“When I had made some progress in Latin, my uncle wished me to learn plain chant, under one of my class who was a musician. This fellow persuaded me to leave Châtillon and follow him to Beaune, where we were to study under the Fathers of the Oratory. As I did not wish to undertake this journey without funds, I stole about a hundred sous from my uncle while he was in the church. With this we took flight.
“We travelled by by-ways to Dijon, whence we made our way to Beaune. There we put up with a townsman, but as my finances were short, I wrote to ask my mother to have the goodness to supply me with money and clothes, so that I might pursue my studies at Beaune, where I hoped to make more rapid progress than at Châtillon. The letter fell into my father’s hands, and he answered me that he would send me nothing; that I must return; and that he would make peace with my uncle for me.
“This reply filled me with dismay. To return to my uncle was to expose myself to be pointed at as a thief, and yet to stay any longer at Beaune was out of the question. So I resolved to run around the world as a vagabond, rather than bear the shame my rascality deserved. I started from Beaune with the intention of going to Rome, though I had not a sou or a change. I travelled alone for half a day; then I fell in with two young men of Lorraine, who saluted me and asked me whither I was going. “To Rome,” quoth I, “to gain the pardons.” They applauded my design, and entertained me with the object of their own journey to Lyons.
“Meanwhile I was thinking what was to become of me, and what I was to live on, if I continued my journey. Begging was in my ideas too degrading, I could not bring myself to work for my living, and there was little chance of my doing it, for I was unaccustomed to labor and knew no trade. Fortunately, my two Lorrainers, who were no better stocked with money than I was, began to beg from door to door in the first town we came to. Who was dumfounded to see them ply this trade? Myself, who, after some deliberation, concluded to imitate them rather than starve, so powerfully had their example made easy what had previously appeared impossible. Such was my apprenticeship as a beggar, but as I was only a beginner at the trade, I gained but a wretched livelihood. However, I flattered myself that on reaching a city so large as Lyons, some good fortune would turn up. But, alas! I was astonished to find myself arrested by the sentinels, who let my companions pass on account of their passports, and detained me because I had none.
“I did not know what was to become of me, or even where I was to get shelter. I saw many large buildings, but I durst not ask the least corner there to pass the night in. At last, spying a wretched shed opposite a glass furnace, I crept under it. Would to heaven I had then had sense enough to take my sufferings as an expiation of my sins, and united my poverty to that of my Saviour lying in a stable!
“Next morning, seeing at the river-side a boat where people were embarking to cross the Rhone, I begged the boatman to give me a passage out of charity. This he did, because in fact the city paid him to carry beyond the river all the beggars who were refused entrance into the city.
“When I got to the other side, I met a young man who promised to make the tour to Italy with me.
“We had just started off together when we met a priest returning from Rome. He did his best to persuade us to forego our projected pilgrimage and return home. Among other reasons, he told us that our want of passports would prevent our getting entrance into any city on our way. I asked him whether he had one, and he had no sooner shown it to me than I begged him to allow me to make a copy of it, which I did on the spot, inserting my own name and my companion’s instead of his.
“Oh! why did I not then offer to God the hardships of nakedness, fatigue, heat, cold, and the thousand other miseries I suffered on that journey! I should have had the happiness of drawing down upon me the blessings of heaven. Our common Father would not have refused them to me, beholding in me some traits of the poverty and sufferings of his Son, but alas! my pride and other sins, which rendered me more like the devil than I was to our Lord by my poverty, were great obstacles to grace in me. Yet, O my God! thou hadst thy views in permitting me to commit fault on fault, folly on folly! Thou didst deign to set me free from all inordinate love to my parents, which, had I remained always with them, would have prevented my consecrating myself entirely to thee. Thou didst design that when I grew up the remembrance of my trials should make me sympathize with more love and gratitude in the sufferings of thy Son.
“But I should be tedious were I to recount all the faults I committed, and all the miseries that befel me on my way. I shall give only the principal adventures.