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.