But heaven favored his desires. He returned to Rome, and was thence sent to the college at Fermo, to his intense delight; for it was but a short distance from that Holy House which was to his last breath the one beloved spot of earth to his warm heart, throbbing with love for the Holy Family.
He easily won permission to make a pilgrimage to that shrine; and the young French runaway of former days, a spectacle to excite pity and horror, would not now be recognized in the talented young Italian Jesuit, Calmanotti. His mother tongue even was lost, but a French father at Loretto gave him some books in his native language, and urged him to recover it. After a time it came back, and he could read with ease.
As a teacher, he won the favor of his pupils and his superiors, for he seemed to possess the donum famæ, that singular gift which constitutes popularity, and wins its way with men of all nations and places.
While pursuing his theology at Rome, he became acquainted with Father Poncet de la Rivière, a Parisian Jesuit just completing his divinity course in the Holy City, destined at a later day to be hurried through Northern New York by savage captors and to reach the Mohawk amid torture and suffering.
One day this father placed in the hands of his young and brilliant countryman one of those Jesuit Relations our bibliomaniacs now prize so highly. Chaumonot read with wonder and excited interest the narrative of the heroic Brébeuf and his call for religious to labor with him in converting the Indians of New France. To him it was a personal call, and he responded. There were obstacles, but he applied for everything, permission to abridge his course of study, permission to be ordained, permission to start as early as possible for France to catch the ships on their annual voyage.
Yet with all his eagerness and haste, he clung to one spot of Italy. He could not leave it without kneeling once more as a pilgrim in the Santa Casa, and bearing it in his heart of hearts to the New World, till he could erect there a Loretto on the model of that he so revered. His devotion to the Holy Family led him to adopt the name of Joseph and Mary, and to choose for saying his first Mass the Loretto Chapel, erected after the model of the Santa Casa by Cardinal Pallotti.
An unfortunate hiatus in his autobiography prevents our following him through France, and witnessing his meeting with his family and his long farewell. The uncle, we can well believe, readily pardoned the escapade of one who was now showing such devotion and self-sacrifice; while the mother must have pressed to her heart the son now more than ever dear to her.
The Canada fleet sailed from Dieppe, and thither Chaumonot and Poncet bent their way. The fleet and its voyage are historical. As the old chronicle remarks, it bore “a College of Jesuits, a House of Hospital Nuns, and an Ursuline Convent,” the last accompanied by Madame de la Peltrie, the foundress and Mother Mary of the Incarnation, as first superior. Of the Hospital Nuns—whose contemplated establishment was endowed by Richelieu’s niece, the Duchess d’Aiguillon, and the great cardinal himself—Mary Guenet of St. Ignatius had in chapter been appointed to assume direction. The passage of the ocean was not without its risks. Richelieu’s attempt to create a French navy, and his motto, so adroitly alluding to the arms of France:
“Florent quoque lilia pronto”
(E’en on the waters lilies bloom),
had excited jealousy, and cruisers, privateers of all kinds, were ready to sweep away the cargoes destined for the colonies the far-sighted minister sought to create.