by his apt pupil, and succeeded by a course of higher instruction, embracing Latin, Greek, Italian, and Spanish. Sophie was particularly enchanted with Virgil, and even able to translate and appreciate Homer. The mother grumbled at this seemingly useless education, but the uneducated father was delighted, and the will of Louis made the law for the household. During seventeen months he was in the prisons of Paris, saved from the guillotine only by the connivance of his former schoolmaster, who was a clerk in the prison department, and released by the fall of Robespierre. Sophie went on bravely by herself during this time, and continued her life of study and prayer in the attic, consoling her father and mother, who idolized her, during those dreadful days, and persevered in the same course after her brother’s release and ordination, under his direction, until she was sixteen. At this period her brother, who had taken up his abode in Paris, determined to take his sister to live with himself and complete her education. Father, mother, and daughter alike resisted this determination, until the stronger will of the young priest overcame, with some delay and difficulty, their opposition, and the weeping little Sophie was carried off in the coach to Paris, to live in the humble house of Father Louis, and, in conjunction with her domestic labors, to study the sciences, the Holy Scriptures in the Latin Vulgate, and the fathers and doctors of the church. She had several companions, and the little group was thus formed and trained, not only in knowledge but in the most austere religious virtues and practices, under the hand of their kind but stern master, for more than four years. During the
vintage Sophie was allowed to take a short vacation at home, of which she availed herself gladly; for she was still a gay and playful girl, submitting with cheerful courage to her brother’s severe discipline, yet not without a conflict or without some secret tears. She was a timid little creature, and the injudicious severity of her brother’s direction made her scrupulous. Often she was afraid to receive communion; but she was obedient, and when her brother would call her from the altar of their little chapel, saying, “Come here, Sophie, and receive communion,” she would go up trembling and do as she was bidden. Her great desire was to become a lay sister among the Carmelites, and her companions were also waiting the opportunity to enter some religious order. Father Barat did not doubt her religious vocation, but he wanted to find out more precisely how it could be fulfilled. Her divine Spouse was himself preparing her for the exalted destination of a foundress and spiritual mother in his church; and when she had attained her twentieth year, this vocation was made known to her and accepted with a docility like that of the Blessed Virgin Mary to the angel’s message.
The history of the origin of the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus requires us to go back some years and relate some events which prepared the way for it. Four young priests, Léonor and Xavier de Tournély, Pierre Charles Leblanc, and Charles de Broglie, had formed a society under the name of the Sacred Heart, intended as a nucleus for the re-establishment of the Society of Jesus. The superior was Father Léonor de Tournély, a young man of angelic sanctity, and a favorite pupil
of the saintly Sulpician, M. l’Abbé Emery. This young priest received an inspiration to form a congregation of women specially devoted to the propagation of the devotion of the Sacred Heart and the higher education of girls. The first woman selected by him as the foundress of the new society was the Princess de Condé, under whom a small community was formed at Vienna, but soon dispersed by the departure of the princess to join the Trappistines. Soon after Father de Tournély died, having scarcely attained his thirtieth year, leaving in his last moments the care of carrying out his project to Father Varin. Joseph Varin d’Ainville was a young man of good family, who, after passing some time in a seminary, had left it to join the army of the Prince de Condé, with whom he made several campaigns. He had been won back to his first vocation through the prayers of his mother, offered for this purpose on the eve of ascending the scaffold at Paris, and the influence of his former companions, the four young fathers of the Sacred Heart above named. On the very day of the prayer offered by his heroic mother he was determined to return back to the ecclesiastical life on receiving communion at Vanloo, in Belgium, when he had met his four saintly friends, whose society he immediately joined. Having been elected superior of the society after the death of Father de Tournély in 1797, Father Varin was persuaded to merge it in another society formed by a certain Father Passanari under the title of the Fathers of the Holy Faith, which was also intended as a nucleus for the revival of the Order of Jesuits. The Archduchess Maria Anna, sister of the Emperor of Germany, was selected
to form in Rome, under the direction of Father Passanari, a society of religious women according to the plan of De Tournély, and she went there for that purpose, accompanied by two of her maids of honor, Leopoldina and Louisa Naudet. Early in the year 1800 Father Varin returned to Paris with some companions, and Father Barat was received into his society. In this way he became acquainted with Sophie, and her direction was confided to him, to her great spiritual solace and advantage; for he guided her with suavity and prudence in a way which gave her heart liberty to expand, and infused into it that generosity and confidence which became the characteristic traits of her piety, and were transmitted as a precious legacy by her to her daughters in religion. As soon as Father Varin had learned the secrets of the interior life of his precious disciple, and had determined her vocation to the same work which had been already begun in Rome by the three ladies above mentioned, three others were admitted to share with her in the formation of the little Society of the Sacred Heart. One of these was Mlle. Octavie Bailly, another was Mlle. Loquet, the third was a pious servant-girl named Marguérite, who became the first lay sister of the society. On the 21st of November, the Feast of Our Lady’s Presentation, the little chapel was decorated in a modest and simple way. Father Varin said Mass. After the Elevation the four aspirants pronounced the act of consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and afterwards they received communion.
This was the true inauguration of the Society of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, for the attempt made at Rome by the archduchess proved
a failure; the intriguing, ambitious character of Father Passanari was detected, and Father Varin renounced all connection with him and his projects. These events occurred, however, at a later period, and for some time yet to come the little community in France remained affiliated to the mother-house in Rome.
The first house of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, the one which has always been called the cradle of the society, was founded at Amiens one year after the consecration of the postulants in the little chapel of the Rue Touraine. A college was established in that city by the Fathers of the Holy Faith, and a visit which Father Varin made there early in the year 1801, for the purpose of giving a mission and preparing for the opening of the college, led to an arrangement with some zealous priests and pious ladies of Amiens for transferring a small school of young ladies to the care of Sophie Barat and her companions. Two of these ladies of Amiens, Mlle. Geneviève Deshayes and Mlle. Henriette Grosier, joined the community, of which Mlle. Loquet was appointed the superior. This lady proved to be entirely unfit for her position, and after some months returned to her former useful and pious life in Paris. Mlle. Bailly, after waiting for a considerable time to test her vocation, at length followed her first attraction and left her dear friend Sophie for the Carmelites. Sophie Barat, with the consent of her companions, was appointed by Father Varin to the office of superior, much to her own surprise and terror, for she was the youngest and the most humble of her sisters; and from this moment until her death, in the year 1865, she continued to be the Reverend
Mother of the Society of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, through all its periods of successive development and extension. It was on the 21st of December, 1802, soon after her twenty-third birthday, that she was definitively placed in this her true position, for which divine Providence had so wonderfully prepared her. She had been admitted to make the simple vows of religion on the 7th of June preceding, in company with Madame Deshayes. The community and school increased and prospered, and on the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel, Sept. 29, 1804, they were installed in their permanent residence, one of the former houses of the Oratory of Cardinal de Berulle. The community at this date comprised twelve members, including postulants. Their names were Madeleine-Sophie Barat, Geneviève Deshayes, Henriette Grosier, Rosalie-Marguérite Debrosse, Marie du Terrail, Catharine-Emilie de Charbonnel, Adèle Bardot, Felicité Desmarquest, Henriette Ducis, Thérèse Duchâtel, Madame Baudemont, and Madame Coppina. The two last-mentioned ladies afterwards brought the society into a crisis of the gravest peril, and finally withdrew from it, as we shall see later. Of the others, Mesdames Deshayes, Grosier, de Charbonnel, Desmarquest, and Ducis were among the most eminent and efficient of the first set of co-workers with the holy foundress herself in the formation and government of the society and its great schools and novitiates. The final rupture with Father Passanari had already been effected, and Madame Barat was therefore the sole head of the society, under the direction of Father Varin. Twelve years elapsed before the constitutions of the society were drawn up and
adopted, and during this period the first foundations were made, a most dangerous and well-nigh fatal crisis was safely passed, the spirit and methods of the new institute were definitely formed; thus laying the basis for the subsequent increase and perfection of the vast edifice of religion and instruction whose corner-stone was laid by the humble and gracious little maiden of Joigny in the depths of her own pure and capacious heart. St. John of the Cross says that “God bestows on the founder such gifts and graces as shall be proportionate to the succession of the order, as the first fruits of the Spirit.” The whole subsequent history of the Society of the Sacred Heart shows that this was fulfilled in the person of Sophie Barat. After the second foundation had been made in an old convent of the Visitation at Grenoble, Madame Baudemont was made superior at Amiens, and the first council was held for the election of a superior-general. Madame Barat was elected by a bare majority of one; for a party had already been formed under sinister influences which was working against her and in opposition to Father Varin, and seeking to change altogether the spirit of the new institute. From this time until the year 1816 Madame Barat was merely a superior in name and by courtesy at Amiens, and she was chiefly employed in founding new houses, forming the young communities, and acquiring sanctity by the exercise of patience and humility. The new foundations were at Poitiers, Cuignières, Niort, and Dooresele near Ghent; and of course the society received a great number of new subjects, some of whom became its most distinguished members—as, for instance, Madame Duchesne,