II.—AMERICA.
It is strange that Gallitzin's sudden immersion should have effected as sudden a change in his character. Up to then he was the refined, romantic, purposeless youth; henceforth he is a man of energy and action—devoted, self-sacrificing, ready to do and dare anything in the great cause to which he was about to give his life. Almost the first news received in Germany from our traveller was the very astounding intelligence that he had resolved to leave all things and settle down in America as a poor, despised missionary of the Cross of Christ.
Mitri, her own beloved Mitri—dear and good, it is true, but somewhat of a "softy," a purposeless dreamer,—now a priest, and above all a missionary! His mother could hardly believe her senses. This was the son to whom but a few years before she had written: "It is a wretched thing that a youth of eighteen should be a child. He can not, of course, as yet be a man; but he must be a youth and no longer a child, if he ever means to be a man."
And now Princess Amalie had a hard time of it. She was a chronic invalid, a great sufferer. With all her seeming harshness toward Mitri, she loved him dearly and well. Yet she had to bear not only his loss, but to be blamed by her husband and all her relatives for being in the secret,—for having known "all about it" throughout. And when able to disprove this assertion, she was still accused of having, through her exaggerated piety, been the means of putting such high-flown ideas into the young man's head. The Prince was the first to recognize his mistake and to write a generous letter to his wife, freeing her from all blame; which, considering his grievous disappointment, was most creditable to him.
The Gallitzins were indeed in a very awkward position. As Demetrius held an ensign's commission in the Russian army, and was due in St. Petersburg at the end of two years at the latest, his father now wrote to him entreating him, almost commanding him, to return; for he foresaw clearly enough what a refusal would entail. According to Russian law, he would be disinherited for becoming a Catholic priest; but besides this he would, because of his neglect to take up his commission, be looked upon as a quasi-deserter, and be banished from the empire as a rebel.
It was now that the full beauty and magnanimity of Amalie Gallitzin were seen in their true light. Her absolute unworldliness, her reverence for the slightest whisper of the Divine Voice were so great that never once did she seek to turn Mitri from his purpose, beyond quietly laying the state of the case before him for his own judgment. In spite of worry and opposition and a good deal of secret heartache, in the depths of her great soul she rejoiced and gloried in the vocation of her son.
When the Princess had given Mitri the Bishop of Hildesheim's introduction to the Bishop of Baltimore, she no doubt imagined him one of those dignitaries of the Church, such as they were in Germany—a temporal lord, a man of vast influence, who lived in a palace and had a large seminary and other ecclesiastical establishments under his control. How different was the reality!
John Carroll had been named Bishop in 1790, two years before Gallitzin's arrival. He belonged to one of those honorable families that had come over to America in Lord Baltimore's time and settled in Maryland. His cousin Charles was a true-hearted patriot, who had signed the Declaration of American Independence. Demetrius found Bishop Carroll living a life of truly evangelical poverty and hardship. Beyond a small private fortune, he possessed no means except such as, with some difficulty he derived from Europe; for no endowment went with the episcopal dignity.
Carroll had received his ecclesiastical education in France, where he had formed many friendly relations. Hence when the revolution broke out several distinguished French priests came to America and offered him their services. Among these were the Abbé Dubois, who died in extreme old age as the first Bishop of New York; Flaget, Bishop of Louisville; Bruté, afterward Bishop of Vincennes; and Nagot, president of the famous Seminary of St. Sulpice in Paris. When first this little band of devoted men came to the new country, they had to earn their daily bread by giving French lessons; and only after mastering the difficulties of the English language were they able to help Bishop Carroll in the care of souls.
The Abbé Nagot soon founded an establishment for training youths for the priesthood; it was on so modest a scale and so humble in its beginnings it could hardly be called a seminary. Among its candidates for the priesthood, Stephen Badin was the first and Demetrius Gallitzin the second.
At first, of course, Gallitzin took up his abode in the quasi-seminary simply for convenience' sake—as a visitor,—for Brosius, his travelling companion, had been sent off to another mission; so he was alone. But he had hardly been Abbé Nagot's guest for two months ere he wrote a letter to Münster, in which he said that he had dedicated himself, soul and body, with all that he had and all that he was, to God's service and the salvation of his neighbor in America; and that what had led him to this resolve was the urgent need of workers in the Lord's vineyard. He saw that priests in this country had often to ride for forty or fifty hours or more to administer the Sacraments to the faithful. He could scarcely fear that any one would doubt the sincerity of his vocation, considering the prospect of very hard work which it entailed.
This was indeed true. Mitri had well counted the cost; for was he not living in the heart of the painful but glorious self-immolation which characterized those first Catholic missionaries? There was nothing feverish or spasmodic in his resolve: the sacred fire had been quietly kindled in his heart; little was said by him at any time, only much was done.
The young man was to receive no outward encouragement. The letter to which I have just referred was written to his confessor in Münster,—a good man, a Franciscan friar, but a man of the eighteenth century. He seems to have been too much alarmed to reply. Only after a second letter from Mitri had made it clear that his advice was no longer needed, and that the decisive step had already been taken, did he pluck up courage to write. In a long-winded Latin epistle, full of platitudes, he, a son of St. Francis, dared not positively say, "Give up this high-flown nonsense and return to your family"; but he said that it was Mitri's duty to consult his father, and to do nothing till he had obtained his consent. Alas for the friar if his blessed founder had followed such advice!
Demetrius had, of course, written to him in confidence, with the express recommendation to say nothing even to his mother for the present; for he had made up his mind not to proceed in the matter till he had waited a reasonable time for a reasonable answer. The reply failed to come; and when at length the friar did write, it transpired that Demetrius' first letter had been handed to him by the Princess herself, who said she had received but a short, unsatisfactory letter from her son; and as the Father's seemed to be a longer letter, she asked him if he would read it and tell her what her son wished or was doing.
"As I had forgotten my spectacles," the worthy man writes, "Dr. Overberg, who was also present, offered to read the letter aloud, which he did from beginning to end. How I felt during the reading and how overcome the reader himself was you can not well imagine. What deep sorrow filled my heart as I saw your mother look so sad and anxious! Herr von Fürstenberg was absolutely silent. Oh, how I sighed when I noticed that I had been the innocent cause of so much sorrow!"
The poor young student, so far from receiving encouragement, was disturbed by long letters from all sides, seeking to change his purpose. Even good men could not appreciate the heights of such a vocation as this. Such a new experience in the even tenor of the dear old Münster existence puzzled the saintly Overberg himself,—who, however, soon came to Gamaliel's conclusion—"If it be of men it will come to naught; if it be of God no one can resist it,"—and contented himself with merely exhorting his young friend to prove his own heart earnestly, and not to be in too great a hurry to take any irrevocable step.
The excellent Von Fürstenberg winced at the scandal of the Cross,—at the trials and humiliations of an unknown missionary in a strange land. If Mitri really wished to be a priest, he wrote, why not return to Europe, where such a vocation could at least be carried out in a manner suitable to his rank and position? It can, therefore, be no matter of surprise that Mitri's Protestant relatives should be furious. His uncle, a Russian general, wrote that he considered certain enthusiasts must be to blame for making his nephew forget his rank and family, as well as all sense of fitness and propriety, to embrace "a state of shame and disgrace."
In the meantime, as Gallitzin's German biographer writes, "his mother, though she was the hardest hit and had to bear the brunt of the storm, behaved much the most sensibly. She wrote immediately to the Abbé Nagot, the Bishop of Baltimore, and Herr Brosius. And when, through their answers and the letters of her son, she felt assured that it was a true vocation, she was unconcerned as to the worldly consequences of so unusual a proceeding, and exulted in the happiness of being the mother of a young man so superior to the colorless, commonplace personalities of these times as to have been capable of choosing such a state of life."
Prince Gallitzin (or Herr Schmet, as he was called) was all the while quietly pursuing his studies at Georgetown, to which place the little seminary had been removed from Baltimore. Humility had doubtless much to do with the ugly alias to which Gallitzin persistently clung; but in the first instance it had been motived by a little human prudence. A prince is often fleeced; and Mitri's father had wisely suggested that the American tour could be made equally pleasant at half the expense if the young man travelled as plain Herr Schmet.
In 1793 his mother writes: "The greatest—nay, the only happiness that can rejoice the heart of man here below is to be able to put himself just there where God would have him be, and then to fill that post worthily and well." She goes on to assure him that all the reproaches and unpleasantnesses she may have to bear on his account will be accepted cheerfully; and that she can conceive no greater delight, no more splendid reward for all her sorrows and cares than to see the son of her heart standing at God's altar. Only two things would she ask of him: first, not to hurry—carefully to examine his own heart before taking the irrevocable step; secondly, to promise her to keep his freedom—not to bind himself by vow to the American mission; for, though determined not to keep back anything in her sacrifice, she could not as yet face the thought of never seeing her only son again.
Gallitzin's friends were of opinion that by a timely, merely temporary return to Europe, some settlement might be made with the Russian government so that at least part of his inheritance might come to him. However, a request for his return had been anticipated by Demetrius, who had at once written to say that he renounced all claim to his inheritance. In a letter to Amalie the elder Gallitzin explains that the mere fact of their son's having become a priest disinherited him according to Russian law. And he adds:
"All that I have will consequently go to Mimi, whom, however, I know to be honorable and generous, so that her conscience would never allow her to rob her brother in order to enrich herself.... If you wish you may send on this letter to Mitri. It will save me the pain of writing to him myself. I must add, however, that, in my opinion, if a nobleman renounces the profession of arms to which he is destined by his birth and enters the Church, he can do no less than become either a missionary or a monk, if he wishes to prove to the world that the career to which he was entitled was abandoned neither through cowardice nor ambition."