After reading it, I said, “Dear Mr. Lincoln, this is a joke. It is not possible that you ask only fifty dollars for services which are worth at least two thousand dollars.”
He then tapped me with the right hand on the shoulders and said: “Sign that; it is enough. I will pinch some rich man for that and make them pay the rest of the bill,” and he laughed outright.
When Abraham Lincoln was writing the due-bill, the relaxation of the great strain upon my mind, and the great kindness of my benefactor and defender in charging me so little for such a service, and the terrible presentiment that he would pay with his life what he had done for me, caused me to break into sobs and tears.
As Mr. Lincoln had finished writing the due bill, he turned round to me, and said, “Father Chiniquy, what are you crying for? ought you not to be the most happy man alive? you have beaten your enemies and gained the most glorious victory, and you will come out of all your troubles in triumph.”
“Dear Mr. Lincoln,” I answered, “allow me to tell you that the joy I should naturally feel for such a victory is destroyed in my mind by the fear of what it may cost you. There were, then, in the crowd, not less than ten or twelve Jesuits from Chicago and St. Louis, who came to hear my sentence of condemnation to the penitentiary. But it was on their heads that you have brought the thunders of heaven and earth! nothing can be compared to the expression of their rage against you, when you not only wrenched me from their cruel hands, but you were making the walls of the court-house tremble under the awful and superhumanly eloquent denunciation of their infamy, diabolical malice, and total want of Christian and human principle, in the plot they had formed for my destruction. What troubles my soul, just now, and draws my tears, is that it seems to me that I have read your sentence of death in their bloody eyes. How many other noble victims have already fallen at their feet!”
He tried to divert my mind, at first, with a joke, “Sign this,” said he, “It will be my warrant of death.”
But after I had signed, he became more solemn, and said, “I know that Jesuits never forget nor forsake. But man must not care how and where he dies, provided he dies at the post of honor and duty,” and he left me.
Here is the sworn declaration of Miss Philomene Moffat, now Mrs. Philomene Schwartz:
State of Illinois,
Cook County,