The frightful storms which had covered with wrecks the roaring sea, where I had so often nearly perished, could not trouble the calm waters of the port where my bark had just entered. Every one of the members of the community was to be like an angel of charity, humility, modesty, whose example was to guide my steps in the ways of God. My superior appeared to be less a superior than a father, whose protecting care, by day and night, would be a shield over me. Noah, in the ark, safe from the raging waves which were destroying the world, did not feel more grateful to God, than I was, when once in this holy solitude. The vow of perfect poverty was to save me, for ever, from the cares of the world. Having, hereafter, no right to possess a cent, the world would become to me a paradise, where food, clothing, and lodging would come without anxiety or care. My father superior would supply all these things, without any other condition on my part, than to love, and obey a man of God whose whole life was to be spent in guiding my steps in the ways of the most exalted evangelical virtues. Had not that father himself made a solemn vow to renounce not only all the honors and dignities of the church, that his whole mind and heart might be devoted to my holiness on earth, and my salvation in Heaven?
How easy to secure that salvation now! I had only to look to that father on earth, and obey him as my Father in Heaven. Yes! The will of that father, was to be, for me, the will of my God. Though I might err in obeying him, my errors would not be laid to my charge. To save my soul, I should have only to be like a corpse, or a stick in the hands of my father superior. Without any anxiety or any responsibility whatever of my own, I was to be led to heaven as a new-born child in the arms of his loving mother without any fear, thoughts or anxiety of his own.
With the Christian poet I could have sung:
“Rocks and storms I’ll fear no more,
When on that eternal shore,
Drop the anchor! Furl the sail!
I am safe within the vail.”
But how short were to be these fine dreams of my poor deluded mind! When on my knees, father Guigues handed me, with great solemnity, the Latin books of the rules of that monastic order, which is their real gospel, warning me that it was a secret book, that there were things in it that I ought not to reveal to any one; and he made me solemnly promise that I would never show it to any one outside of the order.
When alone, the next morning, in my cell, I thanked God and the Virgin Mary for the favors of the last day, and the thought came involuntarily to my mind:
“Have you not, a thousand times, heard and said that the Holy Church of Rome absolutely condemns and anathematizes secret societies. And, do you not, to-day, belong to a secret society? How can you reconcile the solemn promise of secrecy you made last night, with the anathemas hurled by all your popes against secret societies?” After having, in vain, tried, in my mind, to reconcile those two things, I happily remembered that I was a corpse, that I had forever given up my private judgment—that my only business, now, was to obey. “Does a corpse argue against those who turn it from side to side? Is it not in perfect peace, whatever may be the usage to which it is exposed, or to whatever place it is dragged? Shall I lose the rich crown which is before me, at my first step in the way of perfection?”