"I received you very ill the other day," he said; "I come to ask your pardon, and talk with you."
From that day began the closest friendship and intimacy between them. They were literally like father and son; and at the death of Lacordaire he bequeathed to his dear friend all that a poor monk had to leave--his letters and papers. Henri Perreyve is said to have been the being on earth best loved by Lacordaire. "You shall be," wrote the latter to him, "forever in my heart as a son and as a friend." Henri, by the pure devotion of his early youth to God, had deserved some great gift, and it was given to him in the friendship of Lacordaire. That the rest of his life was spent in an earnest endeavor to imitate his friend, we can scarcely wonder at Had he lived, no doubt he would have been a second Lacordaire; but the "sword wore out the sheath," the frail body could not sustain the burning soul within. Lacordaire died in the prime of life, Perreyve in the flower of his youth.
A few more years from the time we are speaking of and he was made priest. Work poured in on him. "The work of ten priests was offered to him day by day." He refused a good deal; but what he reserved would have been enough for three, and he had most feeble health.
He was preacher at the Sorbonne, director of the Conferences of St. Barbe, "sermons everywhere, special works on all sides, endless correspondence, confessions, directions, reunions of young people, incessant visits."
Frequent illness attacked him, and obliged him to withdraw for a time from his labors; but he returned to them with new zest. Of his literary works the one most generally admired is the "Journée des Malades." Here his genius was aided by that personal experience of illness which enables a person so readily to enter into the feelings of another. But many can know and feel the weariness and temptations which beset a sick person, and be very incapable of putting it into words, while M. Perreyve's "Journée des Malades" will comfort many a heart.
His "Rosa Ferrucci," an exquisitely written little biography, is already to some extent known to our readers. He likewise published "Méditations sur le Chemin de la Croix; Entretiens sur l'Eglise Catholique;" and he edited with the greatest care, and wrote an introduction for, the celebrated Letters from Father Lacordaire to young people. He also wrote a "Station at the Sorbonne," and "Poland," besides various little brochures.
The chief work of the Abbé Perreyve was the guidance and influence over young men and boys.
The Conferences at St. Barbe were listened to by a most attentive auditory of this class, and his power over his hearers was large and increasing.
"He possessed in a rare degree," says Père Gratry, "that sacred art of speaking to men, of speaking to each one, and yet speaking to all. Hence the universal success of his discourses."
One of the great orators of the day, after hearing him preach at the Sorbonne, exclaimed, "He who has not heard that, does not know how far human eloquence can go."