These Jesuit fathers suffered in most saintly companionship, and the world will heartily echo the pious wish of our author that other societies may do for their martyred brethren that which he has so lovingly accomplished for his.
The Jesuits in Paris during the war of 1870 saw plainly the gathering signs of darker days yet to come for France; but it is not in their traditions to yield anything to fear, and so they were resolved, the moment the armistice was concluded, to open their school of S. Geneviève and College of Vaugirard. At the very beginning of the war with Prussia, these two establishments had been freely passed over to the military authorities for the use of the sick and wounded, hundreds of whom had been there received and tenderly cared for, many of the fathers attaching themselves to the ambulances and hospitals with the utmost devotion. Consequently these buildings now needed many repairs and to be almost entirely refurnished. The residence in the Rue Lafayette had [pg 506] fared better, as the greater part of the community were Germans who had been obliged to leave France at the beginning of the war, while the house fell under the protection of the American minister, charged by Prussia to watch over the interests of its people in Paris. Add to which this modest mission had the deserved reputation of being very poor—not much of a bait for the blood-hounds of the Commune. At the house in the Rue de Sèvres such measures were taken as prudence seemed to suggest, leaving the rest to Providence. Thus at first it had seemed best to keep some members of the order in Paris—men at once necessary and willing to stay. Some were sent to the provinces, and others remained scattered throughout the ungrateful capital. At the conclusion of the armistice the College of Vaugirard was hastily prepared for pupils, and its reopening fixed for the 9th of March, by which time nearly two hundred students had applied for admission. But on the 18th the long-threatened revolution burst forth, and the rector, more anxious for the pupils than for the fathers, hurried both to the country-house of the college, at Moulineaux, between Issy and Meudon. However, they were soon compelled to retreat precipitately, first to Versailles, and finally to Saint Germain-en-Laye; for, placed exactly in the narrow belt between the belligerent lines, they found themselves, upon the breaking out of hostilities between Paris and Versailles, veritably between two fires. The deserted College of Vaugirard was surrounded, occupied, and pillaged, but no one was there to be arrested.
The school of S. Geneviève required more time for repairs, and was to be opened on March 20; but the insurrection, coming in the interval, necessitated new delays, and parents were notified to await further announcements. The rector, F. Léon Ducoudray, born at Laval, May 6, 1827, a man of great spirit and energy, was not one to lose time or to be dismayed in the hour of trial. He at once sent out four of the fathers, one to negotiate a loan in England or Belgium to meet the exigencies of the moment, and the others to seek in the provinces an asylum for the exiled school, which was finally removed to a country-house at Athis-Mons, on the railway line to Orléans, not far from Paris. The pupils were notified that the school would open on April 12; the rector, who had remained in Paris to superintend the final arrangements, was to join his community on Monday, the third.
On Sunday, the second, F. Ducoudray perceived that F. Paul Piquet, a sick priest left at S. Geneviève, was rapidly sinking, and at a quarter-past eight in the evening this good father had the happiness of leaving this world and its momentarily-increasing trials. It was a great loss to the house, and at this time a very painful embarrassment. The next morning (Monday) the Commune issued a decree confiscating all the furniture and property belonging to religious houses, and at S. Geneviève they every instant expected a visit on the part of the new rulers of the city. Nevertheless, F. Ducoudray sent for several of the fathers to come up from Athis to attend the funeral ceremonies of the deceased priest, set for Tuesday, April 4.
All at once, just after midnight on Tuesday, before these fathers had returned to Athis, the buildings were [pg 507] encircled by a battalion of National Guards, armed to the teeth. The Rue Lhomond, the Rue d'Ulm, the Passage des Vignes, the very woodyard at the foot of the garden, all were guarded. There were repeated blows at the door of No. 18. The brother porter went at once to say that the keys, according to custom, were in the rector's room, and that he would go and get them. But at this simple and reasonable answer the outsiders got into a rage; a summons was sounded three times at rapid intervals; the whole neighborhood was startled by a general discharge at all the windows of the Rue Lhomond; there were loud threats of bringing cannons and mitrailleuses from the Place de Panthéon near by. Presently the doors were opened, and the rector himself appeared, calmly requesting to be allowed to make some remarks in the name of common justice and of individual liberty. But the day for these things had gone by. For sole response the leader signified, revolver in hand, that he constituted the rector his prisoner in the name of the Commune, and should occupy and search the house for the arms and munitions of war therein concealed. But in reality they were here, as everywhere else, on a hunt for the cash-box. “That which we most need,” said a member of the Commune, “is money.”
Right away every one in the house was on his feet, and each one followed his instinct; but first of all one priest hurried to the private chapel, where, for precaution, the Blessed Sacrament had been previously placed, and hastened to secure it against profanation.
The envoys of the Commune were in number and force enough to carry on several operations at once. They arrested everybody they could lay their hands on—priests, lay brothers, even the servants of the school—and, as fast as they found them, seated them in the entrance hall, and kept them there for several hours. They ransacked the entire house; the rector himself led them everywhere. The search was very long and very minute, without the desired result; for they found no arms and very little money. F. Ducoudray, without falsifying himself in the slightest, replied with so much unconcern, with such dignity and politeness, that they said to each other in astonishment: “What a man this is! What energy of character!” At last, after three painful hours, they took him to the hall; but even from the first moment they separated him from his brethren, and put him in a little vestibule of the chapel in front of the parlors. It is almost superfluous to add that the pillage of the house commenced almost at once, accelerated, and the next day completed, by bands of women and children.
At five in the morning the recall was sounded; it was the signal for defiling and departing for the préfecture of the police. The prisoners were ranged between two lines of National Guards. First came the rector, a little ahead of the others; behind him the Rev. FF. Ferdinand Billot, Emile Chauveau, Alexis Clerc, Anatole de Bengy, Jean Bellanger, Theodore de Regnon, and Jean Tanguy, four lay brothers, and seven servants.
“Well,” said F. Ducoudray, with a radiant countenance, to F. Caubert, who was nearest him. “Ibant gaudentes,[112] did they not?”
“What is he saying there?” asked [pg 508] the uneasy guards. F. Caubert repeated the sentence; God knows what they understood by it!