Father Lacordaire. [Footnote 65]
[Footnote 65: The Inner Life of the Very Reverend Père Lacordaire, of the Order of Preachers. Translated from the French of the Rev. Père Chocarne, O.P., with the author's permission. By a Religious of the same Order. With preface by the Very Rev. Father Aylward, Prior Provincial of England. Small 8vo, pp. 556. Dublin: William B. Kelly. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.]
A complete biography of the eloquent Dominican whose name is one of the most brilliant in the history of the modern French Church is yet to be looked for. If it is ever adequately written, it will be a work of singular fascination. Rich, however, as Father Lacordaire's life was in materials for such a book, it was a life comparatively poor in striking incidents—a life whose best side lay apart from the world, and whose beauty could be clearly seen only by the light of a genuine religious spirit. In a word, it was his inner life which best merits our notice and awakens our sympathy. We shall hardly be going too far if we say that the history of his soul is a positive romance. This romance Father Chocarne has endeavored to relate in his excellent narrative of "The Inner Life of the Very Rev. Père Lacordaire." As a biography, it is defective; but it does not pretend to be a biography. It is, rather, a description of the mental and spiritual progress of the man, and a picture of his virtues.
Henry Lacordaire was the son of a village doctor of Recey-sur-Ource, in Burgundy, where he was born in 1802. The gentleness of temper for which he was afterward remarkable, distinguished him from his cradle, and the fiery eloquence by which he was to work such wonders may almost be said to have been a gift of his boyhood. As a child, his favorite amusement was to play at being priest, and from his mimic pulpit to inveigh against the sins of the world with an energy which often became alarming. An incident, which he relates himself, and which may be found in his "Letters to Young Men," published by the Abbé Perreyve, illustrates at once the remarkable delicacy of feeling which formed, through life, so important an element of his character, and the piety which distinguished his early youth. At the age of ten he had been sent to school at the Lyceum of Dijon.
"From the very first day," says he, "my schoolfellows selected me as a kind of plaything or victim. I could not take a step without being pursued by their brutality. For several weeks they even deprived me, by violence, of any other food than my soup and bread. In order to escape their ill-treatment, I used, as often as possible, to get away from them during the time of recreation, and, going into the schoolroom, conceal myself under a bench from the eyes alike of my masters and companions. There, alone, without protection, abandoned by every one, I poured out religious tears before God, offering him my childish troubles, as a sacrifice, and striving to raise myself, by tender sentiments of piety, to the cross of his divine Son."
Father Chocarne's remark upon this story, though it may seem not altogether free from French fancifulness, is, after all, a just one.
"This little sufferer, hidden under a bench in the college of which he was afterward to be the honor, and taking refuge at the feet of the Great Victim, gives the key to the entire life of Father Lacordaire. He was not to be raised by God until he had been abased. He was to know glory, but only at the price of hard humiliations and bitter disappointments; and in the hour of success, as in that of trial, his refuge, his resource, his life, his very passion, was to be the cross, the cross of Him who sought the little schoolboy hidden under his bench."
There was nothing at Dijon to keep alive the fervor of his religious sentiments, and it was a time indeed when, in the confusion of the political upheaval which was soon to wreak havoc in the social life of France, faith was an unfashionable weakness, devotion was an exclusively feminine accomplishment, and piety was supplanted by a pinchbeck philosophy. What wonder, therefore, that he left college at the age of seventeen, with his faith practically destroyed—not an open infidel, but only a nominal Christian? At the age of twenty he went to Paris to commence the practice of the law. It may readily be supposed that in the society of the metropolis, which was then seething with political excitement, and intoxicated with dreams of impossible liberty, in the stirring occupations of his career at the bar where he achieved at once a very signal success, his religious impressions would be still further weakened. At first this certainly was the case; yet there was one peculiarity of his disposition which preserved him from a good many of the dangers of his way of life, and probably contributed, under God, to his conversion. He was one who thirsted for love, yet was without a single bosom friend. He never was attracted by the society of women; but he longed for the affection of some congenial companion of his own sex, who could enter into all his hopes and feelings, and share his disappointments and his pleasures. Without this—and his natural reserve long debarred him from it— Paris was to him a desert. He was forced to withdraw into himself. Solitude and habits of reflection begot an abiding melancholy. "There are in me," he writes at this time, "two contrary principles, which are always at war, and which sometimes make me very unhappy—a cold, calm reason, opposed to a burning imagination—and the first disenchants me of all the illusions which the second presents. Nobody would commit more follies than I should do on one side of my being, were I not withheld by a habit of reflection which presents things to me in all their aspects. I have played the game of the material interests of this world, and, without having much enjoyed its pleasures or been intoxicated with its delights, I have tasted enough to be convinced that all is vain under the sun; and this conviction comes both from my imagination, which has no limits save the Infinite, and from my reason, which analyzes all it touches. I have a most religious heart, and a very incredulous mind; but, as it is in the nature of things that the mind must at last allow itself to be subjugated by the affections, it is most likely that I shall one day become a Christian. I am alike capable of living in solitude, and of plunging into the vortex of human affairs: I love quiet when I think of it, and bustle when I am in it, sometimes making my Castle in the air to consist in the life of a village curé, and then saying good-by to my day-dream as I pass the Pont-Neuf—held in my present position by that force of reason which convinces me that to try everything and to be always changing one's place is not to change one's nature, and that there are wants in the heart which earth is powerless to satisfy."
By what process he was led out of this darkness into the light of religious happiness, we do not know. Probably he never knew himself the precise means by which the grace of God wrought his conversion. "Would you believe it," he wrote in 1824, "I am every day growing more and more a Christian? It is strange, this progressive change in my opinions. I am beginning to believe, and yet I was never more a philosopher. A little philosophy draws us from religion, but a good deal of it brings us back again." His progress toward the truth was rapid. He shunned the society of his acquaintances. Sometimes he was detected on his knees behind the columns of silent churches. Sometimes his friends surprised him wrapt in sorrowful meditation among his books. At length the clouds broke away. The divine light burst upon him in all its magnificence. The loving friend whom he had sought so long he found in the person of his Saviour. The affectionate heart which had yearned for an object upon which to pour out its wealth found one in Jesus Christ. The eloquent lips had at last a theme worthy of their powers. He resolved to become a priest, and at the age of twenty-two accordingly entered the Seminary of St. Sulpice.
The serenity and peace of mind which came upon him in his new life was like the reaction after long restraint. He seemed created for the priesthood, for he had all the natural gifts most fitting the sacred calling; but his life had been forced into the wrong channel, and now that the pressure was removed, his soul rebounded with an elasticity at which his directors now and then stood aghast. The strict formalism of St. Sulpice, with its rigorous rules of propriety, was but little suited to his independent character; yet it was something more than a natural repugnance to unnecessary restraint which inspired him with a gaiety little known in the prim precincts of the seminary.
"It sometimes happened that his lively and original nature, not yet under much control, betrayed itself in sallies which manifested something of the gallica levitas, seasoned with Burgundian love of fun. The good directors were astounded, and hastened to repress this boisterous levity. He never could accustom himself to the square cap, that strange head-dress, the shape of which is so grotesque that one dares not call it by its true name. Against these caps Lacordaire declared war, a war at first carried on by epigrams, but which soon became one of extermination. He would snatch them out of the hands of his friends and throw them into the fire. This gave rise to a great commotion, and very lively discussions ensued, some declaring in favor of the square cap, and others for the biretta, which was then a novelty. But novelty and argument were two things which St. Sulpice held in equal abhorrence. In the evening, therefore, at the hour of spiritual reading, the superior addressed them a grave reproof, and order was once more restored.
"The Abbé Lacordaire always displayed perfect submission to his directors; and if they were sometimes puzzled by the contrasts of his singular character, they never had occasion to complain of his want of humility, modesty, or obedience. He was beloved by all his companions: his deep and earnest nature, wholly given up to his new and sacred duties, was adorned with a certain freshness of poetry, with the fragrance of worldly refinement, and the grace of a character long pent up within itself, but now freely poured forth; and all this gave an indescribable charm to his personal intercourse which made him generally loved and sought after. All his masters, however, did not understand him; the singularity of some of his ways, his liberal opinions, and his instinctive repugnance to certain points of ordinary routine, doubtless now and then deceived their observant eyes, and prevented them from at once appreciating at its just value the pure gold which lay hidden at the bottom of the vessel."
The consequence of all this was that his superiors remained a long time in doubt about his vocation, and he was not allowed to receive holy orders at the usual time.
"They felt uneasy when they observed his ardor for debates, and the large claims which he made for reason. When he opened his lips in class to raise any objection, his words took so lively and original a turn, and his conclusions were so bold, that they often proved somewhat embarrassing to the professors. At last, in order to save time, they begged him to put off his difficulties till the end of the lecture. He forgot this sometimes; perhaps it was to relate a story, but the story generally ended in some treacherous question, or some home-thrust at the thesis of the master."
A project which he seriously began to entertain of becoming a Jesuit put an end to this hesitation, and in 1827 he was ordained priest. Very soon afterward an appointment as auditor of the Rota at Rome was offered him. It was an office pretty certain to lead to the episcopacy, but he refused it, and accepted the humble post of chaplain to a convent of visitation nuns in Paris, where his widowed mother came to live with him. The abundant leisure which remained to him in this humble position he diligently employed in study. At one time he had nearly made up his mind to become a missionary in the United States, and he had an interview respecting the project with Bishop Dubois, of New York, when that venerable prelate visited France in 1830. The bishop offered him the post of vicar-general. It would be curious to speculate what effect his acceptance of this proposal would have had upon the history of either the French or the American Church. Had he been vicar-general, he would probably have been the coadjutor and successor of Bishop Dubois, and the brilliant career of Archbishop Hughes would have been missed from our annals. In no other diocese than New York would Archbishop Hughes have found a proper field for the full exercise of his remarkable powers; in no other position than the one he actually occupied could he have done such good service to the church as he effected in this chief city of the new world. On the other hand, there can be no question that Henry Lacordaire was but imperfectly fitted for the hard and laborious work required in those days of an American bishop. It was rough work, and the tools needed to be not delicate but strong. To one who had refused a tempting offer from Rome, the prospect of a vicar-generalship in America cannot be supposed to have held out strong inducements; but there were some reasons why a career in this country presented itself to his mind in a strangely enticing light. He had not forgotten his early aspirations for political independence. He had already given deep thought to the problem which was afterward to bring him into such prominence before the world, of associating society and the church, and breaking the unholy alliance between democracy and infidelity. Politically he was an earnest liberal; religiously he was a devout priest. In France, men did not readily see how the two characters could be united; but in America he believed that Catholicism was placed under conditions of development and action more favorable than in any country of Europe. "Who is there," he exclaimed, "who, at moments when the state of his own country saddens him, has not turned his eyes toward the republic of Washington? Who has not, in fancy, at least, sat down to rest under the shadow of her forests and her laws? Weary with the spectacle I beheld in France, it was on that land that I cast my eyes, and thither I resolved to go to ask a hospitality she has never refused to a traveller or a priest." Having obtained the consent of his archbishop, he went to Burgundy to bid farewell to his family. But while there, he received a letter from his friend, the Abbé Gerbet, which changed his course and determined him to remain in France.
In the spring of 1830, he had become intimate with the Abbé de la Mennais, in whom the hopes of so many of the most zealous of the religious party in France then centred. He was fascinated by the genius of that remarkable man; he believed in many of his theories; he tried, with only incomplete success, to accept his philosophy; but De la Mennais was an absolutist in politics, and Lacordaire was an earnest liberal. The revolution of 1830, however, swept away this barrier which had hitherto kept the two men apart. De la Mennais frankly accepted the great changes which followed the abdication of Charles X., and, in conjunction with some of his disciples, prepared to discuss the same problem of the church and society of which Lacordaire was about to seek the solution in America. In this work Lacordaire was invited to take part. "Nothing," says Father Chocarne, "could have caused him greater joy; it amounted to a sort of intoxication. … And thus the same enthusiastic love of liberty which was carrying this ardent and generous soul to a country blest with a larger freedom than his own, stopped him at the very moment of his departure, and fixed him for ever to take part in the destinies and struggles of his native land."
The Avenir newspaper, which was to be the vehicle of this discussion, was founded on the 15th of October, 1830. The noise of it had no sooner gone abroad than a young French gentleman of brilliant parts, then in Ireland, hastened home to claim a share of the labor. This was Montalembert, and in him Lacordaire found the friend for whom he had long sought, and a worthy object for the affection which he was burning to bestow. They met for the first time at the house of De la Mennais, and loved each other from the first with a love such as knit together the souls of Jonathan and David. De la Mennais, Lacordaire, and Montalembert were three of the principal editors of the new journal.
"They declared their object plainly enough: it was to claim back for the church of France every privilege of liberty, whilst rejecting none of its burdens. The revolution had just made a clean sweep of all ancient traditions. Since the restoration of order and public worship at the beginning of the century, the clergy had learnt to their cost the real value of that protection granted by a power which was ill-informed as to the real nature of its relations with the church; they had found out by experience what they had gained in consideration under the empire, under the restoration, and under the recently established régime of the bourgoisie. What attitude were they to assume toward the new government? Would the old endeavors to form an alliance between the throne and the altar now recommence? The Avenir was founded to preserve them from this temptation. Its programme was, respect for the charter and for just laws; but for the rest, an absolute independence of the civil government. It consequently advocated liberty of opinion for the press, and war against arbitrary power and privilege; liberty of education, and war against the monopoly of the university; liberty of association, and war against the old anti-monastic laws revived in evil times; the liberty and moral independence of the clergy, and war against the budget of public worship. Very vague and uncertain limits were assigned to these different liberties, and the reserves stipulated for in the declarations of doctrine disappeared often enough when the writers were carried away by the ardor of discussion, and the vehemence of invective. They were more frequently engaged, we must confess, in obtaining the thing they sought than in preventing its abuse. Far too radical in their principles, the polemics of the journal were yet more so in the course of action which they recommended. 'Liberty is not given, it is taken,' was a phrase continually repeated; nor did they scruple to add example to precept. Every morning the charge was sounded, and every day witnessed some new feat of arms. The clergy were addressed as an army drawn up in battle array. Every means was tried to kindle their ardor; the zeal of the tardy was stimulated, and deserters were set in the pillory. The chiefs of the party were harangued, the plan of campaign indicated beforehand, the enemy pointed out and pursued to death. Philosophers, enemies of religion, ministers, miserable pro-consuls, members of the university, citizens, and Gallicans were all attacked at once. Resistance did but rouse the spirit of the combatants; it seemed as though the sun always set too early on their warlike ardor. Patience and discretion were not much regarded in their system of tactics; they wanted to have everything at once, and could not wait for to-morrow, and what was not granted with a good grace was to be snatched by force, and at the point of the sword. This haughty and antagonistic attitude, this want of experience in men and things, more excusable in the young disciples than it was in their master, formed, in our opinion, the greatest fault of the Avenir. Its errors and exaggerations of doctrine might have been corrected with time, good advice, and the practical teaching of facts. But those haughty accents, so strange when heard from the lips of priests, alarmed even their friends, and created a certain consternation at Rome—Rome ever calm as truth, and patient as eternity. The responsibility of this false attitude must be charged chiefly on the Abbé de la Mennais and the Abbé Lacordaire. It was the latter who drew up the most incendiary harangues, and opened the most difficult questions.
……
"The philosophic opinions of M. de la Mennais, and the absolute theories of his journal, particularly those which represented the state payment of the clergy as the badge of shame and slavery, had excited a certain feeling of distrust among the episcopacy, which daily increased. The young disciples of M. de la Mennais were never afraid of a combat; but their faith and loyalty could not endure the vague suspicions raised against their orthodoxy. They began to desire a clear, open explanation, and they determined to go and demand it from the judge of all ecclesiastical controversies, the successor of St. Peter."
The first suggestion of this course came from Lacordaire. He reached Rome, with his two companions, about the end of December, 1831, and besought an audience with the Holy Father Gregory XVI. for the purpose of explaining their views and intentions, and, we may suppose, of defending their orthodoxy. But Rome is not readily moved by the dreams of young enthusiasts, and their reception was a cold one. They were denied a personal interview, and were required to put what they had to say into writing. At the end of two months, Cardinal Pacca condescended to notice their memorial, promised that it "should be examined," and courteously bade them go home. The effect of this treatment upon De la Mennais and Lacordaire respectively, is a remarkable illustration of their characters. The one, deeply wounded in his pride, is sullen under the reproof and at last throws away for ever the precious gift of faith. The other acknowledges his errors, bows humbly to the command of God, and, delivered from "the most terrible of all oppressions, that of the intellect," starts afresh upon a more glorious career than the one he is forced to abandon. "When I arrived at Rome," he writes, "at the tomb of the holy apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, I knelt down and said to God, 'Lord, I begin to feel my weakness, my sight fails me, truth and error alike escape my grasp; have pity on thy servant, who comes to thee with a sincere heart; hear the prayer of the poor.' I know neither the day nor the hour when it took place, but at last I saw what I had not before seen, and I left Rome free and victorious. I had learned from my own experience that the church is the deliverer of the human intellect; and as from freedom of intellect all other freedoms necessarily flow, I perceived the questions which then agitated the world in their true light." "It was at this moment, as I venture to believe," says Montalembert, "that God for ever marked him with the seal of his grace and laid up for him the reward due to his unshaken fidelity, so worthy of a priestly soul."
Lacordaire now resolved to return at once to France, and abandon the Avenir entirely. De la Mennais persisted in remaining at Rome longer and resuming the suspended periodical; but when the pope decided at last in his Encyclical Letter of August 15th, 1832, and decided against him, he made a temporary submission, and withdrew to his country-house at La Chesnaie. In this solitary retreat, where, in the days of his greatness, a knot of favorite disciples used to sit at his feet, he was once more joined by Lacordaire, who had more confidence in the reality of his master's obedience to the Holy See than after events justified. Before long, others of the young school gathered under the roof of the lonely manor-house. De la Mennais chafed daily more and more under the affront to his intellect. He gave signs of rebellion. His heart was torn by passion, and his lips let fall dark threats and alarming murmurs. "The harrowing spectacle," says Lacordaire, "became too much for me to bear." He wrote M. de la Mennais an affecting letter of farewell; and left La Chesnaie alone and on foot. It was not long before the apostasy of De la Mennais brought the sad history to an awful close.
The young priest, who had escaped from the snare, hastened to present himself to the Archbishop of Paris, Mgr. de Quélen. He was received with open arms, as a son who had returned wounded and weary from some dangerous adventure. "You want another baptism," said the archbishop, "and I will give you one." He reappointed him to the chaplaincy of the Visitation, and in the retirement of that peaceful retreat he found rest for his disturbed soul, and girded up his loins for a fresh battle with the world.
He spent about a year in this solitude, and then accepted an invitation from the officers of the Stanislaus College in Paris, to preach a series of conferences to the students. Here, at last, was the vocation for which God had designed him. The pulpit was his proper sphere. After the first day, the pupils had to give up their places to crowds of strangers, and the chapel could not contain the numbers who flocked to listen to his indescribable eloquence. It was an eloquence not restricted by rules. The orator trampled under foot the artificial forms which for centuries had cramped and confined the utterances of the pulpit. He outraged at pleasure all the canons of the schools. His conferences were neither lectures, nor homilies, nor sermons, but rather were brilliant discourses on sacred subjects in which all the sympathies of the audience were by turns engaged. He spoke not merely as a priest, but as a citizen, a poet, a philosopher, as a man of the day, appreciating the spirit and the wants of his own time. But, like all men who strike out in a new path, and are not satisfied to follow exactly in the footsteps of their grandfathers, he encountered bitter opposition from a certain class of purblind formalists. His style, they said, was too human; his rhetoric was too erratic; his disrespect for the text-books of the schools of eloquence was positively appalling. Nay, was he not one of that pestiferous brood which De la Mennais had hatched in the woods of La Chesnaie, and which the Pope had solemnly condemned? Was he not a liberal in politics, a friend of liberty, an admirer of American republicanism? He had recanted his errors; but that was forgotten. He had given the strongest proofs of the steadfastness of his faith and the completeness of his submission to the Holy See; but these were overlooked. He was not merely an orator, but an accomplished theologian, for he had always been a hard student; but to this his opponents resolutely shut their eyes. They denounced him as a dangerous man, a fanatic, an innovator, and a corrupter of youth. Their clamor at last prevailed, and by order of the archbishop the conferences were suspended. This second humiliation, which he accepted with the same docility as the first, was of short duration. M. Affre, afterward Archbishop of Paris, pleaded so earnestly for his reinstatement that he was not only restored to the pulpit but appointed a series of conferences in the great cathedral of Notre Dame. We shall tell in his own words how, after a brief hesitation, he entered upon this important duty:
"The day having come, Notre Dame was filled with a multitude such as had never before been seen within its walls. The liberal and the absolutist youth of Paris, friends and enemies, and that curious crowd which a great capital has always ready for anything new, had all flocked together, and were packed in dense masses within the old cathedral. I mounted the pulpit firmly but not without emotion, and began my discourse with my eye fixed on the archbishop who, after God, but before the public, was to me the first personage in the scene. He listened with his head a little bent down, in a state of absolute impassibility, like a man who was not a mere spectator, nor even a judge, but rather as one who ran a personal risk by the experiment. I soon felt at home with my subject and my audience, and as my breast swelled under the necessity of grasping that vast assembly of men, and the calm of the first opening sentences began to give place to the inspiration of the orator, one of those exclamations escaped from me which, when deep and heartfelt, never fail to move. The archbishop visibly trembled. I watched his countenance change as he raised his head and cast on me a glance of astonishment. I saw that the battle was gained in his mind, and it was so already in that of the audience. Having returned home, he announced that he was going to appoint me honorary canon of the cathedral; and they had some difficulty in inducing him to wait until the end of the station."
The effect of these discourses was irresistible. All Paris came to hear them; and over the young men especially, into whose wants, tastes, feelings, hopes, aspirations, disappointments Father Lacordaire entered so thoroughly, because he had experienced them all himself, his influence was almost unbounded.
"What above all distinguished his preaching, and marked its providential mission, whilst it formed the chief reason of his success, was its adaptation to social needs. It gave to society what society was hungering and thirsting after; that Living Bread, the long privation of which had brought it to the verge of death; it spoke to the world of God, and of his Son, our Lord and Saviour. Christianity has a social existence, not only in the sense that it is itself a society, the most united, the most universal, the most ancient, the most Catholic, and the most perfect of all societies; but also in this, that all societies depend on and live by it, as the body depends on the soul, and draws its life from thence, and as man depends and lives on God. Now the society which the Abbé Lacordaire addressed was remarkable precisely in this, that it was without God. For the first time, perhaps, since civilized nations have had a history, men were to be seen endeavoring to progress without the aid of any positive commerce with heaven. But if it is with difficulty that an individual can live without religious faith, much more is it impossible for a nation to do so. What, in fact, is a nation but a great community of sufferings, miseries, weaknesses, and maladies of mind and body? Without religion, and above all, without Christianity, where is the remedy for all these evils, the consolation for all these misfortunes? The Abbé Lacordaire, himself brought back to Catholicism by his deep conviction that society could not do without the church, received as his peculiar mission the task of developing this truth to the eyes of his countrymen. 'The old state of society,' he said, 'perished because it had expelled God; the new is suffering, because God has not yet been admitted into it.' His constant aim, the thought which ran through all his instructions, his labors, and his entire career, was to contribute what he could in order that he might reenter into the faith and life of the age."
The conferences went on for two years without interruption, and with constantly increasing success. The archbishop bestowed upon the preacher the title of "the new prophet." All at once, in May, 1836, without any ostensible reason, he resigned his pulpit and went to Rome. The fact was, he had not succeeded in living down the misrepresentations and misconceptions which had embarrassed him before. He was still regarded in many quarters as a dangerous man, whose zeal was too rash, and whose orthodoxy was, at the best, but unfirm. What better could he do than seek refuge from detraction in the very bosom of the church? How could he better prove his devout obedience to the Holy Father than by seating himself at the very foot of the papal throne? In the retirement of the Christian capital, he pondered upon his future career. A life such as he had hitherto led he saw was impossible; whatever good he might effect by his preaching would hardly counterbalance the evil of the opposition he aroused among those who could not or would not understand him. Moreover, the archbishop had kindly intimated to him that there was no line of duty open to him except in the routine of regular parochial duty. For this he had neither fitness nor vocation. His only resource was consequently in one of the religious orders. None of them except the Society of Jesus had yet been restored in France. What a glorious task for him to bring back some of them to his native country! After long deliberation, his choice settled upon the Dominicans. The difficulties to be overcome were enormous; and not the least of the obstacles which he had to place under his foot was his own character, his independence of spirit, his love of liberty, his boldness in stepping out of the beaten path. We have no space to relate in detail how he fought and conquered. He made his novitiate at Viterbo, pronounced his vows in May, 1840, and the next day set out for Rome, where the convent of Santa Sabina had been consigned for his use and that of the six companions who were to join him in his mission.
His stay here was but brief, for he was eager to get back to France. In December, he reappeared in his native country, wearing the habit which had been banished from the kingdom for half a century.
"Here and there he met with a few marks of astonishment, and sometimes of hostility. At Paris, where he was expected by no one excepting his most intimate friends, many rejoiced to see him. His former enemies had no time to think of their old rancors, nor the lawyers their musty statutes. Everything else gave way before the sentiment of curiosity. All the world wished to see the friar, the spectre of past ages, the son of Dominic the Inquisitor; and especially to know what he was going to do and to say. Mgr. Affre, the new Archbishop of Paris, received Père Lacordaire with delight, saw no difficulty in his preaching at Notre Dame in his new habit, and only begged him to name whatever day he liked. We must leave Père Lacordaire himself to relate the story of this bold adventure.
"'I appeared in the pulpit of Notre Dame with my white tunic, gray-black mantle, and my tonsure. The archbishop presided, the keeper of the seals, and minister of public worship, M. Martin, (du Nord,) was also present, as he wished to observe for himself a scene of which no one could tell the issue. Many other distinguished persons concealed themselves in the assembly, in the midst of the crowd which filled the church from the doors to the sanctuary. I had chosen for the subject of my discourse the Vocation of the French Nation, in order to veil the audacity of my presence under the popularity of my theme. In this I succeeded, and next day the keeper of the seals invited me to a dinner-party of forty persons, which he gave at the chancellor's mansion. During the repast, M. Bourdain, formerly minister of justice under Charles X., leant toward one of his neighbors, and said, "What a strange turn of events! If, when I was keeper of the seals, I had invited a Dominican to my table, my house would have been burnt down next day." However, the house was not burnt, and no newspaper ever invoked the secular arm against my auto-da-fé.'
"This was, in fact, one of his happiest strokes—one of those surprises which he was fond of, and which suited the adventurous side of his character. The effect of this reappearance was immense; the religious standard had been planted in the very heart of the stronghold; but the victory was not yet completely gained, and many of those who had been dazzled and disconcerted by the brilliancy and unforeseen character of the attack, were not long ere they turned against him, and demanded an explanation of his illegal triumph, in the name of the state."
The establishment of the order in France was not effected without a good many troubles. There was trouble at Rome, where he was suspected and misunderstood until he proved his humility and obedience. There was trouble in France, where the government opposed the introduction of an order which was still forbidden by law, and threatened him with penalties which, after all, they lacked the courage to enforce; and where the timid and short-sighted among the clergy would rather have had him submit to wrong than compromise a sleepy sort of tranquillity by standing up boldly for the right. There was even a tedious controversy which, at this distance of time and place, seems wonderfully trivial, whether he should be permitted to preach in his white habit. But his courage conquered. One or two houses of the order were soon opened; and, when the revolutionary troubles came in 1848, the eloquent Dominican was one of the most popular men in France. With the establishment of the republic, a somewhat embarrassing question presented itself for his decision. It was not easy for him, occupying such a position as he did in the public eye, to stand aloof from the great public questions of the day. The good of religion seemed to require that he should mingle in the turmoil of politics. He tells how his determination was at last effected:
"Whilst I was thus deliberating with myself, the Abbé Maret and Frederic Ozanam called on me. They spoke to me of the trouble and uncertainty that reigned among Catholics; all old rallying-points were disappearing in what seemed likely to become a hopeless anarchy, which might render the new régime hostile to us, and deprive us of all chance of obtaining those liberties which had been refused by preceding governments. 'The republic,' they added, 'is well-disposed toward us; we have no such acts of barbarity and irreligion to charge it with as disgraced the Revolution of 1830. It believes and hopes in us; ought we to discourage it? Moreover, what are we to do?—to what other party can we attach ourselves? What do we see before us but ruin? and what is the republic, but the natural government of a society that has lost all its former anchors and traditions?'
"To these reasons, suggested by the situation of affairs, they added higher and more general views, drawn from the future of European society, and the impossibility that monarchy should ever again find any solid resting-place. On this point I did not go so far as they. Limited monarchy, in spite of its faults, had always seemed to me the most desirable of all forms of government, and I only saw in the republic a momentary necessity until things should naturally take another course. This difference of opinion was serious, and hardly allowed of our working together in concert. Nevertheless, the danger was urgent, and it was absolutely necessary either to abdicate at this solemn moment, or frankly to choose one's party, and bring to the help of society, now shaken to its very foundations, whatever light and strength each one had at his command. Hitherto I had taken a definite position with regard to public events; ought I now to take refuge in a selfish silence because the difficulties were more serious? I might indeed say that I was a religious, and so hide myself under my religious habit; but I was a religious militant, a preacher, a writer, surrounded by a sympathy which created very different duties for me from the duties of a Trappist or a Carthusian. These considerations weighed on my conscience. Urged by my friends to decide, I at length yielded to the force of events, and though I felt a strong repugnance to the idea of returning to the career of a journalist, I agreed, in concert with them, to unfurl a standard on which should be inscribed together the names of Religion, the Republic, and Liberty."
This was the origin of a new political journal, the Ere Nouvelle, of which he commenced the publication in the spring of 1848. Nor was this all. The city of Marseilles elected him a representative in the constituent assembly; and, in his white Dominican habit, he took his seat there on the extreme left. We need hardly say that his political career was a bitter disappointment to himself, and a disappointment, too, to many of his friends. There was only one party with which his principles permitted him to ally himself; but that party, as he saw it in the assembly, could not enlist his sympathies. "I could not sit there," he said, "apart from democracy, and yet I could not accept democracy as I saw it there displayed." He held his seat only two weeks. On the 15th of May, a mob invaded the hall of meeting, and for three hours held their representatives intimidated. The next day Lacordaire resigned in disgust. "I found out," said he afterward, "that I was nothing but a poor little friar, and in no way a Richelieu; a poor friar, loving nothing but retirement and peace." Very soon afterward he withdrew likewise from the Ere Nouvelle, and here it may be said that his public life came to a close. He preached for some time longer in Notre Dame, but the boldness of his language gave offence, and, after the coup d'état of December, 1851, he resisted all entreaties to appear again in the cathedral pulpit. The strengthening and propagation of his order now took up all his attention. He visited his brethren in other countries, and made a short trip to England. Then, at the age of fifty, he resolved to devote himself to the education of the young. He founded houses of the third order of Dominicans for the express purpose of carrying on this important work, and in one of them, at Sorèze, he finally settled down to pass the remainder of his days. Here, with powers yet unimpaired, the man whose eloquence had stirred all France applied himself to teaching the Greek and Latin grammar. He had no fixed system of education, but his personal magnetism made up for other defects; he gathered around him the best instructors; he lived like a father in the bosom of his family; he filled the place with the odor of gentleness and piety. Here, on the 21st of November, 1860, after an illness of nearly a year, he preached his last.
Important as the labor was in which Father Lacordaire had spent the closing years of his life, we cannot help feeling that it was not the labor for which he had been specially endowed, nor was it that in which his heart was most deeply engaged. It is rather as the preacher of Notre Dame than as the president of Sorèze, rather as the reconciler of religion and society than as a teacher of boys, that he stands before us in the page of history. What a bitter comment is it upon the condition of affairs in France, fifteen or twenty years ago, that such a man could be stopped in such a career! The story of Lacordaire often reminds us of a passage in one of George Eliot's novels, where the life of one who had gone through bitter sorrow and disappointment is described as being "like a spoiled pleasure-day, in which the music and processions are all missed, and nothing is left at evening but the weariness of striving after what has been failed of." It was partly so with his life; not wholly, of course, for the reward of the striving came at evening, though the object of the struggle had been missed. Disappointment and weariness were the burdens which God laid upon him, and he leaves a brighter renown, as well as reaps a brighter reward, for the sweetness with which he bore them.