“Here,” F. Clerc wrote May 5—“here no confession, no Mass, not even on Sunday. We are lodged, fed—it is enough for animals.”
“I pass my time,” F. Ducoudray again, “praying much, suffering some; for the privation of the Holy Mass, the isolation, the separation, are cruel, but I see not the end.”
On May 8 an order was promulgated which put an end to all visits; on that very day F. Ducoudray had expected to receive our Lord himself. “What a sacrifice!” he exclaims. “I have offered to our Lord this hard trial, incomparably more painful yesterday than ever, on account of the precious pledge of the love of the divine Master. I seek to make my poor heart the altar on which I sacrifice. I shall add that of yesterday as new fuel to the sacrifice.”
“Six Sundays passed in darkness,” writes F. Olivaint, May 14. “How many days without ascending to the altar!” And the next day: “I am at the forty-first day of my retreat. After to-day, I intend to meditate only on the Eucharist. Is it not the best means of consoling myself that I cannot ascend to the altar? If I were a little bird, I would go somewhere every morning to hear Mass, and then I would willingly come back to my cage.”
The fathers outside the prison walls, understanding well the longing indicated by these and similar expressions, had endeavored in every way to find means to answer their desires. But it required infinite precautions to secure the faithful and sure transmission through all the formalities of surveillance. What is there prudence and love together may not accomplish? At last the doors opened; the prisoners came not out, but the Redeemer entered. Towards mid-day of the 15th the Long-Desired arrived. That tells all. Only FF. Ducoudray, Olivaint, and Clerc could be reached at first. Each of [pg 515] these was given four sacred hosts, and each preserved and carried on his breast, as on a living altar, the God of his heart and his heritage for all eternity.
“There is no more prison,” F. Clerc wrote to his brother, “no more solitude; and I have confidence that if our Lord permits the wicked to satisfy their malice, and for a few hours to prevail, he will profit by them in that very moment to glorify his name by the feeblest and vilest of his instruments.”
Once again, May 22, an opportunity was found to reach the captives. Two feeble but intrepid women traversed the vast, deserted districts to Mazas. This time all measures had been taken, and each prisoner received a share—four sacred hosts wrapped in a corporal, as in a shroud, duly enclosed in a little box with a silk case and a cord, in order that it might be carried around the neck. Coming at that hour, the Saviour seemed to say again: “I return, not to live with you, but to carry you with me.” For the end was at hand.
We linger for a few moments over the last letters gathered here in a most fragrant, fadeless wreath. On the 16th F. Clerc wrote his last letter, truly his nunc dimittis:
“Ah! my God, how good thou art! How true it is that the mercy of thy heart will never fail!... I had not dared conceive the hope of such a blessing—to possess our Lord, to have him for companion of my captivity, to carry him on my heart, and to rest on his, as he permitted to his beloved John! Yes, it is too much for me, and my thought cannot compass it. And still it is. But is it not true that all men and all the saints together could not conceive the Eucharist? O the God of the Eucharist! how good he is, how compassionate, how tender! Does it not seem as if he made again the reproach: You have asked nothing in my name; ask now, and you shall receive? I have him now without having asked; I have him now, and I will never leave him more, and my desire, fainting for want of hope, is reanimated, and will only increase in the measure that possession lasts.
“Ah! prison, dear prison, thou whose walls I have kissed, saying, Bona crux, what happiness thou hast won me! Thou art no longer a prison; thou art a chapel. Thou art no longer even a solitude, because I am not alone; but my Lord and my King, my Master and my God, lives here with me. It is not only in thought that I approach him; it is not only by grace that he approaches me; but he has really and corporally come to find and console the poor prisoner. He wished to keep him company; and can he not do it, all-powerful as he is?... Oh! lost for ever, my prison, which wins for me the honor to carry my Lord upon my heart, not as a sign, but the reality of my union with him.