Chapter VII: The vocation of a Mission Priest

THE letters of M. Vincent to the Priests of the Mission declare to us his mind on the subject of vocation. One meaning of vocation to him was a love of Christ so burn­ing that it consumed all desire other than His Will. Close examination of his recorded words suggests that in his view there were no degrees of vocation, because nothing could be more perfect than the perfect following of the Will of Christ. His desire not to exalt the Com­panies of which he was the human Founder led him into the use of expressions indicating the superiority of other Orders, but in fact no classification was consistent with his actual point of view. It is worth while to follow him into the detail of his direction of his Mission Priests that we may understand how searching and intimate was his representation of this claim of Christ upon them. If they neglected details, it was a sign that their vocation was not being faithfully followed. Unless the fire of the love of Christ was near extinction, there could be no desire to snatch the sweetness of small indulgences; and by the lowering of purpose in one member the whole Company suffered, for they were knit together by the acknowledgment of a claim that touched them all equally. As the first fervour that delights in exaggerated self-immolation died away, there appeared in many of these souls a tendency to rely on their vocation in its spiritual aspect, and neglect its external demands. In 1650 there is a letter from M. Vincent¹ (it is addressed to the Superior at Richelieu, but it was sent to all the Branch-Houses of the Company) on the question of the rigorous observance of the Rule and the reason for such observance. This letter touches a principle which was a matter of difficulty to many, and though much of it is concerned with the minutiæ of the semi-monastic life of a Mission Priest, it would lose weight if given merely in extract.

” MONSIEUR,

” You know that everything is constantly under­going change, that even men are never in exactly the same state, and that God often allows the most sanctified of societies to suffer loss. There have been examples of this in some of our houses, and it has come to our know­ledge from visits made to them, although at first we did not discover the reason of it. It has taken some study and attention to find it out, but at last God has made it clear that a bad result has proceeded from the freedom with which some of you have indulged in more rest than the Rule allows. All the more because, in consequence of not joining the others in prayer, they forfeit the ad­vantage of prayer in common, and very often pray very little or not at all by themselves. It follows that, as these persons are less watchful of themselves, they grow slack in conduct, and the Community no longer holds its life in common. To check such disorder, the root must be removed, and to that end you must require punc­tuality in rising, and insist on its observance, so that, little by little, each house will change its character, growing more attached to the Rule, and every individual will learn to prize his own spiritual privilege.

” All this caused us to make this opening act of the day the subject of our first ‘ Conference ‘ in this new year, that we might become more resolute in all making four o’clock the invariable hour of rising, and so attain the sooner to the good effects of such faithfulness. This having been the subject of our discussion, I thought it well, Monsieur, to inform you of it, and to take counsel with you on the possibilities of objections to it, and the best means of impressing it on your family, so that they may maintain the same practice (or adopt it, if they are not doing so at present), and have their share in the blessing on it.

” The first advantage in rising at the moment of call is that it is fulfilment of the Rule, and consequently of the Will of God.

” The second, that the more prompt the obedience at that hour, the more acceptable is it to God, and it will bring a blessing on all the other doings of the day, as we see in the promptitude of Samuel, who, having risen three times in one night, won the praise of Heaven and earth, and special favour from God.

” The third, that one gives first place to that which is most worthy of honour, and as all honour belongs to God, we should give to Him this first act of the day, otherwise we shall be handing it to the Devil, allowing him to come before God. This is why he prowls around our bed when the day begins, that even if he have no more of us later, he may be assured of our first act.

” The fourth advantage is that, once one is accustomed to a time, there is no difficulty in waking or in getting up, habit taking the place of a clock, if none is to be had. While, on the other hand, Nature presumes on all we yield to her. If we rest one day, the next she will ask for the same indulgence, and continue the demand so long as we give her opportunity.

” The fifth is that mind and body are the better for the regulating of sleep. Those who allow themselves much become effeminate, and open the door to temptation.

” If the life of man is too short to serve God worthily and to atone for the waste of the night, it is melancholy that we should desire to curtail even such time as we have. A merchant will get up early to attain to riches; every moment is precious to him. A robber will do the same, and will be up all night that he may waylay travellers. Is it well that we should have less industry for good than they for evil ? In the world there is much eagerness to be up to attend a great man’s levée. Mon Dieu ! how can we face the shame of losing the appointed hour for intercourse with the Lord of Lords, our patron and our all, because of our laziness ?

” When we take part in prayer and office we share in Our Saviour’s blessing, Who gives Himself freely, being present, as He Himself has said, among those who assemble in His Name. The morning is the fittest time for this employment, as being the quietest in the day. The hermits of old and the Saints, following in the steps of David, used it for prayer and meditation. The Israelites had to rise early to gather manna, and we, being without grace or virtue, why should we not do the same to attain to these things ? God does not bestow His favours equally at all times.

” It is unquestionable that since He has given us grace to rise all at the same moment, we are all more punctual, more recollected, more humble, and in this there is reason to hope that so long as we are agreed on this matter there will be continuous growth in grace, and each one of us will find his vocation deepening. There are several who have left because, as they could not get enough ease, they could not content themselves with their condition. How can there be any eagerness for prayer in those who are only half-awake, and only get up under protest ? On the other hand, those who rise promptly are those generally who persevere, who never grow slack, and make good progress. The reality of vocation depends on prayer, and the reality of prayer depends on getting up. If we are faithful in this first act, if we come before Him all together as the first Christians did, He will give Himself to us, He will give us of His light, and will Himself bring to pass in us and by us the good which we are bound to do in His Church, And He will give us grace to attain that degree of perfection which He requires of us, that we may be one with Him in eternity.

” You will see, Monsieur, how important it is that all the Company should rise at four exactly, because the worth of our prayer depends upon this opening action, and the worth of everything else we do rests on what our prayer has made it. He who said that he could tell what all his day would be from the prayer that began it, spoke with knowledge.

” In some, however, the love of soft living will not surrender without remonstrance, and because there is some excuse for saying that the rule of rising should not be equally binding on strong and weak, I foresee that it will be urged that the weak need longer rest than others. To that the best answer is the opinion of doctors, who all agree that seven hours’ sleep is enough for all sorts of people, and also the example of all religious Orders, who limit sleep to seven hours. There are none who take more, there are some who do not have so much, and with most it is interrupted, as they rise two or three times in the night to go to chapel. That which most of all reflects upon our weakness is that nuns do not have any more indulgence, although they have less strength and have been brought up more luxuriously.

” ` But, surely, they sometimes take an extra allowance of sleep ?’ No, I have never heard that they do so, and I can assert that the nuns of S. Mary do not, except in the case of those who are ill and in the infirmary. ‘ What, Monsieur !’ cries someone else, ‘ must one get up when one is ill ? I have a terrible headache, a toothache, an attack of fever that has kept me awake all night !’ Yes, my brother, my friend, you must get up if you are not in hospital, or have not received a special order to remain in bed; for if you have got no relief from seven hours’ sleep, one or two hours more prescribed by yourself will not cure you. But if, in fact, you do require relief, it is needful that you should praise God with the others in the appointed place of prayer, and that you there make your need known to the Superior. Unless this is the rule, we shall be perpetually forced to begin all over again, because so many will very often feel some illness, and others will pretend that they do, that they may pamper themselves, and so there will be endless opportunities for irregularity. And if one does not sleep soundly one night, Nature is very well able to make up for it the next.

” ` Do you mean also, Monsieur,’ 1 hear someone asking, ` to forbid any extra rest to those who have come off a journey or have just completed some arduous task ?’ I answer, Yes, where the early morning is in question; but when the Superior thinks there is weariness that demands more than seven hours’ rest, he can give leave to retire earlier than the others. ‘ But when they come in very late and very tired ?’ In that case there would be no harm in allowing longer rest in the morning, because necessity is its own rule. ‘ What ! must we always get up at four o’clock, in spite of the custom of resting till six once a week, or at least once a fortnight, to get a little refreshed ? This is not only very annoying, but it is enough to make us all ill !’ There sounds the tongue of self-love, and here is the answer : Our Rule and custom re­quires that we all have the same hour of rising. If there has been any.laxity, it has only been so of late, and only in some houses, by the fault of individuals and the indul­gence of Superiors, for in others the rule for rising has always been adhered to faithfully, and these are the prosperous ones. To think that illness will result from there being no intermission in observance is merely a fancy ; experience has proved the contrary. Since the Rule was enforced there has been no illness here or else­where that there was not before, and, moreover, we know, and the doctors repeat, that oversleep is bad both for the dull and the high strung. Finally, if it be urged against me that there may be some reason which prevents someone from going to rest at nine or ten o’clock, I answer that such reasons must, if possible, be avoided; and if there be impossibility, it will be so rare that the loss of an hour or two of sleep is insignificant compared to the harm done by one remaining in bed while the others are praying.

” Have I not made a great mistake, Monsieur, to have expressed myself at such length with regard to the im­portance and usefulness of early rising, when your family is perhaps the most regular and the most fervent in all the Company ? If that be so, I have no other object than to urge on them a humble thankfulness towards God for the faithfulness that He has given them; but if they have fallen into the fault against which we are fighting, I have good reason, I think, to require them to raise themselves from it and to ask you, as I am doing, to uphold them.

” May it please God, Monsieur, to pardon our past failures, and to give us grace to amend, that we may be like those fortunate servants whom the Master shall fmd watching when He cometh.

” Here, indeed, is sufficient for one letter; I ask the prayers of you and of your little Company.”

Two points are here made clear to us : First, that the Mission Priests—though many of them were marvels of courage and self-devotion—were, in ordinary life, very human in inclination and in weakness. In consequence of this we see in truer proportions the miracle of guidance performed by M. Vincent. We may be tempted to think of him as controlling a huge machine which, from distant and scattered quarters, was connected with S. Lazare. Instead, we must recognize that his control was over a company of human beings, each with a very definite in­dividuality, and each with his special struggle to maintain against familiar and ordinary temptation.

And then, by his insistence on a detail, we see how M. Vincent required the testimony of vocation to shine in every thread of the fabric of a life. The truly dedi­cated life, under whatever conditions, is offered whole. There can be no treasured indulgence, however small, kept in reserve ; even the wish to save out of the sacrifice is enough to spoil its value. A lengthy dissertation on the advantages of early rising is not, perhaps, a valuable contribution to spiritual literature, yet M. Vincent’s ex­hortation to his Sons on the necessity of exact obedience to the Rule that a Mission Priest got up at four is one of the most characteristic expressions of himself that has been preserved to us. It is an exhortation to obedience, but it is much more than that. In the headquarters at S. Lazare the Superior-General, in spite of the innumerable claims upon his time, was living a life of prayer. In so far as the strength of the Company emanated from him, it was not on his experience and administrative capacity that it depended, but on his faithfulness in prayer. The evidence of his letters, as well as the witness of those who knew him, leaves no uncertainty on this point. Every distress and every difficulty was with the most complete simplicity laid before God, and he had discovered that there was no other method of guarding a vocation from the perils of distraction, of ennui, and of self-indulgence; his sense of peril was his motive for summoning his Sons to prayer. At the same moment every one of that great troop of combatants must be united (despite all division of distance) in asking for the aid they would all need before the day ended; if indiffer­ence crept in here the Company was doomed. It was, therefore, not only the enforcing of an order, but the comprehension of its spirit and the real desire to fulfil it which M. Vincent considered necessary, and this was by no means a small demand.

That obedience as obedience was required of a Mission Priest no less than of a Religious has been demonstrated in many of the letters already quoted. In its aspect as an exercise in humility it was specially cherished by M. Vincent; he himself relates² that one of the seminary students was so full of zeal for his own spiritual advance that he desired to attend the lectures to ordination candi­dates. He asked leave to do so from the Director, but it was not immediately accorded to him, and he ventured to gratify his desire without leave. He was at the end of his last year, but for this misdemeanour he was re­quired to remain an additional six months, ” not having had strength to subdue himself in this matter.”

The unnamed culprit seems to have been an ardent youth athirst to realize the spirit of the vocation which he hoped might be his own, snatching at every chance of external assistance and eager in every devotional exercise. Probably he would have been foremost in up­holding M. Vincent’s theory that the Mission Priest must be a man of prayer, and would have given intellectual assent to the assurance that humility is the necessary concomitant of the true spirit of prayer; but, when it was a question of deferring to the judgment of another where his own spiritual needs were concerned, his in­tellectual apprehension proved insufficient, and his pro­fessions of humility showed themselves to be unreal. By this one instance, insignificant enough in itself, we can judge of the innumerable questions that must have come before M. Vincent, in which his decision had life­long effect on the spiritual life of those concerned ; and of the impossibility of bearing such a burden solely by the aid of reason and experience. Rebuke was so very often necessary, and among the many responsibilities of authority there is none in which the grace of God is more essential than in the giving of rebuke. The vagaries of error were endless. Besides the heresy, the disloyalty, the disobedience, which were self-evident temptations to those who made profession of self-surrender, there were unexpected outbreaks originating in failings that were inconsistent with the most elementary understanding of the vocation of a Mission Priest. It was hard always for M. Vincent to believe that a real understanding, however faint, of what it meant to be a Mission Priest, could ever be clouded by any other consideration. As he expressed it to one of them who was tempted by the ambition of a scholar³:

” You must make yourself realize that there are thousands of souls who are stretching out their hands to you, who are saying, ‘ Alas, Monsieur ! God has chosen you to help to save us ; have pity on us and give us your hand to draw us out of our present misery. We are left to rot in ignorance of our chance of salvation, and in sins which we have been ashamed to confess. If we lack your help we are in peril of damnation !’ ”

This is a very simple presentment of the position as M. Vincent understood it. The horrors of ignorance and vice were very vivid in his own mind, and it was the part of the priest to remedy them. It was the duty of his Com­pany not only to be physicians themselves, but to train others to the same office, and both labours were equally important. We have an instance of the varied difficulties of the Superior-General in connection with this work of training. One of his priests employed therein was domi­nated by a violent temper, which expressed itself in abusive language and in blows. The need of plain rebuke was clear, the whole Company was likely to suffer by the scandal; but the sinner was the more difficult to deal with because he was not convinced that he was wrong, and M. Vincent became more forcible than was his habit in consequence⁴:

” If you say that you have not observed these faults in yourself, Monsieur, that is only a sign that you have very little humility; if you had as much as our Lord requires of a Priest of the Mission you would regard yourself as the faultiest of all, you would know yourself capable of these things, and would assume that the reason you do not see what is seen by others, especially since you have been criticized, is some secret blindness in yourself. And with regard to criticism : I am informed also that you will not tolerate any from your Superior and still less from others. If this be so, Monsieur, your condition is indeed serious, and very far removed from that of the Saints who humbled themselves before the world and were glad to be shown any defects.”

In truth, the condition of very many of them was very far removed from that of the Saints, and yet the Call of God upon them was one that demanded saintliness. The work of village Missions alone required a specially con­secrated body; and this need of sanctification becomes, if possible, even more evident if we turn to that other missionary enterprise that had its centre at Marseilles.

With the possible exception of the Foundling Hospital in Paris, the most celebrated labour undertaken by M. Vincent was that connected with the convicts at Marseilles. It is in a measure detached from the accepted tasks of the Company, but by its difficulty, and by the conquest of inclination that it demanded, employment in it was the most real test of spirituality. The idea that M. Vincent’s sympathy was first drawn towards the captives in the Hulks by the recollection of his own years of slavery is not a straining of probability; there is a story that his pity once moved him to change places with one of these wretched beings. We do not have it on his own authority, and the question of belief in it may be left to the discretion of the individual; his real claim on the gratitude of the convicts had a far deeper basis than a passing act of quixotism.

That which is humanly described as chance gave Vin­cent de Paul his original link to the Hulks at Marseilles. M. de Gondi was General of the Galleys, and as a member of his household, access to them, which otherwise might have been denied, was accorded to him. Whether his first visit was by the desire of M. de Gondi or at his own request we have no means of knowing, nor does it signify; the work was waiting for him, and somehow he was brought to it. It would be an offence to transcribe the record of conditions prevailing in those days at Marseilles and at Toulon. The King’s ships were rowed by male­factors; it was necessary that they should be rowed, and volunteers for the office were not forthcoming, therefore the stock of malefactors could never be permitted to run low, and the list of crimes which were visited by con­demnation to the galleys became a formidable one⁵. When the term of the sentence was reached, there was no guarantee of release for those whose services were still required. An edict of Louis XIII⁶ ordains that the first two years of a convict’s labour should not count as part of his sentence, because it took that period to train him as a seasoned and accomplished oarsman, and there seems to have been no protest against this singular in­version of the principle of punishment. When we add that the training, and the subsequent labour of those who were trained, was under the lash, that the rowers were chained to their oars, and that no change of climate altered in the slightest the conditions imposed upon them, we can form some idea of the despair which descended on the prisoner who heard this doom pronounced upon him.

As far as the process of the law was concerned, Vincent de Paul did not effect any improvement in the position of a convict. It is well to admit this fact at the outset ; but it is difficult to decide whether any interference was within his power. We know that at the very beginning of his intercourse with them⁷ he received a special appointment from Louis XIII. as Royal Almoner to the Galleys, and also that M. de Gondi was extremely in­fluential, and he stood high in favour with M. de Gondi. Even in those days, moreover, it was possible to appeal to popular sentiment to check a monstrous abuse, and a priest with the reputation that M. Vincent already pos­sessed had the best opportunity for circulating such an appeal; his observations would be listened to and re­peated until his cause became a public one. On the other hand, he was a member of the household of M. de Gondi, and an outcry raised against the conditions of the convicts was of necessity an attack on the General of the Galleys. At the time of his first connection with them he had made his attempt to retire into obscurity, and had just accepted the decision that the place he held was assigned to him by God. Moreover, at all times he was influenced by the instinct of deference from the peasant to the noble, and he would not have assumed the position of mentor towards M. de Gondi without the actual compulsion of his conscience. It is dear that he felt no such compulsion, nor, when M. de Gondi himself was no longer concerned, did M. Vincent attempt to move the authorities ; and thirteen years after his death we find a Bishop of Marseilles presenting a humble petition in favour of certain prisoners whose term of servitude had expired ten years earlier, but who were still chained to their oars, which suggests that the barbarities practised in 1622 had not lessened half a century later.

The explanation of M. Vincent’s quiescence is not to be found in a failure of compassion. He realized what sentence meant to the future galley slave, he knew that many died by their own hand rather than face the penalty, and that the lives of many more were wasted from lack of the bare necessities of existence, while all were brutalized by the cruelties to which they were sub­jected. He suffered in the thought of their sufferings, but there seems to have been in him a touch of something akin to fatalism; we find evidence of it in his unwilling­ness to interfere with the administration of the Hôtel-Dieu at the call of Mme. Goussaulte, and again in his abstinence from protest when Jean François de Gondi became a candidate for priesthood. To the onlooker in these very differing cases his duty appears obvious, but in the first he only took action under obedience, and in the second he never attempted any action at all. In fact, we must believe that he waited always for the call of God, and that complete reliance (which we have seen sustaining him under responsibilities that were too great for human strength) withheld him from interference in disorder, unless he was assured that interference was required of him by God. This position of absolute qui­escence is, of course, difficult to reconcile with the theory of the pure philanthropist; it is not one that can be adopted lightly, for it assumes the long and diligent practice of prayer which safeguards the soul from self-deception. If M. Vincent’s life was in any degree con­sistent, we must recognize that that which he left undone was so left as the result of prayer.

The fact being admitted, then, that the cruelty meted to the convicts was not lessened by M. Vincent, it is de­sirable to ascertain the actual value of his sympathetic intentions towards them. It was the custom to assemble the prisoners destined for the Hulks in Paris until there were a sufficient number to be worth escorting southward; then la chaine started on its miserable pilgrimage. But great as were the horrors of the road, they were not greater than those which were endured in the time of waiting in the dungeons of the capital; and here M. Vin­cent was able to interfere to some purpose. For the good of the State it was desirable to preserve these future oarsmen from disease, and the conditions to which they were abandoned made disease inevitable. Contemporary writers revel in revolting details, but it is sufficient to note that in this intermediate stage between condemnation and the fulfilmènt of their sentence, the culprits were kept chained to a wall in prisons that in some cases were underground. M. Vincent collected money, and a build­ing in the Rue S. Honoré, near the church of S. Roch, was dedicated to the purpose he desired. Thenceforward a galley-slave obtained his first knowledge of the charity of the Mission Priests before he reached Marseilles; more­over, when the Confraternities had developed, benevo­lence to the convict was one of the duties of a Lady of Charity ; and if they fell ill while still in Paris, they were tended by Sisters of the Poor. By this means the way was opened for nearer approach when they were estab­lished at Marseilles.

The earliest scenes in the history of the Mission to the Convicts are personal to M. Vincent. He could use the memory of his own imprisonment to give him a footing of equality, and even at that period he had so far attained humility that the most resentful of tempers could not detect in him any tokens of condescension. He desired to approach them as comrades who had fallen on evil days, and by that method opened a door to their hearts that might have appeared to be hermetically sealed. It is impossible to imagine a less promising scene for spiritual awakening than the Hulks at Marseilles and Toulon, but the surprise that proceeds from violence of contrast has a peculiar power. Men who were habitually treated as brutes were astonished at the approach of a stranger—even though he was only a priest in a shabby cassock—who spoke to them as if there was some favour they might confer upon him, and appeared oblivious of the horrors that made them loathsome to themselves and to each other. In Paris one of them threw a dish at one of the Sisters of Charity, and in return she besought the guards not to punish him⁸. This was the method which M. Vincent desired in dealing with them. He knew that even the most righteous severity would be misplaced.

” It is when I have kissed their chains, sympathized in their sufferings, and showed them my sorrow for their misfortunes, it is then that they have listened to me, that they have given glory to God, that they have sought salvation.” So he wrote in after-years to the priest⁹ who was carrying on his labours at Marseilles, and the description probably is almost literal. He was doing that which was folly in the eyes of the world, and he could only do it by such an effort of the spirit as should show him Christ in the most miserable and the most guilty of the unfortunates to whom he ministered.

His scheme for the holding of Missions was new in his mind at the time of his first knowledge of the convicts, and in 1622 he applied it for their benefit. He had the fullest support from de Gondi, and from Cardinal de Sourdis, Archbishop of Bordeaux. He was allowed to choose twenty Religious to help him, and had free en­trance to the galleys for himself and them. He ap­pointed two to each vessel, and himself passed from one to another, working continually. His Mission lasted a month, and whatever may have been its permanent effect on the prisoners themselves, the effect upon M. Vincent was to imbue him with a strong desire to resume the attempt that he had made, and to provide some per­manent aid and means of consolation for these the most wretched of his fellow-countrymen. No claim, in fact, could make sharper appeal to the instinct of pity, but M. Vincent did not rule the order of his undertakings by any obvious human instinct. It may be that the work at Marseilles was crowded out by the rapid march of events, and by his own separation from the General of the Galleys, but it is quite equally likely that, having brought his own great inclination for this enterprise before God, he was not convinced that he was called to embark on it; and, in fact, it was left in abeyance for ten years. The position of M. Vincent between 162o and 1630 was a strange one. He was awaking, first, to a sense of the miseries, physical and spiritual, endured by the majority of his fellow-countrymen; and, second, to the comprehension of his own mission as God’s agent for their assistance. The effect of the double revelation upon him resembles the consternation expressed by Isaiah, rather than the ardour of the successful leader of reform. He was always afraid to assume that, because he saw the existence of an evil, it was necessarily his part to interfere with it. Later on, when he held in his hands the threads that could guide great forces of benevolence, the response to cries for help was accorded with less misgiving; but in that earlier time he was, in his own phrase, ” afraid to encroach upon the purposes of God.” His vocation was only gradually accepted. It came to him with an understanding of its difficulty that was as a fire for the burning of his self-esteem. In the time of transition, although there were many possibilities of ser­vice within his reach and within his capacity, he chose to set them aside deliberately.

When he resumed his work for the convicts, there is evidence that M. Vincent was no longer single-handed. As far as it is possible to disentangle the confusion of record, it would appear that the Cabale des Dévots had been in advance of him in practical effort for lessening the horrors of the galleys, and that it was chiefly their efforts which achieved the building of a hospital for the tending of the convicts in sickness. As Abelli never makes any reference to that strange secret society, and he is responsible for the contemporary record of M. Vincent, it is quite possible that credit has been unfairly appor­tioned in this as in other matters; but there is no doubt that, when public attention had once been directed to this particular abuse, all responsibility for spiritual ministration to the prisoners was assigned as a matter of course to the Priests of the Mission. It was in 1643 that the hospital was actually opened, and at the same time, by the generosity of Mme. d’Aiguillon, a permanent house in connection with it was established for the use of the Lazarists, four of whom were to be always in resi­dence. Then at length M. Vincent was able to send labourers to the field on which he himself had entered twenty years earlier with such energy and enthusiasm.

By general consent it was decided that the new con­ditions should be inaugurated by the holding of a Mission. One of the Oratorians — Jean Baptiste Gault — had recently been made Bishop of Marseilles, and his extreme enthusiasm for the work resulted in his death from ex­haustion and overstrain.

The Mission lasted twenty days, the first eight being given to instructing the prisoners collectively; afterwards opportunity of individual intercourse was allowed by the authorities. Even with every facility for investigation a spiritual balance-sheet is of questionable value, and it is not at this distance of time possible to form any estimate of the result. The Director was M. du Coudray, one of the first companions of M. Vincent, and pre-eminently fitted for his task, and we are told that scarcely a soul upon the Hulks remained unaffected. It is evident that a wave of emotionalism passed over them, and there are picturesque accounts of the prayer meetings held among themselves by the convicts, and the intervals of leisure devoted to the singing of hymns and to spiritual reading. Only a little knowledge of the criminal class is sufficient, however, to discount a reckoning of wholesale conver­sion.

All that we can know is that the twenty days’ Mission made a great impression, and that the work that fol­lowed it was worthy of the highest tradition of the Mission Priests. The fact that the hospital was under their supervision was an immense assistance to them. The galley-slave who escaped thither from the horror of illness on the Hulks found himself under merciful condi­tions of which he had. had no experience. It was the most opportune moment conceivable for delivering to him that message of interior peace with which the Lazarist was commissioned. But the deceptive faculty draws its most luxuriant growth from the soil that nourishes the criminal instincts, and spurious penitence no doubt was common in the convict hospital, and disappointment the most ordinary experience of the Mission Priest. It was, indeed, admitted that the most arduous post for a member of the Company was that of Superior to the Mission at Marseilles, and that the labour that set the severest tax on spiritual vitality concerned the prisoners in the galleys. But it might be admitted with equal justice that there was none more suited to a true Son of M. Vincent, for it forced him into a supreme reality of aspiration. Constant failure might be relied upon to weaken his self-love, and the ugliness of the life he was forced to look at schooled him in detachment. So trained, he had the fullest opportunity of living up to his vocation.

There were difficulties besides the difficulty of their spiritual labour. Certain townsfolk of Marseilles were associated with them in the government of the hospital, and local jealousies and disagreements disturbed its peaceful ordering. Graver questions were involved by their connection with the Hulks. Here the appointment of the Almoner (necessarily a priest) was in their hands, but the Captain of a galley was supreme with a kind of supremacy that has no parallel in civilian life ; and the office of Almoner, though it had long had nominal exist­ence on every galley, was not recognized with any respect. The Almoner had a place at the Captain’s table, and, despite his priesthood, was under the Captain’s orders. He was sometimes required to take his turn of watch, and it was extremely hard for him to assert the real immunity from any service of the ship which was his right. It was, in fact, such an anomalous position that vacancies, when they occurred, were very difficult to fill, and the candidates were not of a type that could be imbued with the missionary spirit. Yet, when the galleys put out from port, the rowers had no spiritual assistance except from the Almoner, and the whole object of the Mission Priests on shore was so to stir them from their apathy that they would need spiritual assistance. When Colbert was Chief Minister there were forty galleys in the harbour, and more than 8,000 prisoners manning them. The responsibility resting on the little Company of Lazarists established at Marseilles was, therefore, very heavy, and it is evident that the naval authorities re­sented any interference from them, and interposed every hindrance to the fulfilment of their charge.

There was another consideration for those posted at Marseilles besides the constant test of tolerance and temper. The danger to health was abnormal. Bishop Gault may have fallen a victim to overwork, but many of the deaths there were clearly due to infection. One of the Company—M. Robiche—a man of thirty-five, and in vigorous health when he arrived, forfeited his life after a few months of service. He was noted for his devotion to the prisoners in the hospital, and from them he caught what is termed a ” purple fever,” and died of it. Of necessity his companions and his successor must have realized that his fate was always hovering very near themselves. Marseilles was, indeed, no place for waverers, and even the most faithful may have flinched sometimes at the sharpness of the demand life made on them.

In 1649 there was so terrible an outbreak of the plague as to cause a sort of stampede among the inhabitants. The condition of the Hulks reached a point of horror from which the imagination recoils. There was no one to per­form the most ordinary offices for the dying or the dead, but the prisoners remained prisoners still without oppor­tunity to snatch a chance of life. A few words record the fact that the Sons of M. Vincent stuck to their post, but it is a fact that implies much. In those days terror of the plague amounted to a passion, and their numbers —there were but four of them—were utterly inadequate. If they had retired on the plea that the situation was beyond their power to remedy, the excuse could hardly have been challenged ; instead, they did their part to establish the standard of the Company. Aided by Simiane de la Coste, a Provençal gentleman who was a prominent member of the Cabale des Dévots, they laboured inces­santly, endeavouring specially to preserve the living by burying the dead. It is remarkable that only two—M. de la Coste and one of the Lazariste— died, for the mortality was abnormal, and the peculiar horrors of this particular outbreak of the pestilence is still one of the traditions of Marseilles.

M. Vincent loved his Sons individually, and waited day by day in eager expectation of news from the South; but he was at peace concerning them, whether he ever saw them in the flesh again or not, for they were showing that spirit of entire self-offering which should be inherent in the priest, and justifying for all time the vocation of his ” paltry Company.”

1. ” Lettres,” vol. i., No. 145.
2. “Lettres,” vol. ü., No. 347.
3. “Lettres,” vol. i., No. 21 (1634).
4. Ibid., vol. ii., No. 393.
5. For example: An innkeeper lodging a stranger for more than one night without informing authorities; an able-bodied beggar giving a false name or simulating disease; anyone who could be proved to have caused a woodland fire, even accidentally (Simard, ” Vincent de Paul à Marseilles “).
6. Clement, ” La Police sous Louis XIII., Les Galhres.”
7. 1619.
8. “Conferences,” No. 102.
9. M. du Coudray.