
man but in his deep humility and spirit of obedience he
made no objections so long as it was the will of his su
perior. Perhaps he felt that he never again would return
to his beloved hospital. If so, God's will be done. He
that had divested himself of his cloak for the poor of
Christ would not object to forego the happiness of dying
under the beloved roof so long as that too was the will of
God. He gave his last instructions to his brethren and
appointed Antony Martin superior in his stead. Then a
last visit to the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel and he
was ready to leave. During those last days in the luxuri
ous home of the noble lady he chafed under the kindness
of his attendants. Who was he to have such comforts
when his Lord had suffered so on the Cross ? His Saviour,

THE FOOL OF GOD 17
he said, had been given gall to drink and they gave him —
broths. The room of the dying man was the resort of all. The
nobility came, so too the magistrates of the city begging
the saint to give his dying blessing to their city. It was
the supreme humiliation to John. Who was he, poor mis
erable sinner who had been such a scandal to all, to pre
sume to give them his blessing? If they wanted a real
blessing let them seek the prayers of the poor and of his
brethren. And it was only when the archbishop com
manded him that he finally assented, giving his blessing
to all while at the same time he exhorted them to do pen
ance for their sins. John never preached better than in
those last hours as he stood at the threshold of death. It
was a sermon to draw the tears of all who heard him.
To give John all the honor in his power the archbishop
himself came and said Mass in the room and prepared
him for death. He could die happy now for the arch
bishop promised him that he would pay all his debts and
continue to look after the poor. As the end approached
the dying man insisted upon getting from his bed and
laying himself in the form of a cross on the floor. Then
he arose on his knees and in this position, before the altar,
rendered his soul to God on the eighth day of March, his
birthday, in the year 1550, the very year in which was
born another great servant of the sick, St. John Camillus,
a penitent, too, in many ways like to John of God.
And now the man who was once pursued through the
streets of Granada as a madman had come into his own.
There was no honor too great to give him. His funeral
was one of great pomp conducted by the archbishop and at
tended by all the clergy and nobility; and more than all
by the sick and the poor who realized that they had lost
their best friend.
St. John of God was not soon forgotten. His few pos
sessions became holy relics. The staff which he had used

18 GREAT PENITENTS
as he went about collecting for the poor and seeking out
cases for his charity became a relic celebrated throughout
Spain. It was deposited in the hospital founded by a
noble Spanish lady who had given her own house and her
fortune for the purpose. It was finally encased in silver
by certain persons in gratitude for miraculous cures
through the intercession of the holy man.
A beautiful touch in the story of the mourning for
John's passing is that he was quite as much lamented by
the Moors as by the Christians. It was a proof that he
had been a friend to all.
The work established by John of God still endures. It
is needless to go into the history of the order of the
"Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God," the name
given to the Order of which he was the real founder, al
though the rules were drawn up only after his death.
Speedily it spread all over Europe. Today it numbers
more than a hundred hospitals in Europe with some thir
teen thousand beds, and over fifteen hundred religious
who to the three solemn vows of poverty, chastity and
obedience take a fourth one to serve the sick in the hos
pitals. Still do these followers of the humble penitent
meditate upon his words of advice to his first followers:
"Labor without intermission to do all the good works in
your power whilst time is allowed you."
Many miracles were wrought through the intercession
of the saint, who was beatified in 1638 and canonized in
1690. Leo XIII made him the patron of hospitals and
of the dying in 1898.

THE JESUATES
I REMEMBER hearing the late Abbe Hogan of
Brighton Seminary, who did so much for the forma
tion of clerical opinion here and abroad, warmly de
fend the Salvation Army when a thoughtless person made
fun of its bass drum and popular song methods of religion.
With his broad mind he saw what moral good was effected
here, and especially in London, by the irrepressible army.
He saw it in its philanthropic work — and if philanthropy
is not the sublimest motive power to the human soul, it is
better than laziness, better than a quietistic mode of ex
istence that suffers the submerged tenth to sink so far be
neath the waves as to make rescue impossible.
To praise the Salvation Army is not, as some would
seem to imply, a rejection of the infallibility of the
Church, nor an assertion that their propaganda is not
amenable to criticism. The ulterior motives may be at
times those of the anti-Roman proselyte. Be it so or not,
it is for us Catholics to utilize the present results of their
work, to perfect what they have begun, to lead into the
true Fold those who are brought by other hands out of
recesses into which we might not be able to go. Cardinal
Manning, in his great apostolate for the poor and the chil
dren, recognized this. His "sympathy with the philan
thropic work of General Booth was never disguised," says
Hutton in his life of the great churchman, "and he was too
much of an organizer himself not to look with admiration
on the order and discipline of the Salvation Army." And
he goes on to say that with their simple faith, belief in
God, sin, a Redeemer, the Bible, Heaven and Hell, far
19

20 GREAT PENITENTS
from Catholicism as they still are, it ought to be easier to
guide them aright than many others who have higher theo
logical and ritualistic pretensions and a less real, less ar
dent faith. Some have quarreled with the methods of the
Army. Men who choose to fancy a religious message in
a Wagnerian music drama, or feel compelled to cut into
a Pomegranate of Browning for a substitute for the Ser
mon on the Mount cannot view the Brigade on the street
corner but as a travesty on religion, of the same genus to
their thinking as vulgar Catholicism — something for the
poor, ignorant crowd. There are many Catholics who
share in this antipathy to the advertising of God to the
public. By them religion is confined to the church, or
the innermost recesses of the private chamber, and of a
necessity it must be tabooed in polite society. In fact,
any extraordinary means to gain a hearing, and to win
souls to God, is frowned down as non-traditional and
therefore to be scorned.
The Catholic Church, it is true, does not take kindly to
the ink of the advertising agent. She is always at the
same old stand where she has been for centuries, preaching
the same gospel. Knowing that her faithful children will
come to her, she leaves the three columns of the Saturday
night paper to the passing strange titles of sermons and
musical fixings, which vie with one another in the effort to
attract the sinner to a dissertation on the Jewish mas
sacre accompanied by Gounod music, or to a denunciation
of the wily Jesuit, made patriotic by the sentiment of "My
Country, 'Tis of Thee." They tell us that advertising is
life in this twentieth century, and while we know that the
Church of Christ needs no splashing of ink to live, are
we not allowed to think that more of the scattered sheep
would be brought into the right fold if we went after them
and compelled them to come in ? Too much conservatism
is not a good thing. Street corner religion, combining ex
hortations with brass band accompaniment, has to many a

THE JESUATES 21
horrifying sense of innovation, and is assumed to be an
emanation of fanaticism, or religious dementia, yet it is
not so necessarily, unless one wishes to call fanatics many
of the holy souls whom Mother Church has raised to her
altars. The Salvation Army idea is not a special acquisition of
the nineteenth century and General Booth. In the Middle
Ages the idea of the army for attracting listeners and win
ning souls to Christ was utilized by the Church in the
Order of the Jesuates. It is a far cry from the slums of
the English or American city of to-day to the poetical
Tuscany of the fourteenth century. To read the history
of the Jesuates and the life of their founder, the Blessed
John Colombini, is like a romance of chivalrous days; a
romance it is of those old poetic days, for this army of the
past is quite forgotten save for its memory in ponderous
tomes. Yet it should not be forgotten, for the life of
Colombini and his companions is an inspiration, an in
centive to us to accomplish what they did in Siena.
Old Siena, how poetically has a gifted writer de
scribed it!
"Walls and towers that flush rose red at dawn and sun
set above a sea of vivid green, flecked with silver gray — a
craggy island in a billowy ocean; brown roofs that climb
in broken tiers, a sheer hillside crowned with a high
plumed aigrette of white and black and gold, narrow sinu
ous streets flanked with palaces which Dante may have
seen." Such is Siena the old. Such it was in the glorious four
teenth century. This was the outer appearance that would
catch the eye of the poet, but within how like the modern
city, with its varied life, its passions, its aim at the beau
tiful in art and poetry, and the unsated hunger for wealth
and luxury and pleasure. It was here, in 1304, that Gio
vanni Colombini was born of virtuous parents, of the fa
mous Strozza Vacchae family, which for the past century

22 GREAT PENITENTS
had been known by the more familiar name of Colombini.
It is not surprising to find him in his early youth engaging
in a mercantile career. That was the passion of the
Sienese. In the preceding century they were known as
the nation of shopkeepers, oftentimes engaged in the then
disputed traffic in money. Even the heads of the noblest
and proudest houses did not consider it unseemly to be in
business, which explains the readiness with which young
Colombini became a merchant. Siena occupied the fore
most position in the financial world, due principally to
the fact that its bankers had the patronage and business of
the Holy See, and on the strength of that they had bank
ing houses in the great cities of France and England. A
business career then was the high road to honors.
Colombini entered the wool business, a lucrative one, for
the Sienese had a heavy trade in Flemish cloth. Strictly
attentive to business, he was able soon to open counting
houses in other cities. We can picture to ourselves the
young merchant of the day, proud of his good family, pol
ished to a fault, loving money and having it in abundance,
acquainted with all Christendom, patronizing the arts with
a chivalry which was a certain inheritance. It was Siena's
period of glory and prosperity, and on this account the
arts, being encouraged, were in a flourishing condition.
Yet in the midst of it all there was a prodigality of luxury
which became a folly, so much so that (1262) the State
was invoked to check the extravagance of the women.
Thereupon was decreed by law the length of a woman's
train, the amount of gold and silver ornaments, and such
like. But if the women had. the proverbial failing of
vanity the men were addicted to the greater fault of av
arice. The accumulation of wealth and its wanton use
in luxury, the continual pursuit of pleasure, and the con
sequent oppression of the poor, were the characteristics
of those years.
Undoubtedly, Colombini was not a whit different from

THE JESUATES 23
the nobles of his acquaintance. He was of the earth
earthy — egotistical, proud, avaricious, considering it no
dishonor to grind the poor unmercifully. His pride of
life was intensified by the fact that he had belonged to the
celebrated Nine, shortly before the Black Death and the
consequent overthrow of the existing government, and that
his rule was one of the most brilliant eras of the Republic
in its great rivalry with Florence. That he had a power
ful will and astounding activity is evident in his later life
as well as in the events which led up to his conversion.
He had little thought of marriage till he was more than
forty, believing no doubt that he had little time to concern
himself about domestic affairs. Years before, however, a
wife had been selected for him in the person of the beau
tiful Biagia, daughter of the noble Cerretani family. The
interests of the two families were common. The union
was most desirable to the parents, and so in 1343, Giovanni
became a benedict. It was a happv union of which were
born a son and daughter who died in early life, the daugh
ter as a young novice. So they lived happily for twelve
years till the eventful midsummer day in 1355. On that
day Colombini was in bad spirits. Business cares occu
pied his mind and he scarcely spared the time to come
home to dine. To increase his ill humor the dinner was
late. He fretted and fumed, and loaded everybody with
reproaches — especially his wife for presuming to keep him
waiting. To make matters worse Biagia told him to have
patience, and, as the crowning bit of impertinence, she
took from the table a volume of the Lives of the Saints and
gave it to him with the suggestion that he should read it
till the dinner was served. That was more than he could
bear, and in disgust he threw it into the middle of the
room, while Biagia fled in fear of her husband's anger.
Left alone, Colombini had the grace to be ashamed of
himself. Regretting the manner in which he had abused
the holy book, he picked it up. Chancing to open it at the

31 GREAT PENITENTS
life of St. Mary of Egypt, something in it held his atten
tion, and he sat down to read it. It was the old story of
crime and atonement.
Colombini forgot that he was hungry. Nobody dared
disturb him and he read till morning. The narrative
plucked at his heart strings. It opened his eyes to the
condition of his own soul, taught him that there are things
more important than laying up treasures on earth. The
work was done. It was the "tolle, lege," repeated once
again. Another soul had turned into the narrow lane that
leads to saintship. Here was one more sign of the favor
which Heaven showered down upon Tuscany, a province
beyond all others in the founders of Orders, which pro
duced such saints as St. Francis of Assisi, St. Bernar-
dine of Siena, and the great St. Catherine.
Colombini's conversion was not the pietistic sentiment
that prevails a moment and is gone. He had put his hand
to the plow, and his nature was too noble to think of look
ing back. To atone for past forgetfulness he assumed a
practical penance. He took account of stock and declared
himself ready to return whatever he might have acquired
unjustly. He gave great alms, spent much time in visit
ing churches, the poor, the sick, took the vow of chastity
together with his wife, and from the day of his conversion
used for his short sleep a simple plank. The beautiful
garments of the wealthy merchant were cast off, and, the
butt of jokes from his friends, for his apparently insane
conduct, he walked the streets of Siena as a poor man.
He was not long a solitary figure. The grace of God
worked through his example. Francesco Vincenti, of an
aristocratic and wealthy Sienese family, was the first con
vert to the peculiar ways of his friend Colombini. It was
a hard struggle, however, before the tall and handsome
Vincenti capitulated to the exhortations of his short and
delicate adviser.
The reproaches of friends increased. Such an unheard-

THE JESUATES 25
of thing for two wealthy men with all the pleasures of the
world at their command to waste their fortune, dishonor
their families by their strange behavior, and think and talk
only of the poor, the Holy Name, and the salvation of
souls !
There is a beautiful story about the neophyte days of
the holy man, which shows better than all else what great
love for the poor consumed the heart of one who erstwhile
had despised and ground them. One day the two friends
met with a leper at the door of the church. The unfortu
nate was a repulsive sight to the world, but to these men
he was an image of the Master, "despised and the most
abject of men." Home to Colombini's house they brought
him immediately, washed and bound his sores and put him
to bed, and, as a final penance to strengthen his soul still
more, Colombini drank of the water wherein the leper had
been washed. They then returned to the church, leaving
behind them an indignant woman. Biagia had not ad
vanced in sanctity as rapidly as her husband, and it is no
surprise to find her incapable of looking on with equanim
ity while her beautiful home was used as a hospital for the
poor, and her best bed and daintiest linens taken for the
comfort of despised lepers. But the indignation soon
passed away. "How be a Christian," she asked herself,
"if one did not love the poor ?" And so she went to comfort
her guest. As she approached the room there came a per
fume thence sweeter than the richest flowers. Soon Col
ombini returned to continue his kind offices to the beggar,
and lo, the bed was empty, the leper had fled ! The aston
ished man fell on his knees. His heart told him who the
visitant was, and as he prayed in humility and thanksgiv
ing there appeared to him in a radiant brightness the
Divine Leper, "struck by God and afflicted."
This miracle was followed by a greater abandonment of
self on the part of the two men. After having provided
for those who depended on them they gave away all their

26 GREAT PENITENTS
fortune in order to be more like the Master, and with bare
head and feet they begged their bread like the lowliest of
mortals. "Lady Poverty" had captured other devoted
suitors, like to her greatest knight, St. Francis of Assisi.
Many have remarked the great similarity between him
and Colombini — both poets and musicians, both preachers
of the love of God, and both martyrs to poverty.
The Salvation Army methods, as any attempts destined
to obtain religious notoriety are now called, had already
begun. The man who had been so proud, the nobleman,
the ruler of Siena, determined to humiliate himself. It is
easier to be poor than to sacrifice one's pride, but Colom
bini was equal to the task. He acted as servant to the
nobles who had been his equals in the old days, and to
humiliate himself the more he rode an ass through the
streets where once he had held his head as high as a king.
Eccentric as such actions seemed to his compatriots, there
was in the conduct of the man a deeper purpose than self-
abasement. The sight of a man who had voluntarily re
nounced wealth and station was well calculated to arrest
the attention of passers-by, and he, thirsting for souls as
once he had thirsted for money, profited by the furore his
presence occasioned, in striving to lead others to the things
of God. Simple layman though he was, the love of God
made him an eloquent evangelist. Standing on posts, or
on the steps of some Sienese palace, he held his hearers
entranced as he spoke so earnestly of sin, of eternal punish
ment and especially of love of God. Street corner preach
ing was not such a rarity in those ages of faith, peculiar as
it seemed when the modern Salvation Army revived it. It
was common enough in those days to hear the word of God
preached out under the blue sky in the public square, in
the fields, in the narrow streets, in the highways and by
ways, wherever a soul was to be saved. So in Protestant
England in the eighteenth century had Wesley and White-
field gone out among the people, preaching Christ in the

THE JESUATES 27
fields, in the factories, in the mining districts, and with
such effect that hardened men sobbed like children.
Colombini's preaching, united to his good example, was
most persuasive. In a few months he had the happiness
of beholding a thousand converted to a better life, many
of them abandoning the world entirely in order to surren
der themselves wholly to God. It was from these that this
spiritual general got the first recruits for his army which
was called then "The Poor of Christ." Soon the army
numbered seventy, comprising many of the foremost citi
zens of Siena, an astounding thing to the populace of that
gay place. It is still more astounding when we read of
the manner in which prospective vocations were tried.
Oftentimes the new disciple was compelled to ride through
the streets seated on an ass, with his face towards the tail,
and again bound as a criminal while his companions ex
horted the passers-by to pray for the miserable sinner.
To men who had been full of the pride of life, who
lived in luxury and knew no opposition to their will, such
proceedings were far from being the tomfoolery which
men of to-day consider them, but evidenced in a striking
manner the fact that the love of God can induce men to be
"fools" for Christ's sake. "Have you the courage to let
yourself be spit upon in the face and not say a word?"
asked Lacordaire of the young pianist Hermann, who had
consulted him about his vocation. "Yes," he replied with
out a tremor. "Then go," said the great Dominican, "and
be a monk."
The brass band and tambourine element was not de
spised by the army. Colombini's powerful voice, we are
told, was like a clarion of gold. Loving music passion
ately, as one of the celestial pleasures, and comforting his
heart with it, he saw therein a means to stir up the souls
of his followers as the martial air strengthened the battling
soldier. In mighty chorus they sang the hymns which he
himself composed. It was the battle hymn of an army

28 GREAT PENITENTS
making war upon the powers of darkness. Occasionally
there was one of the disciples like Boccio who sang the
hymn to the accompaniment of the viol. Attract the
crowd was Colombini's motto, and then keep them by the
word of God.
Apparently the army had attracted too many recruits.
The people of Siena saw fathers, sons and friends seduced
from the world by this new enchanter. Therefore they
murmured long and bitterly against him, and as a result
of their enmity Colombini and Vincenti were banished
from the city and condemned to perpetual exile. But they
did not go alone. Twenty-five companions, tried and true,
voluntarily suffered the punishment with them. Heaven,
however, did not permit its valiant soldiers to be treated
thus with impunity. A storm and pestilence swept over
the city, striking terror everywhere, and the afflicted popu
lace, ascribing such a visitation to their unjust treatment of
the army, immediately despatched messengers to entreat
Colombini to come back. But he would not. In this en
forced exile he saw the finger of God pointing to other
cities where he could spread the good work of converting
souls, and thither he led his willing army. Triumphant
band it was, singing hymns as it marched along, converting
sinners and gaining new recruits for the ranks !
It is not a fancy that leads us to refer to Colombini and
his disciples as an army, for the army idea was one of his
own. "Chevaliers of Christ," he calls them, and above all
"The Brigade." "Do you recall," he writes to the abbess
of Santa Bonda, "that the way of combats and battles has
been followed by our Captain, Christ ?" That is the figure
he uses so often in his letters, the true Salvation Army of
Christ. It was likewise a favorite one with St. Ignatius,
who considered Christ as the King, the Leader of an army,
the "Captain-General." Whether the founder of the
Jesuits was indebted to the founder of the Jesuates for

THE JESUATES 29
this idea, or borrowed it from his former knightly career
in the world, it is hard to say ; perhaps it was due to both.
At any rate we are told that one of Ignatius' favorite
books was the life of Colombini.
It is interesting to follow the army in its campaign over
the fair land of Italy, its only weapons the love of God,
and the Holy Name of Jesus. It was on this tour that they
received their distinctive name of Jesuates. Pope Urban V
had left Avignon to return to Rome, in 1367. None was
more pleased at this than the Poor Soldiers, and, in order
to show their joy and their loyalty to their Holy Father,
sixty-six of them repaired to Corneto, where the Papal
party was to land. As they marched along, singing as
usual, the children on the street cried out, "Look! look!
here are the Jesuates !" It was the most fitting name for
men whose entire will was to bring honor to the sweet name
of the Saviour. It was a fruitful journey in many ways.
The Pope was struck by the simple faith of the men, inter
ested himself deeply in their work, approved the Order,
even selecting the garb they should wear, and, in spite of
the opposition manifested towards them on many sides,
defended them and allowed them to be called "The Pope's
Poor." Colombini's cup of joy was full. Back to Siena he
started, but the old body, now sixty-three, was worn out by
its labors. Alive he did not return, but there, almost at
the gate of his beloved city, surrounded by his sorrowing
companions, he breathed his last. As the body was brought
into the mourning city, who more fitting to be the first to
touch it than the faithful wife Biagia, to whose sacrifices
and devotion much of his success was due ?
But if Colombini died, his army endured for three cen
turies. It extended over Tuscany and the neighboring
country, founded many convents, as did the similar Order
of women which he may claim the honor of establishing,

30 GREAT PENITENTS
since it was through his prayers and exhortations that his
rich cousin Catherine left the world and founded the
Jesuate sisterhood.
One would have an incomplete idea of the Jesuates if
he imagined them only as a Salvation Army, singing
hymns and exhorting to holiness of life. Beautiful as this
work is, it was supplemented by another. The sick were
cared for, the dead buried, and remedies were made and
supplied to the poor who could not get them elsewhere.
The Jesuates were certainly all things to all men. Hard
labor, too, was their portion, with the discipline morning
and evening, and the recitation of one hundred and sixty-
five Paters and Aves daily, together with the Office of the
Blessed Virgin, for it was not until 1606 that they were
admitted to the priesthood. In some places distilleries
were established, the proceeds of which went to give succor
to the poor. As time went on, however, the Order ceased
to remember the simplicity of its founder. It became too
wealthy, and that was its undoing, for it is said the Vene
tian Republic demanded its suppression in order to obtain
its wealth to carry on a war against the Turks. How
ever it may be, it was Clement IX, who, in 1668,
three hundred years after the death of Colombini, sup
pressed the Order for reasons which reflect naught upon
the holy men who had done such loyal service to the cause
of Christ.
So ended the Jesuate Army. It is now scarcely more
than a name, its history embalmed in ponderous tomes
where one seldom digs, and yet as we conjure up those
long forgotten forms we see them live and breathe again,
as men of to-day fighting the battles of the King, doing all,
daring all; and in that vision of the olden days we learn
to understand somewhat the grandeur of the great Captain
Who could make of men such a noble army.

THE GAMBLER— ST. CAMILLUS DE LELLIS
PENITENCE and gloom are not necessarily syn
onymous. It would be a mistake to think of the
great exemplars of sorrow for sin as useless mourn
ers kneeling in the corner, beating their breasts, with ear
for nothing but their own lamentations. The science of the
penitential life is the determination to atone. Into that
enters personal mortification, suffering, self -affliction. The
body has sinned; it must pay the penalty. It must suffer
not only for the evil it has done, but it must be subjected
against the possibility of the soul being again dominated
by it. Penance looks not only to the past; it looks to
the future as well. It wants to make up, to redeem the
time. Hence it is no surprising thing to find your penitent
a man of superabundant activity; not a mere regretter of
the past, but a maker-up of lost time. He has wasted his
life ; the days to the end are all too short for him to have
something in his hands when he comes before God to give
an account of his stewardship. So he works incessantly.
Constant tears, constant prayers and, too, constant charity.
Alms, to redeem one's sins. Alms of kindness, generosity
to God and neighbor. How plain all that is in the life of
St. Peter. Lovingly we recall the old tradition that his
sin was forever before him; his eyes were continually
flooding with their penitential tears, so that furrows were
worn into the old cheeks. But who was more active in
charity, in the service of the flock committed to him than
the first great white shepherd of Christendom?
It is this penitential activity that charms in the life of
31

32 GREAT PENITENTS
St. Camillus de Lellis. The grace of God opened his
eyes one day. He saw himself as others saw him, a good
for nothing, rowdyish, swaggering, lustful soldier. A
foolish life surely. But the realization of that fact and
the determination to make up for the squandered years,
gambled away in more senses than one, reached its final
fruition in the establishment of one of the most beneficial
Orders to suffering humanity that the world has ever seen.
The tears of Camillus for his years of sin were rivers of
mercy to the afflicted.
Camillus was a contemporary of Shakespeare. He was
a lad of fourteen when the great poet was born. They
never knew of the existence of each other, but I like to
think that when the poet was penning the immortal lines
as to the quality of mercy the converted gambler and
swashbuckler was giving a sublime example of the exercise
of mercy in his tender care of the sick of Rome.
It was in 1550, then, that Camillus de Lellis was born
at Bacchianico, in Abruzzo, in the kingdom of Naples,
then under the domination of the Spaniards. His father,
Giovanni de Lellis, belonged to a race of soldiers. Mili
tarism was in the blood. But it was rather poor, thin
blood by the time it had reached Giovanni. His was
hardly the soldierness of patriotism. He was a soldier of
fortune. He fought wherever he was hired to fight, irre
spective of the cause, and had no scruples even about hir
ing himself out to the Turks, the avowed enemies of Chris
tianity. As to his ability there can be no question, for we
find him acting as an officer both in the Neapolitan and
later in the French army.
But the life of a soldier of fortune was hardly conducive
to morality, and Giovanni did not scruple at taking his
pleasures where he found them. He was dissolute, with
all the vices of the soldier life of his time. Indeed, those
Renaissance days were nothing to be proud of from the
point of view of morality. Yet no doubt there was a

ST. CAMILLUS DE LELLIS 33
time when he too was something worth while, otherwise one
cannot imagine that fine woman, Camilla Compellia, mar
rying him. But the noble Roman girl soon realized that her
marriage had been a mistake. The soldierly husband had
nothing noble about him but his name. Her happy days,
if happy they could be called, were when he was away
from home on some fighting expedition. Her first baby
had died, and she had not been sorry, for there was ever
the fear in her heart that a child of such a father must
be worthless.
So passed the years. Camilla had lived a life of sor
row, a neglected wife. Her only hope was for the peace
of the grave. Little she guessed that in her old days God
was to use her for a great work in His kingdom. She
was old and gray, nearly sixty years of age, and she was
about to bring forth another child. The biographers of
her son tell us that she was alarmed at the prospect. An
other child, perhaps to inherit the father's vices and thus
be a reproach instead of a blessing. Besides she was old,
she must die before the child would be reared. What
chance would any child have, being left to the care of
Giovanni de Lellis ?
A few days before the birth of Camillus there came a
dream to alarm her. It seemed to her that she saw a child,
her child, with a red cross stamped on his breast, and after
this child came many others following him, all wearing the
same sign. Such a dream would have been a consolation
to her had she read it aright, but it only increased her
melancholy. Might it not be the threat of disaster, the
child signed with a cross of blood.
The early years of young Camillus were such as to in
crease her fears that God had punished her in sending this
son. Many a tear he made her shed. Many an act of
penance she did, many a prayer she said that the sins of
the father might not be visited on the son. But all
seemed hopeless. The boy Camillus was^a chip of the

34 GREAT PENITENTS
old block. There was nothing winning about him. He
was the product of the camp. It was useless for the quiet,
gentle mother to seek to train him. He would have no
books, no education. His soldierly father was his ideal,
not his retiring mother. Even in those days he longed to
be a soldier, and all that education did for him was to
teach him to read and write. The poor mother did her
best, but her conviction must have been, when she came to
die, that she had failed. Little she guessed that one day
this son who now caused her so much grief would be raised
to the altar of God. She was denied that consolation.
Camillus was twelve years old when the poor old mother
was laid to rest. No doubt he grieved ; surely he had rea
son. But the grief of youth is short and anyway there
was one more restraint taken from the life of the lad who
burned to be a man and a soldier. One can fancy him
even then begging his father to take him with him on the
next campaign but, worthless though he was, Giovanni had
some little regard for the welfare of the boy. He sent
him to school, glad no doubt to get him off his hands. But
the school days accomplished little. Camillus learned
nothing but vice, the propensity to which he had inherited
from his father.
It was a happy day for Camillus when he left behind
him the prison walls of school and strode off at last by the
side of his father to be his companion and a soldier of for
tune. Like father, like son. Giovanni de Lellis hardly knew
what were the duties, the obligations of a father. He had
none of the parental instinct, or he would have been the
last one on earth to permit the lad to become a soldier.
But he did not care. Camillus was to him only a boon
companion. The father had walked the way of vice ; why
not the son ?
But Camillus needed not the example of his father. He
was an apt pupil in the ways of the world. He became

ST. CAMILLUS DE LELLIS 35
like his companions, a loose liver, to whom the only manli
ness was sin. The young soldier had little choice in sins,
but if there was one passion more than any other that held
him captive it was gambling. The lazy life of the soldier
of fortune had induced that. It gained possession of
him, body and soul. It became a second nature. He was
powerless to resist it. Sometimes he even lost the clothes
off his back, but that did not change him. There was al
ways the chance to win back what he had lost, the old
gambler's chance.
The destitution to which the son was so often reduced
must have at times disturbed the conscience of the father
who had been the teacher and abettor of the son's vices.
He was now getting to be an old man, with nothing but a
wasted life and a son who seemed destined to outstrip him
in vice, difficult as that might be.
And then came the end. The old soldier was struck
with his last illness, and at the same time Camillus was
slightly attacked. I like to fancy that the son had con
tracted his sickness while caring for his father, a beginning
of the life work which was to cover his name with glory.
The desire of the old soldier was to go home to die.
Home for the end, to be laid by the side of the wife to
whom he had been so faithless. But he never reached
home. They recovered sufficiently to begin the journey
home, but Camillus saw that his father would never reach
there alive. He was dying. The son brought him to the
house of a friend, and there Giovanni de Lellis fought his
last fight — against death. No longer the brave soldier,
no longer the swashbuckler that could laugh at death. He
was vanquished in body, but happily unvanquished in soul.
He who had so long forgotten God was permitted to come
back to Him at the end. The good friend brought the
priest to him, and the dying man made his peace with
God, and surrendered to the Cross. They buried him
there.

36 GREAT PENITENTS
The death of his father was the beginning of the change
in young Camillus. He had loved his father, had admired
his soldierly qualities, had been his companion for years.
And now he was no more. But it was grief that had im
pressed his heart the most. He had seen a great thing.
He had seen this brave man, his father, this soldier who
had been afraid of nothing, now vanquished. He knew
how evil the old soldier's life had been ; and he had seen
the tears of his repentance. It was all in vain then — -this
service of the world. The day comes when passion is pow
erless. He saw the emptiness of a life of sin. It was
then, very likely, he made his vow to become a Franciscan.
So it was a changed youth that left his father's grave,
and still weak from illness and sorrow resumed the journey
home. Not only was he weak from his recent sickness,
but a wound in his leg was beginning to bother him.
It was to bother him to his dying day. He had laughed
at it as a mere scratch, but now it was becoming in
fected. Crushed in soul and body he trudged along,
but thinking not so much of his physical as of his
moral condition. He was sicker in soul than in body.
His father had repented, why not he ? If it was a desir
able thing to repent at the end of life, why not in the flush
of youth ? And moreover might it not be that life was
near its end for him even in his youth ?
Camillus could go no farther. He sat down to rest,
and to think, think, think, of the death of his father. God
was tugging at his heart; and seeing two Franciscans
passing in deep recollection, he took it as a sign that God
had inspired him to make the vow to become a Franciscan.
His mind was made up at once. He would do this thing,
do it while in the first fervor of what he believed to be
his conversion. An uncle! of his, Fra Paolo Lauretana,
was a Franciscan, a man of saintly life and of certain
influence in his Order. Why not go to him for advice?
And at once he went off to beg the good Father to use his

ST. CAMILLUS DE LELLIS 37
influence in getting him into the Order. But the uncle was
first of all the priest, and then the relative. He was not
over impressed with his young soldier-nephew. He knew
the blood of de Lellis, and his discerning eye could not see
any sign that the conversion of Camillus was to be a lasting
one. So without giving a decided refusal, he kept the
youth for a while under observation. The trial did not
win him over. He could discover no sign of a vocation,
and moreover Camillus was far from being in the state
of health required for one who would live the hard life
of a poor Franciscan. He pleaded his case, but the old
uncle was hard as a rock. At last he sent him about his
business. To say that Camillus was angry is to put it mildly. It
is easy to imagine him using pretty strong language in
talking about this uncle of his who did not understand a
fellow. Camillus was incensed. Why try to be good, no
doubt he asked, when your own won't take you seriously ?
Off he went in a huff, decided that there was no use in
trying to reform. He wouldn't try to be a religious any
more. He had offered himself, and had been refused.
The sin be upon his uncle's head. And right away, very
likely, Camillus went looking for a game of cards. No
sense in being good ; we can hear the old companions whom
he rejoined now laughing at the soldier who wanted to
be pious.
Camillus was in a sorry fix. He wanted to be a Fran
ciscan, and the Franciscans would have nothing to do with
him. He must keep on soldiering. But again who wanted
a soldier with a crippled leg? For the supposed slight
scratch had now become a serious running sore. In vain
he sought remedies to heal it and fix him up to resume his
old avocation, and all the time he was so mortified at his
appearance, a soldier limping along from a little scratch —
not a glorious scar received in battle — that he hid himself
as much as he could, sneaking from one town to another.

38 GREAT PENITENTS
At length fate, or rather the grace of God, brought him
to Rome, and he came to the hospital of St. Giacomo to
put himself under the care of the surgeons. In return for
the medical treatment, he offered his services as a servant
in the hospital. A fine big strapping servant, no doubt the
hospital authorities were glad to get him. But the trouble
was he had not come alone; he brought a pack of cards
with him, and to while away the time he had initiated the
other servants into the attractive art of gambling. Soon
all work was neglected for the fascinating cards. Search
was made for the chief culprit who had destroyed the
discipline of the hospital, and lo, under the pillow of the
big lanky young soldier a pack of cards was found. Need
less to say he was dismissed at once, even though his sore
was not entirely healed. What if it wasn't? They were
not going to permit him to disrupt the entire hospital.
A pretty worthless customer, indeed, this limping soldier
with his feet on the threshold of sanctity. In desperation
he tried to hide his infirmity as much as possible and
entered the army again, this time as a soldier of fortune
in the Venetian army.
It was the old, old story. The good resolutions were
forgotten ; the young soldier-that-would-be-a-monk was dis
couraged and he threw himself into the thick of every
fight, not caring if he were killed. He became as he was
before, a roustabout, a sinner. Life held nothing for him.
Yet often as he lay ill, seemingly unto death, he would
shudder at his sins and promise to begin a new life. But
outside dealing the cards the easiest thing Camillus did
was to make vows.
He was a veritable tramp in those days, and with him
there went a soldier chum, Tiberio, whom he greatly loved,
both of them half clothed, half fed. One day when they
were begging at the door of a church they were accosted
by a rich noble of the place. He was at that time paying
for the erecting of a building for the Capuchins. There

ST. CAMILLUS DE LELLIS 39
may have been something in the attitude of Camillus that
impressed him, or again it may merely be that the noble
man was a shrewd business man who did not believe in
giving charity to vagabonds. His alms was to ask the
beggars if they wanted a job. Camillus replied at once
that he did, but before giving a definite decision went to
ask the advice of his chum who had very likely gone on as
soon as he heard work mentioned. Camillus would decide
nothing without the advice of Tiberio. And Tiberio
scorned the idea of menial labor for noble soldiers like
them. What! give up the free life of the road for such
lowly work ? Why, Camillus must be a fool to think of it,
and he the son of a nobleman. The easily led Camillus
thought the same himself as long as Tiberio thought so,
and off he went with his companion to let the building go
up of itself for all of him.
As Camillus went on, however, his conscience began to
trouble him. He had vainly striven to quiet it since that
day when at the death of his father he had seen the wisdom
and the beauty of repentance. Impulsive as usual, he
turned about and set off for the man — it was back twelve
miles — who had offered him a job, while Tiberio, ridicul
ing him, went on his own tramping way never knowing
that this tramp chum of his had just turned into the road
of sanctity. Bu t he soon missed the company of Camillus.
Back he turned, too, to the Capuchin monastery and asked
for a job. He got it. And thus they met again, Tiberio
covered with whitewash and Camillus driving the ass that
carried the building supplies. It was too much for Tiberio,
and after a few days of this menial employment and after
vainly trying to win over Camillus to his way of regarding
work, he left for green fields again, thinking that his old
chum was a poor kind of fool.
The soldier spirit of Camillus never appeared to better
advantage than in these days when he was winning the
battle over himself. It is true, he had little notion of

40 GREAT PENITENTS
spiritual betterment, for he did not stick to his work from
a spiritual motive. The old soldier instinct was still strong
in him. He still wanted to be the active soldier. He
wanted to redeem his good name, he wanted to show the
world that there was something in him, and he regarded
the present work, humble as it was, as the means to make
enough money to rehabilitate himself, get himself new
clothes, new equipment. He was truly a sorry sight,
raggedy, with no care of his personal appearance, so that
even the children used to congregate about the place where
he worked in order to have some fun with him. He did
not see the joke of it all ; he was silent, almost morose, and
made no friends among his fellow laborers.
It may be that the friars saw the real man in this queer
looking youth driving the ass. Anyway, they became inter
ested in him and trusted him, sending him occasionally
on an errand which showed their confidence in him. One
day they sent him to a neighboring monastery. It was
rather a long journey and Camillus was not able to get
home that night, so they put him up at the monastery.
The Father Guardian felt himself attracted to the youth
and engaged in conversation with him, calling attention to
an old scar on the wrist of the young soldier and asking
him about it. Something in the kind soul of the friar won
Camillus. He saw in him a friend, and — perhaps the
first one in whom he felt he could confide — he told the
whole story of his short yet checkered life, short in years
but long in sin and misery. It was not an easy task for
him to bare his soul, and he blushed with shame at the
recital of his evil deeds, even while he scarcely knew why
he was recounting them to this stranger. But he had
found a sympathetic listener. There was no reproach from
the good friar — in this he was very different from Uncle
Paolo who had seen nothing good in his nephew — he gave
him sympathy, kindness.
All the night long Camillus stayed awake. He paced

ST. CAMILLUS DE LELLIS 41
the floor or stood looking out the window, the friar's words
of advice, of warning, ringing in his ears. Again he
heard the call to repentance. He could hardly wait for
the morning to return home, determined to seek the will
of God in earnest and to do it.
As Camillus rode along, meditating on the words of the
friar, suddenly he seemed to hear a voice speaking to him.
It halted him ; he knew it was from God. He threw him
self from his horse and knelt in the dust of the road like
another Paul, begging God to make known to him- His
will. For a long time he remained there thinking of his
past. He saw the wickedness of his misspent life. His
sins frightened him. He beat his breast with sorrow, and
moaned over and over again his fervent, tearful act of
contrition, calling on God to show him mercy ; and then as
if calling him to the service of God he heard the sound of
the church bells ringing. It was the Feast of the Purifica
tion. The grace of God had entered the young man's heart.
The way of penance towards which his steps had been so
many times directed was entered upon at last. He would
tread it willingly to the end. He was then twenty-five
years of age.
Speedily Camillus returned to the monastery where he
was working and told the Father Guardian all that had
happened. The friar believed him and assured him that
everything would be done to enable him to become a Capu
chin. It was enough for Camillus, and immediately he
began a life of sincere penance, a life of austerity. The
friar was as good as his word. He succeeded in making
arrangements for Camillus to enter the novitiate at Trivi-
ento and thither he repaired with a great joy of spirit.
There could be no turning back now. Camillus had seen
the light. He must efface himself, and this he did so well
in the first days of the novitiate that his fellow novices
called him the "humble brother."
But the days of trial were not gone. The old sore,

42 GREAT PENITENTS
that miserable, inglorious scratch, broke out again, and
the novice, zealous as he was, was dismissed, heartbroken,
yet not discouraged, for the friars had promised him that
if he were cured they would take him back. He would
be cured then! So off he started for the hospital of St.
Giacomo where the telltale pack of cards had been found
under his pillow. Again he was given a job as a servant.
But what a change in him ! No longer the lazy, gambling
soldier that had set the whole hospital by the ears, he was
now a slave to duty. He devoted himself to the care of
the sick with such kindness, such unction even, that the
other attendants wondered if this could be the same man
who had been ejected a short time before.
In the Rome of that time the greatest personage was the
humble Philip Neri. The saintly man, through his un
tiring labors in the confessional, had changed the face of
the city, so long suffering from the evil days of the pagan
Renaissance. To him Camillus, as well as everybody else
in Rome, came to confession. But great confessor that
Philip was he had no end of trouble with this new peni
tent of his. Things went along very nicely until the old
sore began to heal. And then nothing would do Camillus
but that he must go back to the Capuchins, since he felt
that he was obliged in conscience to do so. Philip felt that
the youth had no vocation for the Capuchins and sought
to deter him from going back, assuring him that if he did
have his own stubborn way and go back the sore would
break out again. But the headstrong soldier persisted.
Back he went to his old friends, but inside four months
he was out again, and this time for good, with a written
document to show that he was ineligible ever to enter the
Order on account of an incurable wound. Nothing daunted,
he went to another house of Capuchins and sought admit
tance, but the friars would not take him.
Surely Camillus was having a hard time finding his
vocation. God was getting things ready for his own good

ST. CAMILLUS DE LELLIS 43
time. Philip Neri laughed good naturedly at the crest
fallen ex-novice when he next met him. "God bless you,
Camillus," he cried out, "did I not tell you to give up
the thought of being a Capuchin?" Poor enough com
fort to Camillus, however.
Well, since he could not be a monk there was nothing
for him to do but go back to his work at the hospital. So
back he went and was given his old position of superin
tendent of the wards. But even then he had no idea that
here was his lifework. He still had it in his head that
some day he would be a monk. Meantime, he was where
God wanted him to be, for Camillus was needed in the
hospital. The hospital of those days was not the institution it is
today. It had many faults. The methods of caring for
the sick had not reached the perfection of modern times.
No one knew the faults better than Camillus, for in his
early days as servant at the hospital he had committed
many of the sins of negligence. He knew that the at
tendants often neglected their duties. And in order to
catch them in this neglect and reprimand them against the
further repetition of them he would hide himself between
the beds. He saw that the patients often called in vain
for assistance, that beds were unclean, patients uncared for,
parched often with thirst with no one to give them a
drink, sometimes left to die without the sacraments. So
great was the carelessness that sometimes patients were
buried alive!
Beholding these things now from the point of view of
faith, Camillus saw the great need of reform. The sick
must be cared for. They must not be left in incompetent
hands. It was for him to get good men to devote them
selves out of the spirit of faith to the work of caring for
the poor afflicted ones. He found the beginning of his
work in the hospital. Among the attendants he found
five men who had something of his same spirit of love for

44 GREAT PENITENTS
the sick, and who deplored as he did the lax condition of
the hospital. To them he told his plans, indefinite as
they then were, to obtain better care for the sick. These
men all heartily agreed with him. The little group of
reformers gathered in one of the rooms of the hospital
and there before a shrine of Christ crucified, which they
had made, they knelt, and prayed, and even scourged
themselves. In this the moving spirit was, of course,
Camillus. To him there was nothing new in the scourg
ing. Long before this, even in the first fervor of his con
version from sin, he had been accustomed to spend most
of the night in prayer, whipping himself, and torturing his
flesh with a girdle of tin and hair shirt. And added to
these mortifications, he had half starved himself in his
desire to do penance.
And from that penance, that realization of his own un-
worthiness, there came to Camillus the desire to help
others. It was all planned in his mind. He and his com
panions at once put their charitable thoughts into execu
tion. They watched and tended the sick, especially the
dying, exhorting them to pray, trying in every way pos
sible to help them to their sanctification. It was the prac
tice of the spiritual and the corporal works of mercy. But
the methods of the little association, strange to say, were
a novelty to the hospital authorities and some people never
take kindly to novelties. What was good enough in the
past is good enough for all time according to their way of
thinking. Yet one must not be too hard on the authorities.
The Christian world was suffering in those days from un
checked novelties. At any rate the meetings in the oratory
were discontinued and Camillus was ordered to dismantle
bis beloved shrine. He could not understand the opposi
tion, so convinced was he that his mission to the sick had
been given to him by God. Even when Philip Neri sided
with the hospital authorities and advised Camillus to be
obedient and to submit, he found himself up against the

ST. CAMILLUS DE LELLIS 45
stone wall of the stubborn convert. Camillus would sub
mit because he had to, but he kept his own opinion still.
He even went so far as to change confessors believing that
Philip did not understand him.
Though all the world was against him and his pet project
Camillus still felt that God wished him to establish an
Order for the care of the sick. It might be presumption
in some one else, but in one who had felt the very presence
of God it could be nothing but an inspiration. It must
be done. But how? Must he be a priest in order to
fulfill the will of God? Well, if that was so, he would
become a priest, that was all. It seemed an impossibility,
it was true, but God would show the way if he wanted him
to do that work.
Camillus was then thirty-two years old. He had little
or no education; he could read and write, that was all.
What courage it required for him to face the long course
of studies necessary before he would be admitted to sacred
orders! But why let that daunt him if God was with
him? So while still serving in the hospital wards he
conned his new lessons, very elementary lessons at that.
But so earnest was he that it was not long before he was
able to enter the junior classes of one of the Jesuit colleges
of Rome. It is inspiring to think of the tall, ungainly
man of thirty-two or more sitting on the benches side by
side with the small lads who could not resist the tempta
tion to make him the butt of their good-natured jokes.
But what cared Camillus about discomforts, humilia
tion? Zeal lent speed to his feet. Determination aided
him in his studies, and at last with the help of a pious
gentleman named Firmo Calmo who gave him enough
money for his patrimony — the same man when he came to
die gave all his wealth to the hospital — he was ordained
priest at Pentecost in 1584, at the age of thirty-four, and
had the wonderful privilege of offering up the Holy Sac
rifice of the Mass. It was an event beyond the wildest

46 GREAT PENITENTS
dreams of the soldier. How happy poor Camilla would
have been could she have foreseen that glorious day. Her
son, for whom she had feared every ill, a priest of God !
Father Camillus had intended to remain at the hospital
after his ordination, still serving God in what he believed
to be his life's mission, the service of the sick, a service
all the greater now that he was a priest. But he soon
realized that his activities here must be limited. He still
felt that God wanted greater things at his hand. He was
at the time chaplain of a small church. He lived in a
poor small room in the rear of the church — hardly fit
accommodations for one who had visions of founding an
Order. But there he made his home and with him Ber
nardino and Curzio, two poor ignorant men who had served
with him in the hospital, the only ones left of that band
of five lovers of the sick who used to kneel in the little
hospital oratory before the crucifix. It was in this humble
room, however, that the great Order of the Camilians was
begun. The three men lost little time in planning. Theirs
was a practical work, to serve the sick and dying. So im
mediately they began the rounds of the hospitals, Camillus
exercising his priestly functions while old Bernardino and
Curzio instructed the sick, advised them, comforted them
and helped them to die well, besides giving them all the
material comfort which they knew so well how to give.
Wounds and sores were cared for, the most menial and
repulsive tasks were performed with holy joy. The sick
man was made king ; more, he was regarded even as Christ
crucified. "Praised be God," the sick exclaimed, "these are His
angels. Christ himself has come to His own."
Soon the reputation of these few holy men spread
throughout the city, and they were besieged with requests
not only from the hospitals but also to visit and tend the
sick in the private homes. It was heroic work, but crush
ing. Camillus and Curzio broke under the strain and

ST. CAMILLUS DE LELLIS 47
contracted an illness so serious that they had to be taken
to the hospital themselves and put to bed for treatment.
But their courage, their faith, was not lessened. No
sooner were they able to stand on their feet again than
they tottered back to the loved work of caring for the sick.
It was about this time that the kindness of a good man
enabled them to leave the poor room which, being in a
malarial district, had caused the serious illness. A more
fitting dwelling was obtained and Camillus, now with a
home of his own, began to think of the foundation of his
Congregation. He was one of the most persistent men
that ever lived. There was still a good deal of the soldier
blood left in him. The very persistence of the man won
him helpful friends. Not only did he find a good pro
tector in the person of the charitable Cardinal Mondovi,
but even the Holy Father, Sixtus V, took a personal in
terest in him and his work of kindness. At once he gave
his approval to the proposed Congregation of Ministers of
the Sick, and at the request of Camillus, who had never
forgotten the story of his mother's dream of the red cross,
the Pope permitted the members to be distinguished by
this insignia. They wore a long black garment with a
red cross on their breast. They were to live together with
the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and, added to
these, a vow to serve the sick. Gradually the Congrega
tion attracted new members, priests and laymen, and soon
at every hospital bed in Rome there was a wearer of the
red cross tending the sick, facing death if need be in the
heroic exercise of true Christian charity.
It would take too long to review the annals of the Con
gregation. They are filled with beautiful stories about
the work of these men of God. In the humblest cottages,
in the fever-filled galleys, in whole districts where pesti
lence raged and men were dying like flies, there you would
see the red cross. Shortly after the approval of the Con
gregation the members were put to a severe test. A plague

48 GREAT PENITENTS
had broken out in one quarter of the city where the velvet
weavers lived. Camillus and his companions were imme
diately in the thick of it. One gets a beautiful picture of
the big lanky Camillus now worn to skin and bone from
his austerities, taking care of the infants, washing them,
dressing them, feeding them. "Suffer the little children to
come unto me." It was a time of heavy trial, with many
hundreds dying, and as the result of their labors five of
the Congregation died, martyrs to charity. But the dan
ger of death deterred no one, least of all Camillus. He
was still at his post, even going about from door to door
begging for food and clothing for the poor unfortunates.
He knew no rest. Life was a time of penance. "The
true apostolic life," he used to say to his followers, "con
sists in giving one's self no repose or rest."
It was this spirit that ensured the success of his under
taking, and only three years after the establishment of
the Congregation it was made an Order with solemn vows.
Much against his will Camillus was made the Father Gen
eral. Gradually the Order spread from city to city. In
stitutions were established everywhere, for wherever there
was suffering there was an appeal to Camillus, and it was
not in his big heart to be deaf to any appeal from the
afflicted. It was all the work of Camillus, but in his deep humility
he took to himself no glory. He wanted to keep himself
in the background ; hence it is not surprising to learn that
as soon as the work was well established he begged to be
released from the generalship. He was suffered to resign,
and he was glad; glad not at being relieved of care, but
because now he would have more time to give to the sick.
The most desirable holiday to him was the time he spent
in the Hospital of the Holy Spirit in Rome. He hated
to take time to sleep. Four or five hours sufficed him;
the rest of the time he spent in visiting the patients of
whom there were four hundred in the hospital, and so

ST. CAMILLUS DE LELLIS '49
exhausted did he become that he had to drag himself from
bed to bed, falling sometimes from sheer weakness.
But the joy of it! "There is no music," said he,
"sweeter to me than the voices of the sick, all clamoring at
once to be assisted, no perfume more delicious than the
odor of drugs and ointments that bring such relief to the
sick; and if it were a thousand times more offensive I
would gladly endure it if thereby I could gain anything
for the souls of the sufferers."
It was work enough to kill a strong man, and Camillus
was only the wreck of a man. In watching him tend the
sick no one could guess how much he himself was suffering.
For forty-six years the sore in his leg troubled him, get
ting worse as the years went on; for thirty-eight years he
suffered from a severe rupture which he got in caring for
the sick; one of his feet had two great sores which caused
him perpetual agony; and added to this was a painful
kidney trouble. He ate so little that he was but a shadow.
He was without a doubt the sickest man in the hospital
but the most uncomplaining. The more he suffered the
more he felt impelled to come to the aid of others. "So
great is the happiness I hope for, that all pain and suffer
ing is a pleasure." His strength was from God. The
Blessed Sacrament, the Crucifix, the Precious Blood which
were the great objects of his devotion — there he found that
superhuman strength. He knew himself as a great sin
ner ; how little were all these pains if they could atone for
his evil youth. Always he felt that sense of sin. "O
Lord," he would pray, "I confess that I am the most
wretched of sinners, most undeserving of Thy favor; but
save me by Thy infinite goodness. My hope is placed in
Thy divine mercy through Thy Precious Blood." Every
day of his life he went to confession with sentiments of
the greatest sorrow.
At last the old body worn out by vigils and pains could
stand it no longer. Camillus was not afraid to die. He

50 GREAT PENITENTS
could look back on a wonderful work. No less than six
teen houses of the Order had been established in Italy and
hundreds of members were serving the sick while hundreds
more had died the death of saints. So, calmly on July
14, 1614, he passed away in his sixty-fifth year, universally
mourned as universally loved. Eleven years after his
death the body was exhumed and lo ! what had been full
of sores in life was now fresh, incorrupt. Many miracles
were wrought through his intercession, and it was very easy
for all to believe that this was a saint. St. John Camillus
was canonized by Benedict XIV in 1746. Leo XIII
chose him as the patron of the sick and of those who at
tended them. The soldier of fortune had won life's great
est battle.

ABBOT DE RANCE
STRANGE as it may seem, the history of the Bour
bon kings of France makes excellent spiritual read
ing. It is a story in great part of chicanery, of
utter worldliness, of crime ; yet underneath the gay laugh
of the de Montespans, the Pompadours, the DuBarrys, one
always hears "the burden of the desert of the sea" — that
the world and its glory are but vanity and affliction of
spirit. Guizot says somewhere that everybody in those
days, no matter how evil his life may have been, sought to
die well. One could make a very edifying collection of
testimonies, from Voltaire down, of men and women who
after a life of sin, of forgetfulness of God, were compelled
to admit that life had turned to ashes on their lips. As
young Cinq-Mars, once the favorite of Louis XIII and
afterwards a traitor to his benefactor, wrote to his mother
just before he paid the penalty for his crime: "Now that
I make not a single step which does not lead me to death,
I am more capable than anybody else of estimating the
value of the things of the world."
But amid much that was corrupt, and much also that
was worthy of France and its noblest, there is nothing more
edifying than the conversion of the young courtier, Ar-
mand de Ranee, whose subsequent holiness and austerity
gave so much glory to the abbey of La Trappe, with which
his name will be forever associated.
When Don Pierre Le Nain, prior of La Trappe, wrote
the life of de Ranee, — the most complete biography we
have of that wonderful penitent — he spoke of him as, "the
illustrious and pious abbe of the monastery of Notre Dame
51

52 GREAT PENITENTS
de la Trappe, one of the most beautiful monuments of the
Cistercian Order, the perfect mirror of penance, the com
plete model of all the Christian and religious virtues, the
worthy son and faithful imitator of the great St. Ber
nard." A glowing panegyric, indeed, yet an accurate description
of de Ranee. But these words do not tell all. They do
not tell from what depths this great penitent ascended to
the spiritual heights. De Ranee is a great example of
what the grace of God can do in a man's heart. It was
only the grace of God that could take that worldly, sensual,
flippant courtier, that pleasure-loving abbe of the salon,
and mould him over into a model of rigorous asceticism.
Much of it is an unpleasant story, as the story of sin must
ever be, but to understand the real man and the glory of
his accomplishment one must know the poor material he
had at hand when he began the work of forming the spir
itual man. To know de Ranee the sinner and de Ranee
the penitent is to realize that with the grace of God every
man may aspire to sanctity. One is not scandalized at
the early life of the man so much as he is edified by the
manner in which he broke away from that life and wept
bitter tears over it. One forgets the denying Peter when
one sees the tear-furrowed cheeks of the penitent apostle.
Armand Jean le Bouthillier de Ranee was born at Paris,
January 9, 1626. The family of le Bouthillier was one
of the oldest and most illustrious families in the kingdom.
A le Bouthillier had been archbishop of Tours, another
had been bishop of Aire, and another had been secretary
of state and grand treasurer. Originally the family had
belonged to Brittany and was related to the dukes of that
province. Armand's father, Dennis, a seigneur, had held
several offices, and at the time of Armand's birth was sec
retary to Queen Maria de Medici, the "fat bankeress of
Florence," as one of the court had dubbed her when she
came to marry the king of France. Dennis de Ranee had

ABBOT DE RANGE 53
married Charlotte Joly and by her had eight children, five
daughters and three sons. Most of the daughters became
religious ; of the sons, the eldest was a canon at Notre Dame
in Paris, the youngest, the Chevalier de Ranee, entered
the naval service.
Armand was the second son. When he was born Riche
lieu was powerful with Maria de Medici, the queen-
mother ; he was the great power in France. It was before
the break between the great cardinal and the queen-regent.
Dennis de Ranee's position as secretary to the queen brought
him into contact with Richelieu, who must have thought
favorably of him for we find him acting as godfather to
the new baby de Ranee and even giving him his own name,
Armand Jean. It was surely a great honor, for the name
of Richelieu was a mighty one that year of 1626, when
the Cardinal had succeeded in a master stroke for the uni
fication of France by causing the destruction of most of
the feudal castles. It may be noted that there is a simi
larity in the cases of Richelieu and de Ranee. Richelieu
had prepared for a military career, with no notion of the
ecclesiastical state, and it was only when his elder brother,
disgusted with the world, had refused the bishopric of
Lugon and had become a monk of the Grande Chartreuse
that the younger brother, in order to keep the revenues
in the family, was persuaded that he had a vocation. It
was an evil of the times, and the Church and religion suf
fered deep wounds because too often unworthy bishops
were foisted upon her for the sake of material gain. It
was one of the evil results of Gallicanism, for the Con
cordat of Francis I had put the Church in France and the
episcopate in the hands of the king.
It is not that Richelieu was unworthy. Whatever we
may think of his politics, he was at heart religious, and
devoted himself to his poor diocese before he came to his
great position of power. He was a zealous reformer and
did lasting service to religion in writing his "Instruction

54 GREAT PENITENTS
du Chretien," to be read every Sunday at Mass in all the
churches of his diocese, at a time when the great evil was
ignorance of religion. The Church benefited by the strong
hand of the Cardinal. When he was convoking the As
sembly of Notables, he declared, "We do protest before
the living God that we have no other aim and intention
but His honor and the welfare of our subjects." When
he was dying in 1642, he stretched out his hands towards
the Holy Eucharist which was being brought to him, and
said, "There is my Judge before Whom I shall soon ap
pear; I pray Him with all my heart to condemn me if I
have ever had any other aim than the welfare of religion
and of the State." But great statesman though Richelieu
was, and one of the greatest servants France ever had, no
one would presume to call him, save perhaps in his early
days as a bishop, a great shepherd of souls.
Just as Richelieu had not been destined for the Church,
so was it with his godson. The younger Dennis de Ranee
had been from his very cradle the abbot of La Trappe.
It was another of the evils resulting from the interference
of the State in the affairs of the Church when a family
could presume to claim the right over Church property.
Dennis died and Armand thereby becoming the heir in
herited the abbey. This meant, of course, that whether
or not he had a vocation to the religious life he would
enter the ecclesiastical state.
However fine a mind the young Armand had, events
proved that he had little vocation for the Church. That,
however, did not appear in the beginning. It never
seemed to enter the minds of his elders that any special
preparation for a religious life was necessary. Enough
that the lad knew his Latin and Greek, and had the fine
manners of a gentleman. The future abbe had his three
teachers, one for Latin, one for Greek and a third for his
manners. He was remarkably precocious, and his biogra
phers say that he was scarcely out of swaddling clothes

ABBOT DE RANGE 55
when he could explain the Greek and Latin poets. It was
this very precociousness that served him in good stead
when there was question about his appointment to a cer
tain benefice. When the benefice became vacant his name
was put on the list of those recommended. Naturally the
clergy objected to such an appointment. They did not
want this "abbe in jacket." The friends of the le Bouthil
lier family, however, urged the competency of the boy,
and finally Caussin, confessor to the king, Louis XIII,
decided to test the fitness of the boy whom the king de
sired to honor. And as the test for the appointment —
queer test for an ecclesiastical benefice — Caussin gave the
boy Homer to translate ! Armand did it and did it well ;
and Caussin was so pleased at this exhibition of precocious
learning that he withdrew his opposition to the appoint
ment. The whole affair would be ridiculous, if it were
not so sad. No wonder the real churchmen sorrowed at
such appointments of babies to ecclesiastical offices, or
rather to ecclesiastical revenues.
Armand was so precocious that we find him at the age of
twelve publishing a translation of Anacreon under the
protection of Richelieu. The young translator even dedi
cated the book to his godfather in a Greek letter ! It was
not a great contribution to classical learning, but it was
a marvelous thing for a boy of twelve to accomplish. Time
came when de Ranee threw into the fire all that remained
of the edition. Afterwards, when he was at La Trappe, a
penitent after a stormy youth, he spoke of this literary
debut of his, and said that he had kept in his library only
one copy of the Anacreon and had finally given that away,
not, however, as a good book, but "as one very strong and
very well bound." He then went on to say that in the
first years of his retreat before becoming a religious he
had wanted to read the poets, but that since it only recalled
old ideas, and since there was in such reading a subtle
poison hidden under its flowers he at last gave it all up.

56 GREAT PENITENTS
But that was only long afterwards. De Ranee penitent
must have smiled sadly as he thought of those early days
in the sunshine of the court.
No youth ever had better worldly prospects. The
protege and godchild of Richelieu, he was on that account,
as also because of his father, a favorite with Maria de
Medici. She loved the bright lad, and would carry him
in her arms, hold him on her knees, kiss him and call him
her son. Richelieu, too, was very fond of him, chiefly
no doubt on account of his wonderful talent, just as he
had promised great things for young Pascal and his sister,
and he showed his favor in a practical way by giving the
lad many benefices. Fortune surely smiled on him. He
was canon of Notre Dame, abbot of La Trappe, guaranteed
a life of opulence, and all at the age of twelve.
When the break came between Richelieu and the queen-
mother, the de Ranee family was in a perilous position,
but Dennis de Ranee was well drilled in politics ; he had
studied in a clever school. He remained faithful to the
queen, who tried to make him keep away from Richelieu,
but de Ranee was also faithful to his benefactor, and con
tinued to see the Cardinal, though only in secret, till
Richelieu's death in 1642. Richelieu, the mighty, had
gone the way of all flesh. "Treat me as the commonest of
Christians," he said to the priest who came to prepare him
for death. He saw the littleness of worldly glory as he
lay helpless on his death bed. "Let those who cannot re
frain from showing the excess of their weeping and lamen
tation," he said as his friends bemoaned his passing, "leave
the room; let us pray for this soul." The great Richelieu
was at last but this soul seeking mercy from God. So
passed, too, Louis XIII, who in the light that comes from
beyond the grave saw what a puerile thing is all pretended
royal magnificence. One of his historians tells us that in
his last illness, "he was seen nearly always with his eyes
open towards Heaven, as if he talked with God heart to

ABBOT DE RANCE 57
heart." Toward the end he cried out, "My God, receive
me to mercy." And to the Bishop of Meaux, who came
to attend his last moments, he said simply, "You will of
course see when the time comes for reading the agony-
prayers. I have marked them all." The King of France
was but a sinner that needed mercy.
During the regency of Anne of Austria and Mazarin,
who had succeeded Richelieu, young de Ranee continued
his ecclesiastical studies. He attained great success in
philosophy and theology, and — a sign of his favor with the
ruling powers — dedicated his thesis to Anne. He was,
moreover, a successful preacher and, had he applied him
self to that work, might have reached an eminence as great
as that reached by Bossuet, who was his fellow pupil. But
successful as de Ranee was in his studies owing to his
abundance of natural talent, he did not accomplish so
much as he might. The reason was that his heart was
divided. He was not primarily an aspirant to the priest
hood because he felt that he had a vocation. That was
but secondary. The priesthood was simply a career, a
necessary state for the benefices conferred upon him. No
man can serve two masters. But he would be an ecclesi
astic and a man of society at the same time. He did not
see the incongruity of that ; he had all too many examples
before him of men who had thrust themselves upon the
priesthood that shrunk away from their worldly touch.
So we find young de Ranee, because of his social posi
tion, his family name, his royal connections, a frequenter
of the salons. The most illustrious salon of the time was
that of Madame Rambouillet, which became the centre of
the world of nobility as well as the rendezvous of the lit
erati. It was a brilliant, clever, worldly society. It was
a time when a new desire for things intellectual was being
felt. It was the reaction from the licentiousness of the
court of Henry IV. Refinement, grace, intellect were
the valued things at Madame's, and here was laid the

58 GREAT PENITENTS
foundation of the French Academy with which the name
of Richelieu will ever be associated. Here, too, reigned
the blue-stocking, of which Moliere made so much fun;
and that artificiality is the worst that can be said of the
Hotel Rambouillet. To all the salons — for others suc
ceeded Madame's — de Ranee had the entree. Needless to
say, the influence of these worldlings, however intellectual
and refined, was far from happy upon the impressionable
youth who was destined for the sanctuary. Mingling with
worldlings he became a worldling, too. After the Fronde,
that war of the people and Parliament against Mazarin and
his taxation, he resided sometimes at Paris, sometimes at
Veretz, his patrimony. But wherever he was he was the
man of the world. With an abundance of money he could
indulge his luxurious tastes to the full. He could always
go his friends one better. No feasts were more sumptuous
than those given by him, no f£tes more brilliant than his.
He was always planning new pleasures, which assured
him his position as a leader in society. In a word, he
was in those days a worldling, nothing more.
One of the pastimes to which de Ranee was devoted was
that of hunting. One day while out hunting a chance
shot from a hunter on the opposite bank of the river hit
him, but by good luck, or, as he knew later on, by the
Providence of God, the bullet hit the steel chain of his
pouch and thus saved him from death. "What would
have become of me," he meditates in his penitential days,
"if God had called me in that moment?"
At another time when he was staying at Veretz certain
hunters came poaching upon his grounds. De Ranee,
angered, attacked the leader of them, who wondered after
wards what had prevented him from killing de Ranee.
But these narrow escapes from the judgment of God did
not trouble the soul of the young courtier at the time. The
grace of God had not yet touched him.
With such worldly preparations he advanced to the

ABBOT DERANCE 59
priesthood. He had been tonsured as a boy of nine in
1635. In 1647 he had received his degree of Bachelor
of Theology when he was twenty-one, and his Licentiate
in 1649. In 1651 he received Minor Orders, and in that
same year was ordained to the priesthood. How unworthy
he was of the sacred office he himself must have had some
suspicion, for though magnificent vestments had been made
ready for him to say his first Mass at Paris he withdrew
to Chartreuse and there privately offered up his first Holy
Sacrifice. But the humility, if such it was, was but tem
porary. De Ranee wanted to advance. His sole idea in
entering the priesthood was preferment; the spiritual
counted for nothing. He had Richelieu's ambition without
Richelieu's stable character. But times were hardly favor
able for his advancement. He had been a protege of
Richelieu, and that was enough to discredit him with the
reigning powers. Moreover he had taken part in the
Fronde against Mazarin, and Mazarin would not put him
self out much to assist those who had opposed him. Rather
did the Cardinal take delight in opposing the protege of
his predecessor. But de Ranee was not much disturbed by
that. If advancement came he would welcome it, but he
would not think too much about it if it interfered with his
convenience and pleasure. For that reason he refused the
bishopric of Leon, because the revenue was not big enough,
and also because it was too far away from the brilliancy of
the court. He had no notion of sacrificing himself for the
ministry. The Church was to him just what a military
career might be, a means of livelihood and a certain power.
It seems almost incredible that any such notion could be
entertained by him, but there is no sense in minimizing
things. All tends to the greater glory of the penitent de
Ranee once he had opened his eyes to the enormity of the
crime he had committed in forcing himself into the sanc
tuary without a divine call.
So the priest passed the time as any worldly baron

60 GREAT PENITENTS
might. Passionately fond of hunting, he would follow the
chase three or four hours in the morning and then come
to the Sorbonne to sustain a thesis or preach at Paris with
all tranquillity, without any qualms of conscience. One
day his friend Champrallon asked him, "Where are you
going, abbe ? What are you doing today ?" "This morn
ing," replied the abbe, "to preach as an angel, and this
evening to hunt as a devil."
One is not surprised when told that de Ranee had a
strong inclination towards the military life. At any rate
he had little inclination towards the sanctuary he had sworn
to serve. He was the typical court abbe, more interested
in the vanities of the world than in the care of souls. Even
his dress betrayed him. He wore a violet robe of precious
stuff and also wore a wig. There was a diamond on his
finger and an emerald on each glove. When hunting there
was about him absolutely no sign of the priest. He carried
a sword and pistols and dressed accordingly. At home in
quieter company he dressed in black with gold buttons. He
was a man of courage and spirit, and a fearless horseman,
though many accidents happened from which he narrowly
escaped with his life. He had all the accomplishments of
the soldier, none, or few, of the priest. He rarely said
Mass. It would be a mistake to consider de Ranee as a priest ;
he was merely a man of the world who for financial reasons
had taken orders. So also would it be a mistake to consider
him as the typical French priest of his age. His bad ex
ample was as shocking to the good people and the clergy of
his time as it would be to us today. It was the result of
secular interference in affairs of the Church, and the
Church never ceased to protest against it.
The Church in France in the seventeenth century needs
no apology. History, it is true, loves to talk about
Richelieu and Mazarin and De Retz and the court abbes,
and from their lives to make platitudes about the weakness

ABBOT DE RANGE 61
of religion in the France of the Bourbons. It has little
or nothing to say about Bossuet and Bourdaloue and
Fenelon and Flechier. For the seventeenth century in
France, in spite of the noise that is made by Voltaire and
Rousseau and the other Encyclopedists, was a great Catho
lic era. St. Francis de Sales, St. Jane Frances de Chantal,
St. Vincent de Paul, Father Olier of the Sulpicians, Cardi
nal de Berulle, founder of the Oratory; the founding of
the Sisters of Charity, of the Ursulines, of the Christian
Brothers and the bringing of the Carmelites from Spain,
under the protection of Cardinal de Berulle ; the wonderful
work of the Grand Seminaries, and perhaps more than
anything else the great missionary activity, with the estab
lishment of the Seminary for Foreign Missions; the mis
sion labors of the Jesuits in China and Canada, with such
heroes as Lallemant and de Breboeuf — these are but a few
names picked at random from Catholic France of the seven
teenth century.
It was the prevalence of this spirit of faith that eventu
ally worked for the conversion of de Ranee. The event
which led to that conversion was his association, unhappy
as that association was, with the Duchess de Montbazon.
The Duke de Montbazon was a relative of de Ranee's
father. His life had been a wicked one. He was a roue
up to the time of his death in 1644 at the age of eighty-
six. He had married the young Duchess when she was but
sixteen, a wonderfully beautiful girl. She had even de
cided to become a religious, when, flattered by the offer of
the Duke so many years older than herself, she sacrificed
all for the social position he could give her. The young
Duchess soon forgot all religious sentiment. She deter
mined to enjoy the world to the full, and enjoy it while
she was young. It was a bon mot of hers that one was good
for nothing after thirty and that she wanted to be thrown
into the river at that age. De Ranee, owing to his rela
tionship with the Duke, was a welcome visitor. In this way

02 GREAT PENITENTS
he came to the notice of the young Duchess, and was soon
a great favorite of hers. When the old Duke finally died
she was thirty-two and did not look more than twenty.
She had changed her mind about wanting to be thrown into
the river. No wonder people talked about the attention
paid by the young abbe to the frivolous Duchess. Even
had the association been innocent it was scandalous, show
ing what little conception he had of his dignity. Her
name was a byword. At one time she came near being
drowned; in fact the rumor had spread that she had per
ished. No such luck. The accident but added to her fame,
or rather notoriety. The Duke of Beaufort with all his
wealth became her slave, and de Ranee seemed to have
passed out of her life. The Duchess cared not so long as
she had money. She cared not where it came from. She
loved the easy way of the world; there was nothing she
would not sacrifice for social position and power — a far
cry from the days when she yearned to become a nun!
De Ranee was twenty-six when his father died. He
became thereby the head of the house of de Ranee, and
was in a position to live in great style. He had been
worldly enough before ; he was more so now. He became
noted for his luxurious living, his fine table, his beautiful
equipage. He rode in state drawn by eight horses, with
elegant livery and followed by a great train of dependents.
Even the King did not enjoy a greater magnificence or
show greater eclat. No wonder that the Duchess strove
again for his notice.
Speaking of this period in de Ranee's life, his biographer
Le Nain, writes : "A youth passed in amusements of the
court, in the vain search for success, even damnable, after
being engaged in the ecclesiastical state without any other
vocation than his ambition which carried him with a kind
of fury and blindness to the first dignity of the Church —
this man, plunged wholly in the love of the world, is or
dained priest, and he who had forgotten the way to Heaven

ABBOT DE RANGE 63
is received as doctor of the Sorbonne. Behold what was the
life of Monsieur le Bouthillier up to the age of thirty years,
always at feasts, always in company, in play, in the diver
sions of the promenade or the chase."
De Ranee's uncle, the Archbishop of Tours, was unable
to get him appointed as his coadjutor, but he succeeded in
making him his deputy to the Assembly of the Clergy in
1645, and then had him appointed as first Almoner to the
Duke of Orleans. The natural ability of de Ranee came
to the fore. He did excellent work in his new position,
and when it was finished returned to his estates at Veretz,
perhaps with new designs to feed his ambition. But the
day of God's grace was nearing.
The Duchess de Montbazon died, so suddenly that even
de Ranee had not heard the news. One day he came to
call on her. He entered her apartment, and instead of
beholding the sprightly, beautiful woman, he came face
to face with her corpse lying upon the bier. The shock to
him was a terrible one. Even long afterwards he would say
nothing about that day or about the woman who had made
him almost lose his soul. Once he wrote : "Those who die,
well or ill, often die more for those they leave in the world
than for themselves." Stunned, grief -stricken, he returned
to Veretz to bury himself in solitude. The blackest melan
choly fell upon him. He passed the days riding, trying to
forget, but then came the long, torturing nights, so unbear
able. He even consulted the dead, seeking to summon the
Duchess back to speak to him. But the answer came in a
way he did not expect. One day he seemed to have a vision
in which he beheld the woman suffering in the midst of
flames. It was very likely in reference to this event that
he afterwards wrote : "While I followed the disorder of
my heart, I not only swallowed iniquity as water, but all
that I read and heard about sin only served to make me
more guilty. Finally the blessed time came when it pleased
the Father of mercies to turn Himself to me ; I saw at the

64 GREAT PENITENTS
dawn of day the infernal monster with whom I had lived ;
the fright with which I was seized at the terrible sight was
so great that I cannot believe I will recover from it as long
as I live."
The hand of God touched the sinner. He was converted
in that instant, and determined to devote the rest of his life
to penance to seek to expiate the scandal he had given,
In this first fervor he went at once to consult an old friend,
Mother Louise of the Visitation, at Tours. She directed
him to Pere Seguenat, and from him he went to Pere de
Mouchy, a learned priest who belonged to one of the first
families in France. But after these spiritual consultations
he returned to Veretz without having reached any decision
as to his future course. But Veretz, where he had lived
like a king, had lost all its charm. The fine home with its
furnishings of gold and silver, its luxurious beds, its price
less paintings, its lovely gardens, its whole atmosphere of
softness disgusted the young penitent who had come to real
ize what a poor thing is life. He began his reform at once
by practising frugality, by discharging most of his servants,
by giving up hunting and even by renouncing the more
innocent amusement of drawing of which he was very fond.
His whole time now was taken up with works of penance,
in the company of a few friends who joined with him in his
practices of piety.
Shortly after his conversion de Ranee came to Paris
on business. While there he avoided his former friends,
kept away from the salons where he had been so popular,
and instead went to lodge at the Oratory. It was not an
easy task for him to give up his world. Old thoughts
haunted him, temptations to the old life afflicted him. It
was hard for his social set to regard his conversion as
other than a joke. It was no joke, however, to de Ranee;
it was a struggle to the death. To end it all and to enable
him to get away from the temptations of the old life he
was advised to go to the foreign missions, even to India.

ABBOT DE RANGE 65
He did not go; not that he shrank from the hardship,
but God had other work for him to do.
Still undecided, de Ranee repaired to Blois as it was his
quarter to serve as Almoner to the Duke of Orleans. Gas
ton, Duke of Orleans, had revolted against his brother,
Louis XIII, but had escaped. He had reappeared at court
when Louis was dying, but had then retired to Blois, a dis
credited, deserted man. When de Ranee arrived at Blois
the Duke, who was coming to the end of his useless life,
was thinking of doing penance. Surely he needed it. He
withdrew to the Chateau of Chambro, and de Ranee
was one of the party who accompanied him. De Ranee
owned a priory near Chambro, served at that time by
seven or eight religious, and for a time he went to live
with the monks in the midst of those solitary woods. He
returned to Paris, but was hardly there when a messenger
came from Blois to tell him of the serious illness of the
Duke. He repaired thither at once, and had the satisfac
tion of seeing the Duke die in sentiments of great contri
tion. De Ranee's prayers and example had no doubt con
tributed much to this happy ending. He was left almost
alone with the corpse, and was deeply affected by the sight
of death, another warning of the emptiness of life. When
the funeral was over he went to Mans and there hid him
self for two months, even changing his name so that he
might pursue his life of penance without interruption.
He was fighting against himself and the evil inclinations
that he had so long indulged.
For a long time de Ranee had been considering submit
ting his future conduct to the bishops of Aleth and of Com-
minges, and January 27 he arrived at Comminges. He
accompanied the bishop on his diocesan visitation. He
thought of building a hermitage in the mountains, but
the bishops wisely opposed this extreme idea. "You,"
said they, "think only of living for yourself."
The bishop of Aleth approved of de Ranee's determina-

66 GREAT PENITENTS
tion to get rid of his fortune, but he counseled him against
a life of solitude. The abbe agreed to give up his benefices,
recognizing the fact that appointment merely for the sake
of material revenues, was not according to the spirit of the
Church. It was, however, a problem for him to know what
to do, for he did not like going to live in a regular mon
astery. De Ranee returned again to Veretz, decided to put his
plans into execution. Needless to say, there was much op
position on the part of his friends, and of his servants who
did not fancy being sacrificed to the penitential desires of
the master of the house, no matter how highly they regarded
him. It was hard for them, but it was harder for him to
part with all his worldly grandeur. He had no intention,
however, of turning back. There was sorrow in his heart ;
never again could he enjoy life. So he sold his silver and
gave the proceeds to the poor. He owned two houses in
Paris. One of them he gave to the Hotel Dieu, the other.
to the General Hospital. Finally he sold his ancestral
estates of Veretz and gave the proceeds to the hospitals.
Of all his benefices he reserved only La Trappe, which was
to be the scene of his later life. He had effectually broken
with the past.
The abbey of La Trappe was situated in Normandy at
a distance of eighty-four miles from Paris, in a solitary
valley surrounded by forests and lakes. It had been
founded in 1122, having been built by Rotron II, Count
of Perche, who while returning from England had made a
vow that if he escaped shipwreck he would build a chapel
in honor of Our Lady. The chapel which he built was
changed into a monastery in 1140, and in 1147 was united
to the Cistercians. At the time it was founded St. Bernard
was abbot of Clairvaux. St. Louis had taken the abbey
under his protection. Subsequently, when the English
ravaged France, it was pillaged many times. In the six
teenth century it was: one of the abbeys given "in com-

ABBOT DE RANGE 67
mendani," and in this way it finally came into the de
Ranee family. It was not much of a prize, for the glory
of La Trappe had long ago departed. Before de Ranee
came to live there and reform the abbey its doors were open
day and night, and men and women were permitted freely
to enter the cloister. It was a sorry place, fallen into
decay. It was far from attractive to the man who had
been a dainty courtier, but, as he wrote to Madame de
Guise, "It pleased God to send me here. What matter
where one lives since one must die ? "
Not only was the building in ruins; the spirit of the
monastery was also in need of reform. The few monks
who kept the place were content to let well enough alone,
and when de Ranee in his new zeal spoke of reformation
they opposed him. Finally they gave their consent un
willingly, but de Ranee, seeing what little help they would
be to him, let them go or stay as they pleased, giving a
pension to those who wished to leave.
It was a problem for de Ranee when he determined to
settle at La Trappe. One day he was nearly crushed by
the falling of a ceiling. He took refuge in the chapel, and
while praying there heard the monks chanting the psalm —
Qui confidunt in Domino — Who trust in the Lord. It
came to him as the voice of God, and he had no more fear.
He went to Paris to seek the King's permission to establish
himself in the abbey. Some of his friends, holy men,
sought to deter him on account of the difficulty of restoring
the abbey to the rule. "I see no other door than that of the
cloister," he replied, "at which I could knock to return
to God. I have no other resource after so much disorder
than to clothe me with a sack and haircloth and pass my
days in the bitterness of my heart."
A friend of de Ranee's, an abbe, said to him: "I do
not know, sir, if you understand well what you ask. You
are a priest, a doctor of the Sorbonne, and otherwise a
man of position ; nourished in delicacy and luxury, you are

68 GREAT PENITENTS
used to having a great train and the making of good cheer ;
you are on the road to be a bishop at the first opportunity ;
your temperament is extremely feeble, and you ask to be
a monk, which is the most abject state in the Church, the
most penitent, the most hidden and even the most despised.
It will be necessary for you henceforth to live in tears, in
work, in retreat, and to study only Jesus Christ crucified.
Think seriously of it."
De Ranee replied : "It is true, I am a priest, but I have
lived up to now in a manner unworthy of my character. I
am a doctor, but I do not know the alphabet of Christianity ;
I make some figure in the world, but I am like those posts
which show the way to travelers yet never move them
selves." The new life was not easy for the converted courtier.
Many a time memories of the past sought to lure him from
his good intentions, many a time did he have to battle with
temptations. He wrote to the Bishop of Aleth: "I cannot
understand how I have the hardihood to undertake a pro
fession which wants only detached souls, and how, my pas
sions being as vivid as they are, I dare enter into a state
of veritable death. I conjure you, sir, to ask of God my
conversion in a circumstance which ought to be the decision
of my eternity, and that after having violated so many
times the vows of my baptism He will give me the grace to
keep those I am now going to make, which are as a renewal
of it, with so much fidelity that I may repair in some
manner the errors of my past life."
In April, 1663, de Ranee wrote to some friends: "I am
sure you will be surprised when you know the resolution
I have taken to give the rest of my life to penance. If I
were not held down by the weight of my sins, many ages
of the life I am going to embrace could not satisfy for a
moment for that life I have lived in the world." He finally
got the King's permission to have La Trappe restored to
the rule, but on condition that at his death it should be
come a commendatory abbey again.

ABBOT DE RANGE 69
To prepare himself for the work he was about to under
take de Ranee went to Perseigne and spent five months in
the novitiate, learning his new profession. While there
he became very ill, and the doctors assured him that his
health would be worth nothing if he did not give up his
idea of following the monastic life. But the warning did
not deter him. When he went to La Trappe he was cured.
The great Physician of souls was watching over him.
Before pronouncing his vows at Perseigne, de Ranee
made a visit to La Trappe and there read his will by which
he gave to his monastery whatever property still remained
in his possession. He had made his adieus to the world.
On June 26, 1664, de Ranee made his profession at La
Trappe. His real life work was begun. His first care was
to repair the buildings and make them habitable, and dur
ing those days he worked as laboriously as the humblest
brother. "Are we less sinners," he asked, "than the first
religious of Citeaux ? Have we less need of penance ? "
The reply made to him was that they were weaker and could
not practise the same austerities. "Rather say," he replied,
"that we have less zeal."
The abbot's good example soon prevailed and the monks
gave up the use of wine, fish, meat and eggs. Labor be
came sweet, and de Ranee, to set the example, devoted him
self to the cultivation of a piece of wild land.
During those days the cause of the reform of the abbeys,
which meant their restoration to the austerities of the
primitive rule, was in the air. Many abbeys had instituted
the reform. Those of the strict observance tried to form
an independent order under the government of the abbol
of Prieres. De Ranee was appointed by the regular com
munity to go to Rome to plead the cause of reform. He
arrived there November 16, 1664, and had an audience
with the Holy Father, Alexander VII. It was a hard
task. Reformers were regarded as singular men, very
close to schism, even when they were well intentioned, and

70 GREAT PENITENTS
seeing his cause lost, de Ranee returned home. When he
arrived at La Trappe with the unwelcome news the abbot
of Prieres ordered him to go back to Rome and again plead
the cause of the reformed rule. De Ranee obeyed. He
redoubled his penance, living on bread and water only, and
thinking only of God. Back in Rome, he frequented the
churches, earing for no other sights, and went as often as
possible to pray at the tombs of the apostles and martyrs.
But he had. to return home again without having accom
plished his purpose. On the way back he visited different
monasteries, gaining information to help him in the work
of governing his own monastery, and getting new zeal for
the task.
When de Ranee arrived at La Trappe word came from
Rome that the Pope had not sanctioned the strict observ
ance proposed. In the Bull "In Supremo" he settled all
disputes by making certain concessions and by laying down
certain rules to govern the abbeys. De Ranee of course
submitted with true obedience, confident in the wisdom of
the Holy Father, and certain that if God wished it the
strict observance would in due time prevail. The new
regulations were accepted by the General Chapter at Ci
teaux in 1667, though even then de Ranee expressed his
opposition before the vote was taken.
De Ranee's whole heart now was taken up with the desire
to do penance. He was a changed man. There was a
majesty even in his exterior, due to the deep spirituality
that had come into his life. He aimed to sanctify himself
and to make his monastery a holy place. During his brief
absence from the monastery in May, 1666, there came a
relaxation in the discipline of the abbey, but as soon as
he returned he made peace at once and set about needed
repairs, built cells, and two chapels. His penance was not
a mere idle moaning over the past, but hard work for God's
glory. Gradually the discipline became more strict. The
monks slept on pallets of straw, with a block of wood for

ABBOT DE RANGE 71
a pillow. In Lent they kept the strict fast, and spent their
time in prayer, silence and work. Guests were welcomed
with kindness and no questions asked. Already the good
influence of the monastery was being felt. The poor were
fed, schools and workshops were established. De Ranee
preached to his brethren in the abbey, heard their confes
sions, and in every way fortified them in their spiritual
combat. Thus passed five or six years. The abbey grew as its
good fame spread. Up to the time of his death in 1700
de Ranee had received ninety-seven religious and forty-
nine brothers. He kept account of them all and wrote
their history. One such edifying story is that of Pierre or
Francois Fore, who had been sub-lieutenant in a corps of
grenadiers. He was a brave man, and had been often
wounded in battle. He had been the victim of all kinds of
vice and was convicted of a dozen different crimes. Obliged
to flee the country, he knew not where to turn, whether
to England, or Germany or Hungary. He even thought of
going to the Turks. Somehow he heard of La Trappe,
and he decided to go there. He made the journey of two
hundred miles, and after a frightful struggle arrived at
the abbey at the end of winter. He knocked at the abbey
door, and was admitted. He was a pitiable sight, his face
was hardened, his eyes haggard, he looked more like a
ferocious beast than a man. De Ranee kindly received the
poor penitent, who was plainly near death from tubercu
losis. Scarcely was he inside the haven of penance when
he poured forth his life blood and died. It was such cases
that brought consolation to the heart of de Ranee and
repaid him for all his sorrows.
But as the renown of the abbey increased, so also did
the slanders against de Ranee spread. He was sneered at,
the errors of his youth were retailed, and his conversion
was regarded as mere vanity, as a matter of self-advertise-

72 GREAT PENITENTS
ment. But the penitent did not mind what was said. He
felt he deserved it all and more.
In 1673 de Ranee again asked the King to allow the
reformed rule to be established. The request was the signal
for abuse, heaped upon de Ranee by those who did not ap
prove. He was denounced for his doctrines, accused of
hypocrisy in seeking to introduce new ideas. The King
submitted the matter to his advisers. De Ranee's adver
saries opposed him at Rome and again the request was
refused. But he was not disheartened. He went about
his personal sanctification, no matter how great the ob
stacles. And the obstacles, indeed, were many. In 1676
he contracted the disease of which he eventually died.
The pain did not stop him from working. He was com
pelled to spend three months in the infirmary, but as soon
as possible he rejoined the community. In 1689 he was the
victim of a great fever, but when that was passed he was
back at work, though a relapse soon laid him low again.
Sickness did not worry him. He was not afraid to die.
"The life of a sinner like me," he said, "always lasts too
long." Bossuet, who had been his fellow student, came to visit
him several times. He loved the place and would assist
at the offices day and night. De Ranee had thought of
giving up the abbey but Bossuet, knowing the great good
his friend was doing, advised him to wait. One loves to
think of the Eagle of Meaux, the great orator who would
not mince words even when he was talking to the King
and thundering at him the warnings of eternal damnation
if he did not break with the infamous de Montespan,
resting his soul in prayer in the solitude of La Trappe.
Bossuet knew as well as de Ranee, though in a different
way, the foolishness of the life of sin. When the Grand
Monarch, Louis XIV, lay upon his death bed he must have
remembered the many warnings of the preacher. At any
rate he made a good end. "Prayers are offered in all

ABBOT DERANCE 73
the churches for Your Majesty's life," said the parish
priest of Versailles. "That is not the question," said
Louis; "It is my salvation that much needs praying for."
Always patient under abuse and calumny, de Ranee
knew how to sympathize with others. It was no doubt
due to his prayers and his good example that others left
the sinful world to do penance. Like Louise de la Val-
liere, discarded mistress of the king, they could say as she :
"I quit the world without regret, but not without pain. I
believe, I hope, I love." La Valliere led a hard, peniten
tial life for thirty-five years. How many moralists since
have sneered at her wickedness, and how few have had the
courage to imitate her penitence. When the sermons of
de Ranee — "Of the Sanctity and Duties of the Monastic
Life" — were gathered together, Bossuet, no mean judge,
wanted to have them printed. De Ranee in his humility
threw them into the fire, but happily the manuscript was
rescued and published. The book aroused a storm. It
was attacked by Protestants, and even Mabillon entered
into a controversy with de Ranee over some of his ideas
put forth as to whether or not monks in an abbey like that
of La Trappe should devote themselves to study. But the
controversy ended, and Mabillon came to visit La Trappe.
De Ranee was dead to the past. He never referred to
his life in the world. That was a closed chapter to him ;
he wanted it to be closed to everybody else. But he had
no softness because of his own past sins. He had no pity
on evils. "You are made for the cross," he would say.
And again: "One dies only once; one cannot repair in
a second life the mistakes of the first. What one is at the
moment of death, that he is always." There was but one
idea in his mind it was penance, penance, penance. No
other cry escaped him.
De Ranee was a prodigious letter-writer. He wrote to
everybody, and always with the one thought, to bring his
correspondents to the service of the Cross. His work is

74 GREAT PENITENTS
amazing when one considers that his illness was continuous.
One hand had become useless from rheumatism; he suf
fered from a cough, from insomnia, from toothache, and
long days and nights were passed' in a chair in the in
firmary. But he never would relax his penances. Before
his chair he had placed the words, "Lord, forget my
ignorances and the sins of my youth." He always consid
ered himself the most wicked of sinners. Hence he had
no mercy on himself. .The monks complained to the Pope
of his self-afflictions, and the Pope thereupon ordered him
to relax his austerities.
Severe as he was with himself, de Ranee was ever kind
to others. He was full of sympathy for the sick, 'ready at
all times to listen to the troubles of others, always all
things to all men for the sake of winning them to Christ.
In spite of his continued sickness he ruled his monastery.
It was a marvel how one in his condition could accomplish
so much. And all the while with patience, no matter what
happened. His enemies wrote against him, preached
against him. He was called a heretic, a fanatic. But, in
his trust in God, he remained calm through it all. When
he was very ill his brethren begged him to have the doc
tors. "I am in the hands of God," he replied. "It is He
Who gives life, He Who takes it. He knows well how to
cure me if it is His will that I should live. But why
cure me ? For what good am I ? What could I do in
this world but offend God ?"
What good, indeed! For an answer to that one must
ask the many souls in Heaven who were led thither by the
penitential example of this true convert. Whenever the
name of Trappist is heard, one thinks at once of this great
abbot of La Trappe who made the name a benediction.
Many a soul had found new strength in the presence of de
Ranee. Thither in the lifetime of de Ranee had come
the ill-fated James IT. Whatever one may think of the
ability of James, one thing certain is that he had remained

ABBOT DE RANGE 75
loyal to his faith at all costs. When he was dying in
1701, the year after de Ranee's death, he said to his son :
"I am about to leave this world, which has been to me
nothing but a sea of tempests and storms. The Almighty
has thought right to visit me with great afflictions ; serve
Him Avith all your heart, and never place the crown
of England in the balance with your eternal salvation."
De Ranee's continued illness at last made him helpless.
Thinking it for the good of the abbey he resigned to the
King in 1695, and much to his relief another superior was
appointed. In his sincere humility he became a simple
religious, and was given the work of caring for the in
firmary. He still kept up his penances. Penance was his
life. He made his general confession. As the end ap
proached he was serene, his countenance shining. They
laid him upon a bed of ashes, and while answering the
prayers for the departing he died, October 31, 1700, at
the age of seventy-five, after thirty-five years spent in
penitential solitude.
His life reads like a page from the Fathers of the Desert.
The name "Trappist," from this abbey of La Trappe,
was long given to those Cistercians who followed the reform
instituted by de Ranee. Today the Order is known as
the "Order of the Reformed Cistercians," but the popular
name of "Trappist" will continue long.
La Trappe, sanctified by de Ranee, suffered many
changes after his death. In the years between 1713 and
1790 there were three hundred professions there. In the
Revolution the Commissioners took from the monastery
everything they could carry away and dispersed the reli
gious who sought asylum in foreign lands, some even
coming to America. In 1815 the Cistercians repurchased
the place. It was nothing but ruins then, but they rebuilt
it and improved it till now it is a glorious abbey where
the spirit of de Ranee is still vigorous.

SILVIO PELLICO
ONE of the treasures of the library of the University
of Notre Dame is a copy of the tragedy of "Thomas
Morus" inscribed by the author, Silvio Pellico, to
that other great lover of liberty, Daniel O'Connell. Look
ing at the two illustrious names side by side one inevitably
thinks of the other greater bond between them, the Catholic
faith which both so prized.
To Pellico, indeed, religion was everything. In the
silence of his prison cell he had come to see the value of
that faith which in the pride of his youth he had cast aside.
Through tears of pain he had got again his vision of God.
The little cell was a new Mount of the Transfiguration.
A bulky book could be made out of the spiritual expe
riences of famous prisoners. Many there have been to
whom the enforced retreat has been a grace from God.. It
was the only place where God chose to visit them. "I was
in prison, and you came to me."
Benvenuto Cellini, egotistic and boastful though he is,
can stop long enough from his tirades and his self-lauda
tion to write a long poem about the blessings of his expe
rience in jail. Part of it runs thus :
Whoe'er would know the measure of God's strength
And how far man can borrow from that source,
He must in prison lie, I firmly hold,
Harrow'd by thinking of his kindred dear,
Wearied and sick with his own body's pain;
And far must be his exile from his home.
Now if you fain would prove yourself of worth,
76

SILVIO PELLICO 77
Be dragged to prison guiltless ; and then lie
Month after month, while no man lends you aid.
And let them rob you of your little all,
While you face death and outrage every day,
Hopeless of any bettering of your fate.
In prison Paul Verlaine, "pauvre Verlaine," found
his Heaven, only, perhaps, to lose it again. And Silvio
Pellico found in his ten years of imprisonment not only
the' material for one of the classic books of the world, but
more than all that, a sense of sin, a renewed faith in God,
and a spirituality that was to deepen till the day of his
death. "Silvio Pellico," says one of his biographers, "owes
a great celebrity to a great misfortune. Spielberg has been
for him a pedestal which has raised him up and placed
him in the light; his contemporaries spoke of him with
emotion, many with enthusiasm; his name is European."
This was said because of his literary talents. But to
us his fame is greater, not for what he wrote — the day
came when literary renown meant nothing to him — but
for the whole-heartedness with which he served God once
he had set his feet on the penitential road of the Cross.
Silvio Pellico was born at Saluzzo in Piedmont, June 24,
1738. His parents were good simple people of the middle
class, and at that time were in very good circumstances.
There were six children, Luigi, Gioseffina, Silvio and his
twin-sister, Rosina, Francesco and Marietta. Onorato,
the father, was then employed in the post-office. According
to all accounts he was a most excellent man, and his wife
was one worthy of him. Her name was Tournier, and she
came from Chambery in Savoy. She was a woman of
distinguished character, with all the Savoyard virtues, first
and last the devoted wife, the devoted mother whose jewels
were her children, ever filled with tenderness and solicitude
for them.
Silvio Pellico was always proud of his humble birth,

78 GREAT PENITENTS
proud of those parents who never lost their wonder to him.
"No child," he writes in "My Prisons," "was ever more
loaded with benefits by his father and mother than myself."
A good description of that Christian home is given by one
of his biographers : "Perfect purity of manners, hospitality
never refused but always proffered, an uninterrupted exer
cise of Christian charity which recognized as a neighbor
not only the Christian and the royalist, but everyone, and
especially everyone who was unhappy, made the home in
which Silvio was born and lived, a temple sacred to every
social virtue."
The queen who reigned over that home was especially
dear to Silvio. Religious, as was also her husband, she
had moreover a simplicity, a courtesy, a modesty that help
much to explain the later character of her famous son as
suffering formed him. "When he speaks of his mother,"
says his friend Maroncelli, "his soul is an incarnate, liv
ing hymn of adoration to God as manifested in His crea
tures." This tender love of Pellico for his mother was
developed in a great measure by his years of absolute inde
pendence upon her. He was a weakling at birth, so much
so that it was not considered possible that he would live
long. His early years were one continued suffering where
one sickness followed another. The doctors shook their
heads dubiously; he would never live to be seven. When
he did reach his seventh year they prophesied that he
would die before fourteen, and again when he passed that
crisis that he was doomed to die at twenty-one. Evidently
seven was not considered his lucky series.
But the lad continued to live in spite of the doctors,
even though life was to him a miserable thing, filled with
melancholy thoughts and an overabundance of self-concen
tration. "Long sufferings," he writes, "long sadnesses op
pressed my early years. The children of my age ran and
leaped around me, happy and proud of their beauty, but
I was plunged in a mournful languor and afflicted with

SILVIO PELLICO 79
spasms the cause of which was a mystery. My short joys
vanished before the pity which my frail and miserable
nature inspired. I ran away to hide my tears in solitude."
It was in those early years, indeed, that the first germs
of doubt were lodged in his soul. One evening when he
was very sick one of his young companions said to him:
"Silvio, there is no God ! God would be good and He
would not let you suffer so." The day came when his
whole soul was to be poisoned with these sins against faith.
But, it was no wonder that in the childhood days he re
garded death with indifference. It was a feeling he never
lost. In later years he would say, "The most delightful
day of my life will be that on which I die." Many a
heavier cross he had to bear, however, before he found
the peacefulness of death.
When it came time for the boy to be put at his books,
he and his elder brother studied together in their own
home under the tutelage of a priest, Don Manavella, who
prepared them for examination for admission to the public
schools. Even in those early days the future dramatist
displayed a passion for the theatre. His father would
compose little plays and verses, and Silvio and his brother
Luigi would get up on the family bureau and declaim
them. The child is father to the man. Silvio attained
great fame as a dramatist, and Luigi enjoyed a certain
popularity as a writer of good comedies. In those days
when the whole family loved play-acting it is not hard to
credit the story that Silvio, chancing to read an Italian
translation of the poems of Ossian, delivered himself of a
Scottish tragedy at the age of ten !
It was about this time that the Pellico family came to
live at Turin. The father had tried his luck at the manu
facturing of silk at Pinerolo, but the venture had not pros
pered, and he got another position with the government.
Life for Silvio was not changed much by the change of
dwelling. He and Luigi continued their studies under Don

SO GREAT PENITENTS
Manavella, and continued also their play-acting. More
over, these early days at Turin had more than a literary
influence. Turin was then a republic. Onorato Pellico
was at heart a monarchist, deeply attached to the royalist
ideals then so violently attacked1 by the spirit of revolu
tion in France and Italy. He had suffered, indeed, for
holding those ideals, since being known as of the king's
party he had been obliged some time before to be a fugi
tive in the Alps accompanied by his wife, soon to become a
mother, and by his little children. Thus early in life
Silvio had learned the lesson of misfortune. In Turin he
and his brother Luigi accompanied their father to the
popular assemblies. There they received strong impres
sions about popular government and got that strong love
of liberty which later was to be the cause of Silvio's im
prisonment. At Turin, too, he had his first and only love
affair. One of his companions in acting was a girl, Car-
lotinna, who died at the age of fourteen. It is too much,
perhaps, to seek to find any influence from this childhood
love affair in the life of the grown man, yet it is said that
Silvio never forgot the love of his boyhood days.
The day came all too soon when the boy, now grown to
young manhood, put aside the simple Catholic life in
which he had been trained and entered upon the course
which finally led to the ruin of his soul. The change came
about through the marriage of his twin-sister Rosina, who
is said to have been as beautiful as an angel. A cousin of
his mother's living at Lyons had obtained her hand in mar
riage. Silvio and his mother accompanied the young
bride to France, and when the mother returned home
Silvio decided to remain at Lyons. It was an evil decision
for the youth, who was thus deprived of all the safeguards
of home at the most impressionable time of life. Lyons
worked the ruin of his innocence and his faith — he was to
regret his life there with bitter tears. Filled with pride,
and with no other god but his desires, his soul was an easy

SILVIO PELLICO 81
prey for the powers of irreligion. He was unfortunate
enough to meet an apostate priest who was inclined to
scepticism and went about preaching it. The impression
able Silvio was attracted to him, and through the associa
tion lost his respect for the religion in which he had been
so carefully educated. He was never, however, a blatant
unbeliever. There is question if he ever did really lose
his faith, for as one of his biographers tells us, "sometimes
the churches had for him a mysterious attraction. He
fled from the impious gatherings, and solitary and discour
aged went to the churches and there prayed and meditated.
He wept over his darkness, his doubts, his passions and
the God he had lost."
Silvio Pellico was to find that God again only on the
way to Calvary. Just now he had no need of God. He was
young, happy, surrounded by the many friends whom the
gentleness of his manners won to him. He loved the world,
especially this new French world which offered youth so
many attractions. He loved France, French customs,
French literature. He divided his time between the study
of this literature and the pursuit of pleasure. Later on
he deplored the irreligious doctrines he heard preached,
the bad books he read, the hardening of his heart, the pride
of his thoughts. Yet he also consoled himself with the
thought that in Lyons he had seen the rebirth of Cathol
icism, which somehow was always a light shining for him
in the midst of the darkness of his intellect. It would
have been quite impossible for Pellico to get to the low
level of the unbelieving Encyclopedist.
So the youth spent four years in Lyons, thoroughly con
tent with himself, enjoying life to the full. And then
one day in 1806 he chanced to read Foscolo's poem,
"I Sepolcri." It was a voice from home. It made him
Italian again, homesick, and under its spell he became sad,
a dreamer. The French life he had thought so wonder
ful palled on him, and at once he determined to go back

82 GREAT PENITENTS
home. The Pellico family was then living at Milan, where
the father was employed in the war department and where
Luigi was secretary to the Grand Equerry of the Kingdom
of Italy.
The home influence soon resumed its power over Silvio.
Shortly after his return he was made professor of French
in the college of military orphans, an easy position which
required only an hour or two daily. The rest of his time
he devoted without restraint to the cultivation of his poetic
talent. His position in the college he soon lost, being
removed by the Austrian government, but the removal did
not distress him much since it gave him more leisure for his
beloved literary work. This desire for literary fame was
furthered by his friendship with the writer Foscolo, who
was then one of the literary leaders of Italy, the others
being Monti and Manzoni. Luigi Pellico had been a friend
of Foscolo and thus Silvio was introduced to the great
writer. The friendship between the two was a lasting one.
Foscolo, who alienated his friends by his roughness, was
always full of tenderness for Silvio, and on the other hand
Silvio had for him a tender veneration. The two writers
planned to form a literary partnership, Foscolo to do
tragedies and Silvio rhymed stories.
The literary association, however, was not lasting, owing
to what would seem to us now a bit of professional jealousy
on the part of Foscolo. Silvio had written a tragedy on
the subject of Laodicea. Shortly after that he was so im
pressed with the acting of a young girl of twelve — after
wards the celebrated Carlotta Marchionni — that he com
posed for her his famous "Francesca Da Rimini." He
submitted the tragedy to Foscolo, who after reading it told"
him to throw it into the fire and let Dante's dead rest in
peace. Silvio then submitted to him his tragedy "Lao
dicea." Foscolo pronounced it beautiful, even lauded it
to the skies. It may have been an error of taste, but we
rather think it was the master's jealousy of his disciple.

SILVIO PELLICO 83
Anyway Pellico threw into the fire the "Laodicea" and not
the "Francesca." It was the wisdom of the poet who
knew the value of his own work, for it was "Francesca
Da Rimini" that made Silvio's reputation when two or
three years later, in 1819, it was played at Milan by Car-
lotta, then an unrivaled actress. Silvio, however, enter
tained no enmity toward Foscolo on account of the biased
criticism. Rather does he always speak of him with ten
derness, even while he sadly remarks that Foscolo "does
not understand the consolations of the faith and has opened
his strong intelligence to miserable doubts."
A more worthy friend of Pellico's was the famous
physicist, Volta. He was quite the opposite of Foscolo,
being a fervent Catholic, and took every occasion to preach
to his young friend Christian humility and the benefits
of grace. Silvio in those years had his days of anger
and revolt, and was very much inclined to satire. Volta
fought against this disposition. "Poetry of anger bene
fits no one," said he. "If it happens that you feel angry and
inclined to pour out your bile in verse, have the fear of
becoming wicked. I would wish on the contrary that you
would seek then to soften your heart by working on some
noble example of charity and indulgence." Pellico fol
lowed the advice. He wrote a rhymed story, "Aroldo E
Clara" in which a sister pardons her brother's murderer
and persuades her father to do the same in the name of
Jesus Christ. Silvio later on was to give in his own life
a lasting lesson of forgiveness of injuries. Volta died in
1826 when Silvio was yet in prison. Who knows how
much the remembered advice of the great scientist con
tributed to the softening of the heart of the man who must
have felt that the hand of the world was against him.
Silvio had need of the lesson in those days, for he was
soon to be tried by fire. Italy then was ground down under
the heel of the oppressor. To the Napoleonic era had suc
ceeded the Austrian domination, and Vienna treated Lorn-

S4 GREAT PENITENTS
bardy as a conquered country. Though the Pellico family
had returned to Turin, Silvio remained at Milan, where he
had charge of the education, first of the children of Count
Briche and afterwards of the children of Count Porro
Lambertenghi. Count Porro loved Silvio as a son and did
all he could to advance him in the world. The association
meant much to the young poet, for the Count's home was
the meeting place not only of all the eminent men of Lom
bardy but even of all the illustrious strangers, from every
nation, who came to visit Milan. Here Silvio met Madame
de Stael, Schlegel, and especially Byron, then at the height
of his fame, to whom Pellico refers as, "this surprising
genius, who unhappily accustomed himself to deify now
vice, now virtue, now error, now truth, but who was tor
mented, however, with a burning thirst for truth and vir
tue." The friendship of the two poets was very close.
Pellico translated "Manfred" into Italian and Byron trans
lated "Francesca Da Rimini" into English.
They were happy days but Silvio's association in the
house of Count Porro finally led to his imprisonment. It
came about in this way:
The Count was a thorough Italian patriot, one of the
leading opponents of the Austrian domination. It was
thus that the journal "II Conciliatore" was established.
The idea very likely originated with Pellico. The reunion
of so many of the intellectually elect inspired him with
the idea of a paper which would serve as a forum for these
men. The project appealed to Porro inasmuch as the
journal which was to defend the romantic school as against
the classicist would serve as a means to combat all foreign
domination. So the association was formed. It met three times a
week. Silvio was elected secretary. The paper was
avowedly a purely literary one. No politics were allowed
in it, for the eyes of Austria were very vigilant, so vigilant
that even in the literary articles many passages were sup-

SILVIO PELLICO 85
pressed which were regarded as showing a tendency to
think too much about liberty. Scarcely a number of the
"Conciliatore" that was not mutilated by the censor. It
was a busy time for Silvio, yet in addition to his work on
the paper he had the intention of publishing by subscrip
tion a great history of Italy, and a society was formed with
this object in view. But nothing came of it. His pen
was busy otherwise, too. He wrote his second tragedy,
"Eufemio Di Messina" on the subject of "Judith." It
was considered by the censors, however, as having an inner
political meaning, and they allowed it to be published only
on condition that it never would be played. The tragedy
never reached the stage.
"II Conciliatore" did good work inasmuch as it brought
about a renaissance in Italian art and letters; but it was
necessarily doomed to failure. Owing to the many mutila
tions from the censor, it was soon little more than titles
and signatures, and after existing a year it was given up.
But Pellico's association with it was fraught with evil con
sequences. It made him suspect to the Austrian govern
ment and thus finally led to his downfall. The Revolution
in Naples and in Piedmont had produced a great fermenta
tion in the Lombard and Venetian states. As a result the
Italian army was disbanded, all political debate was sup
pressed, the press was silenced, and national industry para
lyzed. Out of the tyranny arose the secret societies, espe
cially the Carbonari, all of which aimed at the constitu
tional independence of upper Italy. This was the unset
tled state of affairs when the revolution of Piedmont and
the Two Sicilies occurred. Austria was alarmed, and
fulminated a decree against the Carbonari. By the decree
of August 25, 1829, Article 53 declared for the death
penalty for all who joined the society, and Articles 54
and 55 declared for severe and most severe imprisonment
for those who neglected to stop its progress or to denounce
its members. Hence the editors of the "Conciliatore" were

86 GREAT PENITENTS
treated as Carbonari. Count Porro and others escaped the
death penalty by fleeing the country.
Silvio had gone to Turin to attend his dying friend,
Breme. On his return to Milan he was told that the
officers of the law were looking for him. "They know
where I live," said he; "I shall go and wait for them."
He found them waiting for him. They took all his papers,
poems, etc., and conducted him to the prison of Santa
Margherita. It was October 13, 1820.
Silvio Pellico did not belong to the Carbonari. He was
not even in the secrets of the conspirators. He had written
a letter making inquiries about the organization, giving
his correspondent to understand that if his conscience per
mitted he would join. The letter had been intercepted.
AH the others had fled, and Silvio, unsuspecting in his
innocence, remained. But he must be found guilty at any
cost. He must be the scapegoat ; and so he was condemned
without even a trial.
The prison of Santa Margherita, in the center of Milan,
had once been a nunnery. When the nunnery was sup
pressed the building was used for the general office of the
police. It had a long range of cells connected with it,
some for criminals, some for unlicensed prostitutes, some
for political prisoners. The cells were damp, so much
so that the prisoners soon lost their hair ; they were dark,
gloomy, fetid, comfortless, with all kinds of loathsome in
sects. They were fittingly called "Dante's Dens." It was
there that Silvio for several days underwent an examina
tion. He tells the story of it in the book he wrote after
wards, the book which keeps his name in everlasting remem
brance, "My Prisons," onei of the classics of the world,
"this book, of a simplicity so sweet and a tenderness so
religious," the simple baring of a man's heart, the story
of Christian resignation under ten years of suffering.
"A century ago," he writes, "this was a monastery ; the
holy and penitential virgins who dwelt here never imagined

SILVIO PELLICO 87
that at this day their cells would resound no more with
the sighs of women and with pious hymns, but with blas
phemies and indecent songs, and would contain men of
all kinds, the greater part destined to hard labor or to the
gallows." He thought of home, and wept like a child, grieving as
he regretted that he had not been more tender with his
parents on his last visit to them. When he awoke in his
prison cell he thought of them again. "Who will give
them strength to bear the blow," he asked himself; and
a voice within seemed to say, "He Whom all the afflicted
invoke and love and feel within them! He Who gave
strength to a mother to follow her Son to Golgotha, and
to stand under His cross ! The Friend of the unhappy, the
Friend of mortals."
For years Silvio had been forgetful of God. He had
put Him out of his life in the Lyons days when pride ruled
his will. Now God was knocking at the door of his heart.
"This was the first moment," he writes, "that religion
triumphed in my heart ; and I owed this blessing to filial
love." He continues his confession: "Hitherto, without
being hostile to religion, I had felt its influence but little
and imperfectly. The common objections which are
brought against it had not appeared to me of much weight,
and yet a thousand sophistical doubts had weakened my
faith. These doubts had not for a long time related to
the existence of God ; and I had continually repeated to
myself, 'If God exists, it necessarily follows from His
justice that there is another life for man who suffers in a
world so unjust, hence follows the great reasonableness
of aspiring to the blessings of that second life; hence
follows a worship consisting of love to God and our neigh
bor, a perpetual striving to ennoble ourselves by generous
sacrifices.' I had for a long time gone on repeating all
this, and I had added, 'And what is Christianity but this
perpetual aspiration after perfection ?' And Christianity

88 GREAT PENITENTS
in its essential character being so pure, so philosophical,
so unimpeachable, I marveled that an age should have
arrived when philosophy should dare to say, 'Henceforth
I will fill its place.'
" 'And in what manner wouldst thou fill its place ?
By teaching vice ?'
" 'No, surely.'
" 'By teaching virtue ? That will be the love of God
and our neighbor. It will be precisely what Christianity
teaches.' "Although I had thus felt for several years," he con
tinues, "I had avoided the conclusion, 'Be then consistent!
Be a Christian ! Be no longer offended by abuses, no
longer dwell perversely on some difficult doctrine of the
Church, since the principal point is this, and it is most
plain: Love God and your neighbor.'
"In prison I determined at last to embrace this conclu
sion, and I did embrace it. I hesitated somewhat from
the fear that if anyone should happen to learn that I was
more religious than formerly he might think he had a
right to consider me a fanatic, made abject by misfortune.
But knowing that I was neither fanatical nor abject, I felt
complacency in disregarding the possible blame I did not
deserve ; and I resolved from that time forward to be and
to avow myself a Christian."
It was some time before this became his settled resolu
tion ; but once taken, he felt peace come into his heart. It
was a time of trial; he was abandoned, deprived even of
the materials with which to write. He tells us that in
order to write a letter to his friend and fellow prisoner,
Maroncelli, he pricked his finger and used the blood as ink.
The old man who carried the letter was beaten mercilessly.
Soon after he was permitted to have a Bible and a Dante,
and to use the jailer's library. He began to love the Bible
more and more. Meditation on the word of God gave him
to understand what prayer was and he learned to put him
self in the presence of God.

SILVIO PELLICO 89
"This purpose of always considering myself in the pres
ence of God," he writes, "instead of being a fatiguing
effort of mind and exciting my fears, was delightful to me.
By remembering that God is always near us, that He is
in us, or rather that we are in Him, solitude became daily
less terrible to me. 'Have I not the most excellent so
ciety?' I used to say. And I became cheerful; I sang
and whistled with pleasure and tender emotion."
There came into his soul a strong faith that God would
sustain him. Written on the wall of his' cell by a previous
occupant were these words: "I bless the prison, since it
has made me know the ingratitude of men, my own misery,
and the goodness of God."
The soul of Silvio Pellico was a tender one. There is
nothing in all literature more touching than his description
of his friendship with the little deaf and dumb boy, the
child of a criminal. Of like beauty is his tribute to the
poor Magdalen whose voice he heard but whose face he
never saw. In the room next to his were women prison
ers. One of them, Maddalena, never gave utterance as
the others to vulgar thoughts. When her companions re
lated their troubles she pitied them and said : "Take cour
age, my dear; the Lord never forsakes anyone." "Inno
cence," writes Silvio, "is to be honored ; but how much is
repentance to be honored also ! Did the best of men, the
God-Man, disdain to cast His compassionate looks upon
sinful women, to regard their confusion, and to associate
them with the souls whom He most honored ? Why, then,
should we so much despise a woman who has fallen into
ignominy?" The voice of this penitent woman often
cheered him. Often when he was tempted to hate the
world her voice brought him back to compassion and in
dulgence. And he concludes beautifully: "Mayst thou,
O unknown sinner, not have been condemned to a heavy
punishment ! Or, to whatever punishment thou hast been
condemned, mayst thou profit by it to recover thy worth,
and to live and die dear to the Lord. Mayst thou be com-

90 GREAT PENITENTS
passionated and respected by all who know thee, as thou
hast been by me who know thee not ! Mayst thou inspire
in everyone who sees thee patience, gentleness, the desire
of virtue and trust in God, as thou hast in him who loves
thee without having seen thee ! My fancy may err, when
it paints thee beautiful in person, but I cannot doubt the
beauty of thy soul. Thy companions spoke with coarse
ness, thou with modesty and courtesy; they blasphemed,
and thou didst bless God ; they quarreled, and thou wert
the composer of their strife. If anyone has taken thee by
the hand, to withdraw thee from the career of dishonor;
if he has conferred benefits on thee with delicacy; if he
has dried thy tears, may all blessings be showered upon
him, upon his children, and upon his children's children."
All the while Silvio was learning to pray again, to re
new again his faith in God, by walking the way of the
cross. On February 20, 1821, he was brought to Venice and
confined in the state prison, The Leads, so called
because the upper part of this former palace of the Doge
was entirely covered with lead. He was subjected to a
harrowing examination for hours, and then restored to
his cell, so enraged by the injustice of it all that he would
have committed suicide if the voice of religion and the
recollection of his beloved ones at home had not restrained
him. Again his faith weakened. He ceased to pray, be
gan to question the justice of God, and for six or seven
days cursed the world and all mankind. "My Bible,"
said he, "was covered with dust. One of the jailer's boys
said while caressing me: 'Since you have ceased to read
that ugly book, you are much less melancholy, I think.' "
He took up the Bible, wiped away the dust, and opened
the book at random. He read the words (St. Luke XVII,
1, 2) : "And he said to his disciples: It is impossible that
scandals should not come: but woe to him through whom
they come. It were better for him that a millstone were

SILVIO PELLICO 91
hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that
he should scandalize one of these little ones."
When the boy left the cell the man exclaimed: "And
had I abandoned Thee, my God ? And had I become per
verted? And could I believe that the infamous sneer of
cynicism was suited to" mly desperate situation?" He
knelt to read the Bible. He burst into tears, and repented
the evil he had done. He vowed he would never again lose
his God. How little now seemed his affliction. Even
the scaffold was small in comparison with God. Again
and again he was assailed by temptations to unbelief, but
by the grace of God he conquered them all. His suffer
ings in the prison cell were intense, the heat was terrific,
the onslaughts of the innumerable insects maddening, but
he resigned himself to all the afflictions. "And examin
ing myself with just rigor," he writes, "I found in the
years I had lived only a few specious traits of character;
all the rest was made up of foolish, idolatrous passions,
proud and false virtues. ... 'It is well,' I con
cluded; suffer, unworthy man, suffer. If through pas
sions and without any right men and gnats should torment
thee to death, acknowledge them as the instruments of di
vine justice, and be silent ! Does it need an effort for man
to be sincerely humble? to be sensible that he is a sin
ner? without self-abasement, without the scruples of a
fanatic, contemplating myself with all possible tranquility
of mind, I perceived that I deserved the chastisements of
God." The struggle to conquer himself was not over yet, how
ever. He busied himself with writing several tragedies
and other poems. On May 29, 1821, he finished two
tragedies, also four rhymed stories. Later, when he was
leaving Italy, being removed to the prison of Spielberg,
he asked permission to pass to his family the two tragedies
as his literary testament. Permission was granted but
nothing was done. The government was afraid the plays

92 GREAT PENITENTS
would be published and thus bring honor to a man who
was a criminal. They decided that even his name must
perish. And all the while they were preparing, unwit
tingly, to make his name immortal.
During those days Silvio meditated much, writing the
meditations on his table and then scraping off the writing.
He made verses, and prayed. Yet would the old tortures
return to his mind. The temptation came to him to con
sider himself abandoned by God, and he yielded to the
temptation. He denied the excellence of religion, even
denied God. To this there succeeded a serious illness.
His heart softened under it. He recovered, and his soul
was filled with gratitude to God. He was now getting
ready to die. "If the end of my life has arrived," he
wrote, "am I not fortunate that it is in such a manner as
to give me time to recollect myself, and to purify my con
science by holy desires and acts of penitence worthy of a
man?" From that time on he meditated on death and
the sacraments.
From The Leads Silvio was removed to the prison of
San Michele. There he was tried again, and condemned
to the death penalty. At once the punishment was com
muted to fifteen years severe imprisonment in the fortress
of Spielberg. To the reading of the sentence the prisoner
simply answered, "The will of God be done," but back in
his cell again the awfulness of his fate struck terror into
his soul and again he put God out of his life. Spielberg,
in Moravia, was the hardest prison of the Austrian gov
ernment. It was a terrible place to Silvio, never of robust
health, now weak and suffering, his lungs affected by what
he had endured in the Italian prisons. He burned with
fever, his stomach revolted against the coarse fare; his
feet were chained together, his bed but hard planks. Yet
in the midst of the afflictions he composed a tragedy. He
had no paper, no ink, but memorized the lines as he com
posed them.
Count Antonio Oroboni, a young man twenty-nine years

SILVIO PELLICO 93
of age, one of Silvio's fellow prisoners, exercised a good
influence upon him. The two prisoners became confidants.
"Let us take advantage of the short time that has been
granted us anew," said Oroboni one day, "to console each
other by religion. Let us speak of God; let us excite
each other to love Him; let us remember that He is jus
tice, wisdom, goodness, beauty; that He is everything ex
cellent which has been the object of our love. I tell you
that my death is not far distant. I shall be eternally grate
ful to you if you will contribute to make me as religious in
these my last days as I ought to have been through life."
So the two prisoners talked of religion, and prayed to
gether. Silvio was taken very ill. He sent for the chap
lain and made his confession, and prepared himself for
death. But he did not die. Oroboni, however, died June
13, 1823. His was a holy death, a blessing which might
not have been his had he been permitted to pursue his life
in the world. He deserves to be reckoned among the great
penitents. Silvio had loved him devotedly and prayed
earnestly for his soul. In his dreams he seemed to see the
man redeemed to glory through the door of his prison cell.
An Augustinian priest, Father Battista, was appointed
confessor to the prison. Silvio lovingly calls him, "an
angel of charity." The priest brought books to the pris
oners, visited them every month and heard their confes
sions. "Oh," says Silvio, "how unhappy is he who knows
not the elevating influences of confession ! how unhappy is
he who thinks himself bound to regard it with scorn, that
he may not appear one of the vulgar!" The ministry of
this good priest continued for a year, and then the authori
ties forbade him to come any more. During the years from
1824 to 1827 a severer discipline was instituted. The
prison was made a tomb, and the prisoners were deprived
even of books. In 1825, however, a new confessor was
allowed them in the person of Father Stephen Paulowich,
who obtained for them the privilege of hearing Mass.
To know the great reputation which Silvio Pellico en-

94 GREAT PENITENTS
joyed in the world it is sufficient to know that when in
1828 the news of his supposed death was given out there
was profound sorrow everywhere. The world had the
most sincere sympathy for the man it regarded as a martyr.
But he was not destined to die in prison. In the Septem
ber of 1830 he was liberated. He piously attributed his
release to the prayers of his baby sister, Marietta, who had
become a nun and had died soon after her profession. He
concludes "My Prisons" with these moving words: "And
now, for my past misfortunes, and for my present happi
ness, as well as for all the good and ill which may be re
served for me, blessed be that Providence, in whose hands
men and things, whether they will or will it not, are the
wonderful instruments for accomplishing purposes worthy
of their divine Author."
What must have been the emotions of the man on re
turning to the home to which he had been as one dead for
ten long years ! But he wasted no time in useless lamenta
tions ; there was nothing of the posing martyr about Silvio
Pellico. On his return to Turin he took up again the
thread of his literary work. His tragedy, "Ester D'En-
gaddi," was played with success in 1831, but the produc
tion was soon stopped by the censors. A new tragedy
met the same fate. He was still considered politically
dangerous. His tragedy on the great Catholic, Thomas
More, was to him a labor of love. He wrote eight trage
dies, but he was never a great success as a dramatist. Be
sides his dramas he wrote a dozen novels in verse, the
subjects of which were taken from the Middle Ages.
His unedited poems contain a paraphrase of the "Imita
tion," elegies on his youth, souvenirs of his past loves.
Nearly all his poems have a religious ending. The most
severe Italian critics consider his canzone on the sun, com
posed at Spielberg, perfect, "a jewel to be set in gold."
"Shine on the face of the father," it runs, "shine on the
face of the mother of this poor captive, and may thy joyous

SILVIO PELLICO 95
ray enchant their sorrow. But what matters where goes
lamenting this abandoned spoil, if God has given me a
soul which nothing here below can enchain?"
But Silvio Pellico came not back to the world to seek
literary fame. He wanted more than all else to serve
God with his pen. So he wrote his "My Prisons" as well
as "The Duties of Young Men" with the object of showing
by precept and example the necessity of sufferings and ex
piation for the moral perfection of man. So he writes in
his "Duties of Young Men," an excellent treatise which
might have been written by a master in the spiritual life :
"Let us not be daunted by the weight of the obligations
which are insupportable alone to the slothful, let us be of
good will, and we shall discern in each duty a mysterious
being inviting us to love it, we shall feel an admirable
power augmenting our force in proportion as we ascend in
the arduous way of virtue ; we shall find that man is vastly
more than that which he seems to be, provided that he will,
firmly will, to compass the noble end of his destiny, which
is to purify himself from all base tendencies, to cultivate
in the highest degree those of a superior order, to elevate
himself by these means to the immortal possession of
God." What a pity that the English translation of this
excellent book is now out of print. It deserves a better
fate. The other great prose work of Silvio Pellico is the book
which has made his name famous — "My Prisons." Some
time after his return to Turin he had selected as his spir
itual director an old priest of eighty years, Dom Giordano.
After listening to Silvio's account of his experiences in
prison he urged him to write them and give them to the
world. Silvio hesitated. Even then there was too much
political rancor in Italy and he did not wish to increase it
by the account of what he had endured for a supposed po
litical crime. However, he spoke to his mother about it.
She replied simply, "Let us pray over it." A few days

96 GREAT PENITENTS
after that she asked him if he had prayed. He replied
that he had, and that he felt the book of his experiences
would do good.
The book was soon written. Needless to say it met with
great success. It stirred up some criticism, too. Some
accused the writer of too much bitterness, others of too
much leniency because he was so forgiving. Some would
have had him make political capital of his sufferings. But
such a plan was furthest from his mind. Indeed — and
that is the tragedy of his punishment — Silvio Pellico was
never a politician. He suffered because of his friends
rather than for what he himself had done. Hence he was
very indifferent to politics after his release from jail. He
was reproached bitterly for the indifference, but the re
proaches could not disturb the serenity of his soul. He
had found the pearl of great price. The book was criti
cised on other scores. The Protestants charged the author
with having attacked the divine nature and truth. Many
Catholics also found fault with it because of the "addi
tions" made to the book by Maroncelli who was a very
different man from Silvio. But no one regretted the addi
tions and the "Life" by Maroncelli more than Silvio him
self. He protested that Maroncelli had put forth many
propositions of which he could not approve. It is a pity
that Maroncelli is still allowed to glorify himself by asso
ciating himself so intimately with the man who was so
immeasurably superior to him. For "My Prisons" is a
great book, simple, true. It is that which makes it im
mortal. Silvio Pellico, after all, was not a great writer,
but he was a human writer. In all his works the ruling
sentiments are family love, love of country, love of man,
love of children especially, and love of God. It is said that
"My Prisons" did more harm to Austria than any military
defeat. One effect of the book was to gain for Silvio the friend
ship of the Marchesa di Barolo, the reformer of the Turin

SILVIO PELLICO 97
prisons. In 1834 he accepted from her generosity a
yearly pension of three hundred dollars. It was a lasting
friendship. On the death of his parents in 1838 he went
to live at the Casa Barolo, and there he remained till his
death, assisting the Marchesa in her charities and writing
on religious subjects. The library of the Casa Barolo
was to him a happy retreat. He had come from the prison
broken in health. It was a wonder that one always so
weak had borne the burdens of prison life so well. Those
who looked at him, small of stature, continually ill, mar
veled that such a one was regarded as a conspirator; they
wondered that the very sight of him had not disarmed sus
picion. But Silvio Pellico did no whining about what he had
endured. He had no bitterness against the prison, simply
because it was there he had found his God. All else was
insignificant beside that fact. He renounced the world,
letters, fame. He gave up writing for the theatre, gave
up writing romances. All was spiritual now. The illu
sions of his youth about fame were gone. He had no de
sire but to come to peace in serving God. His first occu
pation was prayer, then the reading of books of piety,
especially the most ascetic. He loved to converse about
such books; he became more and more mystic. He was
religious first, and literary only secondly. "I often have
need," said he, "to make verses in order to pray; thus
now is produced an ode, now an elegy, where I spread my
soul before God, and it is enough for me to restore seren
ity." "Pray God for me," he asked of everybody he met.
He had but to think of death. "There is for him," wrote
the Marchesa, "only the thought of God and eternity."
Silvio's life toward the end was serene. He taught
French and Italian in a convent school, composed little
plays and canticles for the students. He went to the
church a great deal, never into the social world. All of
his family died before him with the exception of a brother

98 GREAT PENITENTS
who had become a Jesuit, and a sister, both noted for their
piety. The world held little for him now. February 14,
1839, he wrote to his friend Arrivabene: "I write little;
my health is always very bad, and I would say to you that
I am tired of life were it not that I know that one should
never say he is tired of carrying a gift we hold from God,
and that one should rather arm himself unceasingly with
sweet patience and courage and bless life as death. Let
us suffer then with the smile and the strength of soul He
demands : the years flee with such rapidity that to find
their sufferings long would be truly foolish."
Again in 1844 Silvio wrote to the same friend : "Let us
bless God in our consolations and in our sufferings, and
let us go forward with love." It pained him to be useless,
he wrote, but he found consolation in the thought that the
number of useless beings is infinite. He admitted that he
was always suffering, but, he concluded, "Patience and
courage to the end! Let us adore the will of God and
trust in His goodness."
So passed these years of prayer, of atonement for sin,
of deep repentance in sweetness and gentleness. On Janu
ary 31, 1854, Silvio felt that he was going to die. He sent
for his confessor and received him with a smile. "Father,"
said he, "I feel that I am going. In two or three hours I
shall be in Paradise. If I have sinned, I have expiated.
When I wrote 'My Prisons' I sometimes had the vanity to
believe myself a great man, which was untrue, and I have
repented of that all my life." Then with a loud voice,
with a face peaceful and even gay, he read the prayers of
the agonizing. When the priest had finished reading he
looked at Silvio. He was dead. All his prison days were
over.

PAUL FEVAL
SOME time ago I chanced to pick up in a second
hand bookstore an historical romance — Les Deux
Femmes du Roi — by Paul Feval. It was only
necessary to read a few pages to discover that the romancer
was far from being a clerical. "The Popes," he wrote,
"fomented revolt. The Popes are the fathers of the Revo
lution. ... In crying out to the people — to obey is
a crime — the Popes, imprudent, dug the abyss at the edge
of which totters their own throne. They committed the
greatest of all the social crimes." This romance bore the
date of 1865. But what a familiarly modern ring it has !
How like to the violent talk of the anti-clericals of our own
times, whom the great war happily has silenced, for a while
at least.
But the day came when Paul Feval blotted out these
words and many like them with his penitent tears. In all
his long literary career he never wrote such a thrilling ro
mance as his own life was in reality, a poor boy who at
tained great wealth and fame, wandered far from God,
lost all faith, and at last by the loss of all his worldly
wealth got the grace to see the true value of things and
returned a humble penitent to the foot of the Cross. Paul
Feval in his day was a "best-seller." Much of his glory
is departed, as realism has taken the place of romance.
Most of the books which he turned out with such incredible
speed are now forgotten. But the true glory of the man
remains in the ardor with which he defended the recovered
faith of his childhood and in the untiring zeal with which
he labored to correct his books and undo the harm his pen
99

100 GREAT PENITENTS
had done in the many years of his religious indifference.
Feval is a shining example of true repentance.
Paul Henri Corentin Feval was born September 29,
1817, at Rennes in Brittany. He was always a thorough
Breton, and a great deal of his best work deals with the
history, the legends of his native province. "They
sometimes ask me, my dear good mother," he
writes in his wonderfully beautiful dedication of Le
Comte Barbebleu, "why I am always speaking of Brittany,
and why the name of Rennes so often escapes my pen. It
is because you are at Rennes, and with you all that I love.
I speak of Brittany and Rennes, because I am thinking
always of thee, because my heart is with thee, and because
in talking of Rennes and Brittany I seem talking of thee
or to thee. I send thee this book, and if it gives you some
pleasant hours, it will be my great success." The Fevals
were an old family of lawyers. Paul's father was a
lawyer, a learned man, a counsellor at the royal court.
He was, however, very humble and very pious. When
Paul, after his conversion, wrote his most beautiful
book — "Les Etapes d'une Conversion" — he painted the
portrait of his father who had died in 1827 when Paul
was a lad of ten. It is the picture of a wonderfully holy
man, and it was a sad day for the boy when he was de
prived of the guiding hand of the saintly parent. He
made his First Communion ; it was his last for many years,
until the time of his conversion back to God.
Paul Feval was not a very promising youngster. He
was weak and sickly, something of the coddled and spoiled
child, with an inclination to make fun of others. That
habit made him very unpopular with his teachers and his
fellows in school, and many a good beating he got for his
mean disposition. In those early days at school all he
cared for was play, giving very little evidence of a taste
for books, and absolutely no indication of the talent which
later was to bring him fame and fortune. He was stub-

PAUL FEVAL 101
born. An example of that was given when he was thirteen
years of age, at the time of the Revolution of July. His
teachers and fellow students wore the tricolor, but Paul,
no doubt from sheer perversity, wore the white cockade.
He was whipped again and again for his obstinacy, but
he still stuck to the white. His school days thus were not
a great success and finally his mother took him out of class
and brought him to live with her in an old manor belonging
to a member of the family. The neighborhood was the
rendezvous of conspirators, and the mysteries, the dangers
that surrounded them went a great way towards the de
velopment of the spirit that was to make of the lad one
of the great romancers of his age. He was filled with
warlike desires, of which the struggle to hold fast to the
white cockade was perhaps a manifestation. Anyway,
these youthful experiences, while they did not make a sol
dier of him, laid the foundation of his literary success, for
when he came to write he found his materials ready in the
old traditions, the old legends to which he had listened
at the big fireplace and later pondered over as he lay in
bed. his hair standing on end.
Feval entered the college of Rennes in 1831 and re
mained there two years. He did not accomplish much as
a student. He was the same weak, sickly boy, with a
mean disposition, always teasing his companions and get
ting many a good beating that did not, however, reform
him. And all the while there was the growing indifference
in religion. The good mother thought it time to choose
a career for him. She insisted on making a lawyer of him
since that was the family tradition. Paul was not keen
about it, in fact he did not know what he wanted ; he had
no ambition. It was a problem for the mother how to
manage the finances. She was poor through the death of
her husband, but a relative of the Fevals sent her three
thousand francs to pay for the legal education of the boy,
and at once he was sent to the University of Rennes to

102 GREAT PENITENTS
prepare for admission to the bar. It was the same story,
lack of interest in his studies, but at any rate he succeeded
in obtaining his degree and was admitted to the bar at
the age of nineteen.
He was not cut out for a lawyer; he had no oratorical
talent. His first case was to defend a peasant who had
been accused of stealing a dozen chickens. It was the
young lawyer's great opportunity and he was determined to
make a lasting impression on the judges. He prepared
very carefully according to his college exemplars of the
great orations of Demosthenes. When he arose to speak
he launched out into a solemn oration in defence of the
chicken-stealer, and with such pomposity that even the
judges burst into laughter. To make matters worse, the
presiding judge asked the culprit what he had to say in his
own defence and the poor thief gave a dissertation on the
art of stealing chickens while preventing them from mak
ing any outcry. Needless to say he was condemned, and
Feval lost his first case. The young lawyer was disgusted,
ashamed of the manner in which he had humiliated him
self, and he left the court determined never to enter it
again. He wanted no part of the law. He left home at
once and went to Paris with the intention of making his
living by writing, though up to that time he had discovered
no special talent in that line.
Meanwhile, to keep himself from starving while he was
getting ready for his literary career, he got a position in a
bank as a clerk. He did not last there very long. He neg
lected his work and devoted most of his time to the reading
of novels. The climax came one day when his employer
came upon him while he was deeply interested in a novel.
It was one of Balzac's, one in which bankers were satirized.
Feval was ignobly dismissed, and had to face the world
again with only a few louis in his pocket.
He would have to be an author now, he decided, and he

PAUL FEVAL 103
bought a ream of paper and a bottle of ink and began —
nothing less than a tragedy. The only thing he accom
plished was to lessen the number of louis. One of his
good friends came along then and borrowed all that re
mained of his fortune. Paul waited for a while and then
demanded that the loan be paid. Arguments followed ; the
two friends fought it out and Paul wounded his adversary
without, however, getting his money back. He was in a
bad way, without a cent in his pocket and pretty close to
starvation. Some of his former fellow students at the uni
versity came to his aid and gave him a lodging with them.
It was a charming life he led for nine or ten months, sup
ported by others while he continued the tragedy which
he hoped would give him entree to the literary world of
Paris. When it came time for his friends to go home for vaca
tion the five acts were finished and in addition to the
tragedy he found himself possessed of reams of poetry and
other literary baggage. It was one thing to write, it was
another thing to buy bread with verses. He could not
sell his wares. No one would even read the tragedy from
an unknown author. In desperation he decided that he
most do something for a living. What seemed a fine oppor
tunity came with the offer from an absolute stranger to
start a journal provided, of course, that Paul would fur
nish the funds. The gullible youth succeeded in borrow
ing four hundred francs from his sister as his contribution
to the capital. The eager partner took it all and Paul
once more was penniless and jobless. Shortly after this
business failure we find him working with an advertising
concern of bill posters, but not a cent did he receive from
his work.
He tried job after job, but he was a miserable failure at
everything. He had to sell his watch, his clothes, his books
to get enough to eat. He would not go back home. He

104 GREAT PENITENTS
was too proud to admit that he was a failure. He lived
in a mean attic, hungry, his only possessions the cherished
manuscripts which later were to bring him fame and for
tune but which now were worse than waste paper. He
was actually dying of hunger in his attic room when some
of the neighbors, noting his long absence, broke into the
room and found him lying unconscious on the bed. By his
side, strange to say, was the only one of his books he could
not bear to sell — an "Imitation of Christ!"
The good neighbors, full of pity for him, helped him,
and he soon succeeded in getting employment as a proof
reader in the office of Le Nouvelliste. Gradually the op
portunity came for him to slip in his own articles. His
talent was recognized and he received small orders for
articles, for material for the vaudeville stage, while
he continued at the work he liked best, that of writing
romances. The real beginning of his literary career was
with the publication of a short story, Le Club des Phoques,
which, appearing in no less a paper than the Revue de
Paris, attracted considerable attention, gave him a name
and thus opened to him the columns of the most important
papers. Meanwhile Feval had married the girl whose devotion
had saved him when he had been discovered dying of
starvation, the pious, devoted wife who in God's good
time by her incessant prayers was to win him back to his
Breton faith. But he was still far away from that day.
Success in life was to increase his indifference to religion.
As he wrote later in his preface to his wonderful book —
"Jesuits!" — "When I came up from my province, I fell
into the midst of sparkling scepticism where the eyes were
dazzled by incessant flashes of wit. My charming com
panions were engaged in publishing newspapers or in
managing theatres. I was still young in literature. I
ran wildly about after popular success, and I won it to a
degree. I had my day like another, in the society of my

PAUL FEVAL 105
associates and friends, Alexandre Dumas, Balzac, Fred
erick Soulie, Eugene Sue."
Feval came into great literary prominence with the
publication of his "Mysteres de Londres" in 1844. Sue
had won great success with the "Mysteres de Paris" and a
rival house of publishers decided that the mysteries of
London should prove as popular as those of Paris. The
talent of young Feval was very promising. Why not get
him to do the work. But Feval protested that he had never
been in London, knew nothing about England. But, pro
tested the publishers, that was not necessary to make a
popular novel. Let him take one of his romances, change
the locale, give the characters English names and behold
the thing was done. He could go to London afterwards.
Thus the "Mysteres de Londres" was written. It was the
story of an Irishman who tried to avenge his country's
wrongs by seeking the annihilation of England. It was a
book after the school of Dumas and Sue. To give the book
vraisemblance the author was put down as one "Sir Francis
Trolopp." Modern methods of booming literary wares
were in vogue then. The new novel was advertised un
sparingly and met with a wonderfully popular success,
so popular that it was translated into many languages.
Paul Feval had arrived. The wise publishers took
advantage of his success. The famous author was sent to
London in royal style, accompanied by secretaries and
servants, in order to study conditions there and get mate
rial for more mysteries. The distinguished visitor met
with a very flattering reception. He was received every
where and treated as the lion of the hour. A whole police
force was placed at his command to protect him in his
investigations in the underworld of London. The public
was gullible even in those days. Paul Feval must have
grinned to himself as he contrasted his present state of
magnificence with the sordid garret of a few years back.
And how superior he felt to the poor unintellectual things

106 GREAT PENITENTS
of religion! Religion was an excellent thing for his
mother, his wife, but not even worthy of consideration on
the part of the maker of best-sellers.
The "Mysteres de Londres" was followed by "Amours
de Paris." The walls of Paris were placarded with adver
tisements of the book, and soon the name of Paul Feval
became a household word. He had really struck a gold
mine with his popular, somewhat lurid, romances. It may
have been a wasting of talent, as Eugene de Mirecourt in
1856 called it, but Feval did not worry about that. He
had come into his own, and by his own he meant money
and notoriety. He was able now by his royalties to live
like a lord, gave splendid entertainments, had his salon and
drove the best of horses. And with every year the wealth
and fame increased.
It would be impossible to follow out in detail the literary
history of Feval. He was well called by de Mirecourt a
"literary locomotive." He had a facile pen — too facile,
indeed — and sometimes published four novels at once. De
Mirecourt wrote : "If the house Alexandre Dumas & Co.
had interrupted the course of its commercial operations,
the writer, still young (1856) whose life this notice is
going to retrace would have been able by himself alone and
with no help from the pens of others, to supply a good part
of the clientele of this immense factory of romances."
And de Mirecourt ended his notice by saying — "We do not
fear to speak of him with entire freedom, and with the
certainty that sooner or later he will take a shining re
venge." The revenge which Feval was to take on himself
for his sensational fiction was a long way off, and it was to
be very different from that expected by de Mirecourt. It
seems almost incredible, but it is a fact that in a period of
thirty-five years, up to the time of his conversion in 1876,
Feval had published one hundred and three novels and
dramas. From that time to his death in 1887 he wrote
some twenty more books, making a total of one hundred

PAUL FEVAL 107
and twenty-three, besides innumerable articles not repub
lished. He had tried his hand at the drama but only one
of his plays met with success — Le Bossu — dramatized from
one of his novels in 1863. Sardou collaborated with him
in making the play, which may explain its tremendous
success. This then was the life of Paul Feval for many
years. It was not a life of crime, though he wrote much
about crime and thus exercised an evil influence on the
minds of his readers, an evil which he happily came to
realize. His works never were indecent, he never could
have written the immoralities of the realistic school. Yet
for all that he was far from being an uplifting writer. He
was the flippant, sure-of-himself novelist, conscious of his
superiority, quite above the things of religion and hence
sure to say in his books many things that were not in con
formity with the teachings of the Church. So we find
him on the eve of his conversion a wealthy, popular author,
a pagan romancer who long ago had put God out of his life.
He was a sinner, and what made his lot all the worse was
that in the pride of his heart he was unable to realize
his miserable condition. It needed a blow from God to
make him open his eyes.
The blow came in this way : Paul Feval had made a great
deal of money by his pen. He was really wealthy, and to
insure the future of his wife and eight children had
thought to increase his fortune by investment. He had put
all that he owned into Ottoman Bonds, which had promised
an especially high rate of interest. But the foreign se
curity failed and Feval saw the earnings of a lifetime
swept away and at a time — he was then sixty years old —
when it was impossible to build up another fortune. He
was ruined. The news was overwhelming. For years
he had had an income of fifteen thousand dollars a year,
which had enabled him to live in the greatest luxury, and
to send his children to the most exclusive and most ex
pensive schools. The day the bad news came he was sitting

108 GREAT PENITENTS
in his study, while his wife and children, six of them,
just home from school for the mid-day meal, waited for him
to join them. The wife finally went to call him and found
him in deep despair. She was a sweet, gentle woman,
with steadfast faith in God. He blurted out the story of
his bankruptcy and she turned pale at the news, her first
thought being for the future of the children and the effect
which this ruin of fortune must have on them. "Nothing
remains," said he sadly.
"My dear," said the woman, "God remains to us. If
He chastises us it is because He loves us."
"What!" he exclaimed. "God loves me?" He thought
it a poor way in which God had shown His love.
"Will you pray with me ?" she asked simply.
He assented and mechanically he said with her the Our
Father, the Hail Mary and the Hail Holy Queen. She
kissed him and together they went down to lunch.
"O father !" said one of the little girls, "you make a face
just like I make when I am going to cry." Feval surely
had reason to cry.
When the children had gone to school the wife said to
Feval, "There is a God who sees the wound of your heart."
But Paul was unmoved. His heart was not open to con
solation. As he said afterwards : "I was living according
to the law of God, yet without preoccupying myself about
God, at the door of the sanctuary but outside. This posi
tion is of all others the most perilous, because it is not open
to remorse. I was quite at ease there outside God, nothing
tempted me to enter in, and this peccable indifference is
like an untroubled sleep — the last hour may awaken it,
indeed, but who can answer for his last hour ? Indiffer
ence in itself may be, and often is, the most certain of
condemnations," In despair he turned to his wife. "What would you
do in my place ?" he asked.
"In your place," said she, "I should go to confession."

PAUL FEVAL 109
That had been her life-long prayer, for his conversion,
and he knew it. He knew how far he had fallen from
God. He remembered his saintly parents and how his mother
had prayed for him to make his peace with God. He used
to tell how once when he was in trouble he did not dare go
home, knowing that there he should hear only of God. And
he who was the rival of Dumas, Hugo, Flaubert, with his
books translated into twenty different languages was not to
be bothered with inanities about religion. He remembered
his saintly elder brother of whom he writes so beautifully
in "The Steps of a Conversion," but religion was all right
in its place, it had no place in the life of a popular author.
Feval knew that there was no chance in literature for a
practical Catholic. Novels must be unclean — happily he
had not pandered to the underworld — or at least they
must be in harmony with the times, that is with nothing
to disturb the religious indifference of the readers. Hence
the very mention of confession was objectionable to Feval,
who knew that to earn his daily bread he must still retain
his appeal to the popular ear. In his despair as he planned
for the future it seemed to him that there was but one
thing for him to do. His future novels must take the
modern note, must be realistic, must make an appeal to
pruriency. The temptation was alluring but, perhaps with
a thought to his wife and children, he rejected the temp
tation to write immoral books. No doubt that was the
decisive moment in his conversion. At any rate he de
cided to consult a priest even though he had no notion of
going to confession. He went to see a Jesuit, the profes
sor to one of his sons, and confessor of his wife, and
told him about the financial ruin that had come to him.
Toward the end of the conversation the priest said to
him— "Tell me the story of your First Communion; you
have often promised to do so."
"Oh, not now, Father," said Feval, "it is too late ; see,

110 GREAT PENITENTS
it is nearly our dinner hour and I have eaten nothing
today." "Nevertheless, stay with me," insisted the priest, "you
shall have something to eat here."
"Nonsense," said Feval. But the priest insisted.
"I am a prisoner, am I ?" asked Feval, smiling, as he
moved toward the door.
And the priest, his hand on the door, suddenly ex
claimed, "The hour is past and gone ! Let me clasp your
hand, at least, for if you go now, you will never return.
I have prayed to your dead and they have not heard me."
And he continued after a while, "I was wrong to ask for
the story of your past life. I knew it already." Feval
declared that impossible, and he turned back, memories
of the past coming back to him, to ask how the priest knew.
The priest told him where he had got his information. "Her
name is Mother St. Charles, but in the world she was called
Clemena Loirier."
Clemena Loirier had been engaged to Feval's brother
Charles, but Charles, on account of the family cares which
had come to him on the death of his father, had never
married. Clemena entered the convent. At the sound of
the beloved names and the memories they recalled Feval
burst into tears. The priest held a crucifix before him.
"Behold your God of love !" he said, "the God of sacri
fice. Behold the God of Charles, whom Charles sought to
imitate. My son, go down on your knees !"
"I did not kneel," said Feval, "I fell down, with a
great sigh of relief as if a burden was being lifted from
me." And the priest simply pointed to the prie-dieu.
Feval repeated the Confiteor after the priest; it was
so long since he had said it, he had forgotten it entirely.
"My son," said the priest, "you cannot yet make your
confession, but tell me now that you give yourself to God
with all your heart." And simply, as a child, as the prodi
gal son he was, Feval answered, "With all my heart I de-

PAUL FEVAL 111
sire to belong to God, Father." A wonderful joy surged
into his soul. He left the house, his heart singing, while
he heard the priest, whom he had just left, chanting the
Te Deum in gratitude to God for the return of the lost
sheep. "I love God," Feval kept repeating to himself,
"I will love Him." He hurried home as if on wings, and
fell into his wife's arms. "It is done," said he, "I love
God. I belong to Him."
"What a contrast," he wrote, "between this night and
the preceding one! I had Jesus reconciled at my bed
side and I confided to Him, with serene faith, the future
of our children. I cannot call myself resigned, for resig
nation presupposes a struggle, and I had no struggle,
nothing but a supernatural calm."
Feval made his confession, a confession of a life that
had done without God for fifty years. Peace came to
his soul and his heart overflowed with joy as he received
the Bread of Life, his second Holy Communion. The old
life was dead. After his reconciliation with God he took
up the manuscript of an unfinished novel and wrote as
follows: "This unfinished page is written by my other
self, it seems to me a hundred years ago. I cannot finish
it." Feval in those moments of conversion lived a greater
romance than any of those he had written.
The "penitent-romancer" as he has been called had but
one thought — to repair the evil which he believed his
writings had done. He felt that his future life must be
one of reparation. It was a practical penance he did by
working at the revision of his published works, which, as
we have said, numbered at that time more than a hundred.
"It is necessary," said he, "that all those pages disappear
— all! God will permit me to live to convert them as I
am converted myself." So he worked untiringly in the
preparation of new editions of his books, eliminating ob
jectionable passages. His friends remonstrated with him
at undertaking a work of such magnitude. But he re-

112 GREAT PENITENTS
plied: "What is the work, the pain? All is nothing
when one searches into his life, when he reviews his
life and retraces his steps. There is no longer question
of believing, or even of practising, but of repairing. Faith
does not suffice, one must have works."
Feval surely knew the meaning of true repentance. He
had more than the pain of reparation to endure. Once his
conversion became known he was slighted and sneered at
by many of his former friends and admirers. But far
from letting that disconcert him he bore it all cheerfully.
One of his former friends said to him one day, "Well, I
am hardly surprised, for you are a Breton, and that ex
plains it. You have an archaeological heart, attracted by
the things of the past, and you cling to your Ancient God
as you do to your ancient King, but at all events you will
never fall so low as to believe in La Salette and Lourdes,
and what they call the Sacred Heart."
Feval in those days had never even heard of La Salette
or Lourdes, which shows how far removed from Catholic
thinking he was. He asked his wife about them, and she
told him simply the story of them, giving him a picture of
the Mater Dolorosa, weeping over France. "There," said
she, "it is that!" From that time on the convert became
devoted to both La Salette and Lourdes. Also, he devel
oped a great devotion to the Sacred Heart. To manifest it
he went on a parish pilgrimage to the provisional Chapel
built in honor of the Sacred Heart at Montmartre prepara
tory to the erection of the great basilica toward which he
was to contribute so much by his pen and his alms. His
eyes were wet with tears. The chaplain to whom he
was introduced asked him to write an account of the pil
grimage for a Catholic paper. Feval gladly performed
the task, and signing his name to the article thus an
nounced to the world that he was a practical Catholic.
That was the beginning of his constructive work of writ
ing in defense of the faith. He became for the next ten

PAUL FEVAL 113
years the Knight of Catholicism. He wished to write
only for God. "If you knew," said he, "how sweet it is
to pray and to think of nothing but the love of God, when
one has spent his life celebrating the profane love of men."
One thing that especially appealed to him was the erection
of the basilica on Montmartre. Toward this project he
was generous, on one occasion giving the proceeds of one
of his most successful pamphlets, which amounted to some
seventy thousand francs. In fact one form his penance
took was that of giving alms. The first fruits of every
payment he received were devoted to charity. He even
refused to benefit by the sale of any of his re-edited
works lest his repentance might bring him any material
gain, but gave all the profits to the poor.
After the death of his devoted wife Feval went to live
in a small house near his beloved church of the Sacred
Heart on Montmartre, for which he had written such elo
quent appeals. This church was his joy and his life and
he wanted to be near it. So he took this little house at
the foot of the hill, near the church, but not too near since
he humbly believed that he was not holy enough to ap
proach the holy place too closely. In this humble dwelling
he worked at his writing, at new books and at the revision
of the old. It was there he received such friends as Louis
Veuillot. Once he said to a friend who expressed aston
ishment at this hermit's life: "Oh, I know well that
everybody cannot make a hermit of himself like this.
Only — listen! You also ought to convert yourself. I
assure you that God loves you. Adieu! But adieu in
two words — A Dieu."
All his remaining years were for Feval a life of peni
tential prayer. His joy was to climb the hill to the church.
It was not an easy task. He was old and unwell and it
took him fifteen minutes to reach the church where his
soul found such inspiration. "Yes," said he, "the road
is rough, but less rough than the approach to Calvary.

114 GREAT PENITENTS
It is the too weak expiation due to my God by the author
of such deplorable writings."
"But God does not require one to kill himself," said
a commiserating friend.
"God," replied the old penitent, "demands that I do
my duty, and not that I should live."
But live Feval did to atone for his past indifference by
writing noble defences of things Catholic, of the Jesuits,
the priesthood, of his beloved Sacred Heart. One of his
greatest works of apologetics was the sketch book, as it
may be called, which he entitled, "Jesuits!" The book
created somewhat of a sensation. Feval defending the
Jesuits ! Father Galivly translating the book prefaced his
offering by saying: "Feval, until lately, was not what
would be called a clerical — far from it. As he himself
says, he was an intimate friend of Eugene Sue, and his
first connection with the Jesuit controversy was as an
antagonist of the Society." The American reviewer of
this book in the Catholic World of February, 1879, wrote
in this wise — which shows how strange Feval appeared as
an apologist of the Church :
"Paul Feval is scarcely the man we should look to for
a defence of the Jesuits or for a defence of anything that
is especially worth defending. M. Feval is best known
as a fairly successful writer of the customary French
novel, and the customary French novel is worth very
little, indeed. The same sprightliness of style and fancy,
the same play of wit and conceit that once he used on the
side of evil, or of very doubtful morality, he now, in his
old age employs in defence of a worthy cause. . . . There
is force; historical research, eloquence; there are all the
gifts of an accomplished writer bent upon accomplishing a
serious purpose."
The review is interesting as showing how Catholics re
garded Feval in his unregenerate days, and as indicative
of the courage required of the penitent to come out in de-

PAUL FEVAL 115
fence of what he had once derided or ignored. In the
preface to "Jesuits !" he writes the apologia of his return
to God. He tells of his first interest in the Jesuits when
he was a young writer to whom popularity had come.
"Eugene Sue," he writes, "was one of the most pronounced
aristocrats I have ever met; a real Sybarite who was tor
tured by the fold of a rose-leaf. When the enormous
success of the 'Mysteries of Paris' had given him over
to the democracy, Doctor Veron (a publisher) said to him,
'There is a fortune to be made in attacking the Jesuits.'
And he laid a hundred thousand franc notes on the table.
That is the history of the 'Wandering Jew' as related by
Veron, who afterwards freely confessed that the dearly
bought scythe had mown nothing at all, unless it might be
the subscribers."
A rival publisher came to Feval, then only twenty-five,
and, as he says, "vainer than any peacock you could
find" and urged him to write a book also against the
Jesuits, telling him that he had a room full of documents
to help him out. Feval accepted the task, but after work
ing hard for a month studying the question he abandoned
the work in disgust and wrote as follows to the publisher :
"I am going to Brittany, and I have thrown the sheets
of our book into the fire. Pardon me for returning your
'documents' and your money, but I find that I undertook
in a trifling way and ignorantly, a task that does not be
come an honorable writer, and though I am utterly in
different as far as religion goes, I am as careful of my
literary honesty as I am of the apple of my eye. Under
stand, I am not attacking others' honor or honesty ; opin
ions are free; I speak for myself alone. ... I have
found out by reading your own documents that I had
undertaken to calumniate for so much a line men who are
not only innocent of all crime, but are useful citizens, bene
factors of mankind, soldiers of science, peaceful conquer
ors, apostles, heroes, saints whose only fault is having

116 GREAT PENITENTS
excelled all other bodies of men in bringing out by the
strength of their arms, their sweat, their blood itseK, what
is perhaps the most astonishing work of civilization in
modern times." These honest words written thirty years
before Feval' s conversion were, indeed, heroic, at a time
when "not to spit on the Jesuit was indecent !"
The publisher, nothing daunted, then urged him to write
a book in favor of the Jesuits, and so create a literary
sensation! But Feval was afraid. "I was afraid," said
he, "of falling into bad odor with the people who disperse
success. I was afraid of my enemies, but, above all, I
feared my friends. To make known all the testimony
unwillingly favorable to the Jesuits that I had found while
bent on their condemnation amid the heap of papers livid
with their adversaries hatred, would have been to com
promise me forever. ... I was afraid of the journals
I contributed to, I was afraid of my readers whom I liked
and who liked me. It made my flesh creep to think of
the amount of popular prejudice." So the book was not
written until long after, in spite of the fact that the
irreligious Feval had his sons educated in Jesuit colleges.
It required a grace from God to give him courage to defend
the truth. "I was dozing in my worldly prosperity,"
he said, "I needed misfortune to awaken me, and a sorrow
that should scald my eyes with tears. The misfortune
came ; an unaccustomed sorrow fell upon me without warn
ing, threw me to the earth and in that solemn moment
when the soul hesitates and shivers, called on one side
by repentance and life, on the other by revolt and death,
I was assisted by a Jesuit who touched the crucifix to
my pains and lifted me out of despair. ... I have said
that before; here, there, everywhere; do not blame me
for saying it over again, it would be of no use. I will
say it and say it again in the thankful joy of my heart
until the last hour of my life." And he continues : "My
conversion constituted my nobility, my glory and my

PAUL FEVAL 117
triumph in this world and it will be my salvation in the
one to come. And I gather with a pious care whatever
relates to my conversion. I have already made one book
about it, and I shall make others, repeating: Quia fecit
mihi magna qui potens est. Is it not my right and my
duty to chant the Magnificat of my conversion ?"
And thus he concludes: "I have spent thirty years
not in making this book but in summoning up courage
enough to write the first line of it. Would to God I had
spent this better half of my life in getting light on the
subject to the extent of my poor ability ! But I have sown
my long road with light pages that have been the sport
of the wind. In them the name of God is dubiously
honored, religion receives an empty respect, and there is
scarcely one of those pages that I can read with unmixed
pleasure. I have lost too much time. Thirty years ! . . .
I do not know if I shall be read, but I hope so. For some
my bad books will serve as a passport to this book, and
that at least will be good."
As an apologist Feval was untiring. The most beauti
ful of all his books is his "Les Etapes d'une Conversion"
— "The Steps of a Conversion" — in which he gives us
a charming picture of his own family in the far distant
Breton days. It was a work of four volumes published
at intervals and is full of faith and love. He is forever
insisting on the glory of his conversion back to God and
thanking Him for the mercy of it. "Every conversion,"
he writes, "implies at the same time criminal error and
His merciful chastisement. Happy the wounded hearts!
Happy the suffering that warns and converts! Happy
the captives enchained by the benediction of sorrow!"
Well could he write : "I was saved, having received the
gift of first tears. Since then I believe, I hope, and I
love. I am happy : I know how to pray !"
Feval' s pen was forever going. He contributed in
numerable articles to the papers, especially the Catholic

118 GREAT PENITENTS
journals, and at one time directed three different publica
tions. He had in view the writing of many other books
in defence of the Church. It was a hard task he had set
himself and no wonder that the strenuous, ceaseless labor
gradually undermined his health. A sudden stroke of
apoplexy incapacitated him. He became a helpless in
valid. In this condition he remained for five years. The
Societe des Gens de Lettres, of which he was president —
he was also an officer of the Legion of Honor — had him
placed in the Home conducted by the Brothers of St. John
of God. There he was tenderly nursed through the long
years and there, attended by one of his daughters, who
was a Sister of Charity, he died March 8, 1887.
He was buried from the Church of St. Francis Xavier,
the funeral being attended by all the celebrities of art
and literature. At the interment in Montparnasse Ceme
tery eulogies were pronounced by Jules Claretie in the
name of the Societe des Gens de Lettres and by Ludovic
Halevy in the name of the Societe des Auteurs et Com
positeurs Dramatiques.
The Vicomte de Spoelbergh de Lovenjoul in his Les
Lundis d'un Cherclieur pays a glowing tribute to Feval's
literary worth. "Paul Feval," he writes, "though placed
in literature at a respectful distance from the great Alex
ander Dumas, remains, however, one of the masters of
this age in stories of adventure. By his fertile imagina
tion the power of conceptions and the astonishing variety
of his inspirations, he is certainly of the race of the inex
haustible author of Monte Cristo and of the MusTceteers, if
he is not his equal. Both of them will remain for a long
time the best amusers of the sad and morose generations
which have succeeded them. . . . All these works as
sure him a literary rank of the most distinguished among
the writers of these times."
But whatever may be said of Feval's literary glory, he
deserves a place among heroic souls, who when the grace of

PAUL FEVAL 119
God came corresponded with it, considering the world and
its glory as nothing, and the labor for eternal life as every
thing. It is not of Feval, the rich, the famous, we love to
think, but of Feval, the "penitent romancer," Feval, the
great penitent.

FATHER HERMANN: MUSICIAN AND MONK
IN VAIN would one search the musical dictionaries of
today for mention of the boy-genius who once engaged
the attention of the musical world, not alone as a
virtuoso, but also, and perhaps more so, as the darling
pupil of Liszt, the pet prodigy of George Sand.
Hermann Cohen was born November 10, 1821, in Ham
burg, Germany. He was the son of David Cohen, a strict
Jew, who traced his ancestry back to the tribe of Aaron.
The father was a well-to-do tradesman, or as some would
have it a banker, and occupied a high position among his
compatriots, who constituted a colony numbering twenty-
five thousand. This colony, as was to be expected, had
suffered some modification owing to association with the
outside world, and so David Cohen, in spite of his strict
orthodoxy, was, like many of his countrymen of all ages,
fondly in love with the goods of this world. Hence it
is not surprising that greed for business reigned supreme
in the household and that money and stocks were the
topics of conversation from morning until night.
In this atmosphere of broad Judaism young Hermann
spent his childhood. He and his elder brother were sent to
the principal college of the city, where, in spite of delicate
health, his progress was rapid. He was noted for his
amiable disposition, though there was a seriousness about
him which inclined to moodiness. This gloom was due,
perhaps, to the growing ill health of the lad, which made
it advisable in his ninth year to take him out of school
work and allow him to continue his studies at home, a mis
fortune not so great as might be supposed, for he was
120

FATHER HERMANN 121
quick to learn, and had an earnest desire to improve. But
it was in music that his advance was most phenomenal.
At the age of six he played well the popular airs of the
day, improvised on the piano, and had even attempted
composition. Such precociousness pleased the father so
much that when the boy found fault with the old harpsi
chord it required no persuasion to induce him to purchase
a grand piano. Yet, notwithstanding this zeal for the boy's
advancement, there was little vigilance exercised in regard
to his associates, at the most impressionable period of
his life.
On leaving school he was placed under the care of a
professor, whose morals were no clearer than his mental
faculties. He rewarded "le petit prodige" for his talent
by taking him to the theater and the race course, and
initiating him into the mysteries of hunting and gambling.
One can easily foresee the effect of such an association
upon the brilliant lad. It was well that it was soon brought
to an end, though by reverses in the fortunes of the head
of the family. Hermann was twelve years of age when
Mrs. Cohen, seeing how she had fallen from her high
estate, and chafing under the thought that she must live a
life of comparative poverty where once she had been used
to every luxury, determined to leave the scene of her
affliction and settle where none of her old friends could
taunt her with her present need ; for she was a woman of
lofty manners. Accordingly, leaving her husband and
eldest son to try to repair the family fortunes in Ham
burg, she set out for Paris, taking with her Hermann and
his younger brother and sister. Possibly she thought that
the earning power of the boy whose talent had been the
talk of amateur circles in the days of prosperity might
be of service at a time when all help would be acceptable
to David Cohen. When they stopped at Mecklenbourg,
on the way to Paris, the Grand Duke was so impressed
on hearing the boy play, that he besought the mother to

122 GREAT PENITENTS
let her son give all his time to music. Mrs. Cohen needed
no great persuasion. The lad had already made his
debut successfully in Altona, and any lingering doubt
was dispelled by his success in Frankfurt and other great
German cities. And so, with the intention of devot
ing her son to music, she came to the city of Paris July
5, 1834.
It was not difficult for the mother to get a hearing for
the boy. His name was already known as that of a re
markable amateur, and his letters of recommendation as
sured him admission to the smartest salons. Here he soon
became the center of brilliant assemblies, the recipient of
the applause and even of the caresses of the beautiful
and cultured ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain. They
vied with one another in trying to spoil him, giving dinner
parties and soirees at which the twelve-year-old genius,
who looked even younger with his long girlish curls and
kilted costume, rewarded his admirers with exhibitions of
his precocious talents.
Even when the modern press-agent was only in embryo
the daily papers recorded the triumphs of the little Jew,
and he was besieged for his portrait. Alas for youth that
never knew the joys of youth! What is that poem of
Stevenson's ?
Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, if that lad be I;
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.

It was so with the lad who had been saturated with the
world almost from babyhood, a man without having passed
through boyhood, "an abortion of celebrity," as he calls
himself, whom the flattery of worldly men and women
kept from his home till the small hours of the morning,

FATHER HERMANN 123
gradually destroying in his soul the remnants of virtue
in the maelstrom of Parisian luxury.
It was deemed advisable to put the boy under the in
struction of one of the great teachers of the day. Chopin
was first selected because after a long period of neglect he
was now the mode. He took one lesson from this master,
and went from him to Zimmerman, from whom also he
took one lesson. From this we suspect that the purpose
of the boy was to make a trial of all the famous teachers
of the city before submitting himself to any one of them.
At length he came to Liszt, then twenty-three years of age,
who, on his arrival in Paris, had undergone the course
Hermann was now enduring, having been called the eighth
wonder of the world. Liszt, whose name was one to
conjure with in Paris, both as a pianist and as a teacher,
at first refused to take the boy as his pupil, and it was
only after great persuasion that he was induced to give
him a hearing at all. Half unwillingly he listened to the
playing of the lad, but it was so charming, so full of
genius, so replete with hopes of a great career, that the
famous virtuoso immediately assumed charge of his musi
cal education, predicting wonderful things for him. From
that time Hermann was the spoiled pet of Liszt, his com
panion from morning until night, his "show pupil," who
must accompany him to the innermost circles of wealth
and culture, where the master was always a welcome
guest. However advantageous this friendship was to the boy
in the development of his musical talent, it could not but be
harmful in the formation of his character. It familiarized
him with ideas which sooner or later must bear evil fruit.
The whirlpool of Paris had swallowed Liszt. The "sec
ond Mozart," whom Beethoven had kissed amid the frantic
cheers of the Viennese public at the close of a recital there,
had come to Paris the devout son of fervent Catholics.
Even after a tour of France and a second trip to London

124 GREAT PENITENTS
his faith was so strong that he would have entered Holy
Orders were it not for the opposition of his father. A
period of convalescence, when he was about eighteen, was
employed in reading Voltaire and Rousseau. Religious
doubts assailed him. De Lammenais had been his resort
for the solution of them, and he had followed him — alas !
In 1835 he wrote of the Church : "She seems doomed to
perish in oblivion." Jules Sandeau, Victor Hugo, Alfred
de Musset, Planche, George Sand — these were his asso
ciates and his new evangelists. He was twenty-three when
he met George Sand, who had just returned from Venice,
where she had broken with De Musset. But in 1834, the
year in which Hermann had come to Paris, Liszt had met
and been conquered by the Countess d'Agoult, known as
"Daniel Stern." This woman was so infatuated with the
virtuoso that she left her husband and her three children
to follow him, and that infatuation lasted for ten years.
Such was the youth who had once moaned because he
had not been allowed to take Holy Orders ! Such was
the preceptor of Hermann! And by his side, exercising
perhaps a greater influence upon the boy, was the strange
woman who had the name of a man and few of the instincts
of a woman — George Sand, who has immortalized the
young pianist in her "Lettres d'un Voyageur." It is not
pleasant to recall the low moral condition of the men and
women who constituted themselves the protectors, the edu
cators, of the little boy in a strange city, but if one would
understand the full glory of his conversion one must
follow him, even through the sewers of iniquity, where his
feet slipped along ere they struck the solid rock of the
way of the cross.
Amantine Lucille Aurore Dupin-Dudevant had been so
religious during her convent school days as to have yearned
to become a nun herself, but under the subsequent tutelage
of her grandmother, a free-thinker who deliberately
planned a course of reading destined to destroy the girl's

FATHER HERMANN 125
vocation, she gradually lost her faith. Married to the vul
gar Colonel Dudevant at the age of eighteen, she left him
in 1831 at the age of twenty-seven, and came to Paris to
make a living by her pen. She had already displayed re
markable talent, but it was some time before the new writer
found her audience. When she did she became famous
immediately. There was an air of mystery about her
which made everybody wonder.
Young Hermann was brought to the notice of George
Sand by Liszt. Fascinated by his musical genius, she
made a pet of him at once, for she loved music and often
declared that she would have been a musician had she
received the proper training. "Music is prayer," she
said, "it is faith, it is friendship, it is association par
excellence." For days she kept the boy at her side while
she wrote, letting him soothe her with his playing or roll
the cigarettes which she smoked inveterately during her
writing hours. She always called him "Puzzi," a tender
name that Liszt had given him from puzzia, meaning
darling. How beneficial was this influence to a boy of twelve,
may be judged by the picture we have of the youth seated
at the piano running scales mechanically while he devoured
Indiana or Lelia. It was in these days, too, that he came
under the influence of De Lammenais, who soon became the
lad's master and hero. In the "Histoire" of Sand she
tells us of Liszt coming to see her accompanied by De
Lammenais and "V enfant Israelite, Puzzi." Yet all the
while the boy was studying hard at his music. After much
searching in dust-covered folios for accounts of his play
ing, I have found in the Gazette Musicale of Paris for
April 19, 1835, the following notice: "We take pleasure
in announcing the concert of the young Hermann of Ham
burg, pupil of Mr. Liszt, which will take place next Thurs
day, April 23, at eight o'clock in the evening, in the
Chantereine hall. A duo for four hands, the composition

126 GREAT PENITENTS
of M. Pixis, executed by M. Liszt and the beneficiary, the
grand potpourri of Czerny for four grand pianos, by Mes
sieurs Liszt, Lourosky, Alkan and Hermann," etc.
In the letters of Liszt, as well as in the works of George
Sand, we get an occasional glimpse of the affection which
was showered upon the boy by his two older companions.
In 1834 began the fascination of the Countess d'Agoult
for the great virtuoso, and in the following year they de
termined to travel through Switzerland and Italy, taking
Puzzi with them. The boy had prevailed upon his mother
to allow him to go in order to continue his lessons with
Liszt. Evidently there had been a little dispute between
Sand and the Hermanns, for in the November of that year
we have Liszt writing to her, "Come to us, then, and that
as soon as possible. Puzzi has already bought a pipe of
peace in your honor." Many letters passed between the
friends, and Hermann came in for his share of mention,
always in a playful and loving manner. "The illustrious
doctor," she calls him, "ratissimo," the "rat" and "le
gamin musical." In one of her letters to the Countess she
beseeches her not to give Puzzi a bon-bon for a whole day
for not writing to her, and again to "pull the ear of the
ragazzo di-rosa."
Liszt had called himself and his little pupil "fellows,"
and this title was often given to him as well as to Hermann
by Sand. "Fellows primo" was Liszt and "fellows secun-
do" was Hermann. "I want the fellows," she wrote; "I
want them as soon as possible, and as long as possible,
I want them unto death."
In one of her letters to the maestro she says: "It is
you especially, my dear Franz, whom I place in a picture
inundated with light — magical apparition which arises in
the darkness of my evening meditations . . . But if
I made this picture I would not forget the charming Puzzi,
your well beloved pupil. Raphael and Tebeldaeo, his
young friend, never appeared with more grace before God

FATHER HERMANN 127
and man than you two, my dear children, when I saw you
one evening across the orchestra of a hundred voices, all
silent to hear your improvisations. The child just behind
you pale, affected, motionless as marble, yet as a flower
ready to scatter its petals, seemed to inhale the harmony
through all his pores and to open his pure lips to drink
in the honey which you were pouring out for him." Again,
"I received news of you through a letter from Puzzi ; you
have a mother of pearl piano ; you play it near the window
looking out upon the lake, looking up to the snows of Mt.
Blanc." At length George Sand came to visit her friends
at Geneva. "The first object in my path," she says, "was
Puzzi, sitting astride of his traveling bag ; but he was so
changed, so much grown, he had such a head of long brown
hair, his blouse was of such feminine cut, that I was mys
tified. I no longer recognized the little Hermann, but
took off my hat and asked, 'My handsome page, tell me
where Lara is ?' " Very girlish the boy must have seemed
at that time, for soon after when the company went to
the Church of St. Nicholas, where Liszt played the Dies
Irae on the great organ, the old organist was told that
Puzzi was a celebrated Italian cantatrice who was follow
ing Liszt in disguise. Liszt established a conservatory at
Geneva, and gave one of the classes to Hermann, who di
rected it with the assistance of a young German named
Schad. Evil example had already begun to bear fruit in the
boy's soul. While in Paris, his head had been turned by
the strange doctrines he had heard from the lips of celeb
rities. Long after he wrote to Father Ratisbonne, "They
were early at work to make me a scapegoat of all those
dreadful doctrines which, springing up from the bottom
of Hell, were creeping out all over the surface of this
Parisian den. Soon this head of only fourteen made
room for atheism, pantheism, Fourrierism, Saint-Simon-
ism, communism, socialism, riot, massacre of the wealthy,

128 GREAT PENITENTS
abolition of marriage, terrorism, agrarianism and the com
munity of enjoyment in all pleasures. Evil makes rapid
strides; I soon became one of the most zealous of propa
gandists of sects that are sworn to change the face of the
world and, consequently, the pet Benjamin of more than
one of the apostles of a misnamed civilization." Such
was evidently his state of mind during the stay at Geneva,
for we find the youth of sixteen making a pilgrimage to
Fernay, where he rhapsodized before the statue of Rous
seau. It was not surprising, therefore, that for the new
and more companionable friends he neglected the mother
who had followed him to Geneva to watch over him.
When Liszt resumed his travels again Hermann had
to return to Paris alone. It was a strange gift which Liszt
gave his pupil on parting with him; a Bible with these
words written on the fly-leaf by the hand of the maestro:
"Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God."
Were the old thoughts of his childhood's purity and reli
gion pulling at the heart strings of the musical genius,
and did he regret the impious associations into which he
had led the boy ? We know, at any rate, that he had often
tried to break away from the woman, who still clung to
him in spite of himself.
Even in those days Hermann had a fancy to become
a Christian ; but he was uncertain as to whether he should
embrace Catholicity or Protestantism, and so the fancy
passed away, and the youth of sixteen was plunged again
into the world and its allurements. For a time he settled
down in Paris, devoting himself to teaching and the giving
of concerts. He made considerable money, but it went in
gambling and luxurious living. Then the passion of travel
came upon him, and he made trips to Italy, London, and
his own native Hamburg. "Reckless from success," he
said, "and a prey to every kind of bad habits, I traveled
through England and Switzerland, Italy and Germany,
growing ever more mad after philosophical novelties,

FATHER HERMANN 129
everywhere examining the working and finding out the
novelties of the poisoned doctrines with which my child
hood had been imbued. Priests I looked upon as the bane
of society, but the monks I shunned as so many anthro
pophagi. Who would have told me, when I returned to
Paris, that divine Providence intended to show me from
how far it could lead a stray creature back !"
Hermann was then a young dandy who lived but for
the day. According to one of his contemporaries he was
the real beau, very gentlemanly, extremely courteous,
careless, however, about his conversation and unreserved
in telling about his exploits. And no matter where he
went, whether it was to Italy to see Liszt, to London or
to Venice for the production of his opera, he was ever
the rabid redflagger, hot of speech and deeply interested
in the designs of the revolutionary element in every
country. Such a course must inevitably bring ruin. The youth
who had become the victim of every passion, of all the
snares of youth, was obliged to flee from Paris and seek
the protection of his father in Hamburg, beseeching him
to extricate him from the plight into which his gaming
propensities had plunged him. But the father, who had
heard of his escapades, refused to give him any help. He
was heartily ashamed of the son of whom he had expected
great things, not in artistic lines only, but in the making
of a substantial fortune. Nothing daunted by this cold
reception, the youth traveled through Germany, where
his undoubted talent gained him a hearing and flattering
receptions from the noblest families. Still the gambling
craze stuck to him, and when in Paris he found himself
again ruined he was at the point of committing suicide.
Again did he become the dandy of the Faubourg St. Ger
main, and still more the slave of the world's sin. We get
a glimpse of him in the life which Paul de Musset wrote
of his brother Alfred. "Alfred admired him, both as a

130 GREAT PENITENTS
pianist and a composer; and, while the musician impro
vised, the poet would devise verses adapted to the move
ment of the music. They thus composed three songs —
'Bonjour, Suzon,' 'Non, Suzon, pas encore,' and 'Adieu,
Suzon.' Another melody by the same master adapted to
Italian words, was afterwards adopted by Steinberg for
the barcarolle which he sings in 'Bettine.' " But the soul
of the young musician was never at ease. Divine grace
was troubling the Bethesda pool of his corrupt and putrid
heart. The great work was done in 1847, when Hermann was
twenty-seven years of age. At the Church of St. Valery,
Burgoyne Street, Paris, devotions for the month of May
were held with great solemnity, the music being under
the direction of the Prince of Moskowa, whose choir of
efficient amateurs attracted many listeners. One Friday
evening he invited Hermann to play the organ for him.
At the benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, though Her
mann felt no disposition to kneel, there came over him a
strange sensation causing him to bow. The feeling re
turned to him on the following Friday. There came to
him then an inspiration to become a Catholic. A few
days later when, on passing the Church, he heard the bell
ring for Mass, he entered and remained for three Masses.
That afternoon he was drawn thither again and, the
Blessed Sacrament being exposed, he fell on his knees as
though compelled by some power greater than himself.
"I felt as it were a great weight descend upon me which
forced me to my knees, yea, even to bow to the ground in
adoration." That day he hunted out a prayer-book on the shelves
of one of his friends and studied it earnestly to find out
about this great devotion of Catholics. All the night he
thought of the Blessed Sacrament. Thereafter he went
to Mass often, his mind wrought up to a high pitch of
excitement. Grace had not yet come and he knew not

FATHER HERMANN 131
what course to pursue. In this condition he went to Ems
to give a concert, and on Sunday at Mass he felt the same
strange emotion. At the elevation he burst into tears,
and knew that grace had come. "I had often wept in
my childhood," he says, "but never such tears as these.
All at once I saw before me all the sins of my past life,
hideous, vile, revolting, worthy the wrath of the Sovereign
Judge. And yet I felt also a miraculous calm, God in
his mercy forgiving me these sins, and accepting my firm
resolution to love Him henceforth above all things."
He went immediately to the Duchess of Rauzanne and
begged her to introduce him to a priest. Abbe LeGrand
began to instruct him, giving him L'Homond's Exposition
of Christian Doctrine. God alone knows the struggle
that the awakened soul endured in those days. The devil
does not release his prey without a terrible effort to retain
it still unto its destruction. And so he made use of the
concerts and parties and feasts and the joy of living, and
the wit of men and the smile of women, the allurements
of the world and the flesh to keep the heart of the youth
from corresponding to the grace of God. On his return
from Ems Hermann shut himself in his room, and devoted
himself to the study of the doctrines of the Church. His
conversion had been effected at Ems, August 8, 1847,
and on the 28th day of that same month, the feast of the
great St. Augustine, who ever seemed to play a part in
the life of Hermann, he was baptized by the Abbe LeGrand
in the memorial chapel of Our Lady of Zion, built by
the famous convert from Judaism, the Abbe de Ratisbonne,
in the Rue de Regard. To this church was attached a
convent, all of whose inmates, nuns and orphans, were
converts from Judaism.
The new convert was confirmed by Monseigneur Affre
on December 3d, taking the name of Xavier. On the
eighth of that same month he received his first Holy Com
munion with faith and love so ardent as to transform his

132 GREAT PENITENTS
countenance. His old friends could hardly believe him to
be the same person, so great was the change. He was pale
and reserved; he wore a long overcoat, a broad-brimmed
felt hat, common shoes — far different from the clothes
in which he had once taken so much pride. His room
was poorly furnished — an iron bed, a piano, a trunk, a
crucifix, a small statue of Our Lady, and small pictures
of St. Theresa and St. Augustine. If he could abandon
the world entirely and hide himself with God alone ! But
he must first pay the debts of the gambler Hermann, and
to this task he set himself with all the ardor of a penitent
spirit. Those were long and dreary years, the time spent
in giving lessons and concerts to wipe out the debt of
thirty thousand francs. In addition to the suspense, the
dismal labor, there were customs and habits and memories
to be combated, contempt and raillery of former com
panions to be endured. Hermann had recourse to the
sacraments and prayer, the remedies which had sustained
Augustine when the call of the past seemed imperative.
In the intervals of his lessons he recited the rosary and
read pious books; but above all put his trust in the
Blessed Sacrament which was ever to be the object of his
greatest devotion.
Two years of exile ended, and Hermann determined
to become a monk. He had had doubts about the choice
of a vocation, whether to become a secular or a religious,
and had consulted Lacordaire. "Have you the courage to
let yourself be spit upon in the face and say no word?"
asked Lacordaire. "Yes," answered Hermann. "Then
go and be a monk," was the answer. He went therefore
to the Carmelite convent at Agen, and thence to the novi
tiate of Brouissey near Bordeaux, where, alas, for the
aspirant to sanctity, there was a fresh obstacle to be met.
A Jew could not be admitted into the Carmelites without
special dispensation from Rome; and Rome, knowing his
past, refused to grant the dispensation.

»

FATHER HERMANN 133
There was nothing for Hermann to do but to go to Rome
and plead in person with the Holy Father. Happily, a
general council of the Carmelites was then in session at
Rome. Before it he laid his case and the dispensation was
granted. He returned to Brouissey and was admitted
October 6, 1849. On the sixteenth of that same month
died Chopin, another to whom the "woman with the sombre
eye," as de Musset called George Sand, had been an evil
genius. He asked for Extreme Unction, confessed, re
ceived Holy Viaticum, and having recited the litany after
the priest, passed into eternity. Who can say how much
of that happy death was due to the prayers of the other
musician buried in the silence of his retreat !
Novitiate days were full of true spiritual joy to Her
mann, even though the crosses sent to try him were heavy.
He immediately became an example of perfection, work
ing out his salvation with the energy with which he had
pursued the primrose path of pleasure, — cleaning the
offices, sweeping tbe passages, gathering grapes, digging as
a day laborer, yet always with the joy which comes from
a good conscience. Nor was his beloved music cast aside.
What had hitherto been the snare of his soul now became
the wings to bear him aloft in the beautiful canticles which
have since made his name famous in ecclesiastical music.
These were helps to humble and strengthen his soul for
one of the great trials of his life, now in store for him.
In the eyes of his countrymen, for a Jew to become a
Christian was folly; to become a monk was outrageous.
The news of the defection of Hermann had traveled to
his family at Hamburg, and it needs no great powers to
imagine their consternation. One day in the July of 1850
the mother, who had set out from home to reclaim, if pos
sible, the wayward son, came from Paris and took lodgings
in a house near the convent. That evening she came to
the convent, called for her son, and was shown to the little
chape], where she took a seat in a nook by the window

134 GREAT PENITENTS
opening into the cloister garden. Suddenly she started
back in horror. There before her very eyes was the son
of whom she had expected such great things, a renegade,
a monk! Her cup of misery was filled to overflow. It
seemed an age till he came to her, accompanied by the
master of novices, and she swooned and fell into his arms.
Touched by her misery, he sought to console her, but she
would not be consoled. He had to leave her when the bell
for the office rang, but she waited for the services too, and
on hearing him playing upon the little melodeon wept as
if her heart would break, moved by grief and offended
motherly love. He had slighted her before for Liszt and
George Sand. She had won him back, and now he had
gone from her even more hopelessly to the God of the
Christians. She begged him to go back to the world with
her, and went away from the convent, execrating those
who had taken her son from her. His father, enraged at
the defection, disinherited and cursed him, forgiving him
only after many years. Time softens hearts, and Her
mann's prayers were ever ascending to God for the con
version of his family. He was granted the happiness to
see ten members of his family come into the Church,
among them two of his brothers, a sister and her son. His
mother remained a Jewess to the last, though the son had
reason to believe that in the final hour she called upon the
God of the Christians.
At his profession the young pianist became Brother
Augustine Marie of the Most Blessed Sacrament. He
was duly ordained priest, and said his first Mass on Easter
Sunday in 1851. In 1853 he was ordered to the south
of France to preach a mission, which was so successful
as to number among his many converts some of his own
countrymen. But his health gave way under the strain,
and ever after he suffered terrible pain.
The time came for a great act of reparation for the
scandal he had given during his life in Paris. He was

FATHER HERMANN 135
never a great orator, but he had the gift of conviction,
a gift more potent to move hearts than all the powers of
elocution; and so when it was announced that the once
celebrated Hermann was to preach at St. Sulpice, April
24, 1854, the edifice was thronged with a curious and
interested crowd. It was a wonderful sermon, in which
he reminded his audience of his life of sin in days not so
long distant, and told them of the coming of the grace of
God and his strange conversion. Then he turned to a
group of young men present and begged them to do as he
had done, to follow him and share his happiness.
So it was always. The strange circumstances of Her
mann's conversion, the remembrance of his fame as a
pianist, brought him invitations from all sides to preach,
and these, in spite of his continual sufferings, he accepted
whenever it was possible. On one occasion he went to
preach in Geneva where he had been at one time with
Liszt. "How our old friends will be astonished," he wrote
to his former colleague in Liszt's conservatory, Joseph
Schad, the pianist. Surely they would have been aston
ished. I cannot help thinking that it was Hermann's
prayers for his old maestro which led Liszt in his latter
days to take orders in the Church of his childhood, where,
as he wrote to Saint-Saens in 1869, "one must learn to
subordinate himself in mind and deed." Here he devoted
himself to sacred music and charity concerts. But, alas,
for George Sand ! She died as she lived, away from God.
Yet Hermann had not abandoned her without an attempt
to lead her back to the piety of her convent days. Once
after his profession he was allowed to call upon her, but
she would not listen to him. He was no longer the child
of the world, the little "Puzzi" who had rolled her cigar
ettes, or soothed her with the music she loved. "So you
have become a monk," she sneered. That was all. The
interview was ended. Yes, he had become a monk, a real
monk who did not spare himself for the glory of God.

136 GREAT PENITENTS
He was ever working, now founding the desert of Taras-
tiex, now the Lyons foundation, where he was so beloved
by the people that they went on their knees to beg his
blessing as he passed. Cardinal Wiseman met him at
Rome in 1862, and was so impressed that he begged his
superiors to send him to England. The general of the
Carmelites refused, but the Cardinal, undaunted, appealed
to the Pope, who sent Hermann thither. The London
people remembered the young pianist who had amused
them in the olden days and knowing the story of his con
version, flocked to hear him at Kensington, where he was
established. But he was not to remain there permanently.
"In spite of my conversion, I am always the wandering
Jew," he said. He was everywhere,— -at Lyons, Rouen,
Rome, Paris, Geneva, yes, and in Ireland, in spite of his
weak health and constant suffering. Finally he was ap
pointed chaplain to the soldiers imprisoned in the German
fortress, and there his labors were brought to an end.
Smallpox was raging among the prisoners, and while min
istering to them he contracted the disease.
"Can you sing the Te Deum?" he asked of the Sister
who was attending him.
She could not.
"The Salve Regina?"
"Yes," she replied.
"Then let us sing it together," he said. And with that
song on his lips he went to the land of eternal harmonies,
January 20, 1871. He was buried in the church of
St. Hedwidge, Berlin.

J. B. CARPEAUX
CARPEAUX was one of the greatest sculptors that
France ever produced. With every year since his
death his fame has grown. He is sure of his niche
in the hall of fame, but it is not as the masterful artist
that he appeals to us. Carpeaux at the height of his glory,
in the fulness of his powers, does not thrill us so much
as the poor suffering Carpeaux, stretched on his bed of
pain through weary months waiting for the merciful touch
of the hand of death. Carpeaux in his strength had drunk
deep of the cup of sin. He wandered far from God on
the primrose path; he traveled slowly back by the hard
road of the cross. He who had made many a masterpiece
bowed down at: last before the chef d'oeuvre of the Great
Artisan — the Crucified Christ. Carpeaux was a great
penitent, even though like the penitent thief he saluted
his Master only in the valley of the shadow of death.
Carpeaux was born at Valenciennes in French Flanders
May 11, 1827. Here also had been born another great
artist, Watteau, a statue of whom Carpeaux in the fulness
of his powers made for his native city. He was baptized
Jean Baptiste Jules. He was always called Jules until
he became a celebrity, and then he simply signed himself,
J. B. Carpeaux. His father, Joseph, was by trade a
mason, though in order to keep the wolf from the door he
did not disdain being a jack of all trades, now working
as a carpenter, now as a thatcher. His mother's maiden
name was Adele Wargny. They were poor people, in
fact their poverty was extreme, and they found it diffi
cult to feed their children let alone have any ambitions
137

138 GREAT PENITENTS
to give them a place in the world. Consequently, Jean
Baptiste received very little schooling. He had to leave
the Brothers' school just when he was able to read and
write and do a little figuring. He did not rebel against
his lot, however. He was born of the people, was proud
of that fact, and always had the tastes of the people. But
the genius cannot be kept down by lack of opportunities ; he
makes his own opportunities. Carpeaux was possessed
of a remarkably fine intelligence, of an elevation of char
acter, and of a nobility of heart, and these spurred him
on to supply later on the deficiencies of his boyhood's
education. If there was ever a truly self-made man it
was he. Even the humble employment of his father
helped him in his career, for the work as a mason gave
strength to his arm for the fashioning of his masterpieces
of sculpture.
For Carpeaux was destined to be a sculptor. He felt
it in him. Even as a child he had no other dream than
to make statues. His father wanted him to be an archi
tect and put him to study at the school of architecture at
Valenciennes. When he had learned the elements there
he came to Paris and took the courses of the royal school
of design and mathematics. Mathematics appealed to
him but little, design a great deal, and in his spare time
he worked at his modeling, untaught by anyone but by
his own instinct.
One day he came to Henri Lemaire, the sculptor, a
relative of the Carpeaux family, and showed him a head
which he had modeled. Carpeaux was then but a boy
of fifteen, the smallest student in the school, and insignifi
cant in appearance. Lemaire, without looking at the
head, shrugged his shoulders at the sight of the aspirant
to his art as if to dismiss his pretensions. The lad, indig
nant at the silent scorn, burst out in resentment: "You
may be marshal in your art, monsieur, but who told you

J. B. CARPEAUX 139
that I would not be prince of it ?" No difficulty, not even
scorn, could daunt him. But it was an uphill road. Be
tween classes he spent his time modeling, using as model
anyone who was willing to pose for him. To make his
touch surer he would work with his eyes bandaged. To
fill in the education which he knew to be lacking he read
assiduously, especially the books that would help him in
his chosen profession.
The boy sculptor finally mustered up courage to bring
one of his bas-reliefs to Rude, the sculptor, who was so
impressed by the evident talent displayed in the work that
he opened his studio to the youth. Rude may be consid
ered the first master of Carpeaux. Carpeaux remained
there eight months and learned much from this teacher,
for whom he always had the greatest respect.
From his fifteenth to his twentieth year the life of
Carpeaux was one continual struggle for existence. His
father had come to Paris with his family to seek his for
tune, but had retired with them to Versailles. The young
sculptor, alone in the great city, needed all the strength
of his urging genius to keep 'him from abandoning his
quest. There were long months of complete abandonment,
of misery, of sickness. To earn his daily bread he per
formed the most menial labor. Not only did he have to
earn his own living, but the human vultures with whom
he associated preyed upon him. It was an ugly period in
the life of Carpeaux when he found his friends in the
Paris underworld. There was little study then. He mod
eled bits and sold them. He worked by day and attended
class by night. The character of his associates, the evil
life he was leading, were not conducive to the formation
of a great artist. For seven years the youth had wasted
his body, his health, his heart, his brain. He saw at last
that he never would advance in Paris under such condi
tions, and to be free of it all he went back to his native

140 GREAT PENITENTS
city, where he found hospitality in a fine family of artists.
There he remained for a year and accomplished some
really good work.
The following year he obtained a pension of six hundred
francs, which permitted him to resume his studies at
Paris under much more hopeful conditions than during
his former residence there. He again studied with Rude,
but Rude, anxious to advance his pupil, sent him to Durer,
under whom he knew he would make greater progress.
Carpeaux was in earnest and he did advance. In 1851
we find him teaching anatomy at the petit ecole, where
he himself had studied. With his indomitable energy he
took part in all the contests of the Ecole des Beaux Arts
and succeeded in winning many prizes. Characteristic of
his work in those days were the many models he made of
children. He always had a special love for the little ones.
In fact Carpeaux, spite of his evident failings, was always
a child at heart.
In September, 1854, he obtained the grand prix, and
on this occasion his native city gave him a reception. The
son of the poor mason must have felt a thrill of pride as
he returned in triumph to the city where his childhood
had known so many hardships. But the rose was not
without its thorn. His eyes began to trouble him to
such an extent that he feared he was going to lose his
sight. Happily the trouble passed and the year 1858 finds
him entering upon his studies at Rome at the age of
twenty-eight. His talent, his genius for hard work, had
at last established him in the world. Up to now it had
been a hard struggle for recognition, a struggle against
poverty; fortune at last smiled upon him. The years at
Rome were years of hard work. Nor were they without
their struggles. Sometimes he was discouraged, and then
he would find his greatest help in the little mother whom
he always loved so tenderly. Thus, October 16, 1858, he
wrote in reference to a period of discouragement: "My

J. B. CARPEAUX 141
mother consoled me. She restored to me by her letters
the hope I had lost. She gave me courage and I went
back to work."
Shortly after Carpeaux nearly died at Naples. As a
result of the attack he was ill a long time, and came back
to Valenciennes to recuperate in 1860. But once more
he returned to Rome, where he remained hard at work for
seven years. It was there he met with his first colossal
success in his famous group of Ugolini. Everybody in
Rome came to see what was regarded as a masterpiece.
When the work was sent to Paris for exhibition the French
did not think so highly of it. But in time the adverse
criticism was overcome, and today the Ugolini is consid
ered one of the great works of the age.
The now famous sculptor returned to France in the
spring of 1862, but for some reason or other he was dis
gusted with his native country and thought of going back
at once to Rome. He went north instead, and after a
short sojourn in Belgium came back to France again.
Carpeaux, though he had drunk deep of the cup of life,
though his life was far from being an innocent one, was
not the "Voltairian deist" which one of his biographers
would make him out to be. He never lost his faith, even
though he was for many years a stranger to the practices
of religion. When he was working for the prix de Rome
he entered one day the church of Saint Sulpice to pray.
When he was leaving he remarked simply, "The Virgin
has promised me that if I worked hard I would get the
prize." Asked about his beliefs, he replied once, "I love
with naivete, I believe with all the forces of my soul, and
I adore with recollection all that elevates one to God."
Many times he said, when questioned about religion, "Oh,
me? I am a believer." His friends used to say of him
that he was "mad with Catholicism." Later on in 1867
he said to one of his students, "If ever I am sick, don't
forget to go and get me a priest."

142 GREAT PENITENTS
Carpeaux was always noted for his charity. The story
is told that one evening in 1872 the body of a drowned
man was taken from the river. The attempts to revive
him were vain; he was declared dead. But Carpeaux
brought the body to his home and for six hours breathed
into the man, mouth to mouth, and finally saved him. He
was even full of tenderness for animals. One day his dog
wounded one of her pups so that the entrails were falling
out. The great sculptor threaded a needle and sewed up
the wound. Many a struggling artist owed his success in
life to Carpeaux's helping hand.
The great cloud came upon Carpeaux's life with his
marriage. In 1864 he had written to a friend of his: "I
lose from day to day the desire of struggle because my
powers weaken and my will goes. Today I have only the
desire to be able to raise pigs, charming chickens, to have
a horse, a cow, and especially a wife, whom my art has
always refused me, to find refuge in truth and the true
life." At last his art allowed him to take a wife, and on
April 28, 1869, he thought that his cup of joy was full
in his marriage with Amelie de Montfort, the daughter of
the Governor General of the Palace of Luxembourg. The
wedding was celebrated with great pomp at the Church
of the Madeleine. But the cup of joy was soon dashed from
his lips. The marriage was an unhappy one.
Through hard struggle. Carpeaux had reached his posi
tion in the world, and then suddenly came the crash which
broke him in twain physically but which happily saved
his soul. He had arrived at full maturity of his powers,
a man with a soul of fire, with a noble intellect, with at
least twenty years of activity ahead of him, when suddenly
the blow fell that made him a hopeless invalid and robbed
French art of one of its greatest glories.
During the Commune he had sought refuge in London
and there continued his work. But the fatal disease was
working at him. In 1874 he determined to go to Russia,

J. B. CARPEAUX 143
but got no further than Brussels, where he became seri
ously ill. His friend, Alexandre Dumas, came to bring
him home. He returned to Auteuil and remained there
for a while. He wandered then to other places, seeking
his lost health, but all the while he was very ill. "I suf
fer with patience," he wrote. He had sore need of pa
tience. His sufferings were frightful, day and night. He
could not even sleep to forget his afflictions. He wanted
to go to Italy once more, thinking that there he might find
peace from suffering. But he got no farther than Paris.
It was evident that he was slowly dying. His sufferings
increased daily. "What can I say of myself," he wrote,
"except that I am lost? I suffer without respite. That
which I endure, that which I suffer, that which I cry is
impossible to describe. No one can help me." He was
reduced to skin and bone, but he was still patient. "I
submit to the will of Heaven," he said, "which has decided
about my last hour."
There were mental as well as physical sufferings. In
the midst of his pain he was informed that a judgment
had been given to his wife against him. She had divorced
him. He was dispossessed of all he owned. He was then
staying at Nice. The greatest sorrow of all was to be
deprived of his son, Charles, whom he loved devotedly.
Carpeaux had three children, but he cared only for the
first born, Charles. He begged to have Charles, but the
wife, to whom the custody of the children was given, told
him that he must take the three or none.
The faith that had been put aside during the years of
success was making its appeal to the man who was facing
death. During his illness at Nice he succeeded in going
to Mass every Sunday. He was ready to come home as
the prodigal son ; he needed but a tender hand to set him
on the road.
As we have said before, Carpeaux was not the shame
less and cynical artist, the Voltairian deist, that some

144 GREAT PENITENTS
thought him. He had come from a thoroughly Catholic
home, where his youth had been a model one in the Broth
ers' school, and later on during his first studies at Paris.
The relative with whom he lived in those days at Paris
used to tell of the long prayers he said morning and night,
filled with devotion. The Parisian life, the company of
young artists, brought about his fall into a career of sin,
but through it all he kept the faith. At Rome he had
been received by Pius IX, who gave him a medal. After
wards he wanted to go back to Rome to see the Holy
Father, for, said he, "I love him much and venerate him."
As a tribute to him he wanted to make his bust. It was
this faith that at the first stroke of sickness made him
resolve to return to God. A help to that end was, no doubt,
his great charity to the poor. He never refused an appli
cant for charity ; he would bring the poor to eat at his table,
and would even scatter handfuls of silver and gold to
them. There were two young Bretons who worked in his
studio. Their strong faith and piety pleased and im
pressed him. "How happy you are," he said. "You have
only holy passions. I venerate you."
One day a visitor said to him, "I have no belief."
"Well," said Carpeaux, "I do not think as you. I believe,
and this belief is my strength." On the eve of his mar
riage he received Holy Communion with his wife.
He said that the two most beautiful days of his life
were those of his first Communion and his marriage.
When Carpeaux became ill most of his boon companions
left him, but the two Bretons remained faithful to him.
One of them was particularly dear to him.
"Do you believe," said Carpeaux to him, "that the
good God could pardon such a great sinner as I have been ?
How could God show me mercy ? No, it is impossible !"
"You deceive yourself," said the young Breton. "See
St. Augustine. He was a great sinner and yet God par-

J. B. CARPEAUX 145
doned him, and he became a great saint. You should not
doubt the mercy of God."
"Oh, St. Augustine!" said Carpeaux. "I love him
with all my heart. I would like to read his life."
At another time he said: "I deserve all my sufferings.
How I have offended God in my life ! How can you wish
me to confess ? I am too guilty. God cannot pardon me."
And again the Breton tried to convince the despairing
man of the mercy of God to sinners.
Again he said: "If I return to life I promise God to
do as much good as I have done evil. For with a little
sketch of an hour or two I could solace the misery of my
poor." Day by day suffering was bringing the light to his soul.
"I perceive every day," said he, "that I am a great sinner."
"My greatest suffering on my bed of pain," he said to
his Breton friend, "is to have abandoned my religious
duties. If you wish to be happy always, be Christian

One day the Breton brought to him a Capuchin priest.
Carpeaux took the priest's hand and held it during the
entire interview which lasted an hour. It was with deep
humility he said : "If I had always lived as a good monk
I would have become the equal of Michael Angelo."
Michael Angelo was his great ideal.
These were the sentiments of Carpeaux when Prince
Stirbey met him at Nice. The Prince, who was destined
to be the instrument to lead the great sculptor back to
God, had never before met Carpeaux. He had bought
the sculptor's last group — the Amour Blesse. Seeing him
so ill he offered him the hospitality of his villa near Cour-
bevoie, and during the stay at Nice got two Sisters of
Charity to come and care for the new friend whose genius
he had long admired.
As soon as the sick man came to the villa Prince Stirbey

146 GREAT PENITENTS
surrounded him with every possible attention. Once more
the dying man made an attempt to get better. He sub
mitted to four painful operations in seventeen days. But
it was hopeless. He was doomed to die, and even the joy
that came to him with the receiving of the cross of officer
of the Legion of Honor that August did not drive the fear
of death from him. "How hard it is to die," he exclaimed.
The Prince was a devout Catholic himself and he saw
the man's danger. He wanted him to make his peace with
God, but he did not know how to suggest the matter to his
guest. God showed the way. A little child shall lead
them. A god-child of the Prince, a little girl, came to
visit him at Courbevoie. She had just made her first
Communion at Paris. Carpeaux loved children, and the
Prince determined to make use of that affection in order
to win him to prepare for death. The child was soon
admitted into the affectionate heart of the dying man, and
she said to him: "Will you give me a great joy, Monsieur
Carpeaux ?"
"Surely, my dear," he replied.
"I receive tomorrow," she replied simply. "Will you
receive with me ?"
Carpeaux was silent for a moment as he reflected on
her words. "But I am not ready," he replied at last.
"Oh, if it is only that," she replied, "that will be fixed
soon — my confessor is so good!"
She returned to Paris at once to seek her confessor. He
was not at the Madeleine at the time, but in her childish
wisdom she brought back another priest and to him Car
peaux made his confession. The next day they received
side by side in the church at Courbevoie, Carpeaux being
carried thither at his urgent request so as not to disappoint
the child.
After that Carpeaux had many conversations with the
priest. He went to confession several times. His last
confession he made September 29, and there on the ter-

J. B. CARPEAUX 147
race of the Chateau de Becon received Extreme Unction
and Viaticum. He himself answered the prayers of the
priest with deep piety. He kissed the crucifix many times.
"Oh," said he, "how they treated him! Ah, if I regain
my health I will make a crucifix better than that." Again
and again then he kissed the sign of redemption.
In the first days of October the terrible agony began.
His poor mother was faithful to the end. She and his
father were with him as he passed into the dark valley.
He thought of his son, Charles, and grieved that he could
not see him before he died. His cries then were agonizing.
"La vie, la vie!" he called. And then: "O my mother,
my little mother, I love you with all my heart." They
were his last words.
Carpeaux died October 12, 1875. His death was a
great loss to the art which he had so nobly fostered. How
great that loss was considered was shown by the wonderful
outpouring at his funeral, where artists, authors, all of
the intellectual world vied with the people in doing him
honor. The solemn funeral services were held at the
church at Courbevoie. Later on the body was removed
to his native city, Valenciennes, the "Athens of the North,"
as it was called, and after the solemn religious services
was laid to rest amid the tributes of those who knew
that here was a great man.
For a great man Carpeaux was — a great, big, tender
soul — a great a,rtist whose fame shall ever endure. But
more than all he was the great penitent who gave testimony
that all is vanity except to love God and serve Him alone.

FRANCOIS COPPEE
SOME years ago a Frenchman, Jules Sageret, wrote
a book on Les Grands Convertis — the four great
French writers whose return to God had amazed
the Parisian public. The converts were Bourget, Brune-
tiere, Coppee and Huysmans. Sageret rather belittled
these conversions. He explained the psychology of them
according to his own preconceptions and dismissed all by
declaring curtly that the religious experiences of these
men were of no avail as a tribute to the truth of Catholi
cism, and of no influence whatever on French literature.
So he dismisses Coppee's conversion as a purely personal
matter, concerning no one but the poet himself. We
fancy that in like manner Augustine was dismissed when
he left his Manichean friends. How contemptuously they
must have thrown aside the "Confessions" of their former
defender ! Thus speaks M. Sageret : "There are few of
his verses which a Catholic author could not sign. One
could not find in them any that smack of the free-thinker.
The conversion of M. Coppee rests indifferent to literature.
It is then in a word only an affair purely individual."
That is, indeed, how Coppee himself regarded his con
version — an individual matter. That is how Huysmans,
so long doubted even by good men, regarded his ; that is
how all penitents regard their conversion. It is the Lord
Himself who asks, "What doth it profit a man if he gain
the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul ?" But
just because the conversion was so individual, its story
has power over the hearts of others ; Coppee's "La Bonne
Souffrance," simple as it is, will always have its place
148

FRANCOIS COPPEE 149
among the greatest of all books — those written out of souls.
A book that has gone into nearly one hundred and fifty edi
tions must be about something more than an affair purely
individual. Frangois Edouard Joachim Coppee was born at Paris
January 26, 1842. From a worldly point of view it was
not much of a family. His great-grandmother on his
father's side belonged to a noble family of Lorraine and
had two brothers who served in the army of the king. But
that had been a long time ago. The blue blood of the pa
ternal ancestry was of no more interest than the very red
blood of Baudrit, the locksmith, the father of Coppee's
mother, a firm patriot he, who had exercised his trade dur
ing the Revolution in making pikes. But the Coppees
wasted no time in tracing ancestral lines. They were too
busy trying to make a living for their family. Thus in
his sketch — Adieux a Une Maison — after telling of the
pain one must feel in leaving a house that has been part of
one's very life, Coppee confesses : "I have not known this
rending. My poor parents, laborious bees of the great city,
occupied in turn one or other of those hives which are
the houses of Paris. Often they had to change their shel
ter; and all that is left of them to me are — humble relics,
indeed — two or three very old pieces of furniture saved
from the dismantlings."
Humble home though it was, it was the place where
Coppee the Catholic as well as Coppee the poet was formed.
And one could no more neglect his parents in the study
of his conversion than one could eliminate from the life
of St. Augustine the influence of his mother, St. Monica.
Coppee's father was a man of high ideals, a man who
might have been a poet himself had he had the opportunity.
But hard work was his portion of life. He held a small
clerkship in the War Department, a place to which by his
natural talents he was far superior. But true as he was
to the traditions of old France and out of sympathy with

150 GREAT PENITENTS
new movements he got no advancement. He was, however,
passionately fond of literature, an evident influence in the
career of his son. Whatever the accomplishments of the
man, he was first of all the true, practical Catholic. It
was religion that formed his character and made him, as
his son describes him, "pure, humble, and fearing God."
This is the picture which that grateful son paints of him :
"This man of duty, this poor man, proud and pure,
had to have patient and Christian resignation to gain our
bread, a daily task, and to deprive himself of everything
without ever complaining." We get a picture, too, of the
good man telling the little Frangois stories, sacred stories
especially, which were to be of service later on in the reli
gious experiences of the poet. He was a gentle being ; and
from him the poet who was to be known as "the poet of the
humble" got his love for the little ones, the humble ones,
and his horror of violence and brute force. More than that
he got from him the piety which slept during the years of
sin and wanderings far from God, but which came to life
again in the days of sorrow to bring back the penitent to
the cross. Thus the poet :
"And I feel on my lips, surprised, once more
The prayers he taught in the days of yore."
If Coppee owed much to his father, he owed still more
to his mother. It was she, he says, who made him a poet.
The mother of eight children, four of whom died in in
fancy, she had her share of the world's hard work. But
no one ever heard her complain. She was always gay,
always singing and laughing at her work, always hopeful
and full of energy, and her system of meeting new trou
bles in the days when poverty and sickness pressed hard on
the little family was to increase her good humor. No
wonder Coppee loved her. There is in all literature noth
ing more beautiful than his tribute to her in La Bonne
Souffrance, his souvenir filial, as he turns the pages of
the "Life of St. Louis" which she, as a little girl, had won

FRANCOIS COPPEE 151
as a school prize, and from which he had got his first lessons
in spelling. Far back as he could remember she had al
ways been the old mother. "My mother," he writes, "was
nearly forty years old when she brought me into the world.
They say that in her youth she had much freshness and
brightness ; but the only portrait of her that exists is one
that was made a few years before her death, and in the
lowest depths of my memory her beloved face never ap
pears to me but as one already touched with age. Those
who have known their mother as young and beautiful, can
they find a particular sweetness in so recalling her? I
know not. But in my opinion they are privileged whose
first glances saw leaning over their cradle a face marred
by life's fatigue, and to whom their mother always seemed
an old mother. The remembrance they keep of her is,
if not more dear, at least more sacred, and that veneration
which old age has is added to the august dignity which
motherhood has."
Thus Coppee had reason to be grateful for the home of
his youth. It was a home made sacred by hard work, a
home where all was guided by religion ; in a word, a truly
Christian home. Even when he knew it not the association
with these wonderful parents of his was exercising an
eternal influence on his life. He needed such influence.
Of a frail and delicate constitution, of a nervous energy,
and made to learn very early both physical and moral suf-
feringj compelled to face the sorrows and disappointments
of life, he needed the faith of those loved ones — even
though for years that was but an unconscious power in his
life — to enable him to accomplish the work which has
brought lasting glory to himself and to those who were
content to be known as the humble Coppees.
Coppee was never a brilliant student at school. When
it came time for him to begin his education in earnest he
was sent to the Hortus, and afterwards, when he was four
teen, to the St. Louis Lyceum. But the father remained

152 GREAT PENITENTS
his mentor still. Under his eyes Frangois studied his
lessons, at times rewarded with a story or a song from his
father, while the proud mother sat nearby sewing, and
the two elder sisters read, or worked at the restoration of
old paintings. Those days of family life are described in
his book Toute Une Jeunesse — which he says is no more
an autobiography — and we would like to say, no less —
than "David Copperfield." He was perfectly happy at
home, preferring the company of his mother and three
sisters to that of boys of his own age. Even then the po
etic instinct was strong, though at the time he knew noth
ing of the making of verses. School had little attraction.
He liked rather to walk the streets, to visit the museums,
to read real books, to lounge in the gardens of the Luxem
bourg, reveling in the flowers and the sunsets.
So the schools days passed till the close of the third year
at the Lyceum. The elder Coppee's health began to fail,
due to an affection of the brain, and it was necessary to put
him in a sanitarium. It meant the end of school to
Frangois. He saw his duty clear, to go out into the world
and become the breadwinner of the family. He got a
clerkship in an architect's office, and at once showed him
self so efficient that his employer urged him to prepare
for admission to the school of Fine Arts. At the same
time during his leisure he drew plans for contractors,
and in this way added to the small income of the family.
It was a time of trial, but the experience was of lasting
benefit. One thing it did for the youth was to make him
appreciate the education he had been obliged to give up.
He became more studious out of school than he had been
as a student. He became more interested in literature,
read a great deal, and night after night when his work
was done he would be found in the library of Ste. Gene
vieve pursuing his interrupted classics. Architectural
work was not pleasing to the young poet, for he was then
expressing his soul in verse, though nothing had as yet

FRANCOIS COPPEE 153
been published by him. He gave up his intention of pre
paring for the school of Fine Arts and got a position in
the War Department, where he remained for two years,
while spending his leisure as formerly in study and in
making verses.
Evidently, Coppee's youth was not a glad one. Dur
ing those six years there was sorrow in the home, due to
the condition of his father, who finally succumbed to his
affliction of paralysis of the brain and ended his Christian
life among his loved ones, carefully and lovingly attended
through the trying years by the devoted wife.
Frangois, twenty years of age, was now actually the
head of the family. It was his to shoulder the burden.
One sister had married, another had died at the age of
twenty-two. There remained the old mother and his sister
Annette, who never married but was her brother's com
panion to the end, his devoted admirer, sympathizer and
adviser. She died but a few days before him.
It was shortly after the death of his father that the ama
teur versifier had the good luck to meet Catulle Mendes,
the poet, in 1863. Mendes thus describes him as he was
in those days: "Very young, thin enough, pale, a refined
air, timid eyes which looked around him; a scanty coat,
new, however, and very up to date; he had the air of a
commercial clerk or a clerk in the ministry, and at the
same time the elegance of his features, the ironic grace of
his smile with something sweet and a bit sad in it, Pari
sian in all his bearing, would make one notice him."
Mendes did not know then that his new acquaintance
wrote poetry. One day Coppee got the courage to bring
to him the manuscript of verses which he had called Les
Flaws Mortelles. Mendes thought the verses remarkable
for a beginner and asked Coppee to bring to him all that
he had written. Delighted, the budding poet brought his
reams of verse, and Mendes had the patience to read all.
His decision to Coppee was that the whole of it was ex-

154 GREAT PENITENTS
ecrable and that the author did not know the first prin
ciples of his trade.
"All right," said Coppee, "you teach me then" ; and
in all humility he threw into the fire the fruit of his
years of toil.
And Mendes did teach him. He was a good mentor for
the aspiring poet. It was a time of poetic revival in
France, the days of the Parnassus, a group of young poets
bound together by ties of friendship but severe in the
criticism of one another's work. They used to meet at
the home of Mendes. There one would see Jose Maria
de Heredia, Leon Dierx, Albert Glatigny, Leon Cladel,
Villiers de l'lsle — Adam, Albert Merat, Leon Valade,
Georges Lafenestre, E. des Essarts, and sometimes Sully
Prudhomme. Later on this group united with another
which included Paul Verlaine. Helped by this school
of writers, and especially by Mendes, Coppee published
in 1866 at his own expense his first volume — Le Reli-
quaire, and in the year following Les Intimites. At once
he was recognized by literary people as a true poet with
a charm of his own. But it was a local, a limited fame.
It was only when he tried his hand at dramatic poetry
that he succeeded in becoming a celebrity. This was with
his play, Le Passant, produced in 1869 at the Odeon,
beautiful verse, indeed, but in no small way helped to
success by the wonderful talents of the actresses, Agar and
Bernhardt. In his usual humility the author gave most
of the credit to them, but, whatever the case, Coppee woke
up one morning to find himself famous. He was regarded
as a genius. At last his life was to be made easier. Theo-
phile Gautier presented him to Princess Mathilde, the
"good princess" as she was called, who received him in
her salon with the poets and other great men of the day.
She also rendered him a more practical service in obtain
ing for him a position in the library of the Senate, for
which he received a good salary, which provided for the

FRANCOIS COPPEE 155
needs of those at home and gave him leisure for the de
velopment of his poetic talents.
Surely there was joy in the heart of the old mother at
this beginning of success. Anatole France writes: "We
know that Madame Coppee saw the first glimmers of the
celebrity of her son. The friends of that good time re
call, in the modest and flower-filled home of the Rue
Rousselet on the morning following the Passant, the joy
that illumined the countenance of that brave woman."
But the joy did not last long. For six weeks the young
poet, now a figure in Paris, enjoyed his new fame. Then
with scarcely a warning he became seriously ill, suffering
from fever and bronchitis and threatened with consump
tion. Life that had been so sweet was now so bitter!
Yesterday fame, today the approach of death to end it all ;
for Coppee was ordered away for the winter, and he him
self, as all his friends, thought that the end was near.
It was, though he knew it not, a grace from God, but
at this time he rejected the grace. For the young poet, as
he himself confesses later on with tears, was in those, his
days of success, a sinner. He was a victim of impurity,
had been such from his early youth, and had even given
evidence of it in some of his early poems. Long ago he had
lost his innocence, and with his innocence had gone his
faith. The first evil step taken, and unconfessed, the slip
pery path was easy to follow. Immorality was but a neces
sary experience of life ; the consorting with evil women but
a help to the singing of love ! The loss of faith as a conse
quence of immorality is thus described by him in the
preface to La Bonne Souffrance :
"I was brought up," he writes, "in a Christian manner,
and after my first Communion I fulfilled my religious
duties for several years with a fresh fervor. It was, I
say it frankly, the crisis of adolescence and the shame to
make certain avowals which made me give up my practices
of piety. Many men who are in the same case will agree,

156 GREAT PENITENTS
if they are sincere, that that which first separates them
from religion is the hard rule which it imposes on all in
regard to the senses, and that later on they only ask from
reason and science the metaphysical arguments which
permit them to free themselves of all restraint. For me at
least such was the case. I ceased to practice my religion
from shame, and all my evil came from this first fault
against humility, which seems to me decidedly the most
necessary of all the virtues. This step taken, I did not
fail to read on the way many books, to hear many words,
and to see many examples destined to convince me that
nothing is more legitimate for man than to obey his pride
and sensuality ; and quickly I became almost indifferent to
all religious feeling. My case, you see, is a very vulgar
one. It was the cheap desertion of the soldier from disci
pline. I did not, surely, hate the banner under which I
had served; I had fled from it and forgotten it, that was
all." During that first illness grace was trying to enter the
heart of the impure, bad Catholic. He tells us that always
the thought of dying without the priest was terrible to him.
But he turned his mind to poetry even in his illness and
gave no heed to the affairs of his soul. In the April of
1870 he met with a second great success in the theatre with
the production of his Deux Douleurs, a success which doubt
less contributed no little to the restoration of his health.
Then came the War of 1870, and we find him shouldering
the gun of the national guard, while at the same time he
gave his best talents to the production of patriotic poetry
which brought him new popularity. A new success in the
theatre gave him an assured position among the dramatists,
and he also proved by his Une Idylle Pendant Le Siege
and in subsequent books that he was a master of prose as
well as of poetry. But Coppee's true fame came to him
in 1872 with the publication of Les Humbles, poetry of the

FRANCOIS COPPEE 157
people and for the people. It gave him his name of "Poet
of the Humble," and sealed him as a true poet.
Surely the poet's father would have rejoiced could he
have foreseen what fruit would be born by his lessons in
love for the lowly. But he would have grieved, too, had he
seen how far this fame would take his child away from
God. For Coppee restored to health, and become a popular
idol, was again the Coppee whose life was such that he was
afraid to go to confession. Back he went to his mistresses
and his sins. There was little thought then of the terrible
misfortune of dying unshriven. Even the death of his
idolized mother in 1874, while it almost drove him to
despair, did not shock him out of his immoralities. "I
have been," he wrote, "the witness of this simple and
noble life, and it is, I am sure, because I have grown up
near this admirable woman who had all strength and gentle
ness, that the flower of sensibility blooms in my heart and
in my imagination, and that I have become a poet."
Rather a pagan memorial, one would say, but it was the
memorial of one who had lost touch with grace. Later on,
when he came back to the faith which had made his mother
truly great, he wrote thus with all the sensibility of the true
Catholic soul:
"When she died she was seventy-one years old and I
was thirty-three. I was then a man — a man who had lived,
worked, had pleasure, suffered, gone through the flame of
passions many times, a man who doubtless had been faith
ful to his principal duties, but guilty of many faults, alas,
and without innocence. Certainly my mother knew it.
She had known how to encourage my efforts, how to excuse
my weaknesses ; she had her share in my joys, and coun
seled me in the hours of distress. But if, woman of manly
intelligence, and of a judgment high and sure, she spoke
to me as to a man when I asked her advice, I became to
her — adorable illusion! her child, her poor little child

158 GREAT PENITENTS
when I had need only of her love." "How many suffer
ings," he writes again, "how many sorrows I have caused
her, that adorable woman. Not that she could ever doubt
for a single instant my respect and my love, God forbid !
But one is young, one falls foul of life driven by the fierce
wind of desire, and one forgets that there is at the family
hearth, and all too often abandoned, a poor old mother —
full of indulgence, indeed, who scarcely dares to address
to her big son a timid reproach, but who is alarmed at the
dangers he courts, who suffers at seeing him lose his white
ness, his purity — and who weeps. May this page fall
under the eyes of some young man and stop him at the edge
of a serious fall ! If he knew what bitterness it is for the
soul later on, toward the end of life, to think that though
he has not been a bad man, though he may have nothing
serious to reproach himself with, yet he has made his
mother weep !"
But it was only afterwards that Coppee reproached him
self for the pain he had given his mother by his life of sin
and lack of faith. It was not to religion he turned for
solace at her death, but to poetry. His heart was far from
conversion. He worked hard with his pen and produced
many important works which in 1876 won for him the
cross of the Legion of Honor. That same year he gave to
the stage of the Comedie Frangaise le Luthier De Cre-
mone which was a great success then and still holds an hon
ored place in the repertoire of that institution. That same
year, too, the poet fell in love with a girl of seventeen
whom he had met at Geneva. He sought to marry her, but
the girl's mother, a widow who had fancied that the famous
poet had been smitten with herself, was indignant at the
proposal and hurried her daughter off from what she was
now pleased to regard the contaminating presence of this
man. How deep the attachment was it is hard to say now,
even though the poet's biographers see in his subsequent
poetry the results of his pure and unrequited love. It

FRANCOIS COPPEE 159
furnished him with an ideal — in poetry; it did not turn
him to the task of cleaning out his defiled soul.
One need not go into the details of those mature years
of Coppee's genius. New books of poems, new plays, so
many and so successful that he seemed to have devoted
himself entirely to the theatre, and then the masterly
critiques of the drama which from 1880 he contributed to
Patrie at the time he was librarian-archivist of the Come-
die, a position he resigned later on account of a falling out
with the actor Coquelin. His excellent literary work
caused him to be elected a member of the French Academy
in 1S84. The honor only spurred him on to new zeal in
writing. His productivity was marvelous. He wrote
everything and adorned everything he touched — comedy,
drama, lyric, poetry, descriptive poetry, elegy, lieder,
romance, short story, novel, critique, articles, prefaces ; the
entire field of literature was his, and when in 1892 he
was made commander of the Legion of Honor, his readers,
innumerable truly, for he was the poet of all social classes,
agreed that he well deserved the distinction.
In a worldly sense this was the crowning of the poet of
the humble. But the most glorious event in the life of
Coppee was the spiritual victory which he won over him
self and which led him back to God. He himself calls the
memorable year of 1897 the time of his return to God.
"Oh, it was cruel to me that year 1897 ! Is it not, I ask
myself, the worst of my life ? No, no, O my God, it is the
best." Surely the best for his soul, for in that year he
refound his Catholic faith. In the preface to La Bonne
Souffrance, that beautiful book which was the result of
his conversion, he relates the experiences of his soul. After
telling how he had lost the faith by his immorality he pro
ceeds to give the account of its refinding: "Today when
I have refound the faith I ask myself if I had ever abso
lutely lost it. One will meet in my writings some rare
pages which I disown and detest, where I have spoken of

160 GREAT PENITENTS
religious things with a foolish lightness, sometimes even
with the most culpable boldness ; one will seek in vain for
a blasphemy. When by chance I entered a church, respect
met me on the threshold and accompanied me to the altar.
Always the ceremonies of the worship moved me by their
venerable character of antiquity, their harmonious pomp,
their solemn and penetrating poetry. Never did I put my
finger in the cold water of the holy water stoup without
trembling with a strange shiver which was perhaps that of
remorse." A little of the Christian faith, he thinks, al
ways slept at the bottom of his heart, as evident in the res
ignation with which he met the disappointments of life,
its poverty and misery, which never drew from him a cry
of rebellion.
"This conversion, as it is fitting to call it," he writes,
"was rapid without a doubt, but not quite sudden nor
accompanied by extraordinary circumstances. Yet I ought
to attribute it to Divine grace; for when I compare my
moral state of other days to that in which I have found
myself for some months now, I am astounded before such a
change and it seems to me miraculous. The benefit which
I have gathered is within the reach of all. To obtain it,
it is sufficient to demand it with a humble and submissive
heart." Often in the days when Coppee had withdrawn himself
from the presence of God he was tormented by the prob
lems of life and death, of pain and tears. None of the
solutions offered by men had satisfied him ; he had thought
it absurd to think that good or evil done in this life would
have consequences only in this life. Thus he always felt
the need of God. "My conscience," he says, "especially for
some years, became more exacting. Every time that I
happened to think of my last end, to judge myself as one
day God would judge me, I was not content with myself.
When I reviewed my past I often had to blush, and I
felt weighing me down the heavy burden of my sins. By

FRANCOIS COPPEE 161
weakness, by cowardice, I did not reform my conduct ; but
it is necessary to believe, I repeat, that there was in me
a foundation of Christianity, for often in thought I made
a sort of act of contrition ; and that there was also a foun
dation of Catholicism, for every death seemed terrible to
me which was not preceded by a confession and an abso
lution." How the conversion came about is best described in
Coppee's own words. "The God of indulgence and of good
ness," he writes, "reserved for me something better than a
hasty and trembling repentance in extremis. In the month
of January, 1897, during a sojourn at Pau where, suffer
ing for several months, I had fled the winter, I suddenly
had to summon my surgeon from Paris and submit to a
serious operation. I then made myself perfectly under
stand the danger which threatened me, and I prayed the
excellent Dominican Sister who watched at my bedside —
and to whom I have given a remembrance in this book —
to go and get a confessor in case my condition became
worse. But my friend, Doctor Duchastelet, saved my
life that first time, and I thought no more of anything but
the speedy and complete cure which was promised me. The
warning was clear to me, but it was not heeded, and I blush
today in recalling my culpable indifference and my foolish
levity. . . . The improvement in my physical condition
was of short duration. At the beginning of the month of
June a new attack more severe than the first set me again
at the threshold of death. This relapse condemned me
to keep a suffering immovability for many days. The
sufferings were terrible. Then only did my soul turn to
graver thoughts. Judging myself with a scrupulous sever
ity, I was disgusted with myself, I was horrified at myself,
and this time the priest came, he to whom this book is
dedicated. I had known him a long time, but not inti
mately. In meeting him at the house of friends I had
been charmed only by his exquisite gentleness and his rare

162 GREAT PENITENTS
distinction of soul. He is now one of the men whom I
love most in the world, my dear counselor, the intimate
visitor of my soul, and my father in Jesus Christ. I con
fessed to him in tears of the most sincere repentance, I
received absolution with an ineffable comfort. But when
the priest spoke of bringing Holy Communion to me, I
hesitated, full of trouble, not feeling myself worthy of
the sacrament. The danger of death was not imminent. The
man of God did not insist. 'Pray only,' said he, 'and read
the Gospel.' During the weeks and months passed in
bed and in my room, I have lived with the Gospel; and
little by little each line of the holy book has become living
for me and has convinced me that it speaks the truth. Yes,
in all the words of the Gospel I have seen the truth shine
as a star, I have felt it beat as a heart. How disbelieve
henceforth in miracles and mysteries when there was ac
complished in me a transformation so deep and so mys
terious ? For my soul was blind to the light of faith, and
now it sees it in all its splendor; it was deaf to the word
of God, and today it hears it in its persuasive softness;
it was paralyzed by indifference, and now it lifts itself to
the heavens with all its power of flight; and the impure
demons that troubled it and possessed it are forever put
to flight. You shrug your shoulders, proud ones swelled
up with vain learning. What difference to me? I will
not even ask you to explain to me how the word of a hum
ble workman of Galilee confided by him to some poor
people with the command to teach it to all nations, re
sounds victoriously yet after nineteen centuries wherever
man is no more a barbarian. All that I know is that this
same word, heard and understood by me in cruel hours,
had that prodigious virtue to make me love my sufferings.
I go forth from trial physically weak and destined to sub
mit probably to the end to the slavery of an infirmity very
painful. But because I have read and meditated on the
Gospel my heart is not only resigned but full of calm and

FRANCOIS COPPEE 163
courage. Not two years ago, having still some health, but
experiencing already the first attacks of age, I saw with
terror old age coming, solitary old age, with its cortege
of sadness, disgust and regrets. Today let it come upon
me prematurely; I embrace it with firmness, let me say
almost with joy, for if I do not ask for sufferings and
death, at least I do not fear them, having learned in the
Gospel the art of suffering and dying."
When Coppee did submit it was an entire submission,
the submission of a little child ready to be told what to
do. "A compelling desire," he says, "pushed me towards
God. I did not resist. I let myself be led; in a word,
I have obeyed, and today I taste the delights of obedience."
Answering those who used to say to him that nothing
in him seemed changed since his conversion, he writes:
"They only prove in this way how impenetrable man is to
man; for I myself know very well that I have become
another man. It is clear that the fact of saying my prayers
morning and night, of going to church on Sundays and
holy days and fulfilling my religious duties has not sensi
bly modified my apparent life. Clearly one does not read
on my forehead either the reforms which I have been able
to effect in my actions and my thoughts, or the resistance
which now I oppose to the temptations to which formerly
I would have succumbed. It is, nevertheless, the exact
truth. That they do not find me changed — I am not
astonished at that after all ; for my progress in the Chris
tian life, that is to say towards moral perfection, is still
very weak. However, I have become as severe as possible
with myself ; those whom I loved I love better and other
wise than formerly, and make constant efforts to become
more charitable, better. Yet, notwithstanding the too
numerous defects in my conduct, and that of which I
accuse myself with more sorrow — in spite of some last
attacks of doubt and dryness of heart, I displease myself
less than formerly, and very often when I think of the

164 GREAT PENITENTS
saddened days which remain for me to live and the death
that approaches I experience a sentiment of sweetness
which surprises myself. This peace of soul is obtained
only by the admirable discipline of religion, by the exam
ination of the conscience and by prayer. Thus I have no
better moments than those wherein I address myself to God,
in offering to Him the repentance for my past sins and all
my good will for the future, and wherein I ask of Him
that peace which He has promised to us in the next life
and of which His grace gives us in this world the delight
ful presentiment. Yes, there is nothing so truly beautiful
as the hour when one prays, when one puts himself in the
presence of God. A hundred times, then, be the suffering
blessed which has brought me back to Him. For I know
Him now, the Unknowable! The Gospel has revealed
Him to me. He is the Father, He is my Father."
It was not strange that this new peace of soul began to
find expression in the weekly articles which for some time
he had been contributing to the Journal. It was thus that
the essays, "sublime in their simplicity," later on collected
under the title La Bonne Souff ranee, were written, scrib
bled in pencil as he lay "bound with bandages like a
mummy of ancient Egypt," as he describes it, his feverish
head against the pillow. In one of those papers he wrote,
referring to his mother : "Never did I so often call forth
the memory of my mother as during this sickness and this
long convalescence which has inspired me with so many
serious meditations. It is in stammering after so many
years the prayers my mother taught me in my infancy
that my soul has sought to lift itself to God. It is in the
hope of seeing my mother once more that I wish to believe
in life eternal. Oh, how I thought of my mother that day
when to merit the reward of finding her again in Heaven
I promised that the time left me to live would be filled
with dreams more pure and actions more worthy."
Another memento of that wonderful year was the little

FRANCOIS COPPEE 165
essay Au-Dessus Du Nuage, wherein Coppee likened his
struggle towards the faith to the climbing of the mountain :
"Scarcely had I taken the first step when already the mist
of pride and impurity which hid from me the good
way disappeared. Higher still, my soul ! Always higher !
Above all that we see of the sky! What memories have
I called up all at once ! On the mountain I climbed only
toward. the sun. Today I lift myself towards a bright
ness incomparably more dazzling; for according to the
beautiful saying of Michael Angelo — the sun is only the
shadow of God."
If Coppee had done no more than this little book of his
confessions, or expression of his faith in the Catholic
Church, he would still be a classic. Excellent, the articles
were considered as they appeared from week to week, but
it was only when they came out in book form with the
wonderful preface, which may be called the apologia of his
conversion, that their true beauty, their spiritual unity
was discovered. It is this book which makes Coppee de
serve to be studied as a great apologist, a great convert.
It is a soul-study, valuable in itself apart from the literary
genius of the popular poet. He had thought the articles
ephemeral things, but — "Some persons," he writes, "whose
advice is very precious to me, counsel me today to gather
these pages wherein I have confessed to my readers my
return to God. Hence this little book wherein one will
find neither plan nor composition, for it is only a collec
tion of newspaper articles, but which will awaken, I hope,
a little sympathy in Christian souls, and will not be useless
to those — they are many — who having let scatter the be
liefs of their young years regret them towards the end of
their life without having, however, the courage to ask
God to give them that interior strength. It is especially
with a view to these troubled souls, for whom doubt is the
soft pillow of which Montaigne speaks, and who stop, so
to speak, at the edge of faith, that I place at the beginning

166 GREAT PENITENTS
of this book the simple narrative of the moral revolution
which happened in me. Long have I been as they, and
I have suffered from the same disease. I offer them the
remedy which has cured me."
Not only in La Bonne, Souffrance did Coppee give ex
pression to his deep sense of sin, his regret for the past
years of forgetfulness of God. It was eminently fitting
that his last volume of poems — Dans la Priere and Dans
la Lutte — should express in beautiful poetry what he had
already expressed in prose. Thus in Le Devoir Nouveau
he chants his hymn of repentance: "Then in the suffer
ings of age, when God with pity for me showed to my soul,
before the shipwreck, the lighthouse of faith, my compan
ions have seen me change my life and, converted by suf
fering, become in repentance less impure, wiser and better.
And more than one no doubt has envied me, Christian full
of serene hope, traveler finishing my journey in the sweet
peace of a beautiful evening; poet whose last work would
show to an astonished world the grateful prayer of a poor,
pardoned sinner; and an old man whose head bends low,
seeing in the field of rest a divine brightness shine among
the tombstones."
It is a similar thought that is expressed in this won
derfully beautiful poem — L'FJ table, wherein he describes
in matchless verse the mystery of Christmas night.
" 'Dreams, fancies,' said the laughing sceptic; 'a fabulous
legend, a tale of the Orient' Ah, I have denied as he.
Pardon, veritable God ! My soul was then the corrupt and
dark stable open to Thy parents, the poor travelers. For,
alas, in the least culpable sinner there is in desire and
thought only secret shame and heaped up refuse. In my
soul dwelt a common, low vice, like to a vile animal wallow
ing on his dunghill. And in the unwholesome darkness,
filled with miasma, remorse, a monstrous spider, waited
for me. But Jesus to whom now I pray on my knees was
born in a place not less defiled. If the least thrill of re-

FRANCOIS COPPEE 167
pentauce penetrates into a heart saturated with evil, God
can be born there. I knew this hope and this truth one
blessed day when sorrow visited me. I prayed, asking
pardon for my sins. Humbly I reopened to the God of
my childhood my soul, that dwelling impure and dark. He
deigned to descend thither, and, generous master, who
gives even to the late worker a reward, today He reigns
there, perfumes it and brightens it. Prayers, Sacraments,
O ineffable blessings ! As the stable to the eyes of the
dazzled shepherds shone with a wonderful and sudden
brightness, so my soul shines now that God dwells there.
On the blue night where sounds the Christmas hymn, the
dark roof opens which had hid the heavens from me ; and
hideous remorse, the spider in his net, shines suddenly and
becomes a star." So, too, the poem, Dans Une Eglise de
Village. It is a prayer for faith, a prayer of faith. It
is one of the most beautiful things Coppee ever wrote,
this prayer of "the soul of an old sinner, late converted."
The conversion of Coppee was not a passing experience.
There had been, as he says, a moral revolution in his soul.
He was never done after that giving thanks to God for
His goodness to him in opening his eyes to the terrible
condition of his soul. Henceforth there never left his
singing the strain of the penitential psalm. He was seek
ing to redeem the time, showing himself thoroughly Catho
lic in all things, proud to confess the faith to which he
had been so long indifferent. He had been a sinner; his
wish now was to be a true penitent. He found at hand the
way to atone. God Himself chose the discipline for him.
Those last years were years of bitter suffering. But there
was no rebellion. Suffering was sweet. He had learned
to kiss the cross. At the end of his life he could write
in truth :
I have conquered my old pride and unbelief,
And all in tears, extending my hands to the cross,
I dare to say, My God, I love you, I believe.

168 GREAT PENITENTS
A few weeks before his death he was asked by the direc
tor of the Mercure de France what his0conception of reli
gion was. In his letter he answered: "This one word —
Credo." To believe, to love, to suffer, to repent: that was the
secret of life discovered by the poet on his bed of pain.
That secret he would share with all the world in his zeal
to let men know what a folly sin is.
"I have been like to you," he wrote, "poor sinner of the
troubled soul, O my brother. As you, I was then very
miserable and I sought by instinct a confidant full of
clemency and tenderness. I found Him. Do as I have
done. Open your Gospels, and return to the Cross."

J. K. HUYSMANS
A STRANGE being was Huysmans. A lashing critic,
with a tongue like a two-edged sword even after
-his conversion, a man who had plumbed the depths
of iniquity and who afterwards aimed at the peaks of sanc
tity, who consorted with demons and then with mystics,
and at last biting the dust in penitence gave his body a
willing victim to the most excruciating pain — no wonder
this most individual man, even apart from his literary
genius, is still regarded as an enigma. One can understand
how the disciples of the world regard his life as a puzzle;
it is hard, however, to see how Catholics, many of them,
still look on him as a suspect. For to study the man is to
come face to face with sincerity if ever there was such a
thing. One of Huysmans' biographers says that the
Church has not failed to make a great racket about his
conversion. Not such a racket as might have been made,
as should have been made ; for Huysmans, strange apolo
gist though he is, is nevertheless one of the greatest of mod
ern apologists. Full of faults he is, with many a line in
his apologetics that might well have been eliminated; but
there is no use complaining about that, you must take
Huysmans as he is. A petty critic he is at times; your
convert is very apt to be hypercritical. These are but
flimsy clouds before the sun. And underneath all one
finds the burning heart of the great penitent who with
Augustine could cry out — "Too late have I loved Thee,
O Beauty, so ancient and so new."
George Joris Karl Huysmans — he dropped the name
George at the publication of his first book and afterwards
169

170 GREAT PENITENTS
was known merely as J. K. Huysmans — was born at Paris
February 5, 1848. The Huysmans were a family of art
ists. Everybody in the family, said Huysmans, from
father to son, painted. We find at least four of these
Flemish painters of the name in Antwerp in the seven
teenth century. The most noted of these ancestors was
Cornelius, some of whose pictures are in the Louvre, a
very facile painter whose canvases were widely scattered.
One of J. K.'s uncles was for a time professor at the
academies of Breda and of Tilburg. The artist blood
thinned out the nearer it came to J. K, for his father,
Gotfried, who came from Breda in Holland to Paris,
was but an illuminator of missals, and the like small
work. Still, if J. K. did not inherit the ancestral tech
nique he was at heart an artist. There never was a better
critic, a more honest critic. And as has been often said,
if he did not paint pictures he was at least one of the
greatest word-painters in all literature. The inherited
artistry was but manifested in another way. One thing he
did inherit from his father was a generous supply of bile.
Gotfried was discontented with his lot in life ; it explains
somewhat the pessimistic strain in his son. There wa3
another ancestral strain which in due time had its influ
ence upon him. Strange to say, it was the strain of
piety. Gotfried's sisters were nuns in Holland. When
Huysmans came to try to explain his conversion he did
not omit reference to the ancestral piety which was some
how in the blood even during the long years that he re
garded religion as a poor, foolish thing.
Whatever borrowed glory there was on the paternal
side, there was none on the maternal. His mother, whose
name was Badin, belonged to the bourgeosie, a self-reliant
Avoman who after the death of her husband in 1856, when
J. K. was eight years old, supported herself by sewing
and soon had a workshop of her own.
The youth of Huysmans was not that of the precocious

J. K. HUYSMANS 171
literary genius. Neither at the Hortus, the boarding school
to which he first went, nor later at the St. Louis Lyceum,
did he amaze his professors with his talent. He was far
from being a brilliant scholar — just enough to get his
B. A. in his graduation from the Lyceum in 1866 at the
age of eighteen.
Even then Huysmans did not know what he wanted to
do in life. He enrolled himself in the Law School, and
passed the examinations. But that did not appeal to
him, and he gave up the law to enter the ministry of the
Interior ; but he cared little for that and only constrained
himself to take up the work on the principle that of two
evils one should choose the less. So Huysmans himself
described his entrance into the ministry of the Interior,
led thither by the advice of his maternal grandfather
who was cashier there. He was then much of the dilet
tante frequenting the Latin Quarter, reading a great deal,
wondering what his life should be, leading a hermit's life
and having his fling at the pleasures of the world. There
was nothing to keep the youth straight; he had been
brought up with no religion whatever and, as he says
later in the preface to A Rebours, it seemed entirely nat
ural to him to satisfy the senses. The Latin Quarter of
those days besides its moral dangers had its political ones,
too. There were gathered the young political firebrands
who conspired for the overthrow of the Empire. But
these had little appeal for J. K. ; in fact he was always
indifferent to politics, considering that government the
best which harmed nobody.
Huysmans had been working in the ministry two years
when the Franco-Prussian war broke out. He joined the
Sixth Battalion of guards of the Seine, but did not serve
long. He was taken sick and sent to Evreux where he
remained for a time convalescing, and where he resigned
as a soldier. He returned to the ministry of the Interior
at the time of the Commune at Versailles, and returned

172 GREAT PENITENTS
with it to Paris in 1871. The only thing he got out of
his service as a soldier was a bad stomach to which may
be ascribed some of the pessimism of the future critic.
Huysmans never liked the work in the ministry, but,
strange to say — and it is a tribute to the man's capacity
for application and hard work — he remained at the work
for thirty years and was always regarded as a model
employee ; so much so that when in 1893 he was given the
Cross of the Legion of Honor the mark of respect was
more for his work as an employee of the government than
for his great literary renown. It was he, too, who had con
ceived the justice of admitting to the Legion the faithful
old employees of the government. Huysmans was at heart
a traditionalist, though it may seem hard to make that
statement agree with many of the things in his books.
That he was nevertheless, and it helps, apart from the
great explanation — the grace of God — to explain the steps
to his conversion. One example of his traditionalism is
seen in his love for the left side of the Seine. He would
live no place else in Paris. He called the right side the
demoniacal side where resided all that he hated; the men
of prey, the theatrical crew, the feverish life, expense and
luxury. A queer criticism coming from the naturalist
Huysmans. Committed to this quasi-hermit existence — marriage
never had any appeal for him even in the flush of youth —
he sought enjoyment in writing. He loved the poetry of
Villon best of all and spent his leisure making verses in
imitation of his. He had no ambition then to be a writer ;
or if he did it was in the far distance. At any rate he
learned how to use his tools before he sought to exhibit
his handiwork to the public. If any man ever wrote for
the love of writing it was Huysmans, especially in the
beginning. The hours of practise finally led to the pro
duction of some poems in prose which he collected under
the title of Le Drageoir a fipices — The Box of Spices.

J. K. HUYSMANS 173
He submitted tbe manuscript to the publisher Hetzel, with
whom his mother had business relations, but Hetzel was
disgusted with the work and refused to publish it, sar
castically asking Huysmans if he was trying to arouse a
rebellion against the French language and start another
Commune. Evidently the vivid word painting, of which
Huysmans even then showed himself the master, was
lost on Hetzel.
Nothing daunted by this rejection, Huysmans thought
of going to Belgium and submitting the book to pub
lishers there, but chafing under that delay which seems
interminable to the author with his first book he brought
it out at his own expense in Paris in 1874. The little
masterpiece was well received; for masterpiece it was,
something new in the French perfection of literature, a
perfection ready to become decadent. Theodore de Ban-
ville called the book "a jewel of a master goldsmith,
chiselled with a hand firm and light."
The success spurred him to further effort. In 1876 he
went to Brussels and remained there a month seeking a
publisher for his first novel, Marthe, Histoire d'une Fille.
He succeeded in having it published there, but later repub
lished it in Paris in 1879, where it was suppressed by
the police. By this book the comparatively unknown writer
entered the school of the naturalists, Balzac, Flaubert,
Zola. Zola was not then the chief of that school — he was
to become so with L'Assomoir. Huysmans, indeed, in those
days, outdid Zola in realism, even though he may be
called the first disciple of Zola. One thing about Huys
mans in distinction from Zola is that in all his naturalistic
writings he never insulted the Church; one other reason,
no doubt, why he was able to submit to that same Church.
But through many books he was the staunch naturalist.
When in 1879 appeared his Les Soeurs Vatard it was
dedicated to Zola, and being condemned by many of the
anti-naturalists Zola rushed to its defence, a defence which

174 GREAT PENITENTS
was one for Huysmans and two for himself. The defence
was necessary, for Zola was being eclipsed by Baudelaire
who was already exercising a great influence upon Huys
mans. In fact, Baudelaire became the idol of Huysmans,
and he was never done talking his praises. One can ex
plain Huysmans' bent to naturalism by the fact that he was
naturally an insurgent. He must be original or nothing,
even though, explain it as you will, he was fundamentally
a traditionalist. He was, anyway, in letters an insurgent.
The classics, like Corneille, Racine, Moliere, had no ap
peal for him ; he could not, would not read them. So he
continued his realism. In 1880 appeared the Soirees de
Medan, a collection of young writers, as DeMaupassant,
Henrique and Paul Alexis, all under the patronage of
Zola. To the series Huysmans gave his Sac au Dos which
had already been published in a Belgian review, reminis
cences of his short military career which added nothing to
his literary reputation.
Love of art was strong in Huysmans. A master now of
French prose, he could give expression to his ideas as to
what great art should be, and as a result he published
Les Croquis Parisiens — Parisian Sketches — a critique of
the pictures exhibited in the salons of 1870, 1880, 1881,
1882. At once he was recognized as a great art critic, an
honest critic, who was no cringing adorer of the past, a
critic who did not hesitate to praise the unknown artist,
and who took delight in coming to the defence of the
painters who had been unjustly set aside. These critiques
established Huysmans as one of the great masters of
French prose.
The year 1881 was a prolific one for Huysmans. He
published Nana, Pot-Bouille, and finally En Menage. En
Menage was a glorification of naturalism at a time when
naturalism, or as it might be called, nakedness, nakedness
physical and moral, was the pursuit of so many writers.
Huysmans in 1885 could call this his chosen book — which

J. K. HUYSMANS 175
would show how far from the thought of conversion to
God he then was. During those years there was nothing
worth while to him but naturalism. In 1882 he published at
Brussels A Vau-l'Eau which is called his chef d'oeuvre of
naturalism. It is Huysmans in his most pessimistic strain.
He sought therein to show life as unredeemably bad, the
thesis being that "the life of man oscillates as a pendu
lum between pain and ennui." The hero, Folantin is a
type, the Huysmans type which goes through all the subse
quent books of the author, whether as the Des Esseintes
of A Rebours or the Durtal of La Bas and En Route.
A Rebours appeared in 1884. The conversion of Huys
mans did not take place till some eight years after that.
But it is not too far fetched to find the beginnings of the
return to God in this book which marks his break with
naturalism and the school of Zola. Baudelaire was having
a subtle influence on Huysmans the naturalist. After hav
ing reached the summit of naturalism, or rather the depths,
in A Vau-l'Eau he discovered, as he says, that naturalism
ends in a cul-de-sac. He was saturated with realism. He
was sick of it. The dilettante Des Esseintes in A Re
bours tried everything under the sun. He had come to
the limits of physical and moral degeneracy. It was the
same old theme of pessimism, the heart seeking its solace
in sin and finding it not. Huysmans looked for something
besides this naturalism. He did not know what he wanted.
He knew only that he had gone into the blind alley and
wanted to turn around and come to liberty. At any rate
he was done with naturalism — in literature; not in his
own life of the satisfaction of the passions. Zola was
displeased at losing his pupil. "You strike a terrible
blow at naturalism," he said bitterly. It was evident in
A Rebours that Huysmans was seeking something. What
it was even he did not know. At that time Jules Le-
Maltre wrote: "After the 'Fleurs du Mal' I said to
Baudelaire, 'There is left for you now logically nothing

176 GREAT PENITENTS
but the mouth of a pistol or the foot of the Cross.' Baude
laire chose the foot of the Cross; but the author of A
Rebours, will he choose it?"
Huysmans, too, chose the foot of the Cross, but eight
years passed before he made his final decision. A Rebours
had ended in pessimism, almost. But the final words
were the heart cry of one who prayed to be delivered from
the total despair which seemed ready to engulf him.
"Lord," cried out Des Esseintes, "have pity on the Chris
tian who doubts, on the unbelieving who would believe,
on the galley slave who embarks alone in the night under
a firmament which the consoling beacons of old hope no
longer brighten."
In the preface to a later edition of this book Huysmans
seeks to explain this religious appeal on the lips of one
who scarcely knew what it meant. "I was not brought up
in the religious schools," he writes, "but in a lyceum. I
was not pious in youth, and that side of the remembrance
of youth, of first Communion, of the education which so
often holds a large place in a conversion, held none in
mine. And what complicates the difficulty more, and
disconcerts all analysis, is that when I wrote A Rebours
I had not put a foot in a church, I knew not a practical
Catholic, or any priest. I did not experience any divine
touch inciting me to direct me to the Church; I lived in
my trough, tranquil. It seemed to me entirely natural
to satisfy the senses, and the thought did not even come
to me that this kind of tournament was forbidden. A
Rebours appeared in 1884 and I went to be converted at
La Trappe in 1892 — nearly eight years passed before the
seeds of this book had risen; let us place two years, three
even, of a work of grace, heavy, stubborn, sometimes sensi
ble ; there remain less than five years during which I do
not remember to have felt any Catholic inclination, any
regret of the life I led, any desire to reform it. Why then
have I in a night been goaded on to a road that had been

J. K. HUYSMANS 177
lost for me ? I am absolutely powerless to say ; nothing,
unless the prayers of nunneries and cloisters, prayers of
the fervent Holland family which I otherwise scarcely
knew, will explain the perfect unconsciousness of the last
cry, the religious appeal of the last page of A Rebours."
En Rade appeared in 1887, a book that need not be
considered in the soul study of its author.
It is only in 1891 that we can begin to trace the real
conversion of Huysmans. And strange to say it begins
with that truly terrible book La Bas. Interesting as a study
of the depths to which man can descend — if one need such
a study — and explanatory of much of the psychology of
Huysmans — the world would be none the poorer if he had
never written it. For one thing, even while it is not
autobiographical in the strict sense of the word, it gives a
hint of what the private life of Huysmans was during
those years of darkness. Huysmans was Parisian to the
core and he intended to enjoy all the pleasures that
Paris could give him.
He did enjoy them, for he tells us that his conversion
let him escape from "a filthy time." Perhaps it is neces
sary to stress that point — of the animal existence of the
man for so many years- — in order to understand the long,
hard way he had to travel when the grace of God came to
him and set his face in the direction of home. La Bas
still stands badly in need of expurgation. Yet this horri
ble book, this study in Satanism, by convincing him of
the existence of spirits superior to man, was, strange to
say, his first step to God. That book of 1891 was but
the prelude to the conversion of 1892.
How describe that conversion? It is quite impossible
to put in words the psychology of it, for Huysmans him
self could not do so even in regard to his own soul and
with his analytical mind. "Providence was merciful to
me, and the Virgin was good," he wrote. "I was content
not to oppose them when they declared their intentions.

178 GREAT PENITENTS
I have simply obeyed. I have been led by what is called
'extraordinary ways.' "
Yet even from the human point of view it was too great
an experience for the realist not to make a book out of it.
Thus in 1895 was given to the world that truly remark
able book, En Route, in which Huysmans traces the steps
of his conversion to God in the character of Durtal who
had figured so ignominiously in La Bas. There is no
doubt that Huysmans wished to have himself regarded as
described in the character of Durtal even though it is
not wholly autobiographical, especially in the scenes of
La Bas.
During the octave of All Souls Durtal, who, with no
religion to keep him back, had plumbed the depths of ini
quity, entered the church of St. Sulpice while the office
of the dead was being chanted. The plain-chant took posses
sion of his soul. "That which seemed to him superior to
the most vaunted works of theatrical or worldly music
was the old plain-chant, that melody plain and naked, at
the same time aerial and of the tomb." No one has writ
ten so beautifully of the music of the Church as Huys
mans. The art to which the Church has given birth made
an appeal to his soul. "Ah," he cries out, "the true proof
of Catholicism is this art which it has founded, this art
which nothing has ever surpassed. In painting and sculp
ture it was the Primitives ; the mystics in poetry and the
sequences; in music the plain-chant; in architecture, the
Roman and the Gothic."
The sermon ended, Durtal was brought back to earth
again. "I should have tried to pray," he said; "that
would have been of more avail than to be lost there in my
chair of empty reveries ; but pray ? I have no desire for
it. I am haunted by Catholicism, intoxicated with its
atmosphere of incense and wax. I roam around it,
touched to tears by its prayers, impressed to the very mar
rows by its psalmody and its chants. I am very weary

J. K. HUYSMANS 179
of my life, very tired of myself, but it is another thing to
lead another existence. And then — if I am disturbed in
the churches, I become unmoved and dry as soon as I come
out. At the bottom I have a heart hardened and burned
by sensual indulgence. I am good for nothing."
And this irreligious sensualist suddenly became a be
liever. How? Durtal asked himself. And he answered: "I
do not know ; all that I know is that after having been for
years an unbeliever, suddenly I believe." "I have heard,"
he continued, "of the sudden and violent upheaval of soul,
of the clap of thunder, of the Faith making at the end
an explosion in the ground which is slowly and learnedly
mined. It is very evident that conversions can be effected
according to one or other of these two methods, for God
acts as seems good to Him, but there should be a third
method which is doubtless the most ordinary, that which
the Saviour used for me. And that consists in I know
not what; it is somewhat analogous to the digestion of
the stomach which works without one being sensible of it.
There has been no Damascus road, no events which deter
mined a crisis ; nothing supervened, yet one fine morning
one wakes and without knowing how or why the thing is
done. . . . The only thing which seems sure to me is
that there was in my case divine premotion — grace. I seek
in vain to retrace my steps by which I have gone; doubt
less I can discover on the route gone over some marking
posts here and there; love of art, heredity, disgust with
life; I can even recall forgotten sensations of childhood,
little underground paths of ideas resurrected by my visits
to the churches ; but what I cannot do is to bind together
these threads, to group them in a bundle; what I cannot
understand is the sudden and silent explosion of light
which has taken place in me. When I try to explain to
myself how, an unbeliever in the evening, I have become
without knowing it a believer in one night, I can indeed

ISO GREAT PENITENTS
discover nothing, for the heavenly action has disappeared
without leaving any traces."
"It is very certain," he says again, "that it is the Vir
gin who acts in these cases on us; it is She who kneads
you and puts you into the Hands of Her Son; but her
fingers are so light, so soft, so caressing, that the soul which
they have refreshed has felt nothing.
Nevertheless Durtal can find certain motives, or inclina
tions to a revival of faith. Piety was in the blood, it was
ancestral; there were nuns in the family. It will be re
called that the sisters of his father were nuns in Holland.
The second motive was the disgust with life, driving
him to look for solace he knew not where, but knowing
that irreligion and lust had brought no satisfaction. The
third motive was the passion for art, for music, architec
ture, for all those beauties which the Church has cher
ished in her worship.
The faith had come, but the struggle with sin had not
ceased. Durtal believed, but Durtal's morals were the
morals of La Bas and A Rebours. He relapsed into sin
again and again. He was disgusted with himself after the
sin, but he seemed powerless to resist the attractions of
the old life. It was impossible for him to be continent!
How reminiscent it is of the beginnings of the conversion
of another great penitent — St. Augustine.
Durtal had confided his secrets of soul to the Abbe
Gevresin, who is none other than the real Abbe Mugnier,
a curate at the church of St. Thomas d' Aquin, who was
his dear friend and director. The abbe finally succeeded
in prevailing upon Durtal, not without hard work, to
make a retreat in a Trappist monastery. It was so that
Huysmans, on the advice of Abbe Mugnier, went to little
Trappe of Notre Dame d'Igny. It is a touching avowal
which Durtal makes to his God before setting out for his
retreat. "My soul is a bad place ; it is sordid and of bad

J. K. HUYSMANS 181
character; up to now it has loved only perversion; it has
exacted of my miserable body the tithe of illicit delights
and undue joys ; it is not worth much, it is worth nothing ;
and yet, down there near You, if You will help me, I
know well that I will make something of it ; but my body,
if it is sick I cannot force it to obey me ! that is worse
than all, that ! I am helpless if You do not come to my
aid." J
But God did come to the aid of the penitent who was
so distrustful of his own weakness. Anyway, decided
Durtal, "There are many who go to Bareges or to Vichy
to cure their bodies, why should not I go to cure my soul
in a Trappist monastery?"
The description of the state of soul of Durtal during
that retreat, his struggle with himself, with the powers of
darkness, with old memories, the awful agony of his gen
eral confession, make a soul study that cannot be sur
passed. It is realism at its height. No resume of En
Route can be given; one might as well try to give a
synopsis of the Imitation. Durtal made his confession and
found peace for his soul. In the same way Huysmans
made his confession and found peace. Confession always
was to him one of the most opportune and beneficial insti
tutions. Somewhere in En Route he says: "Confession
is an admirable Godsend, for it is the most sensible touch
stone there could be for souls, the most intolerable act
which the Church has imposed on the vanity of man."
Once a friend of his, a man of letters who was obsessed by
certain scruples before he submitted to the faith, came to
him with his difficulties. "You believe," said Huysmans,
"that the priest before whom you kneel to tell your sins
holds the place of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and that he
will pardon you in His Name ? You also believe that in
the Mass the priest immolates Jesus Christ and that the
Host with which he communicates you is Jesus Christ

182 GREAT PENITENTS
Himself?" "Yes," answered the other, "I believe that."
"Very well, then," said Huysmans, "go to confession
and Communion and all will arrange itself."
Huysmans had taken the great step. He had humbled
his soul and thus had found that his only strength was in
God. "If anyone," he once said, "could have the certi
tude of the nothingness he would be without the aid of
God, it would be I." That lesson of his own nothing
ness he had learned in his sojourn at the monastery.
The monks made a great impression upon him and he
might have become one had his health permitted. But
God had other work for him to do.
Huysmans was forty-four years of age at the time of
his conversion. Up to then his life had been spent far
from God. It had been a wasted, criminal life. Not only
had he befouled his own soul with immoralities, but in
describing them in his shockingly naturalistic books he had
brought harm to other souls. He could not cast aside now
the talent which he had misused; he must use it for the
good of souls and seek to undo some of the harm he had
done. He must redeem the time.
Leaving his retreat and returning to Paris he placed
himself under the direction of Abbe Feret of St. Sulpice,
to who La Cathedrale is dedicated. Under his guidance
Huysmans undertook to retrace the steps of his conversion
in the epoch-making En Route. The book appeared in
1895. No book ever caused greater discussion. It was
bitterly attacked and as bitterly defended. Frankly, it
had scandalized many Catholics. It was too free in its
criticisms, hypercritical criticisms many of them; it was
too harsh, and too free in its dealing with sacred things.
Huysmans could not get rid of naturalism, even though in
his converted state the realism was spiritualized. It was
declared by Catholics as well as by the freethinkers who
sought to make light of the great conversion that Huys
mans was still the grand poser, that he was not sincere

J. K. HUYSMANS 183
in his return to religion but had merely turned to mysti
cism because he had exhausted every other subject. In
plain words it was said that he was a hypocrite, the
worst kind of hypocrite, he who pretends to religion to
make capital of it. He was even compared to Leo Taxil
with the miserable Diana Vaughan hoax. All this deeply
pained the heart of the convert, for if any man ever was
sincere it was Huysmans. The pain was all the greater
as he realized that some of the most violent attacks came
from the Catholics whom he sought to serve. The Abbe
Belleville went so far as to write a book — Le Conversion
de M. Huysmans — in which he made bold to express his
doubts as to the sincere conversion of the writer, his argu
ment being that if he had been sincere .he would have
destroyed his former scandalous books instead of con
tinuing to make money out of them. Another argument
was that Huysmans dealt with sacred things in a repug
nant manner. The argument was not without founda
tion. It is going too far, however, to accuse Huysmans
of making money out of his evil books. That never entered
his mind. Perbaps it was quite an impossible task to cor
rect the books that were so widespread. Rest assured
that Huysmans had given the matter serious consideration
and only after viewing it from every angle had decided
to let things as they were.
A certain ecclesiastic, a friend of his — Huysmans had
many sincere friends among the priests — suggested to him
that certain passages in En Route should be eliminated.
"Perhaps today," answered Huysmans, "I would hesitate
to write them. But I must avow it would be a mistake
to eliminate them. They testify to the truth of the book.
It is because it is true that it has a religious influence on
souls." It was an action different from that of another
great convert, Paul Feval, who had burned or corrected
the books of his unregenerate life. Huysmans, in a word,
left his untouched as a history of his state of soul. It

184 GREAT PENITENTS
goes without saying that En Route made many conver
sions, still makes them. It was the realization of this that
cleared the mind of Abbe Ferret. He heard so many
attacks made on the book, by good men even, that he, too,
great as was his confidence in Huysmans, began to doubt.
One day, however, a sinner came to him to confession. It
was a striking conversion, and the Abbe asked what had
led the man back to God. The answer was that conversion
had come after reading En Route. This with other cases
of conversion effected by reading of the soul struggles of
the great realist, convinced the Abbe that in spite of some
evident shortcomings the "confessions" of Huysmans were
designed to do in modern times what the confessions of St
Augustine had been doing for many centuries.
Today we know that there should have been no suspicion
of his conversion. He was not a merely literary convert,
merely drawn to religion as to an unexplored fleld. He
had become a practical Catholic, living the Christian life
with ever new zeal, delighting to visit the churches of
Paris, praying in the old shrines of the faith so wonderful
to him, reading the mystics, listening to the plain chant
of the Church as to the music of Heaven, visiting the
monasteries which he loved so much that he would have
wished to become a monk had he not been advised by his
spiritual directors that he should serve God with his pen.
What his life was in those days is seen in a letter of his to
Gustave Coquiot, one of his biographers. Coquiot had
written to him in 1896 asking him to express his views on
literature and society. Huysmans answered: "My joys
of the present — to follow the canonical hours in a cloister,
to ignore that which passes at Paris, to read books on
liturgy and mysticism, iconography and symbolism. To
see as little as possible of men of letters and as much as
possible of monks. ... I feel myself removed from
active life, and my books appear to me now as those of
others — vain."

J. K. HUYSMANS 185
Huysmans, the convert, showed the literary world that in
leaving the world of fleshy naturalism he had lost none of
his wonderful talent; indeed, his genius is more evident
in the books he made after he had seen the light of faith.
It was said that he had discovered that he had the whole
of Heaven to plumb. Nothing now appealed to him but
that same Heaven. The three years following the publi
cation of En Route were spent in putting together the
documents he had gathered about the Cathedral of Char-
tres. It was a true labor of love. He never thought that
the book would find many readers. But when La Cathe
drale appeared in 1898 it found as many readers as En
Route. In the same way, too, it was attacked and de
fended. Even then the doubts as to his conversion per
sisted. Lucien Descaves, who has written so sympatheti
cally of his friend, relates that many people asked him,
knowing that he was one of the few who had the entree
to the home of the popular writer, if Huysmans was
really sincere or if his conversion was not just a caprice of
art. It was hard to kill the old slander. Descaves was
indignant. He called the suspicion a gratuitous affront
done to an honest man, to a man the least capable of
deception he had ever known. His loyalty, said Descaves,
actually shone. Today at any rate La Cathedrale, this
example of naturalism spiritualized, has its sure place
as a classic. If Huysmans had done nothing but this he
would deserve the lasting gratitude of his fellow Catholics.
In the same year Huysmans received a pension from
the government on account of his services in the ministry.
This removed many of his financial worries and gave him
more time to devote to his religious books. He was now
particularly interested in the study of liturgy which was
to be the basis of the last book of a trilogy. En Route had
dealt with mysticism, La Cathedrale with symbolism. To
allow himself to become saturated with liturgy he decided
to make his residence in the vicinity of the abbey of

186 GREAT PENITENTS
Liguge near Vienne. With some friends of his he bought
a lot of land there and had a house built after his own
designs, which he called Maison Notre Dame. Once estab
lished there he set about getting ready to make his profes
sion as Oblate. His literary work consisted in the prepa
ration of the life of St. Lydwine and he made a short
trip to Schiedam to get the locale of his story and to make
certain investigations. But it was not all literary work.
His chief work in those days was to sanctify his soul. The
cloister appealed to him, and again he would have sought
to be admitted, but the necessity that would follow of
being obliged to submit his writing to censure deterred
him; he felt that he would be able to do greater good as
a free lance in literature. Every morning he assisted at
the High Mass, no matter how great the heat or the cold,
and prayed there full of faith, lost in deep meditation,
so earnest and simple in his religion that the religious
as well as the peasants were edified by him. He would
leave the church only when the monks left. He mingled
with the monks a great deal, not letting a day pass with
out seeing them, learning all that he could from them,
especially in the matter of liturgy which now greatly occu
pied his attention. Descaves who visited him there tells
of watching him across the fields, his head bowed, his
prayer book under his arm, the bells of the old abbey
calling him away from the literary work which was inter
rupted only by the need of assisting at the offices. After
Mass he would return to the house and talk with his friends
of other things than those which really interested him.
Descaves says that the spirit of proselytism was seen
only in his books, not in his conversation with his friends.
It seemed to be an ideal life for Huysmans, but at
last he tired of it. He was homesick for Paris, for he was
Parisian to the core always and it was hard for him to
live elsewhere. He never liked the country, he had a
kind of inbred aversion for the peasants. He was never

J. K. HUYSMANS 187
a lover of nature, and even the sun exasperated him, due
no doubt to the growing affection of his eyes.
In February, 1901, he published Sainte Lydwine de
Schiedam. That, too, was a labor of love for his heart
had been touched by the life of this woman who for
thirty-eight years had lain on her bed of pain, with scarcely
any nourishment but that of Holy Communion, scarcely
any sleep. She was a victim for others, a victim of expi
ation. The idea of expiation had appealed to Huysmans
even in the days when he was writing En Route. This
book on Sainte Lydwine is a compelling one. It is
Huysmans' epic on suffering. His Way of the Cross
henceforth was to be that of patient suffering. How beau
tifully he writes of it. "The truth is that Jesus com
mences by making one suffer and that He explains after
wards. The important thing then is to submit in the
beginning and to stop complaining instantly. He is the
greatest Mendicant that the heavens and the earth have
ever had, the terrible Mendicant of Love. The wounds of
His hands are the purses always empty, and He holds
them out for each one to fill them with the little money
of his sufferings and griefs. There is then only one thing
to do — to give to Him. Consolation, peace of soul, the
means to use and transmute at length his torments into
joys can be obtained only at this price. The receipt for
this Divine alchemy of sorrow is abnegation and sacrifice.
After the period of necessary incubation the great work
is accomplished; out of the brazier of the soul comes the
gold, that is to say, Love which consumes the sorrows and
tears; the true philosopher's stone is there."
Huysmans afterwards called his sojourn at Liguge the
most beautiful time of his life. Homesick though he was
at times, it is very likely that he would have remained
there were it not for the exile of the Congregation. The
law of Associations had taken away the parish church
from the monks and had placed a secular priest in charge.

188 GREAT PENITENTS
At the end of September of that year the monks went to
live in Belgium. Huysmans who was deeply afflicted by
the dispersion had no longer any reason to remain there
after them, and immediately he came back to Paris, happy
no doubt to be home again.
But he did not relax his pious practices. He was a
familiar figure in the churches, assisting at the offices, his
favorite place being the foot of Our Lady's altar, for he
had a wonderful, childlike devotion to the Mother of
God. He still felt an attraction to the monasteries and
went to make his dwelling with the Benedictines of the
Blessed Sacrament. He remained there, however, only
a year and then took apartments. Huysmans was not
too easy to get on with ; he was too individual to be happy
in community life. He could live anywhere so long as he
was lost in literary work, but once the book was finished
he began to be restless again. The story of his sojourn
at Liguge is told in L'Oblat which appeared at this time.
It was the end of the trilogy which he had set out to write,
and was received with as much acclaim as En Route and
La Cathedrale. From a literary standpoint Huysmans
had lost nothing by his conversion. His books sold, even
though financial success had little appeal to him. But
one must live, and his resources had never been any too
great. Those resources had been helped a great deal when
in 1900 he was made president of the Academie Goncourt
of which he had been one of the founders. It gave him the
necessary leisure for his subsequent books. In 1903 in
company with his friend Abbe Mugnier he visited differ
ent cities, and he described the journey in Trois Primitifs
which appeared in 1905. In the following year, 1906,
he published Les Foules de Lourdes, a tribute to her to
whom he had such great devotion, an answer as it was to
the iniquitous book on the same subject by his former mas
ter, Zola.
Huysmans was coming near the end of his literary

J. K. HUYSMANS 189
work. But his life is not entirely seen in his books.
He would have been a great man, worthy of study as a
Christian, even if he had never published a line. He was
a great penitent, an atoner by suffering. Shortly after the
publication of Les Foules de Lourdes began the trouble
with his throat which was at last to cause his death. The
affliction was cancer of the palate. He began to decline,
reduced to nothing but skin and bone by months of torture.
His whole body, indeed, was a prey to suffering. His
teeth gave him constant pain, he suffered from neuralgia,
from pains in the chest, and from dyspepsia. Added to
that was an affection of the eyes, so great that the light
became unbearable to him and it was finally necessary to
sew his eyelids shut and compel him to pass months in
darkness. Through it all he never complained; religion
gave him courage. At length, by what he believed to be a
miracle, his sight was restored. But the other ills from
which he suffered continued. He did not repine — he who
once had been such a victim of ennui. His only comment
was, "The good God sends me this sickness for the good
of my soul." It was not merely resignation ; it was joyful
conformity, a delight in being asked to suffer. He had
hoped to be cured by Easter, but not with any great long
ing, and he was not disappointed when Easter passed and
left him still in pain.
"I ask neither to be cured nor to die," he said ; "God is
the Master. Suffering has its work to do in my soul.
When that is finished death will have only to come."
There was little else to write about — there were no more
subjects — but there was always his soul to sanctify. It was
Huysmans humbled. He loved the humble. He made
money, but he hated it; he would touch only what was
necessary for his few wants. The soul of Huysmans was,
when all is said, a humble one. Not that he disdained
praise; he knew his own talents, knew all that was said
about him, and wanted to know, even when the criticisms

190 GREAT PENITENTS
were far from being palatable. He had no ill will for
anybody. He was simple of soul, childlike especially in his
faith. He had tried the wisdom of the world and had
discovered its real folly. Learning as an aid to religion he
did not value much. It was vain, said he, to seek to
make converts by philosophical discussion. "It is the
humbling of our intelligence before God which is neces
sary for us."
He humbled himself. Like Baudelaire he chose the foot
of the Cross. That was the only thing in life worth while.
He had known sin; he knew how to sympathize with
others who were struggling against it. There is nothing
more truly sympathetic than his defence of the relapsing
Paul Verlaine in the preface he wrote for the collection
of the poet's religious verses. He was hard on nobody
but himself. As to himself he felt that he deserved all
the suffering that could be heaped upon his head. His
was the motto of St. Teresa — "to suffer or to die." "It
was necessary that I should suffer like this," he said to a
friend a few days before his death, "in order that those
who read my works might know that I had not only made
literature ; it was necessary that I should suffer my work."
His friends admired his strength of soul. "He lives,"
said they, "his most beautiful pages on suffering." Suf
fering was his penance for sin. It was why the peniten
tial orders appealed to him; he calls them somewhere the
lightning-conductors of the world. "Hospitals," said he,
"are necessary things in life." And again, "One must re
joice in having the chance to expiate one's sins so."
The conversion of Huysmans had made a special appeal
to that other great convert, Frangois Coppee. He de
votes several pages in La Bonne Souff ranee to him apropos
of La Cathedrale, which he calls a book "infinitely inter
esting" and "profoundly sincere." "If as the proverb
says," he writes, "a proverb which finds here its just
application, all roads lead to Rome, Huysmans has cer-

J. K. HUYSMANS 191
tainly taken the longest. Some years ago an unhealthy
attraction brought him to study the mysterious abomina
tions of Satanism; and to read one after the other, La
Bas and En Route, one could believe — if one did not
know that the first of these two stories is quite imaginary
— why Durtal, that is to say, Huysmans, ran to take refuge
at La Trappe on coming forth from a black Mass. That
which is true is that this scornful and incorrigible man,
so hard to satisfy in all things, in matters of style as in
cooking, came one day to be disgusted with himself. This
sentiment which he has often expressed with the most
energetic frankness had to take finally in a scrupulous
conscience the form of repentance. Whoever repents finds
the need of being pardoned ; and, there is only one tribunal
where indulgence is infinite and absolution perfect, the
confessional. Durtal then rushed upon penance; you will
find in En Route, on this crisis of soul, pages of a singu
lar and penetrating emotion — and he was henceforth a
Christian." "Where Huysmans moves me," continues Coppee, "is
when he is human; it is when newly converted, having
lived to a ripe age almost entirely according to the senses,
and having employed his thought scarcely for anything
but the painful but amusing gymnastics of letters, he suf
fers in having so much difficulty to create in himself an in
terior life ; it is when he deplores, with accents of poignant
sincerity, the little ardor of his piety and the dryness of
his heart in prayer. I recall then the frightful words,
'God vomits the tepid.' For I know like sufferings, the
just punishment of those who are not frightened till late
at the emptiness of their soul; and seek then with anguish
to collect with care some ruins of faith and hope. Alas!
from the first hour we have been separated from the
Cross ; during the heat of the day we have lived far from it,
and it is only towards evening that its shadow lengthens
and touches us. The moment, no doubt, is propitious, for

192 GREAT PENITENTS
all else is going to fail us. We return then towards the
protectmg Cross, we embrace it with a gesture of distress,
and we try to pray. But not with impunity have we
passed long years in indifference to eternal things, and it
seems to us that the sweet prayers of our infancy wither
in passing our impure lips. Courage, however. . . .
Let us pray then without doubting His inexhaustible mercy.
Let our prayers be as dry as they may, they have never
theless their virtue. Are not we already rid of much
of our baseness and the temptations which obsessed us ?
Do we not feel less unjust, more resigned, more humble,
and especially more charitable?" Yes, Huysmans might
have answered. Penance had done its work in his soul.
Religion was easy to him now. "Everything," said he,
"becomes easy when one has once said Fiat from his heart.
It is no merit to me to believe in the supernatural. Ever
since the day of my conversion I have touched it, felt it."
The end was nearing. The sufferings increased, but so
great a value did he set on their purifying influence that
he would not let himself be robbed of any of them. They
wanted to give him morphine to lessen the pain, but he
refused it. He knew that the day of death was not far
off. He made his will, burned his worthless papers, for
bade the publishing of his letters and unedited manu
scripts, so great a horror did he have of "confidences"
and "souvenirs," and made arrangements for the publica
tion of Trois Eglises, his last work, one that was deeply
religious. There was no sentiment about the end; it
was all religiously businesslike. One April day, a few
weeks before his death, he was standing on a ladder in his
library when his friend de Caldain entered. "What are
you doing ?" he was asked. "I am looking for the Pontifi
cal," answered Huysmans ; "I'm waiting for the priest to
give me Extreme Unction."
At last the suffering body was worn out. Huysmans
died May 12, 1907. He had asked to be buried in the robe

J. K. HUYSMANS 193
of a Benedictine monk, and his friend the master of novices
at Liguge, Father Dom Besse, who afterwards pronounced
at Brussels a beautiful eulogy of the Oblate, sent him the
habit, and thus he lay in death in the tunic and scapular,
the hood on his head, the crucifix and relics on his breast.
His hands were joined as in prayer, those hands which
had written so much for which he had to do penance, but
hands, too, that had written great apologies for faith and
repentance. Crowds came to see the great writer dead. Men of
letters, people of the world, priests, religious, all entered
the room which Dom Besse describes as the dwelling of "a
man of the Middle Ages wandered into our times."
So passed one of tbe great figures of his day, one whom
Havelock Ellis in his Affirmations calls "the greatest mas
ter of style and, within bis own limits, the subtlest thinker
and the acutest psychologist who in France today uses the
medium of the novel." It is not, however, of Huysmans
as a great writer that we love to think, but of Huysmans
the sinner who had cleansed his soul by the tears of suffer
ing and penance.

PAUL VERLAINE
THERE is a story somewhere of a man who after
leading an honorable, even heroic, life for many
years died. Admiring citizens erected a monu
ment to his glory, and pointed with pride to one who had
brought such renown to his native place. But in reality
the man had not died ; he had simply disappeared by that
strange loss of memory which so many novelists have used
as the center of their plots. One day he came back to
his old town. The sight of the monument — a monument
to him! — recalled the past. But alas, what was he now?
No longer the upright citizen who did good to his fellows ;
but a poor derelict, a prey to every vice, a criminal with
a price on his head. Yet there was the monument erected
to him ; to him but not to him ; to his dead self, his nobler
self, not to the miserable thing he now was. He could
not, would not claim his due glory. Let his friends think
kindly of him for what he once was. Never must they
know that their hero had turned criminal. He let the
underworld swallow him and left his dead youth in pos
session of its glory.
The mystery of the dual personality has always inter
ested psychologists. But it is no great mystery after all.
There is a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde in every man. It
is all very clear by the doctrine of original sin ; otherwise
it becomes inexplicable. How plainly St. Paul ex
pressed it in his Epistle to the Romans (VII, 22, 23) :
"For I am delighted with the law of God, according to
the inward man. But I see another law in my members
fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me
194

PAUL VERLAINE 195
in the law of sin, that is in my members." It is the soul
struggling against the body, and the body struggling
against the soul.
There is in every man the making of a saint or the mak
ing of a devil. Men on the threshold of Heaven have
about-faced and walked into Hell; the cedars of Lebanon
have crashed from the heights into the ravines. Men, too,
just as the judgment of eternal damnation seemed ready
to be pronounced, have taken fright at their own wicked
ness and have risen over their dead selves till they found
a place somewhere among the canonized saints.
Somehow, when one reads the story of Paul Verlaine he
cannot get the thought of the mysterious dual personality
out of his head. Verlaine reached the heights of mystic
song; he fell to the depths of the obscene guffaw. One
day with the glorious seraphim ; the next with the harpies
of Hell. Which -is the true Verlaine? Psychologists
have tried to harmonize the two distinct beings he seemed
to be. They cannot be harmonized, for sin and virtue
cannot be harmonized. It is clear only in this: with the
grace of God one can do all things ; but, too, it is possible
to lose that grace. Verlaine had his chance; he lost it.
He had his call to sanctity. How nobly he answered it
in the generosity, expressed as St. Francis himself might
express it, in the glorious religious poems by which, as
Huysmans, no mean critic and no mean mystic, says : "The
Church has had in him the greatest poet of whom she
can be proud since the Middle Ages." His was a call to
sanctity, and then the relapse into all that was low, cheap,
vile. How then presume to place Verlaine among the "great
penitents", among those who from the moment of con
version fought their way back into the light ? The degra
dation of his later life up to the very moment of his death
would seem to deny him a place among good penitents
just as for years he was denied a place among good men,

196 GREAT PENITENTS
his name a byword, synonymous with sins which even bad
men hesitate to name. But Verlaine was at one time,
however short or long a time his change of heart lasted,
a great penitent. He is moreover the classic poet of peni
tence, far more so even than his friend Coppee. When
all his other work is forgotten, his penitent cries will still
be heard. Men will no longer remember that he so often
abused his gift of song; his corrupt verses will be of in
terest only to antiquarians, but his religious poetry will
be a part of the eternal classics. As time goes on these
penitential poems, so personal to him when he wrote them,
will lose a great deal of that personal touch and will be
used to voice the sentiments of any singer, just as the
psalms which David wrote to express his own personal
afflictions have become the impersonal, yet for that reason
all the more personal, voice of mankind.
Verlaine was the great penitent — ruined. He found his
soul once in prison. Did he lose it again? God knows.
Not for us to judge. Max Nordau who had made a study
of Verlaine dismissed him as a degenerate. Huysmans
commenting upon Nordau's statement, that Verlaine
"struggled sadly against his bad instincts," says: "Yes,
he did struggle ; he was for the most of the time conquered ;
and after? Who is the Catholic who would believe he
has the right to cast the first stone?" Who, indeed, will
set a limit to the mercy of God, and for one especially who
once served Him loyally, wholeheartedly, and in tears ?
Paul Marie Verlaine was born March 30, 1844 at Metz,
in Lorraine when that province was still French territory
before it came under the heel of the German conqueror.
His parents, associated with the military profession, could
not call any abode their permanent home. This may ex
plain somewhat the tendency of their child to the life of
vagabondage. Nicholas Auguste Verlaine, the poet's father, was born
at Bertrix, then on French territory but ceded to Luxem-

PAUL VERLAINE 197
bourg by the treaty of 1815. Nicholas, the son of a no
tary, could claim an old and good ancestry. At the age
of sixteen he was in the army of Napoleon during the last
campaign of 1814-1815. He went through all the grades
of promotion, and at the time he resigned, a few years
after the birth of Paul, dissatisfied^ thinking he had been
treated unjustly, he was captain in the second regiment of
engineers, a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and also
of St. Ferdinand of Spain. His colonel, Niel, afterwards
Marshal, had great admiration for Captain Verlaine and
urged him to withdraw his resignation, but the captain was
headstrong and followed his bent. Like father like son;
Paul Verlaine, especially when drinking, was the essence
of stubbornness. The captain was forty-six years of age
when his only child was born, and happened to be stationed
at Metz. There the family lived, with short intervals of
change of garrison to other places, during the first six or
seven years of the boy's life.
Paul Verlaine always loved his birthplace. He was al
ways filled with patriotic and even militaristic sentiments
for Metz and France, and after the conquest of Lorraine
always spoke of it with the deepest emotion — "O town
where laughed my infancy." He can well be called a
great patriotic poet, quite as much as Coppee. No won
der. He had a fine example in his father, whom he al
ways loved and admired. What a great hero he must have
been to the little lad, this especially tall soldier, of superb
carriage, with a face so martial yet so gentle. Useless
now to talk of what might have been had Captain Verlaine
remained in the army. But, as we have said, he resigned,
and at once moved his family to Paris, where he took
apartments in the Quartier des Batignolles, sacred now
as the place where the poet lies buried with his father and
mother. Paul, who was then seven, was placed in a small
institution, where as a day scholar he learned to read and
write and figure. There he soon fell ill of a fever, and

198 GREAT PENITENTS
was tenderly nursed back to health by his devoted mother.
That mother of Verlaine ! She began early her ministra
tions of love to the wayward son and never ceased them
till her death. Paul Verlaine's mother will live as long
as Paul Verlaine himself.
Madame Verlaine was Elisa Julie Josephe Stephanie
Dehee, and was born at Fampoux in Pas-de-Calais, in
French Flanders. She belonged to an old family of land
owners, cultivators, sugarmakers, and was an heiress of
considerable importance, having at the time of her mar
riage a fortune of some four hundred thousand francs, a
great deal of which was afterwards lost through the bad
speculations of her husband. She was thirty-six at the
time of Paul's birth. She was an excellent woman, tall,
straight, dignified, always dressed in black, cold and calm
— God knows she had need to be calm with such a son — a
woman of very few words, saving, somewhat ceremonious
in manner. And whereas her husband was indifferent in
matters of religion, though always respectful to the Church,
she was particularly pious. There is room here for psy
chological digression in the immediate antecedents of Paul
Verlaine and the pre-natal effects on him of the wandering
military life, the religious indifference of the father, the
deep piety of the mother. But such digressions are be
yond our point. Verlaine's fate was in himself. He had
what would seem to be a guarded youth in his home and
in his schools, yet in spite of this protection sin came into
his life very early. The Captain adored his boy, never
theless he sought to treat him with a certain discipline, and
when he was sent to the Institution Landry, a large board
ing-school, he used to come daily to inquire about the lad's
health, bring him dainties and often take him out to din
ner. Paul remained at tbe Institution several years. He
said afterwards that he had been a poor student, but in
this, as in many other things, he exaggerated. It was

PAUL VERLAINE 199
there he made his First Communion, preceded by a general
"scrupulous" confession. He writes in his "Confes
sions"; "And my First Communion was 'good.' I felt
then for the first time that thing almost physical which
all who partake of the Eucharist feel of the Presence,
absolutely real, in a sincere approach to the Sacrament.
One is invested. God is there in our flesh and in our
blood. The sceptics say that it is faith alone which pro
duces that in the imagination. And the indifference of
the impious, the coldness of the unbelieving, when by
derision they absorb the Sacred Species, is the effect even
of their sin, the temporal punishment of sacrilege." He
had sinned much when in 1895 these words were written.
As a boy he was assiduous enough in his religious exer
cises, but it was not long before he became acquainted
with vice. Precocious in talent, he was also precocious
in vice. His boyhood was filled with impurity; indeed,
he was little more than fifteen when he began to frequent
the company of bad women. Taken all in all there were
very few months in his life when his tendency was not
to animal passions. Evil companionship had helped to that
end, especially the evil companionship of bad books. Ver
laine could scarcely remember the time when he had been
pure. While still boarding at the Institution Landry he en
tered the courses of the Lycee Bonaparte where he studied
from 1853 to 1862. Though of limited faculties, espe
cially as to sciences, he bad a certain success in his studies,
chiefly in rhetoric and Latin, won several prizes, and
succeeded in getting his Bachelor degree, which was suf
ficiently hard to win. When he left the Lycee he was a
youth of eighteen, with absolutely no morals, and less
faith. Impure books, rationalistic books, read clandes
tinely, had done their work.
As soon as his school days were finished he went with
his parents to visit his mother's relatives in Artois. Sub-

200 GREAT PENITENTS
sequently he made many visits there, for he loved that
country, and, although never what may be called a poet
of nature, he loved nature. During that vacation he
walked in the woods, fished and hunted. Hunting was
his favorite sport. He made himself one of the country
people, dressed like them, lived like them, and soon drank
like them. It was here he got his passion for strong drink,
which was eventually to be the cause of all his misfortunes.
Verlaine was at heart always a northerner; he hated the
sun. This happy-go-lucky life was just what appealed
to him. It was after all the fundamental weakness of his
character — instability. He was essentially a dreamer.
His parents were already planning his future — they
wanted him to take up law — but he was the least concerned
of all.
There was no need to worry about finances, and the
hunting was good. Verlaine then as always was a great
reader. He read with avidity all that came under his
hand, history, romance, poetry. We find him even in
those days expressing delight over a life of St.' Teresa
he was reading. Why, it is hard to say, for as we have
said, even in those young days his faith had gone with
his morals. He occasionally visited the churches, as one
of his friends assures us, but it was merely to satisfy his
artistic curiosity. He would follow a sermon of Pere
Monsabre or some other great preacher, but merely for
the sake of the oratory. It brought no spiritual message
to his soul, so young yet so corrupt. It was so manly to
be an unbeliever at eighteen! In one of his letters to a
school chum he writes that he has been reading the "Rama-
yana," by Indra! He exclaims, "How fine it is! and
how it disgusts you with the Bible, the Gospel and the
Fathers of the Church." Poor silly youth, how wise it is !
On the return to Paris Verlaine undertook to study
law, but it was evident at once that he had no aptitude
for it. Most of his time was then spent in the drinking

PAUL VERLAINE 201
places of the Latin Quarter. The military father sensed
the impending ruin. He was anxious to place the youth
away from the danger of idleness, and finally got him a
position with an insurance company. To qualify himself
for the work Paul went to a commercial school. Once in
this position everything looked bright for a while. He
was forced to be sober, and as he was allowed little spend
ing money he led a rather decent life. He even saved
some money from his wages, and gave some to his parents.
They must have breathed a sigh of relief when they saw
him so industrious, spending his leisure with books and
paintings and not, as formerly, in the cabarets. It was
but a temporary relief, however, for he gradually con
tracted the drinking habit again, a habit that he further
developed during the days of the Siege, and which finally
bound him body and soul.
From the insurance office he passed in 1864, when he
was twenty, to a position in one of the city departments.
But his heart was not in that work either. As soon as
his day's work was over, he would hurry to the Cafe du
Gaz, then the rendezvous of literary and artistic folk,
where he would delight in taking part in the discussions
on poetry and other matters, a discussion that was punc
tuated by much drinking. As an employee he had no
ambition. He never had ambition. He was the type of
the care-free poet; for Verlaine even then was a budding
poet. Far back as the time when he was but fifteen or
sixteen he had begun to write verses, without, however,
any thought of publication.
Captain Verlaine died December 30, 1865. Paul
grieved over his death. It was a loss in more ways than
one, for the hand of the father had had some restraining
influence on the boy so inclined to waywardness and so
easily led.
A few months later Paul Verlaine made his debut in
the literary world with the publication of his first book,

202 GREAT PENITENTS
Poemes Satumiens. The famous literary group, so many
of whom attained fame, known as La Parnasse, began
with Louis Xavier de Ricard, who had gathered at his
mother's house the young men just beginning to write.
There were seen Catulle Mendes, Coppee, Anatole France,
Sully Prudhomme, de Heredia, the de Goncourt brothers,
and others. La Parnasse Contemporaine, devoted for
several months, week after week, to the publication of
the verses of new poets, caused a stir in the literary world,
and also brought upon the writers, unjustly, a great deal
of ridicule. Alphonse Lemerre, who up to that time had
specialized in pious books, agreed to publish the works
of the budding poets at their own expense. Thus the
Poemes Satumiens appeared, on the same day, by the
way, as La Reliquaire of Coppee and a book of de Ricard.
Needless to say, the new book of a contemporary, com
paratively unknown poet created no sensation. His friends
of course flattered him upon it, and even estimable critics,
like Saint Beuve, recognized in the youth of twenty-two
a real poet, but the reading public ignored the book, and
the press, as was to be expected, was quite silent about it.
It did not meet the success of Coppee's first book. Ver
laine's verses were impersonal. He was then but a care
free boy who scarcely knew that he had a soul; anyway
he did not put that soul into his poems until the day when
the hand of God afflicted him. The same thing may be
said of his next book — Fetes Galantes — which appeared in
1869. It was barely noticed outside the salon of the
strange Nina de Callias where the Parnassian group used
to congregate.
The real tragedy of Verlaine's life began with his mar
riage. One day he called upon his friend Charles de Sivry.
By chance de Sivry's half sister, Mathilde de Maute,
entered the room. She had seen Verlaine in an amateur
play in which he had had great success as a comedian.
Introduced to the young poet of a certain literary, though

PAUL VERLAINE 203
limited fame, she told him how much she appreciated his
verses. It was a case of love at first sight. The young
girl — she was only sixteen — was pleased to have a poet
make much of her, and Verlaine, so intensely ugly as to his
personal appearance that he himself knew it and delighted
in drawing caricatures of himself, a man, too, who was
timid in the presence of women, in spite of his sinful
youth, felt flattered that he whose ugliness ordinarily re
pelled women seemed to hold the attention of this charm
ing girl. She was a girl of good common sense, with no
romantic notions, and was worshipped in her own family.
Verlaine, beside himself with this first love, went north
to think the matter over, and almost immediately wrote
to de Sivry asking for the hand of his sister. It was an
extraordinary way to propose, but de Sivry pleaded his
friend's cause. There was little need of pleading, how
ever. Nobody was opposed to the marriage. Verlaine
was considered quite a good catch. He had a good posi
tion in City Hall, his mother was known to have a good
amount of money which eventually would come to him,
and — perhaps the deciding factor with Mathilde's parents
— he was willing to take the girl without a dowry. Ver
laine's mother, too, was pleased, thinking that marriage
would make him settle down and make a man of him. She
was always the doting mother. She adored her boy, she
spoiled him with her ready indulgence, and she cried all
too late. No matter what his transgressions she quickly
pardoned him. When he came home drunk, she put him
to bed, took care of him, and then went to her room to
weep over his misfortunes. The next day she would kill
him with kindness, find excuses for him, and blame every
body else for his faults. She was very proud of his tal
ents, even though she was not literary, and perhaps never
read one of his books.
For a time it seemed that she was right about the mar
riage. Love, and it was a great love, sobered the man,

204 GREAT PENITENTS
He stayed away from the saloons and wrote poetry. It
was at this period when he was longing for his wedding
day that he wrote La Bonne Chanson, poems in praise of
the girl who was to be his wife, the volume appearing in
1870 during the war. The marriage at last took place
in the Church of Notre Dame de Clignancourt in the time
of the Commune.
It is useless to discuss whether or not Verlaine ever
should have married. He was a bundle of nerves, ex
citable to fury when he drank. Whether this lot would
have been different with another wife, it is also useless to
discuss. It is folly to talk of what might have been. The
times were, indeed, strenuous. Shortly after the honey
moon came the Siege, then the Commune. Verlaine might
have escaped the service had he wished, but, the true son
of his soldier father, he was a good patriot and, filled with
zeal, joined the national guard. He did not last long as a
military man. He had the soul of a hero, but the body of
a coward. An attack of bronchitis not only weakened
him, but it impelled him to drink in spite of his resolution
at the time of his marriage never again to touch the stuff.
The army anyway had its special temptations to drink.
Dispensed from service through illness, he never took up
his gun again, though in reality while being classed among
the Communards he never took an active part. He was
back at work in the City Hall where his task was to clip
from the papers all that was favorable or unfavorable to
the Commune. And all the while he was writing poetry
to the sound of the cannon.
The honeymoon, meanwhile, had not lasted long.
Scarcely six months had passed when one day he came
home drunk. The young wife was so surprised and dis
gusted that she left him and returned to her parents. She
at last acceded to his importunities, trusting in his good
resolves, and came back to him. But it was only a tem
porary reconciliation. The rift in the lute was widened

PAUL VERLAINE 205
by his idleness. He refused to go back to the bureau af
ter the defeat of the Commune, being afraid that his for
mer activity in the cause, small though that activity was,
would militate against him. In reality he was glad to be
rid of the prosaic job. It was a misfortune, but a greater
one was his going to live with his wife's people. Idle1
now, he had more time to drink, and he drank heavily.
He went north with his wife and spent the summer there,
returning to Paris in September. He afterwards regret
ted that he had not kept his position ; years afterwards he
tried in vain to get it back. But that was long afterwards.
At first the idleness did not worry him a bit, though it
was the beginning of his many misfortunes. When sober
Paul Verlaine was of fine disposition, agreeable. When
drunk he was disagreeable, violent, unbearable. Even
the birth of his son, George, did not wake him up. He
was living in a fool's paradise. His faults were great
enough, but they were greater when seen through the mag
nifying eyes of his people-in-law. Had his wife been of
strong character — like her parents she had little religion —
she might have reclaimed him, for he loved her devotedly.
But one must not be too hard on her. She suffered much
at the hands of her poet husband.
The growing ill-will came to a climax through the youth
who was Verlaine's evil genius, Arthur Rimbaud, a boy
of sixteen, precocious, intelligent, anarchistic, even athe
istic, who could drink strong drink like water. He had
run away to Paris from his home in the Ardennes — Ver
laine's own country. A poet himself, he had read Ver
laine's verses and had liked them. He affected to despise
the classics. He sent one of his poems to Verlaine who,
flattered by the tribute, wrote at once to the youth offering
him the hospitality of the house where he himself was only
a guest, and quite an unwelcome one at that. The Maute
family did not share Verlaine's enthusiasm for the pre
cocious poet and they soon dismissed him, much to Ver-

206 GREAT PENITENTS
laine's chagrin. Rimbaud lodged here, there and every
where. He imposed himself wherever he could. But
Paul was his great friend, taking him about with him,
proud to show him off to all the literary circles. Rimbaud
was a vain youth. He had a real talent, an original one,
and a monument has been erected to him in his native
town of Charleville. But he was unbearable. Addicted
to drink and drugs he was forever quarreling, insulting
even his hosts, so that after a while no one wanted him.
Verlaine's feelings were hurt by this rejection of his pro
tege and he broke with his old friends out of loyalty for
this "enfant Shakespeare," as Victor Hugo — cynically no
doubt — called Rimbaud. The strange association was the
cause of daily quarrels in the Verlaine home. The vilest
insinuations even were made as to the nature of the friend
ship, but Verlaine clung to Rimbaud in preference to his
wife. Thinking himself a martyr, an abused husband, he
decided to leave home. His wife was quite indifferent.
She had ceased to care for him, ceased to respect him. His
mother, as usual hoping for the best, gave him the means
to support himself on his uncertain journey. It was a
poor service to him.
The queer pair set out that July day of 1872 for Arras.
From Belgium they went to London. Scarcely had they
left Paris when Verlaine's wife entered her appeal for a
separation from him. It was an evil period in the life
of the poet, no matter how charitably we may be inclined
to him. It was a period of drink and lust. That was
evident from the book of poems he sent back to Paris to
be printed, and which on its publication was confiscated
by the police.
Rimbaud's friendship did not last long. He found Lon
don useful inasmuch as he was able to learn English there,
but he soon returned to Belgium. Verlaine was incon
solable. He became ill, and telegraphed for his wife and
mother to come to him. The poor doting mother came, of

PAUL VERLAINE 207
course. The wife ignored the request. She was done
with Paul Verlaine. When his mother returned to Paris
he refused to go with her, although she pleaded with him.
Instead he went to Belgium in the spring of 1873, where
he remained a while with his relations. All the while
he hoped, vainly, that his wife would become reconciled to
him. Meanwhile he had been writing poetry. He had com
pleted Les Romances Sans Paroles, but was unable, owing
to unsettled conditions in politics, to get a publisher. He
heard then that his wife had been granted a decree of
separation, and at once he wrote for Rimbaud to come
back. The return meant another drunken debauch, as
they wandered first in the Ardennes and then back to
London again, where they tried to gain a living by giving
lessons in French. But the chief means of support was
the money that came from the poor, foolish mother.
The strange friendship lasted for two years and a half.
Then one June day, 1873, the poets quarreled, Verlaine
going off in a huff to Anvers without telling Rimbaud, and
without leaving him any money, for it was considered
Verlaine's privilege to pay all the bills. Verlaine was
morbid ; he even thought of suicide. He wanted his wife ;
he loved her, and he cursed her. He met his mother at
Brussels, and she brought the final word that his wife
would have nothing more to do with him. He sought
solace in drink, and more drink, and again he sent for
Rimbaud. Rimbaud came, not for the sake of his friend,
but to seek to bleed him and get enough money to take
him to Paris. He even tried to extort money from
Madame Verlaine. A quarrel ensued between him and
Paul. Rimbaud started to leave, and Verlaine, drawing
the revolver, fired at him. The shot went wild. The
mother, shocked at the vulgar quarrel that had almost
ended in murder, gave Rimbaud the money he wanted
and sent him on his way. Paul insisted on accompanying

208 GREAT PENITENTS
him to the train and walked out with him, when Rimbaud,
fearing that he was going to shoot again, called the police
and had his friend arrested. He then took the train for
home, breathing a sigh of relief that he had escaped with
his life.
Verlaine was immediately brought to the prison of
Petits Carmes, where he was detained until an investiga
tion into his character was made in Paris. The report
that came back was bad, and he was sentenced to two years
in prison and a fine of two hundred francs, August 8,
1873. The poor mother did her best to get him released.
Other friends aided her, but all to no purpose. Verlaine
was doomed to remain in prison. He tried to make the
best of it. He bore it well, and was as patient as could
be expected under the circumstances. In the February of
1874 Les Romances Sans Paroles was published. Copies
were sent to those designated by him, to papers for review,
but in vain. Nobody wanted the book. Paul Verlaine
was dead to his world; he was a disgraced, a dishonored
man, a convict. But at that very moment of his rejection
by his friends he was about to receive a wonderful grace.
God was preparing to do a great work in his soul. And
what a soul it was! the idle vagabond, the drunkard, the
brawler, the impure and foul-mouthed man, the free
thinker without a shred of faith. Men do not fall much
lower than Verlaine had fallen up to the time of his im
prisonment. In his book, Mes Prisons, published in 1893, he tells
the story of his sudden, his wonderful conversion back to
God and to decent living. No one can question the sin
cerity of it even though the poor weakling relapsed into
sin after a long hard struggle to be true to his nobler self.
Read in the light of his after degradation the conversion
of Verlaine moves one to tears.
In that prison of Mons, he did not curse his lot. He
confesses that he knew that he really deserved the scaffold.

PAUL VERLAINE 209
He tried to make the best of it and amused himself by
reading and by playing simple games which he invented.
He worked, read poetry, projected plays, read Shakespeare
especially in order to perfect his English, and made plans
for the translation of contemporary English books. We
find him reading among other books Cardinal Wiseman's
Fabiola. But at last the great day dawned. He writes :
"Jesus, how did you come to take me ? Ah, one morn
ing the good director himseK entered my cell. 'My good
friend,' he said to me, 'I bring you bad news. Courage!
Read.' It was a sheet of crested paper, the copy of the
separation (from his wife), so merited, but so hard to
bear. I fell in tears on my poor back on my poor bed."
An hour or two later he asked that the chaplain be sent to
him. When he came Verlaine asked him for a catechism,
and the chaplain brought him a copy of Abbe Gaume's
Catechism of Perseverance. "I am a literateur," he writes,
"I enjoy correctness, subtility, all the art of style, as of
law, order, etc. But in spite of a deplorable art in point
of writing, and of painful syntax, Abbe Gaume was for
me — so rotten with pride, with syntax and Parisian fool
ishness — an apostle." "The proofs," he continues,
"mediocre enough, given by Abbe Gaume in favor of the
existence of God and of the immortality of the soul,
pleased me but little and convinced me not at all, I ad
mit, in spite of the efforts of the chaplain to corroborate
them with his better and more cordial commentaries. It
was then he thought of a supreme idea and said to me,
'Skip the chapters and pass at once to the Sacrament of
the Eucharist.' I do not know if those pages constitute a
chef d'oeuvre. I even doubt it. But in the state of soul
in which I found myself, the profound ennui in which I
was plunged, the despair at not being free, the shame at
being in prison, determined one certain June morning,
after what a bitter sweet night of meditation on the Real

210 GREAT PENITENTS
Presence and the multiplicity without number of hosts
figured in the holy Gospels by the multiplication of the
loaves and the fishes — all that, I say, determined in me
truly an extraordinary resolution."
There hung in his cell above a little brass crucifix a
picture of the Sacred Heart, a lithograph that was far
from being a work of art. His eyes rested upon that pic
ture. "I do not know," he says, "what or Who suddenly
raised me. I threw myself out of my bed without taking
time to dress myself, and I prostrated myself in tears and
sobs at the foot of the crucifix and of the picture evocative
of the strangest, but to my eyes the most sublime devotion
of modern times in the Catholic Church. Only the hour
of rising two hours or less after this veritable small — or
great? — moral miracle, made me get up from my knees.
I went about the care of my cell, according to the rules,
making my bed, sweeping the room, when the day-guard
entered, and addressed me in the conventional, 'All goes
well?' I said to him at once, 'Tell the chaplain to come.' "
The chaplain entered the cell a few moments afterwards,
and Verlaine told him about his conversion. "I believe,"
he said, "I saw, it seemed to me that I knew; I was illu
minated." The chaplain was persuaded of the prisoner's sincerity.
Priests are never surprised at the workings of the grace
of God. He calmed the penitent, and upon Verlaine's ex
pressing a desire to go to confession at once, the good
priest prevailed upon him to wait for a while. Verlaine
meanwhile prayed — "Praying through my tears, through
my smiles, as a child, as a redeemed criminal, praying on
my knees, with my hands, 'with all my heart, with all my
soul, with all my strength' according to the words of my
revived catechism."
"How much I reflected on the essence and evolution
even of the thing which had taken place in me. Why?

PAUL VERLAINE 211
How? How good I was, how simple, how childish, and
how ignorant. Domine, noverim Te. What candor of a
childish heart, what gentleness of an old — and young —
then converted sinner, the proud humbling himself, the
violent man become a lamb." As a sign of his conversion
he gave up all profane reading, Shakespeare included. He
plunged into de Maistre and Auguste Nicolas, eager to
learn all he could about his renewed faith, the chaplain
explaining whatever difficulties he had.
At length the great day of confession arrived. It was
long, detailed, the first since the day he had renewed his
First Communion years before. There were shameful
things to tell, for the soul of Verlaine had been, indeed, a
leprous one. But when it was ended and the words of
absolution pronounced on that glad Assumption day, a
new peace came into his soul, a peace which remained till
the day of his liberation from prison, and indeed long
afterwards. Verlaine was a true convert, and burned with zeal to
share his good fortune with others. He desired to con
vert his old school chum, Lepelletier, and wrote to him,
advising him to get a copy of Gaume. "All that I am
going to tell you now," he wrote, "is that I experience in
a great, an immense degree, that which one feels when,
the first difficulties surmounted, he perceives a science, an
art, a new language, and also that inexpressible feeling of
having escaped a great danger. I implore you to tell no
one what I write to you. If anyone asks of you news of
me, say that you know I am well, that I am better, that
I am absolutely converted to the Catholic religion, after
ripe reflection, in full possession of my moral liberty and
my good sense."
Lepelletier, his biographer, does not wish to grant that
the conversion was sincere. He calls it "an impulsive
act." Verlaine, he says, in his youth despised religion,
had read materialistic books, and had lost faith in the

212 GREAT PENITENTS
supernatural, getting instead, "a rational and intelligent
atheism!" He seeks to explain the psychology of it in a
natural way. The habits of the man had changed, he
had become sober by force, and hence less nervous, less
excitable ; he was less the boy now, and had become more
serious; he stopped swearing, blushed for his past, exam
ined his conscience and asked himself what he had done
with his youth; from that there came a moral depression,
and he got the idea that he must do penance; then the
religious idea awoke, and he invoked the Lord for help.
This mere natural explanation is unjust to Verlaine.
There is no doubt that the man's heart was converted to
God. His one thought during those days was to atone
for his sins. Piety occupied his mind to the exclusion of
everything else. Worldliness had left even his poetry.
"I am making canticles to Mary," he writes, "after the
system and the prayers of the primitive Church." It may
be noted that henceforth Verlaine's poetry sounded the per
sonal note.
His reading, too, had changed. He wrote that he
wanted to translate "a remarkable book of Lady Fuller-
ton — Ellen Middleton." Strange that that book, written
before Lady Fullerton entered the Catholic Church,
stressed the need of man to confess his sins. Verlaine had
already decided that when he was liberated he would make
his living by translating. One gets an idea of his change
of heart in a letter he wrote to Lepelletier, September 8,
1874: "It is necessary to have passed through all that I have
suffered for three years, humiliations, disdain, insults, to
feel all that is admirably consoling, reasonable, logical, in
this religion, so terrible and so sweet. Oh, terrible ! Yes !
But man is so bad, so truly fallen, and punished by his
birth alone. And I do not speak of proofs, historic, scien
tific and other, which are blinding when one has this im
mense goodness to be drawn from this society, abominable,

PAUL VERLAINE 213
rotten, old, foolish, proud, damnable." The prison,
through the religion which it brought to the soul of the
sinner, regenerated Paul Verlaine. It was under that
wonderful influence that he wrote in prison most of the
great religious poems of Sagesse, which Verhaeren calls,
"the white crown of his work," though the book was not
published till 1881, several years after he had been re
leased from prison. Sagesse is wonderfully beautiful;
every line of it could be quoted to show how Verlaine had
remade his soul through tears of repentance. One ex
ample must suffice, one of the most glorious lyrics ever
written. We give the fine translation made by Ashmore
Wingate. My God, but Thou hast wounded me in love,
And quivers still the wound that Thou hast made :
My God, but Thou hast wounded me in love.
My God, but with Thy dread Thou'st stricken me,
Thy blast, which thunders yet I feel anear :
My God, but with Thy dread Thou'st stricken me.
My God, I have discovered all is vile,
Now that in me Thy glory is installed :
My God, I have discovered all is vile.
Submerge my soul in flood-waves of Thy Wine,
And from Thy table's Bread upbuild my life :
Submerge my soul in flood-waves of Thy Wine.
Behold my blood, which I have never shed;
Behold my flesh, unworthy to feel pain :
Behold my blood which I have never shed.
Behold my forehead, which can only blush,
For footstool of Thy feet adorable :
Behold my forehead, which can only blush.

214 GREAT PENITENTS
Behold my hands, which have no labour done,
For burning embers and for incense rare:
Behold my hands which have no labour done.
Behold my heart, which hath but beat in vain,
To throb upon the briers of Calvary :
Behold my heart, which hath but beat in vain.
Behold my feet, these frivolous voyagers,
To hasten to the summons of Thy grace :
Behold my feet, these frivolous voyagers.
Behold my voice, a sullen, lying sound,
For the reproaches made by Penitence:
Behold my voice, a sullen, lying sound.
Behold mine eyes, lights which with error shine,
To be extinguished in the tearful prayer:
Behold mine eyes, lights which with error shine.
Ah, God of offering and forgiveness,
What is the depth of my ingratitude ?
Ah, God of offering and forgiveness.
Oh! God of terror and of sanctity,
Behold the black abysm of my sin:
Oh ! God of terror and of sanctity.
Thou God of peace, of joy, of goodness, too,
All these my fears, all this mine ignorance :
Thou God of peace, of joy, of goodness, too.
Thou knowest, yea, all this Thou knowest well,
And how I am most poor of all that live :
Thou knowest, yea, all this Thou knowest well.
Yet, Lord, that which I am, to Thee I give.

PAUL VERLAINE 215
Verlaine was released from prison January 16, 1875.
The faithful old mother was waiting for him at the door.
They were escorted to the French borders by the police,
and the mother brought him to her relations to rest a
while before taking up his life again. She alone was
faithful. Verlaine was dead to society, buried alive, and
not even his name was mentioned, a fact that must be
taken into account when there is consideration of his re
lapses and his final degradation.
How sincere his conversion was is evident from the fact
that he did not drink for five years after his conversion.
Had he been given a helping hand in those first days of
fervor, things might have been different towards the end.
But he was received coldly even by his relatives. There
was the taint of the jail upon him. But he was still domi
nated by his conversion. He was a sincere penitent; he
sought to arrange his life so as to avoid the temptations of
the past. He had to look for some way to earn a living,
for his mother's fortune had dwindled to almost nothing.
He thought of taking up farming, but wisely put away
the idea. Literature, his metier, offered no financial pros
pects, and he had no bent to journalism. Anyway, he
did not wish to return to Paris, where his name was a
byword, and where, moreover, there were so many dan
gers for his soul. The vagabond life, the cabarets, all Paris
was full of temptations. No better proof of his sincere
repentance is wanted than his manly, even heroic efforts to
lead a new life. So he decided to teach Latin, French and
English in some school where he could live and there find
forgetfulness of the past in honorable work. He adver
tised in the papers and soon got a position in the Grammar
School of a Mr. Andrews, in Stickney, near Boston, Eng
land. There he taught French, Latin and drawing, and
made his dwelling with the family of Mr. Andrews, a
charming, learned man. Verlaine led a very happy exis
tence there for a year and a half, leading a laborious, regu-

216 GREAT PENITENTS
lar life, working hard at learning English and finding
solace for his soul in the open fields of the beautiful Eng
lish country. He wrote little or no poetry in those days,
but he read a great many books. He writes from Stick
ney, November 19, 1875, that he has been reading theology
and the mystics — The Summa of St. Thomas, and the
works of St. Teresa!
Anxious to see his mother, he left the school and came
to Arras, and remained there for a time, writing poetry
and studying English. He finally came to Boston, Eng
land, and tried to make a living by giving private lessons
in French but failing in that he got a position in an insti
tution at Bournemouth, directed by a Mr. Remington.
Here he wrote several of the poems of Sagesse, "masses
of verse," as he said. But the homesickness was upon him,
and he returned to Paris where he remained for a while,
though unknown. Through his friend Ernest Delehaye,
then a professor in the Catholic College of Notre Dame at
Rethel, he got a position teaching literature, history, geog
raphy and English. Most of his fellow professors were
priests "gens cordiaux," as he calls them. He found there
in this "Thebaid" peace and calm. The priests did not
know the history of the man till long after he had left
them. They had found him uncommunicative, but faith
ful to duty, regular in his religious exercises. They never
suspected that in the quiet of his room he was writing
some of the greatest religious poetry of all time, his recrea
tion after correcting the themes of his pupils. He was a
modest, simple, pious man. Verlaine always kept the
most pleasant remembrances of the college. And the col
lege reciprocated. It was proud of him. In 1897 the
alumni gave a banquet at Paris in memory and in honor
of their late professor.
It is said by some of his biographers that at Rethel the
old temptation to drink came upon him, and that being
reprimanded for it he left. Whatever the reason he re-

PAUL VERLAINE 217
signed. He wanted to reclaim his position in society, to
get a place in the world.
One of his students was Lucien Letinois, a farmer's son,
a pious youth whom Verlaine loved much. He went with
the lad to the farm and lived there for a time. He per
suaded his mother to come and buy a farm in the vicinity.
Poor business man that Verlaine was, he had the place
bought in the name of the elder Letinois. The dreamy
poet was never meant to be a practical farmer, and the
undertaking was a miserable failure. He gave it up ; old
Letinois sold the farm and pocketed the money, and Ver
laine with the wanderlust again in his soul set out with the
boy for London. They remained there but a short time,
for they had no money, and back to Paris they came to
his mother, with whom he remained from 1881 to 1883.
He tried in vain to get back his position in the bureau.
It was in this period of uncertainty, of mental suffering
that he brought out his greatest book, the immortal Sagesse,
1881. It had been a hard struggle to place it. No one
wanted poetry, especially pious poetry. It was a Catholic
publisher, Victor Palme, who finally accepted it.
Needless to say it passed unnoticed. Even the Catho
lics did not buy it. The book was dedicated to his mother.
It is interesting to read the original preface, suppressed
in later editions, since it gives an insight into the spiritual
condition of the poet at that time, long after the first fervor
of his conversion.
"The author of this book has not always thought as he
thinks today. For a long time he wandered in contem
porary corruption, taking his part there through ignorance.
Griefs, well merited, have since then warned him, and
God has given him the grace to heed the warning. He is
prostrated before the altar, so long unknown, he adores the
All Good and invokes the All Powerful, a humble child
of the Church, the least in merits but full of good will.
The knowledge of his weakness and the memory of his

218 GREAT PENITENTS
falls have guided him in the elaboration of this work, which
is his first act of public faith after a long literary silence ;
one will not find anything here, he hopes, contrary to this
charity which the author, hereafter Christian, owes to
sinners, whose odious morals he formerly and almost up
to the present has practised. . . . The author pub
lished when very young, that is to say a dozen years ago,
verses sceptical and sadly light. .He dares to think that
in these here there is no dissonance to shock the delicacy
of the Catholic ear; that there is no such fault would be
his dearest glory as it is his proudest hope."
Oh, the pity that in time these good resolves disappeared
and the poet gave to the world not only light verses but
verses rankly obscene.
Verlaine was now at the edge of the precipice. Lucien
Letinois had died of typhoid. Verlaine was inconsolable
at the loss of the youth whom he loved as a son. He wept
in agony as he went to bury him. In time he found res
ignation, beautifully expressed in his book— Amour — ¦
written in memory of the youth. We can date the be
ginning of Verlaine's new decline, moral and intellectual,
from the passing out of his life of the good influence of
Lucien Letinois.
For a while Verlaine got work on the Reveil (which
afterwards became the Echo de Paris), contributing short
essays such as constituted later his books — Les Memoires
d'un Veuf and Qvinze Jours en Hollande and Les Poeles
Maudits. He wrote other prose at the same time and a
new volume of verse Jadis et Naguere. In 1883 he re
turned to Belgium and made another attempt at the farm
er's life. His mother went with him. But it was the
same old story. The ennui drove him to drink. He quar
reled with her, fell into bad company and became so ob
jectionable that she left him and went back to Paris,
where he followed her. They returned again to the coun
try. But he drank again in spite of his good promises,

PAUL VERLAINE 219
and in one of his fits of drunkenness raised his hand against
this old woman of seventy-five years whose only fault was
that she loved him too well. For this offense he was im
prisoned for a month. After his release he sold the farm,
at a loss of course, and came back to Paris. He was ill,
weak, breaking up from his debauches. He that once had
been so near sanctity !
The last years of Verlaine are a distressing study. His
mother died in January, 1886. It was a black day for
him and he was never any good after that. His life there
after was one of bad company, misery, sickness. With no
money, he lodged in deplorable conditions, in the poorest
district, sometimes in hovels where there was not even a
floor. His wife remarried in 1886. In August, 1887,
we find him writing that he did not have a sou.
The life of poverty, of heavy drinking, of immorality
soon broke down his body, naturally robust. Time and
again he had to go to the hospitals, his only refuge. There
he was forced to be sober, there he could work ; there, too,
he could weep over his past sins. "All the maladies I
have," he wrote in humility, "I have well deserved. I
am able to say my mea culpa. I have burned my life, and
so much the worse for me." The doctor who attended his
death bed said that Verlaine had eight or ten mortal dis
eases. In the hospital he was contented for a while, but after
a couple of weeks the ennui would seize him and he would
go back to the hovels of the Latin Quarter. He was al
ways the big irresponsible child. It was this, perhaps,
that drew so many friends to him. There was a certain
fascination about him and no one could be angry with
him for long. Even the police had orders not to arrest
him no matter what his vagaries. Bad women preyed
upon him, exploited him, made him support them.
The last years, 1892 to 1896, were lamentable. He lived
here, there, everywhere, drinking, carousing, a life of vul-

220 GREAT PENITENTS
gar lust, even prostituting his wonderful poetic talent for a
few pence in the writing of poems some of which were so
positively indecent that they could not be published openly.
He had lectured with much acclaim in Holland, in Bel
gium and in London, and had this late in life tasted the
joys of popularity. But it was too late to redeem him.
He had gone back to the vomit. Still there was some
thing of the old faith when he wrote in his Confessions
(1895), "To conclude, as the Christian I have tried to be
and who is not perhaps quite submerged, ought I not re
peat, speaking of my past, with that other great self-con
fessor, the adorable Bishop of Hippo — Domine, noverim
Te — Lord, That I might know Thee !"
The last days of the poet were tranquil enough. He
had given up drinking and was assiduous at his work.
About Christmas, 1895, he was taken ill and was obliged
to keep to his room. Strange, his last poem was on Death.
He was ill several days, neglected by the woman who preyed
upon him. When help did come it was too late. He fell
into a coma. The priest was sent for, but Verlaine was
unconscious when he arrived. The poet died January 8,
1896, "fortified by the Sacraments of the Church," the
funeral notice read.
When the news was spread about everybody in the world
of letters came, a tribute to the genius of the man. Among
those who came was Huysmans, also Coppee, who wept
for his friend. Coppee was not far from that day that was
to mark his own great conversion. The hour for the fu
neral had been set for two o'clock, but through the influ
ence of Coppee, sorry that no one had thought of having
a Mass said for the poor soul, the hour was set for ten
o'clock. Letters of condolence came from all parts of the
world, the humble room was filled with flowers, and all
Paris thronged to the funeral Mass at the Church of St.
Etienne du Mont, Verlaine's parish church. Fifteen pages
of a register were filled with the names of visitors to the

PAUL VERLAINE 221
home of the dead poet. He was buried in the cemetery
of Batignolles with his father and mother. The great
writers of the day, such as Mendes and Coppee, pronounced
his eulogy. Coppee's tribute is a classic.
So passed one who, as Maurice Barres says, "was the
victim of his own genius."
In Mes Prisons (1891) Verlaine tells us that after his
conversion he persevered for several years, and that relaxa
tion followed little by little, and then new falls; and he
writes : "Irremediable ? Perhaps not, for God is merciful
and has sent me afflictions, ruin in truly the most humble
circumstances, deceptions, treasons from my scandalized
neighbors. Oh, the catechism of Abbe Gaume! Oh, not
to be able to read it again, not to want to read it again,
perhaps, and this time to keep it! God, nevertheless, is
merciful, and hope is a theological virtue which departs
more willingly. Lord, have pity on us !"
Verlaine must remain always something of an enigma.
But one thing is sure, he was at one time of his life a great
penitent, near to God, even though his later relapse is all
too plain. His friend, Lepelletier, will not admit his real
conversion. He calls it, "a sort of religious conversion,"
a "theatrical religiosity, external and bookish." But we
prefer to have the opinion of Huysmans. Verlaine loved
Huysmans. Apropos of one of the books of Huysmans —
La Bas — some one asked Verlaine if he had ever attended
a Black Mass. The question irritated him. "Do you
think me," he replied with vehemence, "so cockney or so
sick as to give myself to those mummeries so infamous,
so repugnant in themselves, so truly repugnant to the
Catholic faith which I have always professed sincerely,
notwithstanding all my weaknesses, all my errors?"
In Verlaine there was the struggle between the senses
and the soul, and no one knew it better than himself. He
sinned; then he was ashamed of his sins. But his faith
was never shaken. All, Catholics and unbelievers, recog-

222 GREAT PENITENTS
nized him as a great Catholic poet, though many Catholics,
and justly, too, suspected him on account of the life he was
leading. Huysmans in 1904 wrote the Preface to the
collection of the religious poems of Verlaine. He comes
to the defence of the dead poet. He seeks, he says, to
dissipate the misunderstanding which exists between Ver
laine and the faithful, distrustful of his person and his
books, to make them understand that he was not the im
penitent sinner they suppose. "Unique, in effect, across
the ages, he has recovered those accents of humility and
candor, those prayers grieving and benumbed, that joy-
fulness of the little child, forgotten since that return to
the pride of paganism which the Renaissance was."
Huysmans, big convert as he himself was, knew the hu
man heart, the weakness of human nature. It was not
for him to throw stones at a sinner. He expresses his
faith in the reality of Verlaine's break with sin. "The
conversion of Verlaine was then entire. He lived then in
his cell the new existence of sins wiped away by repent
ance and absolved by pardon; he was no longer the pris
oner discontented with men, but the captive enamoured of
God; he experienced the sweetness of the St. Martin's
summer of the soul which the Lord reserves for the reju
venated old age of His own; there were for weeks the
pouring out of prayers, joys softened by tears ; as all peni
tents he was fondled (spoiled) by tbe Virgin, rolled in
the swaddling-clothes of tenderness; he had an advance
of his inheritance of the joys of Heaven, and he ended
by thinking the punishment of his imprisonment too short.
So one can affirm that his resolve henceforth to live right
was sincere." Verlaine, says he, was a big child whose
will would not hold with conscientiousness when he drank ;
the absinthe "uncaged in him, alas, an evil beast delivered
without defence to the Spirit of Evil. He deplored it,
swore never to drink again, and he drank." He lived,
unavoidably, in the midst of wicked men and women, who

PAUL VERLAINE 223
were always a temptation. Some of his friends tried to
redeem him from them, but in drink Verlaine was indocile,
headstrong. "What he needed," says Huysmans, "was
some priest to lead him, but God did not send him one.
Hence," he adds, "Verlaine was more to be pitied than
blamed, the more so that he had awakenings of conscience,
of remorse, in this wretched existence." Ah, be assured,
that he was not -in his lucid moments the haughty, the
light-hearted one; he wept with disgust at himself; per
haps he even drank then, as so many others, to forget.
Safe from temptations in the hospital he could write mys
tic poems, he could pour out his heart to her he loved so
much, the "Refuge of Sinners" ; he could write then "the
most beautiful poems of repentance and the most beautiful
rhymed supplications that exist."
So also Coppee. Addressing Huysmans in La Bonne
Souffrance, he says : "A wind has passed — spiritus flat ubi
vult — and religious words have been spoken by mouths
whence one would not expect to hear them. The poor
Verlaine began it. You recall the admirable plaints of
penitence in Sagesse."
Many affected to despise Verlaine. There was, indeed,
much about him that was ignoble. But to such poets and
penitents as Huysmans and Coppee he was always "Poor
Verlaine." Perhaps that is what will remain of him, the
memory not of the old man, old before his time, drunk with
absinthe, frequenting low dives, the companion of loose,
scheming women, the relapsed sinner who was the weakest
of mortals, but the weeping sinner, crushed to earth in his
prison cell, rising from his knees to chant through his tears
some of the most beautiful penitential psalms ever writ
ten. Poor Verlaine !

A LITANY OF PENITENTS
SAINT TERESA always had a special devotion to
those saints who once had been great sinners. She
found comfort in thinking of their conversion,
praying that through their intercession God would forgive
her as He had forgiven them. She had devotion in par
ticular to St. Mary Magdalen and to St. Augustine.
For that very reason the life of the great penitent
makes an appeal to all of us. God forgave him ; the real
ization of that fact induces us to hope that He will also
forgive us. More than that, the true penitent is always
a living testimony to the truth of religion. Men do not
leave the pleasures of sin, do not afflict their bodies with
the scourging rod and the hair-shirt for a mere whim.
Hardly. It is because they are convinced that their true
happiness, their eternal happiness, can be had but at the
price of tears shed over the evil they have done. It is
their personal testimony to the belief in the necessity of
penance. To them penitence is a plain statement of fact ;
there is nothing heroic in their eyes in their own suffering
for sin, in their turning away from the allurements of the
world to follow God. It is just a plain need ; if they want
Heaven they know they must do penance, for there is no
Heaven for the man in sin. We might call that the com
mon sense of religion, even though it is a common sense
very much derided in these days when there are so many
who affect to believe that Hell and the punishment of sin
is just a sorry little joke on the part of God. Just plain
common sense we could call it, for it is a strange fact that
there is no people, no religion which does not profess at
224

A LITANY OF PENITENTS 225
least to believe that to obtain from its god or gods the re
mission of sins committed it is necessary to have a sincere
regret for past faults and a firm purpose to sin no more ;
while most of them agree that every bad action requires a
real, a corporal expiation. So, with the Egyptians, the
Greeks, the Syrians, the Romans, with nearly all the peo
ples of antiquity this expiation of sin was a religious truth ;
there could be no initiation into the mysteries without such
expiation. It was, too, a fundamental dogma of the
Brahmins, the Buddhists, the negroes of Africa, the In
dians of America. In this universally surviving truth
there is seen, of course, the remnant of primitive revela
tion and the history of the primal fall.
Needless to quote the numberless passages in Sacred
Scripture wherein God requires the sinner, if he would be
saved, to do penance. The Old Testament is one contin
ual appeal to penance. The penitential psalms are the
classics of the poems of repentance. The history of King
David is the example that never stales of the folly of sin
and of the wisdom of coming back to God in humble re
gret at ever having left Him. As Saint Ambrose says:
"David seems to have sinned that he might at once become
an example of penitence."
In the New Testament the teaching of the necessity of
penance is more insistent still. "Do penance, for the
Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." So declares the Lord
(St. Matthew IV. 17). "Amen, I say to you, unless you
do penance you shall not enter into the Kingdom of
Heaven" (St. Matthew, XVIII, 3). "Unless you do pen
ance, you shall all likewise perish" (St. Luke, XIII, 5).
And, "indeed, how lovingly the inspired writers tell the
story of the first great penitents of the New Law, Magda
len, Peter, the Good Thief. Jesus was the "friend" of
sinners. We read in an old book that when a zealous pas
tor named Carpus was weary in trying to reclaim an ob
stinate sinner in vain, Christ in a vision rebuked him, tell-

226 GREAT PENITENTS
ing him He was ready to die a second time for the salva
tion of sinners.
What the Master taught, so also taught His apostles.
Their great message is, "Do penance; be converted to
God." How St. Paul must have wept and prayed for the
soul of the slave Onesimus — Onesimus, the thief, who had
robbed his master, Philemon, and then run away for fear.
By the grace of God he met Paul, then a prisoner at Rome,
and the great Apostle of the Gentiles converted the poor
slave to God, sent him back to his master, and obtained his
deliverance. Not only from material bondage was Onesi
mus freed but from the greater bondage of sin. He is
one of the first great penitents of the Church. More strik
ing is the beautiful story we read in the life of St. John
the Evangelist. On one of his visitations while he was
preaching he was very much attracted to a handsome youth
in the congregation. Won to the lad, he brought him to
the bishop of the city and said to him, "In the presence of
Christ and before this congregation, I earnestly recom
mend this young man to your care."
The bishop took the trust, educated the lad, baptized
and confirmed him. Soon the boy fell into wickedness and
ended by becoming the leader of a band of highway rob
bers. Some time after that St. John returned to the
city and asked the bishop for the trust he had committed
to him. What a surprise and grief was his when he
learned the terrible truth. He wept bitterly. "Oh," said
he, "what a guardian have I provided to watch over a
brother's soul !" Off he rode to the mountains and, being
seized by the robbers, asked to be led to their leader. When
the youth saw his old friend, he was covered with confu
sion and sought to run away from him. But St. John
pursued him, crying out, "My son, have compassion on me.
There is room for repentance; your salvation is not irre
vocable. I will answer for you to Jesus Christ." The
robber dropped his weapons and burst into tears. He was

A LITANY OF PENITENTS 227
henceforth a true penitent, reclaimed by him whose one
sermon in his old age was, "Little children, love one an
other." That message of repentance the Church has continued
to repeat. Sorrow for sin is to be a new baptism, "the
baptism of tears," as St. Cyprian calls it. Hence the
Church in her practices, her law of Lent, her laws about
fasting and abstinence, but gives the expression of her be
lief that sin once done must be atoned for. It is the law
of satisfaction. To the Church sin is always the only
evil. She never minimizes that evil ; and it is because she
knows how great an evil it is that when she succeeds in
putting her own conviction into the hearts of her children
that she falls to rejoicing, in imitation of her Divine
Founder, the Good Shepherd, Who rejoiced over the sheep
that had been lost and now was found again. Rejoice she
does over the return of the sinner but, true Mother that
she is, she is not the doting mother that would spoil with
too much kindness the wayward one. She would welcome
home the sinner, but her love indicates that there is some
thing else to be done besides the mere wish to return.
The sinner has to prove himself. Hence the system of
public penance which, so long in vogue in the early Church,
strikes terror into our weak souls today because of its
severity. To read the penitential canons of the past with
the years of penance assigned to various sins, five years for
this, twenty-five for that, is to make us tremble at the little
penances at which we grumble.
It was in the second century and at the beginning of
the third that the penitential discipline of the Church was
most severe. It was then, as it were, a great concession to
a man who had sinned grievously to be allowed even to
begin his penance. Penance was a painful operation nec
essary for the lasting cure of the sin-diseased soul. Not
only was the Church's concern for the sinner himself, but
the example of the penances he was made to endure was

228 GREAT PENITENTS
to keep others from falling by striking terror into them
at the sight of the penalties which sin exacted. Hence
permission to do penance and so become reconciled to the
Church was given only to those who showed unmistakably
that they were in earnest. There was to be no dilly dally
ing with sin ; it must be cast aside absolutely. The sinner
must beg to be allowed to come back home, and until he
had obtained that permission, he must be an outcast from
the faith, not even allowed to take part in the public offices
of the Church he had so disgraced. When he was granted
permission to begin his penitential life he came on the first
Wednesday in Lent and had the bishop and the clergy im
pose hands on him as they prayed. He was barefoot, his
hair clipped, ashes upon his head, and his clothing was of
the poorest kind. He prostrated himself on the ground
and then the sentence according to the laws of the Church
was pronounced upon him. He was told how many years
he must do penance, the practices of austerity he must
submit to, and urged piously to humility and to a spirit
of true mortification.
There were generally four states of penance ; ,the first
was for the penitent to remain outside the Church and beg
all the faithful who entered to plead his case with God and
with the bishop. After he had finished that course of pen
ance be was permitted to stand in the portico of the
Church and be present at the prayers before the Mass.
His real penance began with the third step when he was
allowed to enter the nave of the Church and assist at the
Mass of the Catechumens. He left the Church with them
before the Mass of the Faithful. Before he advanced to
the fourth step he had the hands of the bishop again im
posed upon him and heard the prayers offered up for him.
And finally he came to the fourth step when he was al
lowed to participate in all the prayers and celebrations of
the Church and to assist at the Holy Sacrifice, being al
lowed, however, to receive Communion only after the sol-

A LITANY OF PENITENTS 229
emu declaration of the bishop that the penance was com
pleted. After such a penance there was little danger of
relapse. Drastic the remedy was, but effective, as the
Church well knew. Well could she be proud of her work
of reclamation through such trials and tears.
Seeing that the solicitude of the Church for the sinner
is so great, it is not surprising that the penitent has always
been a noted figure. He is always the prodigal welcomed
home; he is the experienced traveler who assures us on
his life that what God said was true, that there was no
real happiness in sin, that it was folly to cast aside inno
cence of heart for the husks of pleasure, that the only real
wisdom of life is to love God and serve Him alone. For
that reason the study of the lives of great penitents is one
of the most salutary ; useful not only to the sinner as show
ing him bis miserable folly, convincing him by example
of the eagerness of God to welcome him home, but also to
the man who has never sinned grievously, as telling him
that the life of sin which sometimes seems so alluring is,
after all, not worth while; that in the end it has to be
regretted; and what sense is there in doing what one will
have to regret ?
The example of penance has always been cherished in
Christian literature. One could make a litany of peni
tents out of the lives of the Fathers of the Desert. What
penitents they were even though in most of them there
never had been any grievous sin ! It was the example of
these terrific penances that drew thousands away from
the world, that made the desert bloom with the innumer
able flowers of holiness, watered by the tears of the peni
tents. Those were the ages of penance par excellence.
But in all ages there have been great penitents: "His
mercy is from generation to generation to them that fear
Him." The Church has always provided for those who
are weary of serving the world and wish to return to God.
One sees that in the many penitential orders, as they are

230 GREAT PENITENTS
called, wherein the members of these orders take the obliga
tion upon themselves to do extraordinary works of penance,
or provide for others the means of atoning for great sins.
The same spirit is seen in the confraternities of penitents
who publisb to the world even by their manner of dress
that they are poor sinners anxious to atone for their sins.
"To bring forth fruits worthy of penance;" so entreated
the Baptist. That has been the aim of all who have sought
holiness. Even in the lives where there has been no great
sin we see extraordinary penance. Sometimes the grief of
the saints over their petty faults would seem to us almost
an exaggeration, but their yearning for perfection, their
burning love for God, made even the venial sin seem to
them an extraordinary crime of ingratitude. So we read
of the grief of some of the saints over what we of untender
consciences would dismiss almost as a joke.
We are told that when St. Thomas, Bishop of Hereford,
was young and studying philosophy at Paris he took the
prop of a vine from another man's vineyard in order to hold
up his window. And so great was his remorse afterwards
for the petty theft that he did severe penance for it sev
en longs years. So, too, we read in the life of St. Philip
Neri that once when he was a little boy he pushed away his
little sister who was teasing him while he was reading the
psalter ; all his life he bewailed this as a great fault. St.
Ephrem would always bewail the little fits of anger he had
against his playmates in the days before his baptism.
St. Macarius the Elder, a wonderful penitent, had stolen
some figs as a child and had eaten one of them. From the
day of his conversion to the day of his death be bemoaned
that sin. St. Walston, Bishop of Worcester, was once
tempted to a sinful thought. It was only a temptation but
it so disturbed his conscience that he threw himself into a
thicket and there bewailed his fault. Yet the same man
was always so tender with penitents that he would weep

A LITANY OF PENITENTS 231
over them. The great St. Anselm would cry over the
petty faults which to his pure eyes seemed great. In the
life of St. Conrad of Piacenza we read that one day he
ordered one of his servants to set fire to some brushwood.
The fire got beyond control and a conflagration was the
result. A poor beggar was accused of the crime and was
sentenced to death. Conrad at once assumed the blame
and even sold all his property in order to make up the
losses which his innocent action had caused. So filled was
he with penance that he retired to a hermitage, while his
wife entered the Poor Clares. For thirty years he led a
life of austere penance.
It was because their souls were so tender that they wept
over even these little faults. To them tears were sweet so
long as they were shed for God. Penance was their love ;
it was such a very little thing to bear great sorrow so long
as the pain brought them to eternal life. Thus when St.
Peter of Alcantara appeared to St. Teresa, he said, "O
happy penance, which hath obtained me so great a reward !"
What mattered the sufferings of the body while the spirit
was dwelling with the angels. That was why Saint Francis
of Asissi called his body "Brother Ass" — because it wa3
to carry burdens, to be beaten, and to eat little and coarsely.
The litany of penitents is as cosmopolitan as the litany
of the saints. From every age and country and station in
life their cry of sorrow ascends to Heaven. A litany could
be made even of the names of the penitents "that are in
the houses of kings." High station in the world may be
nothing to brag about, but there is always a specially
striking lesson in the conversion of the high and mighty.
Surely it takes a great grace from God to make the king or
the gay courtier humble himself in the dust. St. Igna
tius, St. Francis Borgia are all the more convincing in
that they sacrificed much that the world holds dear in order
to walk the way of the Cross. It is not easy for the ruler
of men to put off bis soft purple and fine linen for the

232 GREAT PENITENTS
hair-shirt and the ashes. But it is not an isolated story in
the history of penitents. Not in vain had King David
given the example of bitter tears. One loves to be told
that the doughty Richard Coeur de Lion died showing signs
of sincere repentance and so won his greatest battle, that
over himself. It was the same spirit that converted the
French King, Dagobert I, from a dissolute life to one of
holiness on the occasion of the birth of his son who was
to be the great St. Sigebert II. What a cheap bauble
was the crown to the man who knew himself to be a
miserable sinner.
In all history there is no more striking example of
humbled royalty than that of the great Emperor Theo
dosius. A general of great probity and valor, he had
triumphed over the barbarians in Britain and Africa. The
Emperor Gratian had such respect for him that he finally
made him his colleague, and emperor of the East, in 379.
St. Ambrose in 390 was holding a council at Milan when
the news was brought that a dreadful massacre had been
committed at Thessalonica. A charioteer had been impris
oned for an offense he had committed, and the people were
so enraged because the authorities would not release him
in order that he might perform in the circus that some of
the officers were stoned to death and their bodies dragged
through the streets. Theodosius when he heard of the
affair was very angry, but Ambrose and the other bishops
finally prevailed upon him to overlook the crime. Other
advisers, however, urged him to put down the insolence
of the public, and at last orders were given to send the
soldiers against the city. While the people were in the
circus the soldiers surrounded them and a slaughter took
place which lasted three hours; seventeen thousand were
massacred. Ambrose and the other bishops were filled
with horror at the terrible crime. When Theodosius re
turned to Milan, Ambrose left the city and sent a letter to

A LITANY OF PENITENTS 233
him telling him that he must do penance and that until he
did he would not celebrate Mass before him.
When Ambrose returned, Theodosius as usual came to
church. But Ambrose faced him at the door. "It seems
to me, sir," said the fearless bishop, "that you do not yet
rightly apprehend the enormity of the massacre lately com
mitted. Let not the splendor of your purple robes hinder
you from being acquainted with the infirmities of that body
which they cover. You are of the same mould with those
subjects which you govern ; and there is one common Lord
and Emperor of the world. With what eyes will you
behold His temple? With what feet will you tread His
sanctuary ? How will you lift up to Him in prayer those
hands which are still stained with blood unjustly spilt?
Depart, therefore, and attempt not by a second offence to
aggravate your former crime, but quietly take the yoke
upon you which the Lord has appointed for you. It is
sharp, but it is medicinal, and conducive to your health."
The emperor tried to defend himself by suggesting that
David, too, had sinned. But Ambrose replied: "Him
whom you have followed in sinning follow also in his
repentance." Theodosius returned home, humbled. For
eight months he did penance, clad in penitential weeds, and
weeping abundantly over his sin. Rufinus, the master of
the offices, tried to soothe him by telling him that there
was no need of such grief inasmuch as he had only punished
criminals. "Rufinus," replied the emperor, "thou dost
but make sport and mock me. Thou little knowest the
anguish and trouble I feel. I weep and wail my miserable
condition. The Church of God is open to beggars and
slaves ; but the church doors, and consequently the gates of
Heaven, too, are shut against me. For our Lord has
peremptorily declared that whatever you shall bind on
earth shall be bound in Heaven."
When the emperor finally begged Ambrose to absolve

234 GREAT PENITENTS
him, the great bishop ordered him to take his place with
the public penitents. Theodosius obeyed ; he knelt at the
church door among the penitents repeating David's cries
of sorrow. He beat his breast, tore his hair, and confessed
his sin while the people wept with him. What an edifying
sight to see the great emperor humbled in the dust!
Ambrose absolved him. It was love for the sinner that
closed his eyes to the worldly grandeur of the emperor.
It was the greatest blessing that could come to Theodosius.
Every day till the day of his death he continued to do
penance for his sin. He had the happiness to die in the
arms of the bishop who had withstood him. It was
Ambrose, too, that preached his funeral sermon.
One of the most thrilling stories of penance is that of
St. James of Persia (A. D. 421). He was a nobleman
of the highest rank, a man of fine talent, and a great
favorite of the king. He was a Christian but apparently
only a nominal one, for when the king proclaimed war
against Christianity, James lacked the courage to confess
himself a member of the hated religion, and denied his
God. It was so hard to give up his place in the world for
a mere matter of conscience! His wife and his mother,
who were devout Christians, were heartbroken at his defec
tion, and they wrote him a letter taunting him with his
cringing before a mortal man and threatening him with
the Divine justice he must one day face. James was moved
by the fearless letter, and began to think of his terrible
sin of apostasy. He left the court which had been the
cause of his downfall and bewailed in tears his denial of
the faith. The king was told of his favorite's penance and
sending for him reproached him with ingratitude. But
James did not heed the reproaches of the earthly monarch ;
he saw himself as a wretched sinner, an ingrate to his God.
The end of it all was that the gay young courtier was
called upon to do penance in his blood for the sin he had
committed. He was hacked to pieces. He did not flinch.

A LITANY OF PENITENTS 235
He knew that all the agony that could be inflicted upon
him was little enough to atone for his crime of apostasy.
That is one thing about the great penitents ; they set no
bounds to what they wish to endure in atonement. It was
so with another nobleman, St. Bavo, the patron saint of
Ghent, who lived in the seventh century. For years he
had led a life of sin, when one day, some time after the
death of his wife, he listened to a sermon preached by St.
Amand. So deeply was his heart touched that on the
instant he was converted from his wickedness. He followed
the preacher and threw himself in tears at the feet of the
holy man. Weeping bitterly, he confessed himself the
lowest of sinners, and begged to be directed how to atone
for his past. Amand was not too tender with the convert ;
he knew that here was a great sinner who needed to do
great penance. The saints while tender with sinners never
minimize the horror of sin. Bavo made his confession.
He was done with the world now ; he sold all his property
and gave the proceeds to the poor, one of the hardest pen
ances for any man to do. In time he became a hermit,
building for himself a cell and living all the rest of his
days on herbs and water, thinking all suffering but small
in comparison with the goal to which it led. We read in
his life that so great was the example of his penance that
sixty other noblemen left the world to lead a life of the
most austere penance. Taken from these ages long gone
by, these penitents may seem but as mere names, but we
must not forget that they were all men like ourselves, to
whom pleasure was just as sweet, the smell of life just as
attractive, and the practice of self-denial just as repellent.
For that reason every one of them must be a hero to us
poor weaklings.
The story of St. Hubert has always been a popular
one in art and poetry. Hubert was a worldling if ever
there was one. The gay court was his world; he thought
little of the things of the spirit. One thing to which he

236 GREAT PENITENTS
was especially devoted was hunting. The legend goes that
one Good Friday when everybody else was at the solemn
services of the Church, he went forth to hunt. A magnifi
cent stag came across his path and at once he gave chase to
it. Suddenly the animal turned. Hubert saw a crucifix
between the antlers, and heard a voice which said to him :
"Hubert, unless thou turnest to the Lord and leadest a
holy life, thou shalt quickly go down into Hell." The
huntsman prostrated himself upon the ground and cried
out, "Lord, what wouldst Thou have me do?" Henceforth
his life was one of rigorous penance, of devotion to the
service of God as first bishop of Liege and as apostle of the
Ardennes. So earnest was he in his penitence that he
longed to wipe out his sins by the blood of martyrdom.
But God had other work for him to do, and Hubert lived
his saintly life giving to the world he had left the example
of sorrow for sin (727).
One likes to linger over the story of Blessed Gunther of
Bohemia. He was of a noble family, was related to St.
Stephen, King of Hungary, and had the world at his feet.
The court was his life; its pleasures filled his mind, and
his one thought was to rise in the world. He was fifty
years of age when the call to conversion came. Thence
forth his life was one of mortification in atonement for his
sins. For thirty-four years he led the life of a hermit, a
life of tears and pain, yet considered it all cheap in com
parison with the joys of Heaven for which he labored
(1045). A contemporary of his was St. Romuald, founder of
the order of the Camaldolese. He belonged to the family
of the dukes of Ravenna, and was a thorough worldling, a
slave to his sinful passions. The occasion of his conversion
was a strange one. His father Sergius slew his adversary
in a duel. Romuald, then twenty years of age, was a wit
ness of the crime, and so shocked was he by it that he
thought it necessary for him to expiate the crime of his

A LITANY OF PENITENTS 237
father in a monastery. There he went through a course
of rigorous penance for forty days. The penance won his
soul to God ; from doing penance for the sins of his father
he saw the need of doing penance for his own sins. From
that day till his death at seventy, through hard labors for
the Church, through terrible temptations in the memory
of the luxuries of the court he had quitted, he atoned for
the sins of his youth (1027).
How often in the history of the saints we see repeated
the manner of the conversion of St. Paul, struck to the
ground by a blow from Heaven. That was the case with
St. John Gualbert. His parents were of the nobility,
with an abundance of wealth. Young John had a great
future in the world. He lived as a great lord, was full
of family pride, a law unto himself. Very poor material,
indeed, for a saint; and no one would have laughed as
heartily as the young courtier himself had any one sug
gested that he would ever exchange his fine silks and satins
for the ugly hair-shirt.
One day his brother Hugo was murdered and John
determined to have revenge. To this he was incited by
his father, for the honor of the family demanded that blood
should be paid for by blood. As in the case of St.
Hubert the conversion took place on Good Friday. John
was riding home with his attendant when in a very narrow
passage he came face to face with his enemy. He drew
his sword to execute his vengeance, when the other threw
himself from his horse, fell on his knees and with his arms
extended in the form of a cross begged John by the Passion
of Christ to spare him. The bloodthirsty John felt the
heart within him melt. "I can refuse nothing," he said,
"that is asked of me for the sake of Jesus Christ. I not
only give you your life, but also my friendship forever.
Pray for me that God may pardon my sin." The two
former enemies embraced and parted. John came to a
monastery and entering the Church prayed before the

238 GREAT PENITENTS
Crucifix and in tears begged God to forgive him his sins.
The story goes that in answer to his appeal and as a reward
for his heroic act of forgiveness the Crucifix bowed to
him. A thorough conversion was effected in the heart of
the man. He threw himself at the feet of the abbot and
asked to be received into the monastery. The abbot was
afraid of the anger of John's father, but he permitted him
to live there in his secular habit. That would not do John,
however; he cut his own hair and borrowed a religious
habit. When the father came, angrily protesting against
such a course, John finally prevailed upon him to allow
him to remain and follow the will of God which had been
manifested so clearly to him. The rest of life was for the
penitent an austere one. From a hot, impulsive youth he
became meek and humble. Yet with that continual pen
ance there went great service for the Church. At the time
of his death he had founded twelve monasteries. So great
was his practical charity to the poor that often he would
empty the granaries of the monasteries to feed them. As
in the case of all the other saints, the greater the penance
the greater the charity. Sometimes we are given an idea
of penitents as poor useless beings wasting their time in
idle grief; nothing is further from the truth. St. Peter
could weep penitent tears till his cheeks were furrowed,
but who was ever more active? So with all these other
men of God; the more they realized their own sins, the
greater their zeal for the souls of others. Your great peni
tent is never a man of selfishness.
The description of the penance and the tears of St.
Norbert (1134) is one of the most edifying stories we have
in the lives of the saints. He belonged to the world of the
nobility, loved the life of ease and pleasure which was his
birthright and went on his way singing. One day he was
thrown from his horse in the midst of a terrific thunder
storm. "Lord," he cried in fright, "what wilt Thou have
me do ?" The answer came : "Turn away from evil and

A LITANY OF PENITENTS 239
do good; seek after peace and pursue it." It was in the
ways of penance he sought and found that peace. Through
a long life of penance he never ceased to meditate on the
mercy of God, which had given him a chance when so
many others had been thrown into Hell.
The desire to do penance impelled the saints to heroism.
St. John Capistran had the world at his feet, and then
he kicked it away from him. To him there seemed nothing
worth while in life but to do penance. He had not been
what we would call a great sinner, nevertheless he was a
great penitent. When he sought admission into a Fran
ciscan monastery, the guardian, who knew the nobleman's
history, and how much he had loved the world, in order to
try him out, ordered him to don a ridiculous dress and ride
on an ass through the streets of Perugia, with a paper cap
on his head on which the names of many grievous sins were
written in capital letters. It was a severe trial to the rich
young man, once the nice dandy, but he did not shirk it.
He was willing to be considered a fool for the sake ofi
Christ. Henceforth his life was a terrible penance. It
was that same spirit of sorrow for sin that gave such power
to his sermons. One sermon he preached on death and
judgment in Bohemia moved one hundred and twenty
young men to enter religious orders. There never was
absent from him the thought of his sins. He often declared
that God treated him with too much leniency. The old
man of seventy-one died on the floor, a humble penitent.
Then, too, there was St. Ennodius, of one of the great
families of France, related to all the great lords of his
day. The world was bright to him; he was married to a
rich and noble woman, he was talented, devoted to elo
quence and poetry. But he had sinned. One day the grace
of God touched his heart and he was moved to weep bit
terly over his sins. With the consent of his wife, who
embraced a life of continency, he took orders and thence
forth gave his life, his literary talents, to the service of the

240 GREAT PENITENTS
Church, in which he attained a high position as Bishop of
Pavia. He endured many things for the faith, but gave
great lustre to the See he so well served. One thinks of
him, however, not as the great bishop but rather as the
poor penitent who had tasted of the sweets of sin yet saw
how all turned to ashes on the lips.
It was not always the man of the world that was the
penitent. Sometimes we find the virtue wonderfully exem
plified in the lives of the young. Such a one was St.
Andrew Corsini. The Corsini family was one of the most
illustrious in Florence. Andrew, the child of pious
parents, the result, indeed, of prayer, and consecrated to
God before his birth, fell into wickedness as a mere boy.
One day his pious mother, like another Monica grieving
over the dead soul of her child, reproached him for his evil
life. So touched was the boy that he went to the Church of
the Carmelites to pray and think the matter over. There
came to him then a resolution never to go back home again,
but to leave the world and do penance for his youthful
wickedness. From that time till the day of his death at
the age of seventy-one he never lost his first fervor. It
was a life of stern penance, with his hair-shirt, his iron
girdle and his humble bed of pine branches on the floor,
a life of perpetual prayer and tears that finally sanctified
the soul which once was on the edge of perdition. It was
a noble life of the service of God and His poor ; but through
it all sounded the lamentations of one who had been a
sinner (1373).
So goes the litany from one age to another. The royal
courts, the palaces of the nobles have given all too many
examples of the service of the world, the flesh and
the devil; yet there is also the other side of the pic
ture, of wonderful sanctity, of the garment of sack
cloth underneath the fine linen. So much is said in mem
oirs of the evil life of the Duchess de la Valliere, for in
stance; so little of such men as the Jesuit, Pere Aineet,

A LITANY OF PENITENTS 241
who resigned his office as confessor to Louis XIV because
that monarch would not give up his illicit attachment for
the Duchess. We like to return again and again to the
days of the Bourbons when the court of France was a bat
tle ground where the spirit of sin and the spirit of pen
ance were in continual conflict among mesdames and mes
sieurs. "To die well, to die penitent," says Guizot, "was
in those days a solicitude which never left the most
worldly." The Prince of Conti died devout; even De
Retz made his peace with God. Mazarin in the shadow of
death saw the vanity of life. "I have misgivings," said
he to his confessor, "about not being sufficiently afraid of
death." Toward the end, when he was commiserated for
his sufferings, he humbly said, "I shall have a great deal
more to suffer." When Berulle brought the Carmelites
from Spain to France the convent soon numbered among
its penitents women of the highest rank in the world. It
was there that Mme. de Longueville did penance for
twenty-five years. "Now that I make not a single step
which does not lead me to death," wrote the young favorite,
Cinq Mars, to his mother, "I am more capable than any
body else of estimating the value of the things of tbe
world." When he went forth to his death, wrote the Coun
cillor of State, he "showed a never changing and very reso
lute firmness to death, together with admirable calmness
and the constancy and devotion of a Christian." As his
friend de Thou said to him as he marched to the scaffold,
"Enough of this world ; away to Paradise." It was thus
that the two young courtiers recovered their faith in God
there in the valley of the shadow of death; and both had
been near to losing their souls at the royal court.
"Enough of this world ; away to Paradise." Often the
same sentiments have been expressed at the approach of
death by those whose lives have been so scandalous that
their return to God seemed impossible. Who would have
expected a change of heart on the part of the licentious,

242 GREAT PENITENTS
renegade Talleyrand. A persecutor of the Church whose
holy orders he had received, he was declared by his own
episcopal chapter as "deserving infamy in this world and
damnation in the next." He had reached the heights of
power as a statesman, he had attained the glory of the
world, but in the end it brought only affliction of spirit.
Every night Bishop de Quelen prayed for the conversion
of the notorious sinner: "O my God, I ask for the con
version of M. de Talleyrand. I offer my life to obtain it,
and I willingly consent never to hear of it if only I can
obtain it." The im: able prayer was answered. Sometime
before his death Tallfvuiud humbled himself by signing
an open retraction of his errors. He made his confession
and received the last Sacraments. His repentance was
earnest and he died fervently praying to the Mother of
God, for whom he had always had a sentiment of devotion.
Talleyrand then saw that his wisdom which he had thought
so great was but the folly of the heedless prodigal. It
was only by a great grace from God that a Talleyrand
could humble himself to admit that he had been a fool.
Not the least prominent position in the litany of great
penitents is held by those who once had been great soldiers.
It is hard to exaggerate the part played by the warriors in
the early ages of Christianity in helping to propagate the
faith. A great army could be numbered out of the fighting
men whose military career finally led them to martyrdom
in the arena. Some of them had served the world all too
well, had led lives of wickedness in the camp till the grace
of God humbled them into weeping penitents.
Such a one was St. Joannicius, once a driver of hogs,
then a soldier in the Guards of the Emperor Constantine.
A big, robust fellow he was, fearless, who had won fame
by many brilliant military exploits. His life, however,
was one of moral rottenness, and in addition to that as an
Iconoclast he took part in the persecution of the Church.
By the grace of God he was at last converted after a con-

A LITANY OF PENITENTS 243
versation with a holy monk. From that time on no pen
ance was too great for him to atone for his past wicked
ness. During the six years that he remained in the army
after that his whole life seemed to be made of tears, fasting
and prayer. At the age of forty he left the army and
became a monk; and from that day till the day of his
death at the great age of one hundred and sixteen he was
one of the greatest penitents the Church ever had. It is a
great line, that of the soldier penitents, with such wonder
ful heroes as St. Ignatius Loyola, St. John Camillus,
St. John of God, and in our own day the young Italian
soldier, Giosue Borsi, great sinner, great penitent, great
ascetic, great patriot, a man whose literary testament, "A
Soldier's Confidences with God," is destined to become
one of the great books of the ages.
From every walk of life, indeed, there goes the procession
of sin-weary penitents into the vale of tears. God's grace
softens the hardest hearts. Even the apostate doctor,
Pantaleon, who sacrificed his faith for worldly ambition,
was allowed to come back and atone for his sins by shed
ding his blood as a martyr. Today the apostate Pantaleon,
tomorrow the great martyr, St. Pantaleon. What hope
there is to the sinner who reads the story of the "Seven
Robbers" who became the seven martyrs; in the story of
the outlaw, Talon, notorious in the Middle Ages, who after
having assisted at the execution of Aime du Poncet became
a sincere penitent and willingly embraced death as a little
atonement for the evil life he had led. What an inspira
tion there is in the stories of the penitent women, from
Magdalen down ! One could compile a litany of penitents
from the old stories of sorrowing women, of such heroines
of atonement as St. Mary of Egypt, St. Pelagia, St. Thais,
St. Margaret of Cortona, Blessed Angela of Foligno, who,
after having drunk the cup of shame to the bitter dregs,
braved the ridicule of the world they had so long served
and put off the soft garments for the sackcloth and ashes.

244 GREAT PENITENTS
Over and over again it is the same story of Magdalen,
the woman once a sinner now suffered to behold face to
face her risen Master.
But the greatest victory for the spirit of penance was
that won over the intellectuals. And how endless the list
is. The proudest intellect of all, Augustine, became the
model of lowliest penitence. It was the same spirit that
led Prudentius to become an ardent penitent, fasting every
day until night, using his literary talent to glorify God
and to atone for the sins of his youth. It was the same
spirit which made the penitent Chaucer disclaim those
books of his which he thought "consonant with sin" ; which
turned the gallant, self-sufficient Racine into a lowly peni
tent. Several of Racine's daughters were nuns ; it was no
doubt by their prayers he came back to God. "He was
loving towards God," said his son, "when he returned to
Him." The life of all the penitents is summed up in these
words. How edifying are the last days of La Fontaine.
"0 my dear friend," said he to one of his companions, "to
die is nothing, but thinkest thou that I am about to appear
before God? Thou knowest how I have lived." He had
lived a life of sin, but for the last two years had done heroic
penance. When they came to put him in his shroud they
found that he had been wearing a hair-shirt. The maker
of wise fables had given in his own last days the best lesson
of true wisdom, that the only peace is in keeping the com
mandments of God. So Lamartine, who in his old age
returned to the wisdom of the faith which in the days of
his strength he had treated as foolishness. So Boileau
who said at the end : "It is very shameful to be still busy
ing myself with rhymes and all these Parnassian trifles
when I ought to be thinking of nothing but the account I
am prepared to go and render to God." So with the great
Manzoni, a wanderer far from God; his wife, who had
been a Protestant became a Catholic and Manzoni followed
her into the Church. From that time on he desired only

A LITANY OF PENITENTS 245
to serve the faith which once he had derided. How good
was God to them ! He would not have them throw their
souls away. As an old priest once said about Passaglia:
"Never fear, he will die penitent. He has written too
beautifully of the Mother of God to be allowed to perish."
Passaglia, a true genius, eminent theologian, had written
three volumes on the Immaculate Conception, and had had
a leading part in preparing the definition of the dogma.
Pride of intellect brought about his downfall and his ex
communication. It seemed a hopeless case. But some
days before his death he retracted his errors and was recon
ciled to the church.
It would be an endless task, indeed, to complete the
litany of those who wandered far from God, who sought
their joy in the cup of sin, and finding it all but vanity and
affliction of soul came back to Him over the rugged road
of the Cross to drink to the dregs the penitential cup of
tears. It was thus they found their happiness. They
would not have exchanged their hideous hair-shirt for the
royal robes of kings. They knew that here, no matter how
the world ridiculed their foolishness, was all wisdom. As
the great dramatist says of Wolsey :
His overthrow heap'd happiness upon him ;
For then, and not till then, he felt himself,
And found the happiness of being little ;
And, to add greater honours to his age
Than man could give him, he died fearing God.

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