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FREDERIC OZANAM 
 
 PROFESSOR AT THE SORBONNE 
 
 HIS LIFE AND WORKS 
 
 BY • 
 
 KATHLEEN OMEARA 
 
 (GRACE RAMSAY) 
 
 AUTHOR OF "PEARL, A STORY OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH UFE IN 
 THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON " 
 
 WITH A PREFACE 
 
 By his eminence CARDINAL MANNING 
 
 PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS M. MULRY 
 
 FRBSIDENT OF SUPERIOR COUNCIL OF NBW YORK, SOCIBTY OF ST. VINCBNT DB PAUL 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHRISTIAN PRESS ASSOCIATION 
 PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
Copyright, 191 i, 
 
 BY 
 
 CHRISTIAN PRESS ASSOCIATION PUBLISHING 
 COMPANY. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Preface, xi 
 
 CHAPTER 1.-1813-31. 
 
 Antiquity of the family of the Ozanams — family treasures — story of Jere- 
 miah Hozannam — Jacques Ozanam and his nephew Benedict — CcU«er 
 of Antoine, father of Frederic — Birth of Frederic at Milan, in 1813 — Set- 
 tlement of his father in Lyons as a physician — Characteristics of Frede- 
 ric's childhood — Early confessions — School life — Period of questioning 
 and doubt — Becomes a pupil of Abbe Noirot — Noirot's testimony regard- 
 ing him — Becomes clerk in an attorney's office — Writes a treatise 
 against the St. Simonians — receives congratulations from M. de Lamar- 
 tine — Studies the state of society in France — Views and ambitions at 
 the age of seventeen — Programme of future work — His ideas of true 
 glory — His freedom from the mere ambition of making money and a 
 position, in the worldly sense, x 
 
 CHAPTER n.— 1831. 
 
 Ozanam enters on his legal studies in Paris — first experiences — Stands 
 aloof from his fellow-students at the Ecole de Droit, on account of their 
 opinions — Boarding-house grievances — Impressions of Paris — Visit to 
 M. Ampere ; becomes an inmate of his house — his new manner of life 
 described — First interview with M. Chiteaubriand — Aim of his studies 
 — longing for noble work — Opposing school of Philosophy — the Ration- 
 alistic and the Traditional, 17 
 
 CHAPTER III.— 1831. 
 
 State of religion in France subsequent to the Revolution — Reign of 
 Atheism— Napoleon — The Abb6 Foumier — the Concordat of 1801 — 
 Radical Catholicism of France — Attitude of Napoleon towards the 
 Church— His policy towards the clei^— And the press — How he dealt 
 with the department of Public Instruction — Imperial University — His 
 instructions to the Minister of Public Worship — divorce established— the 
 Sabbath altered — The Concordat of Fontainebleau, Napoleon, and Pof)e 
 Pius VII. — Fall of Napoleon and restoration of the Bourbons — the 
 reign of faith restored only in appearance — Attempt at converting the 
 nation — Revival of Voltairianism — Ozanam, in his capacity of a Chris- 
 tian teacher, a witness for God to his generation, 25 
 
 8()210Ja 
 
iv Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER IV.— 1832. 
 
 VAGB 
 
 State of society in France after the Revolution of 1830 — The Abb6 de 
 l^amennais — Incident connected with M. Letrone's lectures at the Col- 
 lege de France — Ozanam and Lallier — Catholic young men finding each 
 otlier out — Rationalism and Revelation — letter to Ernest Falconnet — 
 Conferences of the Abbe Gerbet — Passage of arms between Professor 
 Jouffroy and a young Catholic at the Sorbonne — Result of this on Oza- 
 nam, and en the tone of the teaching of the Professors, . . . .41 
 
 CHAPTER v.— 1833. 
 
 Advantages accruing to Ozanam from his residence with M. Ampere — His 
 love of science — Tendency to dicouragement — anxiety about the future 
 — Tour in Italy — Dante and Raphael, 47 
 
 CHAPTER VI.— 1833. 
 
 The young Catholics befriended by M. Bailly — His newspaper, the Tri' 
 bune Catholique — Opens his office as a lecture-room and debating-hall — 
 Removal to a spacious hall in the Place de I'Estrapade — Account of the 
 debates — Increase of the Society — Soirees at M. de Montalembert's, . 53 
 
 CHAPTER VIL— 1833. 
 
 Hostility to the young Catholics continues unabated — Professor Jouffroy 
 an exception — The enemy's taunt : "Show us your works ! " — Ozanam's 
 suggestion at this juncture — First practical meeting in Pere Bailly's of- 
 fice, and presided over by him — Formation of the Society of St. Vincent 
 de Paul — its work among the poor — Sceur Rosalie — Rules of the Society 
 — Ozanam's first proteges — Hesitation at first as to the admission of new 
 members — Rapid growth of the Society, as related by Ozanam twenty 
 years later — The title of Founder always repudiated by him — Brave 
 manifestation on the part of the Catholic students described by Oza- 
 nam in a letter to his mother— procession at Nanterre — God preparing a 
 powerful and brilliant champion '59 
 
 CHAPTER VIII.—1834. 
 
 Fall of M. de Lamennais — The Abbe Gerbet— M. de Montalembert— Anti- 
 Christian spirit manifested at the Sorbonne at this time — The preaching 
 of the Paris clergy — The Abbe Lacordaire — his first oratorical successes 
 at the College Stanislas — First idea of his "Conferences" due to Oza- 
 nam — Proposal to Monseigneur de Quelen, Archbishop of Paris — La- 
 cordaire's consent obtained — Ozanam and others again visit the Arch- 
 bishop— Lamennais at the Archbishop's— The proposal divulged in the 
 Univers — The Archbishop's scheme to meet the wishes of the young 
 men — Lacordaire's Sunday addresses at the College Stanislas — His sub- 
 jects — Ozanam's admiration and regret 69 
 
Contents. ▼ 
 
 CHAPTER IX.— 1834.35. 
 
 Osanam's uncertainty as to his vocation — His repug^nanc*' to leadership — 
 Memorable soiree— Antagonism of the world — Political formula— Holi- 
 days spent at Lyons — his impression of the changes during his two years' 
 absence— Visit to the Chateau de St. Point to see Lamartine — The in- 
 terview described — Letters in reference to the poor and the Society of St. 
 Vincent de Paul— Charity and philanthropy — Return of old scruples 
 and anxieties— Illness of his mother— visit to Lyons— The cholera 
 averted from Lyons, 80 
 
 CHAPTfR X.— 1835-36. 
 
 Attitude of the clei^ towards Lacordaire's Conferences — Hesitation of the 
 Archbishop— Lacordaire remonstrates— The Archbishop proposes a con- 
 dition of resuming the Conferences which Lacordaire could not accept — 
 Despair of Ozanam and his friends — The Abbe Liautard, founder of the 
 College Stanislas, writes a vigorous expostulation — Lacordaire visits 
 the Archbishop — Sudden revulsion in the Archbishop's mind — appoint- 
 ment of Lacordaire to the pulpit of Notre Dame, and named Canon of 
 the Cathedral — Ozanam and Lacordaire, ^ 9' 
 
 CHAPTER XL— 1837. 
 
 Close of Ozanau's legal studies— Indecision as to his real vocation — Enters 
 on his duties as a barrister— Death of his father — Anecdote in reference 
 to his knowledge of Hebrew— Devotedness to his mother — The munici- 
 pality of Lyons petitions that Ozanam be appointed to a proposed Chair 
 of Commercial Law — His own feelings in regard to it — Antipathy to 
 the married state — Acquisition of the dignity of Doctor of Law— Visit 
 to La Grande Chartreuse — His ide al of a^ wife— Incompatibility felt by 
 him between the professionoF tKe bar and the pursuit of literature — 
 Seeks to combat in others the depression experienced by himself — Remi- 
 niscences of Italian travel — The great social question, .... 99 
 
 ^ 
 
 CHAPTER XII.— 1838-39. 
 
 Degree of Doctor of Letters — Thesis on Dante — Failure of his mother's 
 health — his anxiety regarding the younger members of the family — The- 
 sis on Dante extended and published — Nomination as Professor of 
 Commercial Law at Lyons — Philosophical Professorship at Orleans 
 offered by M. Cousin, but declined — Cousin's announcement to him of 
 his nomination to the Municipal Chair — Growing importance of the 
 Society of St. Vincent de Paul — Opposition encountered by it — Impor- 
 tance attached by him to correspondence between the various Con- 
 
 ferences — The two hostile camps existing in society — The power of 
 
 friendship, 
 
 :x.£ 
 
vi Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII.— 1839. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Failure of Ozanam's new position as Professor to set his mind at rest — 
 his mother — doubts as to his vocation — His views on marriage — This 
 period the most agitated of his life — M. Cousin — M, de Montalembert — 
 Lacordaire and the Order of St. Dominic — Conferences of St, Vincent 
 V' de Paul invited by Ozanam to meet Lacordaire at Lyons — Reply of 
 Ozanam to Lacordaire's letter from Rome — symptoms of a monastic 
 vocation — Lacordaire's answer — Letter on the death of Madame Oza- 
 nam — Communion with his mother's spirit, 116 
 
 CHAPTER XIV.— 1840-41. 
 
 Ozanam's Cours de Droit — crowds attracted — Renewed perplexities about 
 his vocation — Sympathy with domestic joys — Matrimonial traps — Visit 
 to Paris — meeting with old friends — Position of Catholics in France — 
 Renewed overtures from M. Cousin — Resolves to compete for the Agrd- 
 gation de litterature — the issue to be accepted as the final indication of 
 his destiny — The Abbe Noirot's advice as to marriage — Visit to M, Sou- 
 \y lacroix — Competitive examination in Paris-^^nexpected triumph — 
 Offered the position of Assistant Professor of Foreign Literature in the 
 Sorbonne — Undertakes a short tour in Germany — Aix-la-Chapelle — 
 Cologne — Christian art — Legends of the Rhine — Asks the hand of. 
 Mademoiselle Soulacroix, and is accepted — Offered the Chair of Foreign 
 Literature in the University of Lyons — Deliverance from the dilemma — 
 resolution to go to Paris — His^parriage — letters connected with it — His 
 lofty idea of the duties aiid privileges of the married state— Tour through 
 Italy, Sicily, Naples, Rome— St. Peter's, •-« 
 
 CHAPTER XV.— 1842. 
 
 Ozanam's new post one beset with difficulties — His fitness for it, notwith- 
 standing— MM. Guizot, Villemain, and Cousin— M, de Montalembert— 
 Ozanam comes boldly out as a teacher identified with the Christian 
 faith— His eloquence— Gifts and difficulties as an orator— His manner 
 of lecturing— Power over the young, and strong sympathy with them — 
 Earnestness in his professorial duties— Lectures on the Holy Roman 
 Empire— Research for his work on Germany— Advice to his brother 
 Charles — His love of work, ^47 
 
 CHAPTER XVI.~i 843-44. 
 
 Question of the freedom of the schools— Montalembert — The Cercle Catho- 
 lique — Ozanam's influence at the C^rc/^— speech on the literary duties 
 of Christians— Fierce attack by the Univers on a portion of the speech 
 — His prudence and far-seeing sagacity exemplified at this juncture-^. 
 Relations between Church and State the grand question at issue — Oza- 
 nam bravely seconded by M. Lenormant — Account of Lenormant's con- 
 version to Christianity— Tumult at the recommencement of his lectures 
 
Cou tents. vii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 stilled by Ozanam— Lenormant's Cours closed by Government — Oza- 
 nam, undaunted, continues the out-and-out Christian tone of his teach- 
 ing His universal popularity — His tolerance towards error — Anecdote 
 
 illustrative of the charity which distinguished all his dealings with the 
 poor — His considerateness and deference in his service of the poor — 
 True character of almsgiving — His order in dispensing his chcirities, . 162 
 
 CHAPTER XVII.— 1844-45. 
 
 O^anam's household in Paris — Gui-gui— Important event for Ozanam — M. 
 Fauriel's death — Nominated Professor for life — Letters on this subject to 
 Ampere and Foisset — Regret of the pupils of the College Stanislas at 
 losing him — their letter to Ozanam — His conscientiousness as an ex- 
 aminer — Nomination of his father-in-law, AL Soulacroix, as Chef de 
 Division in the Ministry of Public Instruction— Birth of his child— Joys 
 and duties of fatherhood — Summer residence at Nogent — His History 
 of Christian Civilization amongst the Germans^ !&? 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII.— 1846. 
 
 Health giving way, but work uninterrupted — Lectures to working-men — 
 The laborer rehabilitated by Christianity— The law of labor universal — 
 Labor in the Church — Labor the law of regeneration — Examinations for 
 the Baccalaureat — Ozanam attacked by a malignant fever — Sent on a 
 literary mission to Italy, iS3 
 
 CHAPTER XIX.— 1846-47. 
 
 Winter in Rome — Two volumes the result of his present journey — Pius 
 IX. at the Church of St. Apollinarius — Ozanam's enthusiasm for the 
 Pope — Easter Sunday at St. Peter's — Enthusicism of the Romans — Por- 
 trait of Pius IX. — Private audience with the Pope — Little Marie — Re- 
 searches in the library at the Abbey of Monte Cassino — National banquet 
 in Rome — Torchlight procession to the Quirinal — Dreaming in the star- 
 light — Ozanam's idea of Democracy — Real and ideal Republic — Policy 
 of Pius IX. — Principle of religion and liberty — Ozanam's hopeful view 
 of the Pope's reforms — The amount of liberty enjoyed without prejudice 
 to order, the measure of a nation's moral strength — Tour homewards — 
 Siena, Bologna, Padua, Assisi, Venice — Attractions of Venice — Home 
 with restored health— through Switzerland and Belgium, . . .193 
 
 CHAPTER XX.— 1847. 
 
 Ozanam's work, Les Poetes Franciscains, the fruit of this journey to Italy 
 — St. Gregory and St. Ambrose — St. Francis of Assisi — *' My Ladye 
 Poverty" — "Our brother, my lord the Sun" — Tomb of St. Francis — 
 Cimabue, Giotto — Frere Pacifique, St. Bonaventure — Jacopone di Todi, 
 the herald of Dante— .^////# Flowers of St. Francis, . . . . aio 
 
viii Contenh. 
 
 CHAPTER XXL— 1848. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Elaborate prolamine of Ozanam's great work — Revolution of February 
 — Ozanam's manner of judging politics — Attacked by the press — the 
 camp of monarchs — Louis Quatorze — " Passons aux Barbares ! " — Oza- 
 nam's estimate of the revolution — Declines becoming a candidate for 
 election to the Assemblee Nationale — He enters the lists as a journalist, 223 
 
 CHAPTER XXH.— 1848-49. 
 
 The Avenir — Retrospect of Catholic journalism — Abbe Migne and the 
 Univers — Abbe Gerbet — The Ere Nouvelle started by Ozanam and the 
 Pere Lacordaire — Election of Lacordaire to the National Assembly — 
 Ozanam's zeal in propagating Christian democratic principles — Extracts 
 from the Ere Nouvelle — Ozanam's courage in this national crisis — On 
 duty as a National Guard — The Archbishop of Paris, at the request of 
 Ozanam, M. Bailly, and M, Cornudet, goes forth as peace-maker — The 
 Archbishop killed at the barricades — Ozanam's disappointment at the 
 results of the Revolution — His extraordinary activity at this time — State 
 of Paris after the Revolution — Picture of misery in the Faubourgs — Oza- 
 nam's crusade against the gospel of despair — Radical causes of the evil ' 
 sought to be discovered — Apathy of the Government — The Ere Nou-.- ; - - 
 velle^s career closed — Letter to a Freethinker — A new paper started — 
 the Mojiiieur Reiigieux — Ozanam promises occasional assistance — Con- 
 troversy with the Univers — Denounced as a deserter — Bears witness to 
 himself 231 
 
 CHAPTER XXni.— 1850-51. 
 
 Ozanam's health again a cause of serious alarm — Tour in Brittany — the 
 Bretons — the pardon of St. Anne d'Auray — Legends of Brittany — The 
 interests of the poor — Morlaix — Hospitality — political feeling — Comic 
 incidents — Burlesque poem addressed to M. Ampere — Political decom- 
 
 position of society — State proselytism — Pere^ Lacordaire — Country rest- %^Jj y 
 
 dence at Sceaux, near Paris — Friendship with Ampere — Faithful and 
 tender letter to him, and the response it met with — Visit to London — 
 the Crystal Palace — The true greatness of London — Its wealth and its 
 pauperism — St. Paul's — Incident connected with his first visit to West- 
 minster Abbey — Catholicism in England — Class feeling — Visit to Ox- 
 ford — Return to Sceaux — Letter to Ampere — pleasant prospects, . . 255 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV.— 1852. 
 
 Ozanam again dangerously ill — Letter to an old schoolfellow whose faith 
 had been shipwrecked in the study of profane science — Leaves from his ' 
 own experience — Conquests of the Gospel — Last appearance at the Sor- 
 bonne — Removal to Eaux-Bonnes for the benefit of the waters — Founds 
 a Conference there — Intercourse with the Abbe Perreyve — Leaves Eaux- 
 
Contents IX 
 
 FAOE 
 
 Bonnes for BiauriU — Tour in the Pyrenees — Pilgrimage to B«tharram, a 
 shrine of the fifteenth century — Parting with Perreyve — Proposed as a 
 member for the Institut — Stolen glimpse of Spain — A few days at Bur- 
 gos — Souvenir of this rapid excursion : A Pilgrimage to the Land of 
 t/ie Cid — Burgos under three separate aspects — Farewell to Sfkain — 
 jxjetic invocation to Notre Dame de Burgos — Pilgrimage to Notre 
 Dame de Buglosse — St. Vincent's oak-tree — The old priest at Buglosse, 
 and his advice — Threatening symptoms reappear, aya 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Ozanam's early-formed plan never lost sight of throughout his literary and 
 professional career — His reluctance to allow his lectures at the Sorbonne 
 to be reported at last overcome — success of the experiment — The post- 
 humous volumes on the Civilisation au Cinquilme Slide — His literary 
 testament, being the preface to that wck— The Middle Ages— Gibbon's 
 thesis — How viewed by Ozanam — Good Friday, a. d. 1300— Paganism of 
 the Roman Empire— Slavery— The poor— Fall of the Empire— St. 
 Augustine — Change effected by Christianity on the social position of 
 woman — The Latin tongue saved by Christianity — the Vulgate — The 
 bridge between antiquity and barbarism bridged over by Ozanam — Ora- 
 nam's Civilization 0/ the Fifth Century crowned at the Acad^mie Fran- 
 (jaise — Programme of the course of his whole work — Les Etudes Ger- 
 vianiques — Radical unity of the Indo-European peoples — Conflict be- 
 tween the Germans and the Romans — The mission of the Franks — 
 Charlemagne — The mission of the Celtic race — Ireland : St. Columba, 
 St. Brendan, St. Patrick — Lacordaire on Ozanam's power of oratory 
 and erudition — Letter from Count de Montalembert to Madame Oza- 
 nam — Dante et la Philosophie Catholique au treiziime siicle — The dif- 
 ferent schools of Dantesque commentators — Ozanam's chief aim in his 
 work on Dante— Philosophy of the Middle Ages— Secret of Dante's im- 
 mortality — Ozanam's treatment of Beatrice — Multiform character of 
 Dante's poem— Dante and Beatrice — Turning-points in Dante's life — 
 Earlier works — The Divina Commedia—Dainie claimed by Ozanam as 
 the prophet of democracy and of the revolutions of modem society — 
 Exonerated from complicity in modem excesses — The question of Dante's 
 orthodoxy — His invectives against the Roman court and certain Popes 
 — Summoned before the Inquisition — Homer and Dante — Dante's phil- 
 osophy ever the obedient handmaiden of theology — Ozanam's work and 
 fts characteristics, 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI.— 1853. 
 
 Threshold of the closing scene — Journey to Italy — his admiration of the 
 wort:s of God — Cathedral of Pisa— The library— Pleasure in his friends 
 — Lenormant — Ampere — Multiplication of Conferences of the Society of 
 St, Vincent de Paul in Italy — Guido P«dagi — Pisa and Genoa — aspect of 
 
 y^Q 
 
Contents. 
 
 PAGS 
 
 the churches— Protestant efforts— Fourierism and Socialism — Incident 
 in connection with the foundation of Conferences in Tuscany — Dowager 
 Grand-Duchess — His speech at the opening seance — Effect produced by 
 its circulation — State of health at this time — His daily thanksgivings for 
 particular mercies — " Little kindnesses " received from God — Letter to 
 Ampere— His delight in prayer and meditation on Divine things, and in 
 the reading of the Scriptures— Thoughts written on his last birthday — 
 The Marquis de Salvo — Madame Recamier— Jewish convert to Chris- 
 tianity — Improvement of health — old passion for work — Visit to Siena 
 with a view to establish a Conference — Removal to Antignano — Letter 
 to Padre Pendola, earnestly pleading with him to take the matter in 
 hand — His success — two Conferences founded — Sympathy with do- 
 mestic joys — Review of the Poetes Franciscains in the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes — His candidature for the Institut abandoned— His "Odyssey" 
 — increasing weakness — Flattering tokens received from the highest per- 
 sonages during his stay in Tuscany — Visitors : the Ferruccis — ^brothers 
 of St. Vincent de Paul— Goes to hear Mass— homage of the villagers — 
 The old Cure of Antignano— Codicil to his will— Letter of the Abbe 
 Perreyve — Last days at Antignano — Removal to Marseilles — The clos- 
 ing scene, • 3^9 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The following passages from a Review of the first edition of 
 this Biography of Frederic Ozanara is the best preface I can 
 give, at the request of the writer, to the second edition of this 
 deeply intejresting narrative. 
 
 HENRY EDWARD, 
 
 Au£. IS, 1878. Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, 
 
 P6re Gratry has said somewhere in his writings that one dif- 
 ference between the society of the Middle Ages and of these lat- 
 ter centuries consists in this, " Society then was Catholic, and 
 sustained men above themselves, but now Society is Catholic no 
 longer, and drags men downwards with itself." The truth of this 
 is to be seen perhaps more clearly in France and in this century 
 than in any other period or country. The first French Revolution 
 decatholicized the society of France. Its Catholicism has sur- 
 vived in individuals, and yet they have, with exceptions indeed, 
 shown the depressing and distorting power of the society into 
 which they were born, and by which they were nurtured. What 
 the Germans call the " Time-Spirit " is powerful everywhere, but 
 it has shown its subtlety and its supremacy nowhere more visibly 
 than in the noble and chivalrous race of Catholics who have so 
 powerfully urged onward the reaction towards faith in France 
 since the year 1830. 
 
 M. de Broglie has said that the principles of 1789 were formu- 
 lated and published not only as a charter for France but as a gos- 
 pel for mankind. M. Thiers said to a bishop on his way to the 
 Council, *' Do not attack the principles of 1789; whoso touches 
 them touches the marrow of Frenchmen." They have penetrated 
 into the intelligence and created a public opinion which affects 
 even those who resist them. To this fact we may ascribe two 
 phenomena strange and sad in the Catholic action of France 
 for the last forty years; namely, that those who were labor* 
 
xii Preface, 
 
 ing in the Catholic reaction to restore faith, piety, and fidelity 
 to the Holy See, were divided, and opposed to each other, and 
 that one band of men for whose devotion, piety, intellectual ele- 
 vation, and chivalrous fidelity to the Catholic Church, every 
 Catholic must have admiration, should have been so perceptibly, 
 though, we believe, unconsciously, affected by the Time-Spirit 
 created by the principles of 1789. 
 
 Frederic Ozanam was one of the most brilliant of the brilliant 
 band of Catholic writers in whom this can be traced. We are, 
 therefore, desirous of making unmistakably clear our judgment 
 on these points before we go on to express our profound admira- 
 tion and affectionate sympathy with him and many of those who 
 were associated with him in this noble conflict for the Catholic 
 Faith against the infidel politics and Voltairean society of Paris 
 and of France. 
 
 The youth of France were the offspring of the infidel Univer- 
 sity of the First Napoleon. Neither under the Restoration nor 
 under the reign of Louis Philippe was its destructive influence 
 counteracted. Society was either infidel and indifferent, or Vol- 
 tairean — that is, infidel and scoffing. Such a society pulled down 
 all its members ; and into such a society Frederic Ozanam was 
 born. It might be divided into three classes. First came the 
 non-Catholics, who believed nothing ; secondly, the Catholics 
 who gave splendid examples of a perfect fidelity to the Church ; 
 and, thirdly, those who may be called Catholics juxta tnodum ; 
 that is to say, they were in some particulars and details affected by 
 the Time-Spirit of their age and country. Nevertheless, among 
 these were some of the noblest and most chivalrous sons of the 
 Church, and some also of the most ardent and loving Christians 
 and true soldiers of Jesus Christ. It seems to us that we ought 
 to render justice to all such men, and we feel that we can do so 
 without incurring a suspicion of our being "liberal Catholics." 
 We have had our baptismus opprobriorum as Ultramontanes, and 
 even as ultra-Catholic and ultra-ultramontane. Our chief mission 
 has been to learn of the living voice of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and 
 to repeat his utterances with a perfect fidelity. We therefore claim 
 to ourselves the freedom of speaking generously of those who, 
 in our judgment, may not in some things have followed the guid- 
 ance of the Holy See, for we have bought that freedom with the 
 great price of no little odium, and no sparing censure for our 
 extreme ultramontanism. 
 
 It seems to us to be the duty of justice, not to speak of charity, 
 
Preface, xill 
 
 that while we remain inflexible in our own attitude, we should en- 
 deavor, as lar as possible, lo appreciate at its full all that is high, 
 noble, truthful, and Catholic in them ; and while we note the 
 point in which we believe them to have come short, to render to 
 their lives, characters, and memories the fullest recollection of 
 what they were. We say iheir memories, because of those of 
 whom we have to speak hardly one survives. 
 
 Between the years 1830 and 1850 there arosj in France a group 
 of men whose lives have left an indelible mark upon their country. 
 The period of De Maistre and Chateaubriand was followed by 
 that of Lamennais, De Bonald, De Salignis, Gerbet, Lacordaire, 
 Montalembert, Ozanam, Rio, Combalot, Cociiin, and in its later 
 time, Gratry ; and, we must add, as a youthful disciple called 
 away before he had inscribed his name by toil, Henry Perreyve. 
 
 While conscious of divergencies and deviations in certain 
 things, it was impossible not to see and to love the noble charac- 
 ter of these men. Endowed with great natural gifts, and with 
 wide and various cultivation, there was one thing in common with 
 them all — a great mental beauty, and a great breadth of heart. 
 No one can have read the writings of Gerbet, Rio, Ozanam, 
 Montalembert, and Gratry, nobody can have known Henry Per- 
 reyve, without seeing and feeling the singular beauty of their in- 
 telligence, and the generous impulses of their character. 
 
 We have no fear in rendering this just and afiectionate tribute to 
 their memory; and if in anything we have at times strongly op- 
 posed their way of judging and speaking, we never forgot, and 
 never shall cease to declare, that they were noble sons of France, 
 which had marked them for its own with some of the best tokens 
 of its less stable age. There is also another truth to be born in 
 mind. If we were to try the language of some of the Antcnicene 
 Fathers by the terminology fixed by the Council of Nicaea, we 
 should find matter for criticism. In like manner if we were to 
 try the writings of some of the noblest and most fervent de- 
 fenders of the Catholic Faith and of the Holy See in France by 
 the later tests of the Syllabus and of the Vatican Council, we 
 should commit an injustice. At that period we might have been 
 as they were, without an exact terminology, and with questions 
 as yet undecided. • 
 
 Ozanam's studies were completed by the age of twenty-two ; 
 and in eighteen years he accomplished all that he has left behind 
 of finished writings, and all that he wrought into the hearts and 
 lives of the youth of France in the widespread revival of Faith, 
 
xiv Preface. 
 
 which is expanding to this day. They were eighteen years of 
 great intellectual and spiritual intensity. One word spoken by 
 a mind raised to the pitch of its powers does more than a thou- 
 sand scattered from an unimpassioned mind. We have rarely 
 seen clearer evidence of mental intensity than in Frederic Oza- 
 nam. It may be well believed that it was not only the energy of 
 a mind inflamed with the love of God, but that the keen energy of 
 a nervous system which daily consumed itself added to the inten- 
 sity of the will. There can be no doubt that he accomplished the 
 vow of his youth by spending and being spent to the last beat of 
 his pulse for " the Truth which had given him peace." 
 
 Although Ozanam chose literature for his calling in life, and 
 although he refused again and again the proposal to enter the 
 Legislature, or to be called a politician, and that, too, with a de- 
 clared purpose of working out social reforms in distinction from 
 political, nevertheless he avowed himself explicitly to be a repub- 
 lican. This we have no doubt has caused him to incur the cen- 
 sure of Legitimists, Royalists, Imperialists, and even to lose the 
 perfect confidence of loyal Catholics, who associate order and 
 obedience with monarchy, and, if not anarchy, at least instability 
 of both public and private morals with republicanism. This was 
 especially true in France, where the name of Republic and the 
 reality were identified with 1793 and the Phrygian cap of re- 
 volution. We shall not be suspected of republicanism, or want 
 of loyalty to the great English monarchy of a thousand years, 
 founded broad and deep in the natural order of prudence and 
 justice by our Catholic forefathers, and subsisting to this day, the 
 only commonwealth against which revolutions have broken them- 
 selves in vain, — we say we shall not be suspected of republican- 
 ism, or of any uncatholic tendency in politics, if we clear Frede- 
 ric Ozanam also from any such suspicion. 
 
 We have heard it said that no republican can be a good Catho- 
 lic. We would commend this dictum to the conscience of Cardi- 
 nal McCloskey and to the pastors and people of the Catholic 
 Church of the United States ; or, to come nearer home, we would 
 commend it to the deliberation of Mgr. Mermillod, who would, 
 we imagine, distinguish between the Helvetian republic and the 
 gang of infidels and persecutors who now tyrannize over Geneva. 
 But we may even go further, and remind those who censure Oza- 
 nam's politics, of the republics of Venice, Florence, Pisa, and 
 Genoa, of the Catholic chivalry which issued from them, and of 
 the Saints who sprung from them. 
 
Preface. xv 
 
 Now, it was precisely the mediaeval Christian and Catholic re- 
 public which fascinated and filled Ozanam's mind. In it he saw 
 the check and balance which would have saved France from the 
 excesses of its later kings, and, therefore, from the sanguinary 
 and anarchical reaction called the Revolution. His indignant 
 lamentations over the state of the people of Paris ; his burning 
 zeal for the poor, whose degradation in poverty, ignorance, and 
 depravity he, as a Brother of St. Vincent de Paul, saw with his 
 own eyes, and relieved with his own hands — all this made him 
 pray and toil for a Christian equality of brotherhood such as he 
 had read of in the commonwealth of Israel. Perhaps the instinct 
 of a theocratic commonwealth ran in the blood of a Hozannam 
 by direct inheritance. 
 
 But we can find for Ozanam another plea. In the years when 
 he was entering into the studies of his manhood there appeared 
 in France a book which has, more than almost any other, mould- 
 ed and directed the political thought of the nineteenth century ; 
 wc mean De Tocqueville's "Democracy in America."* We 
 shall better convey our own meaning by simply letting De Tocque- 
 ville express his. In his Introduction to his work he writes as 
 follows : 
 
 " The more I studied American society, the more I perceived that the equality 
 of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and 
 the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated. I then 
 turned my thoughts to our own hemisphere, where I imagined that I discerned 
 something analogous to the spectacle which the New World presented to me. I 
 observed that the equality of conditions b daily progressing towards those extreme 
 limits which it seems to have reached in the United States; and that the demo- 
 cracy which governs the American communities appears to be rapidly rising into 
 power in Europe." (P. 13.) 
 
 He ascribes this equality chiefly to the action of the Catholic 
 Church : 
 
 "Soon (he says) the political power of the clergy was founded, and began to 
 exert itself ; the clergy opened its ranks to all classes — to the poor and to the rich, 
 the villain and the lord ; equality penetrated into the government through the 
 Church, and the being who, as a serf, must have vegetated in perpetual bondage, 
 took his place as a priest in the midst of nobles, and not unfrequently above the 
 heads of kings." (P. 15.) 
 
 After saying that everj' fifty years has levelled France more and 
 more nearly after the model of America, he s^'S : 
 
 " Nor is this phenomenon at all peculiar to France. Whithersoever we turn our 
 ♦ " Democracy in America " : Reeve's translation. London : 1865. 
 
xvi Preface. 
 
 eyes, we shall witness the same continual revolution throughout the whole of 
 Christendom. The various occurrences of national existence have everywhere 
 turned to the advantage of democracy. All men have aided it by their exertions: 
 those who have intentionally labored in its cause, and those who have served it un- 
 wittingly ; those who have fought for it, and those who have declared themselves 
 its opponents — have all been driven along in the same track, have all labored to 
 one end, some ignorantly and some unwillingly ; all have been blind instruments 
 in the hands of God. The gradual development of the equality of conditions is 
 therefore a providential fact, and it possesses all the characteristics of a Divine 
 decree : it is universal, it is durable, it constantly eludes all human interference 
 and all events as well as all men contribute to its progress." (Pp. ig, 20.) 
 
 " The whole book which is here offered to the public has been written under the 
 impression of a kind of religious dread produced on the author's mind by the con- 
 templation of so irresistible a revolution, which has advanced for centuries in spite 
 of such amazing obstacles, and which is still proceeding in the midst of the ruins it 
 has made." (P. 21.) 
 
 " The Christian nations of our age seem to me to present a most alarming spec- 
 tacle ; the impulse which is bearing them along is so strong that it cannot be 
 stopped, but it is not yet so rapid that it cannot be guided : their fate is in their 
 hands ; yet a little while and it may be so no longer. The first duty which is at 
 this time imposed upon those who direct our affairs is to educate the democracy : 
 to warm its faith, if that be possible ; to purify its morals ; to direct its energies ; 
 to substitute a knowledge of business for its inexperience, and an acquaintance 
 with its true interests for its blind propensities ; to adapt its government to time 
 and place, and to modify it in compliance with the occurrences and the actors of 
 the age. A new science of politics is indispensable to a new world." (P. 22,) 
 
 " Zealous Christians may be found amongst us, whose minds are nurtured in the 
 love and knowledge of a future life, and who readily espouse the cause of human 
 liberty, as the source of all moral greatness. Christianity, which has declared that 
 all men are equal in the sight of God, will not refuse to acknowledge that all citi- 
 zens are equal in the sight of the law. But, by a singular concourse of events, re- 
 ligion is entangled in those institutions which democracy assails, and it is not un' 
 frequently brought to reject the equality it loves, and to curse that cause of liberty 
 as a foe, which it might hallow by its alliance." (Pp. 31, 32.) 
 
 He then sums up the saddest feature of our times — the unna- 
 tural and fratricidal conflicts of those who have common interests, 
 and are combining for the same ends. It is as if At6 had come 
 between men. 
 
 " The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack re- 
 ligion ; the high-minded and the noble advocate subjection, and the meanest and 
 most servile minds preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are op- 
 posed to all progress, whilst men without patriotism and without principles are the 
 apostles of civilization and of intelligence." (Pp. 33, 34.) 
 
 We cannot leave De Tocqueville's name without adding that 
 he was born of a fervent Catholic Breton family ; that, like too 
 many Frenchmen, he became practically indifferent ; but that he 
 ended his days in Cannes with the pastoral care of the cur6 and 
 the watchful service of a Sister of Charity. 
 
Preface. xvll 
 
 Now, we can hardly believe that Ozanam had not become fa- 
 miliar with De Tocqueville's thesis, and we might venture to as- 
 sert with De Tocqueville's writings. If so, we have the key to 
 the passages which we now add, in which Ozanam pours out his 
 whole political creed. 
 
 His biographer, who evidently has studied all his works, has 
 summed up his mind as follows : 
 
 " The philosophy of history, as he interpreted it, had led him to beUeve that 
 there is no real meaning or character in the movement of human society unless 
 through all its changes and convulsions we can discern a steady and continual pro- 
 gress through Christianity to the dignity of freedom. This condition of freedom, 
 which he held as essential to the welfare and happiness of communities, he consid- 
 ered equally indispensable to the Church. He was consequently intolerant of the 
 least bondage for her, and impatient that a Christian people should tolerate it, 
 when at the same time they were, perhaps, fighting manfully for the emancipation 
 of their country. If the Church were free, free in the fullest sense of the word- 
 free to guide, to rule, and to teach mankind — then all legitimate freedom would 
 follow." (Pp. 283.) 
 
 " ' A struggle is preparing,' he says, ' between the classes, and it threatens to be 
 terrible ; let us precipitate ourselves between these hostile ranks so as to deaden 
 the shock, if we cannot prevent it.' In 1836 he wrote to his friend Lallier : ' The 
 question which agitates the world to-day is not a question of political formsy but 
 a social question ; if it be the struggle of those who have nothing, with those who 
 have too much ; if it be the violent shock of opulence and poverty which is mak- 
 ing the ground tremble under our feet, our duty, as Christians, is to throw our- 
 selves between these irreconcilable enemies, and to induce one side to give, in 
 order to fulfil the law, and the other to receive, as a benefit ; to make one side 
 cease to exact, and the other to refuse ; to render equality as general as it is possi- 
 ble amongst men ; to make voluntary community of possession to replace taxation 
 and forced loans ; to make charity accomplish what justice and law alone can never 
 do.' He adhered to this political creed all his life. Twelve years later, on the eve 
 of the ' violent shock' which his far-seeing sagacity foretold, he repeats, as in his 
 student days, * It is a social question ; do away with misery. Christianize the peo- 
 ple, and you will make an end of revolutions.' " (Pp. 304.) 
 
 ** The first duty of Christians, now, is not to be frightened ; and the second is 
 not to frighten others ; but, on the contrary, to reassure the timorous, and to 
 make them understand that the present crisis is like a storm that cannot last." 
 (P. 318.) 
 
 " Here we are in this great and opulent metropolis for the last seven weeks with- 
 out a government or a regular police, and yet we hear of no more murders, robber- 
 ies, or other misdemeanors than before. Don't believe those evil-minded persons 
 who go about spreading absurd stories ; there is not a word of truth in them, and 
 nothing is more contrary to the dispositions of the population of Paris, who on 
 every occasion seek to show resp&ct to religion and sympathy to the clergy. My 
 friend, the Ahbfe Cherruel, who has blessed thirteen trees of liberty, has been quite 
 affected by the proofs of faith which he found amidst this people, where, since 
 1815, the priest has been taught to see only enemies of God and of the Church. 
 Occupy yourself as much with servants as with masters, with workmen as much as 
 vith employers. This is henceforth the only means of salvation for the Church of 
 
T-viii Preface. 
 
 France. The cur^iS must set aside their pious parish congregations, little flocks of 
 good sheep in the midst of an enormous population to whom the parish priest is a 
 stranger. He must henceforth occupy himself, not only with the indigent, but 
 with that immense class of poor who do not ask for alms, but who are, neverthe- 
 less, attracted by social preaching, by charitable associations, by the affection 
 that is shown to them, and which teaches them more than we think. Now, more 
 than ever, we ought to meditate on a beautiful passage in the 2d chapter of the 
 Epistle of St. James, which seems as if it had been written expressly for these 
 times." (Pp. 319.) 
 
 Once more, in a passage which we reluctantly abridge, he 
 brings out the profound conviction of his mind that the infidel 
 revolution is the ranting and malaria of a land where the " salt 
 has lost its savor " : 
 
 " It is within, not without, that we must seek for the sources of men's happiness 
 and its principal enemies," he declares ; " and we shall have done nothing, abso- 
 lutely nothing, so long as we have not carried light and reform into those internal 
 disorders which time does not right, which are more incurable than diseases, which 
 Jast longer than the chomage^ and go on multiplying pauperism long after the 
 grass of the graveyard has effaced the last traces of civil war. God did not 
 make the poor ; He sends no human creatures into the chances of this world with- 
 out providing them with those two sources of riches, which are the fountain of 
 all others — intelligence and will. . . . Why should we hide from the people 
 what they know, and flatter them like bad kings? It is human liberty that makes 
 the poor; it is that which dries up those two primitive fountains of wealth, by al- 
 lowing intelligence to be quenched in ignorance, and will to be weakened by mis- 
 conduct. The working-men know it better than we do. . . . God forbid that 
 we should calumniate the poor whom the Gospel blesses, or render the suffering 
 classes responsible for their misery ; thus pandering to the hardness of those bad 
 hearts that fancy themselves exonerated from helping the poor man when they 
 have proved his wrong-doing. . . . But while we have put crushing taxes on 
 salt, meat, and all necessaries of life, we have not yet discovered in the arsenal of 
 our fiscal laws the secret of arresting the multiplication of distilleries, of raising the 
 price of alcoholic liquors, of restricting the sale of those detestable, adulterated, 
 poisonous drinks that cause more sickness than all the rigors of the seasons, and 
 make more criminals than all the injustice of men combined. What reforptis have 
 you introduced into the public amusements of this Parisian population, so infatu- 
 ated about pleasure, so ready to let itself be led to the ends of the earth, not with 
 bread, as it has been said, but with amusement ? Last winter the Prefecture of 
 Police delivered yi7«r thousand licenses /or night balls. The State puts no limit 
 to those unhealthy diversions, which the good sense of our fathers contracted within 
 the six weeks of the Carnival. Every year it authorizes the opening of a new thea- 
 tre in some wretched haunt of the Faubourgs, where the sons and daughters of the 
 people are fed nightly upon the scum of a literature whose cynicism would revolt 
 the chastity of the opera pit. And when, for six months of the year, the youth of 
 the working classes have spent their evenings and their nights in these horrible 
 dens, where their health runs as much danger as their morals, you are surprised to 
 see them turn out miserable puny creatures, incapable of supplying the military 
 contingent, but supplying innumerable recruits every year to the prisons and the 
 hospitals ! Let us not imagine we have done our duty by the people when we have 
 taught them to read, and write, and count- ■ . . When it was a question of 
 
Preface. xix 
 
 crushing out the last embers of the insurrection, there was no need of delays and 
 formalities to pitch twenty camps in the Boulevards of Paris, and up to the very 
 doors of the Hotel de Ville ; and here we are, after four months, when in the 12th 
 arrondissement alone there are 4,000 children without shelter — here we are still 
 struggling amidst adjournments, motions, and debates, fighting to overcome I 
 know not what scruples of committees, boards, administrations, and the rest of it, 
 who are terrified that the State will be ruined and overturned if the education of 
 the young ouvriers is confided to sisters and brothers, to teachers capable, that is, 
 of teaching them something more than how to spell out the syllables of the news- 
 paper, and to scrawl the ordre dej'our of the barricades on the walls with a piece 
 of coal." (Pp. 334-335.) 
 
 " ' The poor devils,' he said, ' who are beguiled to the barricades, but who are 
 Christians at heart, are ready to melt at a word of kindness.' " (P. 277.) 
 
 In all this we see a profound faith in the words of the Holy 
 Scriptures. ** Sanabiles fecit Deus nationes super terras." He 
 believed the nations to be sick because their faith had almost given 
 way under the spiritual, moral, and physical conditions of their 
 life. But he profoundly believed in the healing power of God 
 through the Church and the ever-renewing health of the genera- 
 tions of man. France, it is said, had once two-and-twenty thou- 
 sand leprosy hospitals, but they have disappeared together with 
 the leprosy which called them into existence. So he believed 
 that the social evils of France were to be healed by the power of 
 Christianity upon the heart of man. " Christianize the masses"; 
 this was his gospel and his political creed — a creed which has a 
 higher sanction from St. Gregory the Great to Pius the Ninth. 
 
 And the mention of this august nanxe reminds us that we can- 
 not better close this hearty tribute to a beautiful mind and a noble 
 life than by the words in which Ozanam professed his filial 
 and loving obedience to the Vicar of Jesus Christ. The winter 
 of 1846-1847 Ozanam passed in Rome. It was at the beginning 
 of the Pontificate of Pius IX. On Easter Sunday he wrote thus: 
 
 " This is the moment to speak to you of the Papacy, now that I have just as- 
 sisted at its most solemn pageants, and am still under the spell of the emotion 
 called up by that most thrilling specUcle which is to be seen on earth, the Papal 
 Mass and the benediction of the Urbi et orbi." (P. 265.) 
 
 Ozanam was received by the Holy Father with the most fatherly 
 affection, and it was returned by a filial love which inspired his 
 whole soul with the loyalty of a chivalrous Catholic. 
 
 At a public meeting, on his return from Rome, he said: 
 
 " I believe the future has serious troubles in store for Pius IX. I believe it for 
 his greater glory. God does not raise up such men for ordinary difficulties. If this 
 great Pontiff had only to cope with the over-enthusiasm, the eagerness of his peo- 
 ple — a thing that so few Drinces have to complain of— his mission would be an easy 
 
XX Preface. 
 
 one ; it would fill too small a place in history ; his bark would glide over tranquil 
 waters. We must look out for the tempest. But let us not fear, like the disciples 
 of little faith ; Christ is in the boat, and He is not sleeping ; never has He been 
 more wakeful than in these present days." (P. 280.) 
 
 Such was Frederic Ozanam, a pure and noble soul, on fire with 
 charity to all men, especially to the poor ; consumed by zeal in 
 the service of truth ; pious, with a filial tenderness ; exemplary 
 in every path of life ; more eloquent in the supernatural beauty 
 of his thoughts than in the loving words which fell from his lips; 
 more illuminated with the ardor of Christian faith than with the 
 manifold lights of literary cultivation : such a man bore in him a 
 Catholic heart full of all instinctive loyalty, as ready to give his 
 life for a jot or tittle of the faith, or for a definition of the Divine 
 authority of the Church, as he was to counsel the Archbishop of 
 Paris to tread in the steps of the good Shepherd, and to lay down 
 his life for his sheep. May God raise up on every side laymen 
 like Frederic Ozanam ! 
 
 H. E., C. A, 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THK PRESENT EDITION 
 
 Vincentians and Catholics generally of this and other English- 
 speaking communities, particularly such as are interested in the 
 history and development of Catholic charitable endeavors, will 
 be much gratified to learn of the purpose of the Christian Press 
 Association to issue another English edition of the life and works 
 of Frederic Ozanam, that brilliant Catholic scholar, that true 
 follower of St. Vincent de Paul, that great exemplar of the 
 zealous Christian charit>'-worker, whose entire history is one 
 continued recital of beautiful acts of self-sacrifice and benevolent 
 deeds entering into a life unselfishly devoted to the alleviation of 
 the wants, and the lessening of the miseries and ills of the poor, 
 the suffering and the afflicted. 
 
 How few comparatively there are who know anything of the 
 wonderful work performed by this man of God ! The histories 
 and biographies of noted warriors and famous statesmen are 
 usually read with avidity and admiration. It is universally ad- 
 mitted that such men have accomplished good and that the world 
 was much better for their existence. It is not surprising, there- 
 fore, to find that, in the perusal of the histories of these great 
 characters, there sometimes comes stealing o'er us, a feeling of 
 pride in the realization of the fact that these men who have left 
 their impress upon the pages of history and whose deeds of 
 valor and renown have been handed down from generation to 
 generation were, after all, human like ourselves. 
 
 Why is it then, that so few take interest or pleasure in pe- 
 rusing the histories of those saintly warriors, those God-fearing, 
 God-loving men and women who have labored zealously for the 
 advancement of the interests of the poor, the down-trodden and 
 the defenceless? The world at large knows perchance a little of 
 the wonderful works accomplished by the great and good St. 
 Vincent de Paul, but his saintly follower, Frederic Ozanam, the 
 founder of our beloved Society of St. Vincent de Paul, is com- 
 
 iii 
 
iv Preface, 
 
 paratively unknown. Yet, in charity work, these saintly men have 
 made history, and the methods adopted and put into operation 
 by them for the adequate relief of the poor are well-established 
 principles, recognized and followed by the leading charitable or- 
 ganizations of the present day. 
 
 In this age of enlightenment, when people apparently have 
 gone mad over the question of modernized charitable or philan- 
 thropic methods, is it not a matter of interest to Catholics to 
 know that, with all our vaunted and much-heralded progress, 
 with all the wonderful advances made in the so-called scientific 
 charitable field, there is comparatively little of lasting value em- 
 ployed that does not owe its origin to the inspiration of that 
 great apostle of charity — St. Vincent de Paul. Moreover, many, 
 very many of our so-called modern methods are but counterparts 
 of those actually used centuries ago by St. Vincent de Paul and 
 his disciples. Seventy-eight years ago, Ozanam, patterning his 
 work on the plans outlined by St. Vincent de Paul, organized the 
 Society which has grown to such large proportions that to-day 
 it occupies a very conspicuous place in the history of relief - 
 giving societies. 
 
 Alexander Johnson, a non-Catholic charity- worker of national 
 repute and for many years Secretary of the National Conference 
 of Charities and Correction of the United States of America, thus 
 writes of Ozanam: "The name of Frederic Ozanam deserves 
 a high place in the list of benefactors of his race, and the 
 motives which animated him should be emulated by us all to-day, 
 whether we are Catholic or non-Catholic. * * * The principles 
 set forth more than seventy-five years ago by the young law 
 student in Paris, are now the common possession of the civilized 
 world. Unfortunately, we know them better than we practise 
 them. . . . Ozanam perceived the principle, now universally 
 accepted wherever organized charity is known, that you do not 
 really help people unless you help them to be better men and 
 women. Not merely the bread that perishes, but the alms of 
 counsel and good advice, was to be given. More than all he 
 taught that the relation between giver and receiver must be a 
 personal one, that we cannot discharge our duty to our poor 
 neighbor by a gift to some society- or institution, good and 
 necessary as such gifts are, but that we must visit the needy in 
 their afflictions, not sending, but going." 
 
 " May God raise up on every side laymen like Frederic Oza- 
 
Preface. v 
 
 nam," was the beautiful tribute, penned years ago by the 
 venerated Cardinal Manning in the concluding paragraph of his 
 preface to the first edition of the fascinating and soul-inspiring 
 life of Ozanam. Surely does the Cardinal's prayer find a most 
 responsive echo in the hearts of all who have given any thought 
 or heed to present day conditions of charity work. 
 
 Never was the time more opportune or appropriate for the 
 promulgation of the doctrines taught and practised by Ozanam 
 and the members of the first Conference of the Society of St. 
 Vincent de Paul. Charity, devoid of the softening influence of 
 religion, is cold and forbidding. Unfortunately, the trend of 
 secularized charity work in the United States to-day seems to be 
 drifting away from religion and religious influences. With 
 others, who have spent almost a lifetime in an endeavor to 
 further the cause of Catholic charity, the writer often has ex- 
 perienced the pangs of sadness when compelled to realize that, 
 outside of the Catholic Church, the great philanthropic leaders 
 who are working mightily for the social uplift of the people 
 inject very little, if any, religious motives into their work. The 
 recognition of this absence of religion in social work becomes 
 more discouraging when one pauses to consider the dreadful 
 prospects such Godless charity unfolds. Dispense with religious 
 influences in your treatment of the ills of the poor and you 
 thereby deprive those already sorely-afflicted unfortunates of the 
 strength and inspiration necessary to help them bear with resigna- 
 tion the sufferings and privations of this life. Take away from 
 them the thought of an hereafter and you do much to create in 
 them a spirit of anarchy and unrest which will be difficult to 
 control. 
 
 In organizing the Society of St Vincent de Paul, Frederic 
 Ozanam, following the inspiration of St. Vincent de Paul, framed 
 its rules on the same principles and ideas that were in vogue in 
 the seventeenth century. He saw that people were falling away 
 from religion and becoming discontented, and that to bring them 
 back to practical Christianity, something more than words was 
 necessary. 
 
 " Alas ! " he exclaimed, " We see the divisions which exist in 
 society growing deeper and wider every day. It is not political 
 opinions that divide men; it is their interests that sunder them. 
 Here is the camp of the rich, there the camp of the poor. One 
 only means of salvation remains to us, that is, that Christians 
 
vi Preface, 
 
 in the name of love, interpose between the two camps, passing 
 like beneficial deserters from one to the other, collecting abun- 
 dant alms from the rich, and resignation from the poor, carrying 
 gifts to the poor and words of gratitude to the rich, teaching 
 them on both sides to look upon each other as brothers, and 
 communicating mutual charity to all until this charity, paralyzing 
 and stifling the egotism of both parties, and every day lessening 
 their antipathies, shall bid the two camps arise and break down 
 the barriers of prejudice, and cast aside their weapons of anger, 
 and march forth to meet each other, not to fight, but to mingle 
 together in peace and good will." 
 
 The injection of Ozanam's strong personality into the work 
 served to attract to it a number of young students whose Cath- 
 olicity was so strong, whose faith in God was so deep that, in the 
 midst of a school of infidelity, irreligion and immorality, they 
 stood boldly forward publicly proclaiming their belief in God's 
 church and their loyalty to everything Catholic. Would that our 
 Catholic young men of to-day would strive to emulate the ex- 
 ample of those brave young Parisians ! Never was the time more 
 opportune for the spread of the spirit of charity as taught by 
 St. Vincent de Paul and carried out in detail by that greatest 
 of Catholic laymen of the nineteenth century — Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 In our large universities and so-called non-sectarian colleges, 
 where the Catholic student is necessarily brought into contact 
 with men of no religious views, there is need to-day of an 
 Ozanam to stand forth and encourage his fellow Catholic stu- 
 dents to strive manfully for the preservation of religion, for the 
 injection of God in sociological work, if the betterment of God's 
 poor through supernatural motives is to be accomplished. 
 
 To-day the world gives abundant proofs of the wonderful 
 forethought of Ozanam. He builded better than he knew, for, 
 at the present time, conferences of the Society of St. Vincent 
 de Paul are to be found in every civilized country of the world. 
 Though much progress has been made by the Society in the 
 United States, greater good could be accomplished did we have 
 sufficient numbers to cope with the work. The demand for 
 workers is very great; those of us who are brought daily into 
 intimate contact with the poor, realize fully that unless the re- 
 ligious people of all communities come forward and show by their 
 actions that they are devoted to the interests of God's poor, 
 that they have the welfare of their fellow creatures at heart. 
 
Preface. vii 
 
 the muffled mutterings of discontent will constantly grow louder 
 and more bitter and eventually break forth into anarchy. 
 
 Keeping charity closely identified with religion, so that they 
 who labor for the benefit of humankind may be inspired by the 
 love of Christ, and that they whom the workers endeavor to 
 assist may be brought to realize that what is done is intended for 
 their social and moral uplift is the only practical way in which 
 to carry on efficient charity work. This is what our grand So- 
 ciety of St. Vincent de Paul is endeavoring to do. As a conse- 
 quence the charity workers of every denomination, recognizing 
 the higher aims and motives of our members, gladly enlist our 
 aid in every movement looking to the betterment of the condition 
 of the poor and lowly. 
 
 Earnest Vincentians are striving daily to augment their num- 
 bers by bringing into the ranks of the Society active, intelligent 
 and God-fearing young men who will willingly devote their time 
 and energies in an effort to carry on the work organized and 
 undertaken by Ozanam and his brave little band of student fol- 
 lowers. Personally, it is a source of much comfort and pleasure 
 to me to know that a newer and enlarged edition of Ozanam's 
 life is contemplated, for I am confident that its publication must 
 mean much added interest in the life-work of him, who was at 
 once the champion of the faith and the champion of the poor. 
 Would that a copy of this new book could be placed in the hands 
 of every Catholic young man in the land, for I am certain that 
 no one can read this beautiful portrayal of the life and character 
 of one of God's chosen men, without experiencing within himself 
 an earnest desire to emulate his example. 
 
 Ozanam's life and Ozanam's work are daily inspirations. 
 " May God," to quote Cardinal Manning, " raise up on every side 
 laymen like Frederic Ozanam." 
 
 THOMAS M. MULRY, 
 
 President, 
 
 Superior Council of New York, Society of St. Vincent de Paul. 
 
FREDERIC OZANAM. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 1813-1831. 
 
 The Ozanams would seem to be one of those races where 
 virtue and science are an entailed inheritance, descending 
 like heirlooms from one generation to another. For more 
 than three centuries every generation produced some dis- 
 tinguished man of science, and invariably counted one, fre- 
 quently several, members in the service of the sanctuary. 
 There is still preserved amongst the family treasures a MS- 
 Office of Our Lady, in Gothic characters, and illuminated 
 with delicate skill, by Elizabeth Ozanam, a nun of the Ursu- 
 line convent in the fifteenth century. In the last pages of 
 the book the genealogy of the elder branch of the Ozanams 
 is recorded, each generation inscribing its names and dates 
 individually. 
 
 Not satisfied, however, with this noble family tree, the 
 Ozanams trace back its roots to immemorial tradition. In 
 the first page * of the family records we read that one Jere- 
 miah Hozannam,t a praetor m the 38th Roman Legion, came 
 over to Gaul with Julius Caesar, after the conquest of Segu- 
 via, — a country situated between the Jura and the Alps, — 
 and received as his share of the conquered territory a can- 
 
 • If this fabulous genealogy were claimed by any but a Jewish family, we should feel 
 bound to dismiss it forthwith as beneath the serious notice of a biographer. Without, 
 however, attributing to the story more tlian a legendary importance, it is too picturesque 
 to be omitted. 
 
 + Hozannam is the plural of Hozanna, according to the Hebrew custom of writing 
 family names in that number. 
 
 I 
 
1 jl( i Lif' and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 ton called Bellignum, lying north of Lyons, and known later 
 as the village of Boulignieux. Jeremiah reclaimed this 
 waste land, which was covered with woods and swamps, 
 and founded there a little Jewish colony. He died in the 
 year 43 before Christ, the same year that Caesar was assas- 
 sinated. He had many children, but the eldest is the only 
 one whose genealogy has come down to us. He starts the 
 long ancestral line in which Jacob, Ishmael, Elias, Abimelech, 
 Jehoshaphat, Shem, etc. etc., pass on like a procession of wit- 
 nesses vindicating the pure Jewish origin of the race. The 
 march is uninterrupted until the beginning of the seventh cen- 
 tury, when St. Didier, placing the cross in its way, stops it. 
 The saint, having denounced Queen Brunhaut's wicked man- 
 ner of life, was pursued by that sanguinary princess, and fled 
 for security to a forest near Boulignieux, where Samuel Ho- 
 zannam, the then chief of the tribe, sheltered him with native 
 hospitality. St. Didier repaid it by baptizing him and his 
 people in the true faith, and henceforth we see Matthias, 
 John, Peter, and other Christian names intermingling more 
 and more with the old Hebrew ones. The saint was seized 
 at last by the emissaries of Brunhaut, and strangled on the 
 banks of a little stream called the Renom, where, in course of 
 time, a village arose, and was called St. Didier de Renom. 
 
 Benedict, grandfather of the subject of this memoir, was 
 the first to suppress one n and the initial If in the family 
 name, which from this time forth we see written " Ozanam." 
 Benedict was nephew of Jacques Ozanam, the famous ma- 
 thematician, whose panegyric was written by Fontenelle, 
 and whose quaint saying, significant enough of his times, 
 has been so often quoted by his contemporaries : '* It is the 
 . business of the doctors of the Sorbonne to dispute, that of the 
 pope to dogmatize, and of mathematicians to go to heaven by 
 the perpendicular." 
 
 Such is the story of the remoter ancestors of Frederic. 
 Antoine, his father, when a very young man, was forced, by 
 the law of conscription, to serve in the army for five years. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam 3 
 
 He entered a hussar regiment, and made the Italian campaign 
 under Napoleon, then only a general, and had his share in 
 the glories of Lodi, Areola, Pavia, Rivoli, etc. He received 
 five wounds on one field of battle ; in spite of this, and dis- 
 armed, he captured the Neapolitan general, Prince de Catto- 
 lica, and led him prisoner to Bologna, a feat which establish- 
 ed his reputation for valor and soldiership. 
 
 When the wars of the Republic were over, Antoine, un- 
 willing to serve under the Empire, returned to his native 
 town, Lyons, and soon after married Mademoiselle Nantas, 
 the daughter of a wealthy merchant of that city. He de- 
 voted himself to commercial pursuits, and so successfully 
 that in a few years he was in possession of a handsome for- 
 tune. He then came to reside in Paris, where he lived very 
 happily, until one day he gave his signature to a near relative 
 who was in pecuniary diflSculties. The kind but imprudent 
 act resulted in his complete ruin. Everything was lost; 
 even his furniture was sold ofld The Emperor heard of it, 
 and »ent him at once a brevet of captain in his own guards, 
 which he was just then raising, accompanied by a very flat- 
 tering message to "the brilliant officer whose valor had 
 made a lively impression on him." But Ozanam declined 
 theoflfer; he could not forgive Bonaparte for having made 
 a stepping-stone of the Republic to an Empire, and preferred 
 to face the world, beggared as he was, in independence. 
 His indomitable gayety and firmness of character enabled 
 him to meet poverty with the same intrepidity with which 
 he had faced death at the cannon's mouth. He left his wife 
 and young children in Paris, and set out for Italy, where he 
 had made some friends during his military stay, and where 
 he hoped to turn his French education to better profit than in 
 his own country. He met with great sympathy, and secured a 
 sufficient number of lessons at Milan to enable him to send 
 for his family and settle down there as a professor. Madame 
 Ozanam and her children were accompanied by a faithful 
 servant, who went by the name of Gui-gui amongst the chi? 
 
4 Life and Works of Fredem Ozanam, 
 
 dren — a wonderful typ of the old Fren h sfrvant that one 
 hears of in records of former generations, but seldom, if in- 
 deed ever, meets with in the present one* GuUgui shared 
 her master's poverty and worked her fingers to the bone to 
 add her mite to the common store in those first days of sud- 
 den distress. 
 
 M. Ozanam, while working hard at his "lessons," had 
 begun to study medicine, and, thanks to his indefatigable 
 industry, and to that inherited instinct of science which 
 seemed the birthright of his name, he was able, at the end 
 of two years, to pass his examinations with brilliant success, 
 and very soon acquired a fine practice. He devoted a 
 large share of his time to the poor, but his disinterested 
 kindness showed itself more especially to the sick soldiers of 
 the garrison. A terrible epidemic broke out at Milan, and 
 raged with peculiar fury amongst the troops ; the two medi- 
 cal men attached to the military hospital caught the fever 
 and died. Dr. Ozanam volunteered to replace them, and, tak- 
 ing up his abode in the hospital, he remained there till the end 
 of the pestilence, with the sole unaided charge of several 
 hundred invalids. 
 
 It was during this memorable year, 1813, that his son 
 Frederic was born, on the 13th of April. 
 
 The entrance of the Austrians into Milan decided Dr. 
 Ozanam to leave that city, it being repugnant to him to re- 
 main under a rule that was no longer French. He returned 
 once more to Lyons, where the fame of his medical skill had 
 already travelled, so as to secure him soon after his arrival 
 a sufficiently large practice. But although his practice in- 
 creased rapidly, and placed him for many years at the head 
 of his profession, Dr. Ozanam never became a rich man. 
 Wealth was never his first aim ; he looked upon the medical 
 profession as a sort of priesthood, and divided his labors al- 
 most equally between the rich and the poor. His wife foi 
 seventeen years seconded him nobly in this apostolate of 
 charity. When they had both g-own old, and were no Ion- 
 
?}/:s oj Ircdaic OzanaiTU 5 
 
 ger able to climb so nimbly up six and seven stories to the 
 garrets where his poorer patients dwelt, they bound each 
 other by a mutual promise not to go beyond the fourth story. 
 Dr. Ozanam's infirm health made this limitation the more 
 necessary, in that he was subject to a giddiness which seized 
 him without warning at any moment. His wife, for her part, 
 suffered from an oppression of the chest, which was increased 
 almost to suflfocation by mounting stairs. Many a time the 
 poor neighbors of those whom she was toiling up to sec have 
 come out of their rooms and found her sitting on the stairs, 
 panting for breath. The husband and wife were not always 
 loyal in keeping to their mutual promise. More than once 
 it happened that the doctor, coming discreetly down from 
 the seventh floor, where some more than common misery had 
 enticed him, came face to face with his wife treacherously 
 climbing up to it. It was in coming from one of those 
 abodes of poverty that he eventually met his death. Fami- 
 liar as he was with the perils of the dark, broken stairs, he 
 made a false step and fell, injuring himself so severely that 
 he died the next day. He had had fourteen children, all of 
 whom died in childhood, except a daughter, whom he lost 
 at the age of nineteen, and three sons, of whom Frederic was 
 the second. 
 
 Frederic's childhood offers none of those picturesque or 
 striking incidents that we like to discover in the dawn of 
 great men. His one salient trait was an excessive sensibility 
 to the sufferings of others. It is related that when little more 
 than a baby, at Milan, he could never hear the little sweeps 
 as they passed under his nursery windows of a morning cry- 
 ing, ** Spazza camino ! spazza camino 1" without sitting up in 
 liis cot to listen with an expression of intense pity on his face 
 until the plaintive, childish voice died away ; then he would 
 exclaim with a little sigh, "Poor spazza camino!'* and lie 
 down again. 
 
 This precocious sensibility did not, however, exclude a 
 certain self-willed energy and vehemence of temper. He wa» 
 
6 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 very fond of games, and very punctilious about keeping to 
 fair play; but nothing could ever make him own that he 
 was beaten ; when his playfellows insisted on his giving them 
 this legitimate satisfaction, the child would stamp his small 
 foot on the ground and protest that he *' would rather die 
 than say it !" 
 
 We find in a letter written to a confidential friend at the 
 age of sixteen, a sort of autobiography of these early days, 
 which is sufficiently characteristic to be regarded as tru hful 
 in its self-judgment : 
 
 " Now let me tell you," he says, ' "what I have been up to this day. They 
 say I was very gentle and docile as a child, and they attribute this mainly to 
 my feeble health ; but I account for it in another way. I had a sister, such a 
 beloved sister 1 who used to take it in turns v/ith my mother to teach me, and 
 whose lessons were so sweet, so well explained, so admirably suited to my 
 childish comprehension as to be a real delig:ht to me. All things considered, 
 I was pretty good at this period of my life, and, with the exception of some 
 trifling peccadilloes, I have not much to reproach myself with. 
 
 •'At seven years old I had a serious illness, which brought me so near 
 death that everybody said I was saved by a miracle ; not that I wanted kind 
 care : my dear father and mother hardly left my bedside for fifteen days and 
 nights. I was on the point of expiring when suddenly I asked for some beer, 
 [ had always disliked beer, but it saved me. I recovered, and sbc months 
 tater my sister, my darling sister, died. Oh! what grief that was. Then I 
 Degan to learn Latin, and to be naughty ; really and truly I believe I never 
 was so wicked as at eight years old. And yet I was being educated by a 
 kind father and a kind mother and an excellent brother ; I loved them dearly, 
 and at this period I had no friends outside my family ; yet I was obstinate, 
 passionate, disobedient. I was punished, and I rebelled against it. I used to 
 write letters to my mother complaining of my punishments. I was lazy to 
 the last degree, and used to plan all sorts of naughtiness in my mind. This 
 is a true portrait of me as I was on first going to school at nine and a half 
 years old. By degrees I improved ; emulation cured my laziness. I was 
 very fond of my master ; I had some little success, which encouraged me. I 
 studied with ardor, and at the same time I began to feel some emotions of 
 pride. I must also confess that I exchanged a great number of blows with 
 my companions. But I changed very much for the better when I entered the 
 fifth class. I fell ill, and was obliged to go for a month to the country, to the 
 house of a very kind lady, where I acquired some degree of polish, which I 
 lost in great part soon after. 
 
 " I grew rather idle in the fourth class, but I pulled up again in the third. 
 It was then that I made my first Communion. O glad and bussed day « 
 
Life a'ld Works of Fredenc Ozanam. 7 
 
 nay my right hand wither and my tong:ue cleave to the rcx>f of my mouth if I 
 ever forget thee I 
 
 ' I had cbang:ed a good deal by this time ; I had become modest, gentle, 
 and docile, more industrious and unhappily also rather scrtipaloas. I still 
 continued proud and impatient." 
 
 Although, looking back from the sustained energy of sixteen 
 to these first beginnings, Frederic accuses himself of laziness, 
 he was considered a dihgent h'ttle scholar from the time of 
 his entrance into school until his leaving it ; but, like almost 
 all children endowed with special gifts, there was a dispropor- 
 tion in the way he applied himself— some studies were irk- 
 some and distasteful to him, while others he found attractive 
 and easy. He bestowed special pains, for instance, on his 
 Latin, and displayed such a facility for Latin verses that his 
 teacher, M. Legeay, a veteran classicist of the old school, 
 thought it worth while preserving many of them, some of which 
 he published in a biographical notice after his pupil's death. 
 During his passage through the third and second class, be- 
 tween thirteen and fourteen years of age, Frederic commenc- 
 ed and very nearly completed a voluminous Latin poem on 
 the taking of Jerusalem by Titus. The range of his juvenile 
 muse was wide and ambitious, judging from the specimens 
 preserved by M. Legeay. There were airy flights with the 
 skylark, mystic communings with the moon and the stars, an 
 adieu of Marie Antoinette to the Princess Elizabeth, written 
 in stately Virgilian hexameters, hymns on sacred subjects, 
 tender canticles to the Madonna. " I was often astounded 
 at the strength and elevation of these young flights,** says M. 
 Legeay ; " his analyses of sacred and ancient history were 
 quite surprising. The subjects where he shone most were 
 those which gave scope for religious and patriotic sentiments.'* 
 
 At fourteen he entered the class of higher studies, and this 
 was to be the signal of a new and painful experience which 
 left its mark on the boy's whole after-life. Up to this period 
 he had never known what it was to doubt; his faith had been 
 as placid and as trusting as a child's ; but the moment had 
 
8 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 come when he was to pay for the precocious maturity of his 
 mind and the lofty flights of his imagination ; the intellectual 
 activity which had so quickened his mental powers suddenly 
 kindled a flame within him that stirred vital questions, and 
 evoked the demon of doubt, that torment of noble and un- 
 quiet souls who hunger to believe, and cannot rest until reason 
 has justified belief. Like Pascal and Joubert and other deep 
 thinkers, Frederic was doomed to experience, as he himself 
 described it long years afterwards, " the horror of those doubts 
 that eat into the heart, pursuing us even at night to the pillow 
 we have drenched with our tears." Suddenly, without his 
 being able to discover any immediate cause for it, a change 
 came over him, his childlike peace was overclouded, he began 
 to question, to argue, to all but disbelieve. In a confidential 
 letter to the school-fellow before quoted from, he thus alludes 
 to this crisis : ** I must tell you now of a most painful ex- 
 perience which began forme just as I entered on my rhetoric, 
 and which only ended last year. By dint, I suppose, of hear- 
 ing people talk of infidels and infidelity, I came one day to 
 ask myself why I believed. Doubt presented itself, but I re- 
 pulsed the doubt, for I felt I must believe ; I read all the 
 books I knew of which explained and defended religion, but 
 none of them fully satisfied me ; I would believe for a month 
 or two on the authority of such and such a teacher, then an 
 objection would start up in my mind, and the doubts returned 
 
 stronger than ever. O my dear , how I did suffer ! for 
 
 I wanted to keep my faith. I dipped into Vallar, but Vallar 
 did not satisfy me ; my faith was shaken, and yet I preferred 
 to cling to it, to believe without understanding, than to go on 
 doubting, because doubt was such a torture. In this state I 
 began my philosophy. The thesis of * certainty * bewildered 
 me ; it seemed to me for a moment that I might doubt my 
 own existence." 
 
 This trial left such a deep impression on him that Frederic 
 never in after-life could allude to it without strong emotion. 
 One day, when the temptation was at its worst, clutching 
 
Life and Works of FrecUru Ozanam. 9 
 
 him almost like a physical pain, a sudden impulse drove him 
 towards a church near which he happened to be walking; he 
 quickened his steps, entered, and, falling on his knees, prayed 
 with all his soul to be delivered from the trial, promising that 
 if God gave him light to see the truth he would for ever af- 
 ter devote himself to its defence. While uttering this prayer, 
 he felt that he was committing himself to a distinct pledge, 
 which must color his whole life ; that if his faith were restored 
 to him, his life must be consecrated to its service in no ordi- 
 nary way. Referring to the circumstance in the last work 
 he ever wrote, with that shuddering sense of a danger escap- 
 ed which he retained to the last, he says : *' The uncertainty 
 of my eternal destiny left me no peace; I clung to the sa- 
 cred dogmas in desperation, but they seemed to break in my 
 grasp ; then it was that the teaching of one who was both 
 a priest and a philosopher saved me ; he brought light into 
 my mind ; I believed henceforth with an assured faith, and, 
 touched by this mercy, vowed to consecrate my days to the 
 service of that truth which had given me peace." 
 
 The philosopher and priest here alluded to was the Abb6 
 Noirot, a man whose wisdom, learning, and seductive piety 
 made him a power with a generation of young spirits, con- 
 temporaries of Ozanam. 
 
 M. Ampere says of the Abb6 Noirot: "All those who 
 studied under this cherished master agree that he had a par- 
 ticular gift for directing and developing each one in his voca- 
 tion. He proceeded with his pupils on the Socratic method. 
 When he saw a young rhetorician arrive at his class of phi- 
 losophy, puffed out with recent success, and as full of impor- 
 tance as ever Euthydemus or Gorgias was, the Christian So- 
 crates began by bringing the young rhetorician gently to re- 
 cognize the fact that he knew nothing ; and then, when he 
 had crushed him under the weight of his own weakness, he 
 raised him up, and set to work to point out to him what he 
 really could do. The influence of this able master decided 
 the course of Ozanam's mind.** 
 
/ 
 
 y to Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 Lacordaire tells us how the master loved to take this fa- 
 vorite scholar as the companion of his walks, and how, in 
 their solitary rambles over the steep and lonely roads out- 
 gide Lyons, the mature philosopher and the boy would for- 
 get the lapse of time while they discoursed on deep and lofty 
 themes — God and His dealings with men being the one 
 they delighted most to dwell on — till the shades of night 
 overtook them, as they hurried homewards. 
 
 Frederic was the youngest of the hundred and thirty pu- 
 pils who studied under the Abb6 Noirot; he reached the 
 head of his class very quickly, and remained there till he left. 
 ** He was an elect soul," says this venerable master, who 
 still survives, and still, in his eighty-fourth year, charms the 
 young men who seek his wisdom for advice, as their fathers 
 did; " he was marvellously endowed by nature, both in mind 
 and heart; his industry was incredible; he worked all day 
 without intermission, and a part of the night ; he was devot- 
 ed, ardent, and singularly modest ; he was cheerful, even 
 gay, but there was always an undercurrent of seriousness in 
 him ; he loved a joke dearly, and was sure to be in the 
 midst of any fun going, for there never was a boy more popu- 
 as with other boys. But I never heard of him being in any 
 mischief; he was most affectionate and sympathetic ; I don't 
 believe Frederic was capable of inspiring or harboring an an- 
 tipathy; he was, however, very fiery, and had often vehe- 
 ment bursts of indignation, but not against individuals; I 
 never knew him angry or embittered against any one; he 
 was simply inaccessible to hatred, except against falsehood 
 or wrong-doing." Such is his portrait at seventeen, as it is 
 inscribed on the memory of one who knew him well, and 
 whose tender admiration for him is as fresh to-day as it was 
 forty years ago. 
 
 But these days of study and pleasant companionship were 
 drawing to a close. Frederic had completed his term of phi- 
 losophy, and was now ready to enter on the study of the law. 
 For this purpose it was necessary for him to go to Paris; but 
 
Life and Wotks of Frederic Ozanam, ti 
 
 Dr. Ozanam, in spite of the confidence he had in his son's 
 steadiness and principles, shrank, naturally enough, from 
 sending the boy adrift alone on that dangerous sea where so 
 many noble young hearts are daily shipwrecked. It was de- 
 cided, therefore, that he should wait for a couple of years 
 at Lyons, and be employed meantime in some way which 
 might serve as a preliminary to future studies at the Ecole de 
 Droit. The choice of the intermediate occupation was about 
 the most uncongenial to the young man's taste that could 
 have been made. He was placed as clerk in an attorney's 
 office. Much, however, as he recoiled from the uninterest- 
 ing nature of the position, he accepted it without repining, 
 and took his seat cheerfully in the dusky office, where there 
 was little to remind him of the poetic and philosophical re- 
 gions in which he had hitherto dwelt. He worked away as 
 diligently copying law papers as if they had been so many 
 theses he was preparing for M. Noirot, and listened with def- 
 erential patience to the long-winded perorations of the head 
 clerk. But, do what he would, he could find no pleasure in 
 the work; so, when he had done all that duty demanded, he 
 lightened the intervals by studying English, German, He- 
 brew, and even Sanscrit ; in after-office-hours he read also 
 enormously, and even found leisure to write a treatise against 
 the St. Simonians, which may be said to have struck the key- 
 note of his future literary career. " It was like a preface to 
 the work which was to occupy him to the end of his days," 
 says M. Ampere. 
 
 The sect known as the St. Simonians was so called from 
 one of its first enthusiasts, who, after his death, was erected 
 into its founder, no one else being forthcoming to claim the 
 title. The religion of St. Simon was born of the moral and 
 social disorganization which followed after the revolution of 
 1830. Its main tactic was to glorify Christianity in the past, 
 while denying and vilifying it in the present, treating it as a 
 worn-out creed, and building up upon its ruins the new re- 
 ligion — *' the religion of the future," as it boldly styled itsel£ 
 
12 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 It had made a good deal of noise in various parts of France, 
 fascinating many restless young spirits, who, impatient of the 
 prevailing apathy, and hungering for a faith of some sort, 
 caught eagerly at a creed which seemed to promise a solution 
 of the great social problem. In the course of the winter the 
 St. Simonians came to Lyons, and were reaping there the 
 same ephemeral harvest which had rewarded them elsewhere. 
 Frederic had some passages of arms with them in the col- 
 umns of the local journals ; but, not satisfied with this, he set 
 to work and composed his treatise, which appeared in the 
 month of April, 1831, and dealt a heavy blow at the sect he 
 combated. M. de Lamartine, on reading it, wrote at once 
 to congratulate Frederic, observing that his admiration for the 
 talent of the author was heightened by his astonishment at 
 his age. " This beginning," he adds, " promises us a new 
 combatant in the sacred struggle of religious and moral phi- 
 losophy which this century is sustaining against a materialis- 
 tic reaction. Like you, I augur well for the issue. We do 
 not see it, but the voice of conscience, that infallible prophet 
 of the brave man's heart, promises us that our children shall. 
 Let us trust to this instinctive promise, and live in the future." 
 Such episodes seem somewhat out of keeping with the pur- 
 suits of an attorney's clerk; but Frederic felt that this was 
 only a temporary phase, which might usefully serve as an ap- 
 prenticeship, but which, meantime, must not absorb him to 
 the exclusion of higher interests. He never lost sight of this 
 fact; and while fulfilling conscientiously his daily task, he 
 was working still more assiduously to prepare himself for the 
 higher one that was awaiting him. He set himself to study 
 the state of society in France, and the knowledge which, even 
 in his present narrow sphere, he gained of it, of the deep- 
 seated evils eating into its heart, filled him with profound pity 
 and an intense longing to help even remotely towards bring- 
 ing about a better state of things, or at least to cast in his 
 labors with others better competent to deal with so tremen- 
 dous a problem. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. fj 
 
 The following letter, written at the age of seventeen and a 
 half, to two college friends, reveals fully his views and ambi- 
 tions at this period : 
 
 "iS/^Tir*., 1831. 
 
 "... You ask what people think here. It would be very diflScult for 
 me to tell you. Philosophically speaking, my belief is that in the provinces 
 people don't think at all, or at least very little ; they live a life purely indus- 
 trial and material ; everybody looks after his personal comforts, and takes 
 care of number one ; and when that personage is satisfied, when the purse is 
 replenished, then people discuss politics quietly by the fireside, or round the bil- 
 liard-table ; there is a great deal of fine talk concerning liberty, about which 
 the talkers themselves understand very little ; people praise the conduct of the 
 National Guard and the Schools in the joumies of December, but they make 
 small account of the protestations and proclamations of the gentlemen of the 
 Elcole de Droit, who, on the contrary, are severely blamed for attempting to 
 govern the Government, and plant their little republic in the midst of our mon- 
 archy. Material order, moderate liberty, bread and money, this is all people 
 want here ; they are sick of revolutions and pine for rest ; in a word, the men 
 of the provinces are neither men of the past nor men of the future, they are 
 men of the present, • see-saw men,' as the Gazette calls them. 
 
 *' So much for my surroundings. And after that you want to know what I 
 think ; a poor little dwarf like me who sees things from afar, through the 
 newspapers, which are seldom to be trusted, and the still more absurd gossip 
 of our politicians, like a man looking through a bad eye-glass 1 . , . All I 
 can do is to keep my temper, to read just enough news to know what is going 
 on, to confine myself as much as possible to my individual sphere, to improve 
 my mind while keeping aloof for the present, pursuing my studies outside 
 society, so that I may be able to enter it later with some advantage for others 
 and for m>*self ; this is the line of conduct I have felt compelled to adopt, and 
 which M. Noirot encourages me to persevere in, and which I advise you, my 
 dear friend, to adopt also ; for, honestly, we young fellows are too green at 
 present, too insufficiently nourished with the living sap of science, to b« 
 able to offer any ripe fruit to society. Let us not make haste, and while the 
 •torm throws down many who are on the heights, let us grow quietly in the 
 shade, so that we may prove ourselves full-grown men, full of vigor, when the 
 days of transition shall have passed away, and we shall be wanted. For my 
 part, my choice is made, my plan for the future is sketched out, and, as in 
 friendship bound, I will tell you what it is. 
 
 '• Like you, I feel that the past is falling to pieces, that the foundations of 
 the old edifice are shaken, and that a terrible convulsion has changed the face 
 of the earth. But what is to come out of these ruins ? Is society to remain 
 buried under the rubbish of its broken thrones, or is it to arise and reappear 
 younger, more brilliant, more beautiful ? Shall we behold novos ccelos et 
 novam t err am ? There is the question. I, who believe in Providence, and 
 4o not despair of my country, like Charles Nodier, I believe in a fori of 
 
14 ^^f^ ^^^^ Works of Fndefic Ozanam, 
 
 palingenesis ; but what is to be the f Drm, what is to be the law, of this new 
 order of society, I do not undertake to prophesy. 
 
 •' Nevertheless, what I feel confident of is that there exists a Providence, 
 and that that Providence cannot for six thousand years have abandoned rea- 
 sonable creatures, naturally desirous of the true, the good, and the beautiful, 
 to the genius of evil and error ; that, consequently, all the creeds of humanity 
 cannot have been mere extravagant delusions, and that there are truths scat- 
 tered over the world. The thing is to discover these truths, and to disengage 
 them from the falsehoods they are mixed up with ; we must search the ruins 
 of the old world for the comer-stone on which the new is to be rebuilt. It 
 would be very much like those pillars which historians tell us were raised be- 
 fore the deluge to transmit existing traditions to those who might survive, 
 just as the ark, borne over the waters, bore safely within it the fathers of the 
 human species. But this comer-stone, this pillar of traditions, this lifeboat, 
 where are we to seek for it ? Amidst all the notions of antiquity where are 
 we to dig for the only true and legitimate ores ? Where must we begin, and 
 where end ? 
 
 " And here I stop, and set to thinking in this wise : the first want of man, 
 the first want of society, is some notion of a religion. The human heart 
 tliirsts for the infinite. Moreover, if there be a God, and if there be men, 
 / there must be some connection between them, hence a religion of some sort ; 
 consequently, a primitive revelation ; consequently, again, there is a primi- 
 tive religion, ancient in its origin, essentially divine, and therefore essentially 
 y true. This is the inheritance, transmitted from on high to th^ first man, and 
 from the first man to his descendants, that I am bent on discovering. And I 
 mean to pursue my search through time and space, stirring the dust of tombs, 
 digging up the mbbish of temples, disentombing all the myths from the savages 
 of Cook to the Egypt of Sesostris, from the Indians of Vishnu to the Scandi- 
 navians of Odin. I investigate the traditions of every people, I enquire into 
 their reason and origin, and, aided by the lights of geography and history, I 
 recognize in every religion two distinct elements — one variable, individual, 
 secondary, having its origin in the circumstance of time and place in which 
 tach people found itself ; another immutable, universal, primitive, inexplica- 
 r ble to history and geography ; and as this latter element is to be found in all 
 ^ religious creeds, and stands out more complete and pure according as we re- 
 mount to the most remote antiquity, I conclude that it is this alone which 
 ■ reigned in the early days, and which constitutes the primitive religion of man. 
 I conclude, consequently, that religious truth is that which, spread all over the 
 face of the earth, is to be found amidst all nations, transmitted by the first 
 man to his posterity, then corrupted and mixed up with all sorts of fables and 
 falsehoods. 
 
 **This is what I felt society wanted. I was conscious of a corresponding 
 want in myself. I had need of something solid to take hold of, something 
 ♦hat I could take root in and cling to, in order to resist the torrent of doubt ; 
 and then, O my friends ! my soul was filled with a great joy and a great con- 
 Kolation ; (or, lo I it discovered, by the sheer force of reason, that this some' 
 thing w^s none other than that Catholicism which was first taught me by m^ 
 
Life and Works of FrfcUric Otanaim. 15 
 
 mother, which was dear to my childhood, and so often fed n\y mind and heart 
 with its beautiful memories, and its still more beautiful hopes — Catholicism, 
 with all its {grandeurs and all its delights I Shedcen for a time by doubt, I feel 
 the invincible need to cling, with all my might, to the pillar of the temple, 
 were it even to crush me in its fall ; and, lo ! I find this same pillar supported 
 by science, luminous with the beams of wisdom, of glory, and of beauty. I 
 find it, and I clasp it with enthusiastic love. I will take my stand by its side, 
 and there, stretching out my arm, I will point to it as a beacon of deliverance 
 to those who are tossing on the sea of life. Happy shall I be if a few friends 
 come and rally round me. Then we should unite our efforts, and create a 
 work together, others would join us, and, perchance, the day would come 
 when all mankind would be gathered together beneath the same protecting 
 shade. Catholicism, in its eternal youth and strength, would rise suddenly 
 on the world, and, placing itself at the head of the age, lead it on to civiliza- 
 tion and to happiness. O my friends 1 I feel overcome in speaking to you ; 
 I am filled with intellectual delight, for the work is magnificent, and 1 am 
 young. I have great hopes, and I believe that the day will come when I shall 
 have nourished and strengthened my thought, and shall be able to express it 
 worthily. Yes, the preliminary labors have already opened out to me the vast 
 perspective which I have unfolded to you, and over which my imagination 
 soars transported with joy. But it is a small thing to contemplate the career 
 I have to run ; the thing is to start on the road, for the hour is at hand. If I 
 nean to write a book at five-and-thirty, I must begin to prepare for it at 
 eighteen, for the preliminary studies are multitudinous. Just see what an 
 amount of study it involves I I must acquire twelve languages, so as to be >/ 
 able to consult sources and documents. I must be fairly master of geology 
 and as^ionomy, in order to discuss the chronological and cosmogonical sys- 
 • -ms of peoples and savants. I must master universal history in all its breadth, 
 and*the history of religious crgeds in all its depth. This is what I have to do 
 jefore I arrive at worthily expressing my idea. I dare say you %vill exclaim at 
 the audacity of this poor fellow Ozanam, and compare him to the frog in La 
 Fontaine, and to the ridiculus mus in Horace. Just as you like I I, too, was 
 aghast for a moment at my own boldness ; but what is one to do ? WTien af 
 idea has taken hold of you, and possesses your whole mind for two years, are 
 you free to withstand it ? When a voice keeps continually crying out to you, 
 Do this ; I so voillit^ can you bid it be silent ? 
 
 " Besides, I have laid my whole scheme before M. Noirot, who encourages 
 me to carry it out ; and when I urged that perhaps I should find the task too 
 heavy, he assured me that I should meet with numbers of studious young men 
 ready to assist me with their advice and their labor. And then, my friends, 
 I thought of you." 
 
 How thoroughly single-minded Frederic was in his grand 
 schemes of religious championship appears in many letters of 
 the same date, where he lays bare his heart to the young 
 friends whom he was seeking to enlist in his chivalrous design. 
 
1 6 Life and Works of Prederic Ozanam, 
 
 ' Your ideas of glory are natural enoughrtn a young man," he writes to M. 
 Falconnet, his cousin ; " we must not make it oui aim, but accept it as a happy 
 result. Man. loving his own existence, longs to perpetuate it ; he lives again 
 in his children, he lives again in his works, he seems to live again in the hearts 
 of all who bless his name. Tnie glory consists in the gratitude of posterity. 
 Just as the righteous man does not bestow his gifts to obtain gratitude, yet 
 nevertheless accepts its tribute with a sweet sense of satisfaction ; so should 
 the true philosopher, the Christian, never act in view of glory, while at the 
 same time he cannot remain insensible to it. Hence it is, that as ingratitude 
 and oblivion sometimes follow the greatest benefits, the just man builds his 
 hopes higher, and awaits both reward and glory from an incorruptible Judge : 
 he appeals from ungrateful men to God, who never fails." 
 
 Ozanam was blessed by nature with a singularly contented 
 disposition as regarded external circumstances, although, as 
 we shall see, his soul was naturally unquiet, and often 
 •' troubled within him." 
 
 He was poor, and he was contented to remain so. There 
 seldom was a young man, conscious of high intellectual gifts, 
 who began life freer./rom the mere ambition of making money, 
 and a position, in the worldly sense. '* I often thank God," 
 he says, " for having placed me in one of those positions on the 
 confines of indigence and independence where one is inured 
 to privations without being absolutely shut out from enjoy- 
 ments; where one runs no risk of becoming stultified by the 
 indulgence of every wish, and where, on the other hand, one 
 is not distracted by the clamorings of want. God knows 
 what a snare my weak nature would have found in the ener- 
 vating influence of the wealthy classes, or in the sordid pri- 
 rations of indigence." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 1831. 
 
 Dr. Ozanam, who had cause probably to realize the unad- 
 visability of condemning Frederic any longer to the obscurity 
 of his present employment, suddenly determined to abridge 
 the term of delay, and sent him to Paris to begin his legal 
 studies towards the close of the year 1831, Frederic being then 
 in his eighteenth year. 
 
 His first experience of the new life, which had looked so at- 
 tractive in the distance, was anything but pleasant. Paris was 
 a very different place then from what it is now. The young 
 Catholic student coming to Paris now finds no lack of centres 
 where he can claim welcome and companionship, and at once 
 lose the sense of his isolation in the warmth of a common 
 faith and common struggles. But it was not so just after the 
 revolution of 1830 had convulsed society to its base, and de- 
 stroyed all cohesion. All who could leave the capital had 
 fled, and security was not yet sufficiently re-established to lure 
 them back from the quiet of the provinces to a city which, 
 then as now, was the recognized centre of disturbance and dis- 
 order, the hearth from which the spark flew to set the fire 
 abroad. Parents were terrified to let their sons return to 
 Lyceums and Colleges where atheism reigned supreme; and, 
 rather than expose their faith to the risk it must run in such 
 an atmosphere, and under such influences, they kept them at 
 home, out of harm's way, hoping that the eflects of the storm 
 would pass away, and fairer weather gradually return. They 
 began to perceive, however, tliat this hope, if it did not ulti- 
 mately prove vain, was likely to be indefinitely deferred ; so it 
 became a question of depriving their sons of all liberal educa- 
 
 tf 
 
iS Life and Works of Frederic Ozafiam, 
 
 tion, and thus closing the door of every honorable career to 
 them, or of sending them back to the public schools, and tak- 
 ing the consequences. The greater number were still hover- 
 ing between these two alternatives when Frederic Ozanam 
 came to Paris. On entering the classes of the Ecole de Droit 
 he found that he and three others were the only Christian 
 students who attended them. 
 
 His first feeling on discovering that his life was for the next 
 few years to be cast amongst young men who were either 
 avowed atheists, or rationalists, or St. Simonians, was a pain- 
 ful one. Fresh from the pure atmosphere of a Christian home, 
 and animated by an ardent love of his faith, he could not 
 bear the idea of daily companionship with those who made 
 open profession of hating Christianity, who scoffed at its 
 doctrines and blasphemed its Divine Founder. Yet there 
 was no choice between this and complete isolation, which, to 
 a sympathetic nature like his, seemed unbearable ; neverthe- 
 less, he bravely chose the latter, and for the first months of 
 his residence in Paris he kept aloof from all intimacies, and as 
 far as possible from all acquaintance with his fellow-students. 
 
 He had at first not even the compensation of a cheerful 
 fireside to return to after his hard day's work. Madame 
 Ozanam had deputed an old friend to look out for a quiet 
 boarding-house, where her son would be comfortable, and 
 where he would have some safe and cheerful society in the 
 evenings. The old friend's choice proved an unlucky one, 
 as we learn from Frederic's first letter to his mother, dated 
 from his new abode, November 7, 1831 : 
 
 "... Here I am alone, without any amusement or any sort of consola- 
 tion. I, so used to fireside talks, who took such pleasure in seeing every day 
 around me those dear ones who love me ; I, so terribly in need of advice and 
 encouragement, behold me cast unprotected, without a rallying-point of any 
 sort, into this great capital of egotism, this vortex of human passions and er- 
 rors I The few young men whom I know* are too far off for me to see them 
 often. I have no one to pour my heart out to but you, my dearest mother— 
 
 * Some young friends from Lyons, come to Paris to study Hke himseli^ but who lived at the 
 Mher extremity of the citf» 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 19 
 
 f ou and God . . . ; but these two are all in all to me. I have a thousand 
 things to say to you, bufwhere shall I begin ? I am installed, since Saturday, 
 in a little room lc»king to the south, and near the Jardin des Plantes. This 
 sounds very nice, but it is not so in reality ; I am very uncomfortable. I «a« 
 a long way off from the law schools, the lending libraries, from the centre x 
 my studies, and my Lyonese friends ; then my landlady strikes me as a sly 
 gossip ; her talk and her manners lead me to suspect that she looks very lov- 
 ingly on a young man's purse. Lastly, and this is my chief grievance, the io- 
 ciety is not good. There are dames and demoiselles boarders also, who have 
 their meals at our table, who keep the^conversation to themselves, and whose 
 tone and manners are extremely vulgar ; from my room I hear them just now 
 roaring with laughter ; they congregate every evening in the drawing-room 
 to play cards, and pressed me very much to join them, but, as you may im- 
 agine, I declined. These people are neither Christians nor Turks. I am the 
 only one who abstains* — a circumstance which diverts them exceedingly. 
 You will let me know what you think of all this, and whether you wish me to 
 look out and make some other arrangement for myself." 
 
 He then proceeds to relate his impressions of Paris : 
 
 ** I have seen the Pantheon, that strange monument, a pagan temple in 
 &e midst of a city whose inhabitants are either Christians or atheists; iti 
 magnificent cupola is widowed of the cross that once crowned it, and ti>e 
 sombre tint of its superb facade indicates an origin far anterior to its present 
 extravagant destination. What does it mean, in truth, a tomb without a 
 cross, and a sepulchre where no religious idea prevails ? If death be but a 
 material phenomenon that leaves no hope behind it, what sense is tliere in 
 these honors rendered to dry bones and flesh falling into corruption ? The 
 religion of the Pantheon is nothing but a comedy, like that of Reason and 
 Liberty. But the people must have a faith, and when the faith of the Gospel 
 was torn from them there was nothing for it but to fabricate another for 
 them, even if it is made up of madness and imbecility 
 
 ** I was amply compensated for these sad reflections by the beauty of the 
 church of St. Etienne du Mont, my parish, the pomp of its ceremonies and 
 the magnificence of the singing and the organ. A thrill of delight ran through 
 my whole being when I heard that instrument of a thousand voices resound- 
 ing beneath the Gothic roof, glorifying God, and chanting forth His praises, 
 as David says, on the harp and the cithern, on flutes and trumpets. How 
 ^reat the power of music is, and how sublime and beautiful the Catholic faith 
 that inspires it I" 
 
 The post did not travel so quickly forty years ago as it 
 does nowadays, and before an answer could arrive from 
 Lyons the forlorn student was rescued from his uncomfort- 
 able quarters by an unforeseen piece of good 'fortune. He 
 
 nut i«, obMTTcfl tbe Fridaf fiuL 
 
10 Life and Works of Fredenc Ozanam. 
 
 had met once the celebrated mathematician, M. Ampere, at 
 the house of a friend at Lyons, and taking advantage of the 
 great man's kindly invitation to come and see him when he 
 came to Paris, Frederic called upon him a few days after the 
 date of the above letter. 
 
 Andre Marie Ampere was a very great man indeed, a 
 member of the Institute, and of a number of other learned 
 societies, as well as an unrivalled luminary in his own per- 
 son ; but it was a greatness unalloyed by a tinge of pedantry 
 or hauteur. Frederic approached him with a certam trepi- 
 dation, but he was quickly put at his ease by the frank cor- 
 diality of the untidy old savan^ and before many minutes 
 was pouring out the tale of his domestic grievances as to an 
 old friend. M. Ampere listened with attention, then, rising 
 suddenly, he threw wide open a door of the salon, and said, 
 pointing to the room within, " Come and look at this room, 
 and tell me how you like it." It was a large, comfortably 
 furnished bedroom, looking on the garden. Frederic replied 
 that he liked it very much. "Then come and take possession 
 of it J it is heartily at your disposal," said M. Ampere; "you 
 can pay me what you are paying at yonx pension ^ and I hope 
 you will be better off; you will make the acquaintance of my 
 son,* who is occupied studying German literature; his li- 
 brary meantime is at your disposal ; you abstain, so do we ; 
 my sister and my daughter dine with us; that will be a little 
 society for you. What do you say to the plan ? " 
 
 Frederic said it was almost too delightful to be real, and 
 that he would write at once to his father about it. The reply 
 was such as might have been anticipated ; and a month later 
 the student writes home in high spirits, describing his new 
 manner of life, and enclosing a plan of his room, with its fur- 
 niture and ornaments, for his mother. 
 
 "You will all laugh," he says, "but I am sure the scrawl will amuse 
 mamma ; she can now fancy me seated at my table, getting into bed, going 
 from my table to fetch a block of wood, and putting it into my stove I 
 
 Then »1>sent »t » C«miw> University; this rooin.'waiithe one )ip occupied when at home* 
 
Ufiand Works of Frederic Ozanam, %% 
 
 We breakfast at ten, and dine at half-past five, all together— M. Amp^. 
 his daughter and sister. M. Amp>ere talks a good deal, and his conversation 
 is amusing and always instructive ; since I have been here (two days), I have 
 already learned many things from him. His daughter talks cleverly, and takes 
 part in all that is said ; M. Ampere is very caressing in his manner to her, but 
 he never speaks to her about anything but science. He has a prodigious 
 memory for everything scientific, in every conceivable department of know- 
 ledge, but he never remembers anything connected with the manage. He 
 learned Latin all by himself, and began to vrrite Latir verses only two years 
 ago, and does it remarkably well. He has a wonderful knowledge of history, 
 and reads a dissertation on the hieroglyphics with as much pleasure as a de- 
 scription of some experiment in physics and natural history. All this comes 
 to him like intuition. The discoveries which have raised him to the pinnacle 
 where he stands to-day came to him all at once, he telN me. He is just now 
 finishing a grand plan for an Encyclopaedia. Are you not glad, my dear 
 father, to have me under the roof of this kind and excellent man ? I forgot 
 to tell you that the most perfect politeness reigns in the family. I also forgot 
 to give you my address ; here it is— 19 Rue des Fosses St. Victor." 
 
 His residence with M. Ampere brought Frederic into con- 
 tact with the most distinguished men of science and letters of 
 the day; they all seem to have treated the modest young stu- 
 dent with a kindness and condescension which charmed him. 
 
 •* All these savants of Paris are full of affability," he informs his mother. 
 ** Yesterday I saw M. Serullas,* a most worthy man, gifted in the highest 
 degree with scientific absence of mind. I found him In the mvdst of some 
 chemical manipulations, which he took care not to interrupt while receiving 
 me very graciously, and treating me every now and then, as he said, to an 
 explosion of fragments of potassium ; but he was not in tune, his exoertnents 
 were not successful. It is surprising how learned everybody is here I You 
 see I have turned optimist ; in my last letter I was a pessimist, because I was 
 worried ; everything seemed to me to be going wrong. BuT now that things 
 are quiet at Lyons, and that I have society and a room to my fancy, and the 
 prospect of books and fire and money — what more can I want ? You, my dear 
 father, you, and all my family ; oh I that is what I still want, and what I long 
 ardently for. What a happiness it will be to embrace 70U in eight months 
 from this I " 
 
 Amongst the celebrities whom Frederic always reckoned jt a 
 
 privilege to have come in contact with at this period of his 
 
 / life, was M. de Chdteaubriand. He had been furn'shed with 
 
 a letter of introduction to the great man on coming to Paris, 
 
 but he kept it nearly two months before he had the courage 
 
 * Proreaaor of CbcmMtrf at V«l-<|»^r«e». 
 
tS Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 to present it. At last, on New Year's Da)^ he put it m his 
 pocket and sallied forth before twelve o'clock, determined to 
 take the desperate step. His heart beat violently as he rang 
 at the door of the man whom Charles the Tenth had called 
 *• one of the powers of this world." M, de Chateaubriand 
 had just come in from mass ; he received his timid visitor 
 with the most winning grace, questioned him with lively in- 
 terest concerning his studies, his tastes, his future plans and 
 prospects; then, fixing a peculiar look on him, he enquired 
 whether he had yet been to any of the theatres. Frederic 
 replied that he had not. " And do you intend to go ? " asked 
 M. de Chateaubriand, with his eye sull bent on him. Fre- 
 deric hesitated for a moment; he had promised his mother 
 not to go, and he never dreamed of breaking his word, but he 
 was afraid of appearing ridiculous in the eyes of the great 
 poet if he confessed this ; the struggle, however, was brief; 
 he replied frankly that he had resolved never to put his foot 
 inside a theatre, and why. A beam of satisfaction lighted 
 up M. de Chateaubriand's face, and stooping forward he 
 embraced the young man with emotion. " I implore you to 
 »y be true to that promise to your mother,'* he said. "You 
 would gain nothing at the theatre, and you might lose a great 
 deal." 
 
 Frederic counted this little episode amongst the many sig- 
 nal kindnesses which Providence placed in his path at the 
 perilous moment of his dibut in Paris. Henceforth, when any 
 of his freethinking companions proposed his accompanying 
 them to the play, he would answer boldly, and without fear 
 of ridicule, ** M. de Chateaubriand advised me strongly not 
 to go, and I promised him I would not." 
 
 ■But indeed from the day he entered on his studies in Paris, 
 his time was so completely filled up that there was little mar- 
 gin left for such amusements, had he been inclined for them. 
 He worked all day, and continued to encroach frequently on 
 his night's rest, to prepare the labors of the morrow. More- 
 over, the drean> which ha4 illuminate'] the dusky precincts of 
 
JUfe and Works of Frederic Ozanam. aj 
 
 fV>e attorney's office for nearly a year was still dominant in 
 his mind, guiding all his efforts, overshadowing all minor am- 
 bitions : the desire to do something, to help in doing some- 
 thing, for God and his fellow-creatures. This was the aim 
 of all his studies — to fit himself for some mission of usefulness, 
 to whose success his personal interest and success as a stu- 
 dent, or even later as a barrister, must remain absolutely sub- 
 ordinate. No wonder that these lofty aspirations and deep 
 musings engendered a sort of tender melancholy in his ardent 
 soul, compressed as he was by circumstances so little favor- 
 able to his wide humanitarian ambitions. He writes to Fal- 
 connet: 
 
 '« I have been here now a fortnight in possession of a charming room, with a 
 hospitable table, pleasant society, and the conversation of my host, which is al- 
 ways instructive, and often amusing ; one class of law and two of literature a 
 day ; the frequent society of Henri.* Surely this is more than enough to 
 make a student's life happy ! and yet— if you tliink I am happy you are mis- 
 taken. I am not happy ; I am conscious of an immense void, an indescriba- 
 ble tnalaise. ... I dislike Paris because there is no life here, no faith, no 
 love ; it is like a huge corpse to which my youth is chained alive, and whose 
 icy coldness freezes while its corruption poisons me. It is in the midst of this 
 moral desert that one understands fully and repeats ardently that cry of the 
 Psalmist : 
 
 * Habitavi cum habitantibus Cedar, multum incola fuit anima mea I 
 Si oblitus fuero tui, Jerusalem, adhaereat lingua mea faucibus meis P 
 
 "These accents of immortal poetry resound often in my soul; this vast 
 city where I am, as it were, lost, is to me Kedar, Babylon, the land of exile 
 and pilgrimage, while Sion is my native town, with its provincial simplicity, 
 the charity of its inhabitants, its altars erect, and its faith respected. Science 
 and Catholicism are my only consolations, and assuredly they are noble ones ; 
 but here also I find hopes deceived, obstacles to be overcome, difficulties to 
 be conquered. You know of old my longing to surround myself with young 
 men feeling and thinking as I do ; I know that there are such, many such, but 
 they are scattered ^ like gold on the dunghill,^ and the task of gathering de- 
 fenders under one flag is proverbially a difficult one. I hope nevertheless, 
 in one of my next letters, to be able to give you some more definite hopes 
 on this head. 
 
 *• How do we stand at present regarding scientific ideas ? what is the po8i« 
 tion of the schools, the belligerent powers in the field of philosophy ? 
 
 " We must first consider that after all our disputes and struggles, after all 
 
 * Henri Pessonncaux, his cousin, a young man of high mc-al and inteUectual eadownients.«ai 
 4evotedl7 attached to Frederic 
 
24 Lifi ^f^^ Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 partial problems, a moment must come when reason sums up all her doubts !nta 
 one, and proposes the grand general problem. In our day this problem may bt 
 thus expressed, What was man made for ? What the aim and the law of hu- 
 manity ? Considered with regard to the past century, there is progress, since the 
 very terms of the problem imply the existence of a providence, an aim, a crea- 
 tive and conservative idea. The question at this stage appeals for its solution 
 to philosophy and history. You can understand the immense importance at- 
 tached in these days to historical studies. Up to this point everybody is 
 agreed ; but here they split, the division being caused by the very premises of 
 the question. One side takes psychology as the basis of its researches, and builds 
 up to itself a sort of abstract man after the fashion of Condillac's statue. In 
 this man it sees all it wishes to see, and hence deduces a philosophical for- 
 mula on which it spreads out history as on a sort of Procrustes-bed, cutting 
 and hacking all that has any difficulty in fitting into its inflexible frame. 
 These people, who are but following after Rousseau, Dupuys, and Volney, 
 have lighted on the admirable discovery that all religions began with fetichism, 
 and they go about proclaiming it to whoever has ears to hear, holding forth 
 about the law of progress, the extinction of Christianity, and the approaching 
 advent of a new religion. This is what Professor Jouffroy preached to us only 
 the other day at the Sorbonne, that ancient Sorbonne which was founded by 
 Christianity, and whose dome is still crowned with the sign of the Cross. 
 
 " But in opposition to this school, which calls itself the Rationalistic, an- 
 other has sprung up by the name of the Traditional, not because it has repu- 
 diated reason,, but because history is the groundwork and tradition the start- 
 ing-point of its system. In its ranks are enrolled MM. de Chateaubriand, de 
 Lamennais, d'Ekstein, Ballanche, de Donald ; and in Germany, Schlegel, 
 Baader, Stolberg, Goerres. They distinguish two aims of human knowledge, 
 the finite and the infinite, philosophical truth and religious truth ; two ways 
 of knowing, reason and belief, analysis and synthesis, or perhaps, as the 
 Church defines it, the order of nature and the order of grace. Now, the finite 
 is pressed upon all sides by the infinite ; the infinite is God, the Alpha and 
 ;he Omega, the beginning and the end. Hence it follows that synthesis is 
 at once the basis and the crown of humanity, and that religious truth is the 
 source and final end of philosophical truth. From these premises there springs 
 up a vast theory concerning the relations of science and faith, and a wide ex- 
 planation of history. And as synthesis is the primitive fact which precedes 
 all knowledge, it follows that psychology is incapable of sounding the depth 
 of nature, or grasping her breadth. It is therefore in history that we must 
 pursue our researches and our study of her ; it is history which must tell us 
 the history of mankind. They assert, moreover, that fetichism, far from being 
 the first step of humanity, is the last degree of corruption ; that souvenirs of 
 the age of gold, and of the first fault, and of expiation by blood, are sown 
 everywhere amongst the peoples. This is their theor>'. Meantime our work 
 is maturing in the young Catholic minds, and will appear in its fulness at 
 the appointed time. Never wa? a history of human religion more imperative- 
 ly called for by social needs. 
 
 *♦ Temfu^erit. . , ," 
 
CHAPTER 111 
 
 183.. 
 
 In order to understand the social conditions which Ozanaro 
 describes, and which stirred him to such dismay and com- 
 passion, it is necessary that we should glance back to the 
 opening of the nineteenth century, and realize what was the 
 state of religious feeling in France just after the Revolution had 
 subsided, and left the country still heaving from the storm 
 which had uprooted all her old beliefs and traditions, and 
 overturned her civil and religious institutions, and built up out 
 of these ruins an edifice of order, where the first essential ele- 
 ment of order was wanting. 
 
 When Napoleon came and took the destinies of France in 
 hand, religion, in so far as the state and the nation at large 
 were concerned, had ceased to exist ; it was practically abol- 
 ished ; its temples were turned into stables and warehouses, or 
 else profaned by monstrous rites and revolting orgies, m the 
 name of the goddess Reason ; no external sign bore witness 
 to any covenant between heaven and earth ; there was no re- 
 ligious instruction to be had anywhere ; children grew up like 
 animals without souls; the remnants of the clergy were scat- 
 tered through the provinces, officiating in holes and comers, 
 hiding from the hostile and ubiquitous police of the republic, 
 mistrusting as spies those who came furtively to implore their 
 ministry ; a certain number of constitutional priests in Paris 
 were feebly attempting to blow a spark from the cold ashes 
 of a Church pulverized by the Revolution. There were still, 
 no doubt, noble examples of fidelity to the faith to be found 
 throughout the country, but these were exceptions to the 
 general rule of atheism and freethinking. The Church had 
 
26 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 fallen into contempt long before contempt had translatea 
 itself into the active hostility and open violence (5f the Revo- 
 lution. The Church — or what has in all ages been identified 
 with her, for glory or for shame, the clergy — had lost her 
 hold upon public esteem. There were saints amongst them 
 m tnose days, as there always have been, but there was, on 
 the surface, a class of men, such as the abb^s de cour^ who, by 
 their crimes and follies, had become identified with the rigimi 
 whose corruption eventually brought about its own downfall, 
 dragging the Church with it, and shattering the sacred edifice 
 so terribly that, to human eyes, the ruin of the altar seemed 
 as complete and irreparable as the ruin of the throne. Even 
 those who believed in the immortality of the Church herself 
 confessed, with sorrow, that in France her reign was over. 
 The admission, sad as it was, implied no disloyalty towards 
 the faith. Faith can never die ; the Word of God is immortal, 
 but no particular spots on earth have been assigned as its 
 dwelling-place, or the shrine of its eternal presence. Africa 
 had held it once, and so had Antioch and Jerusalem and Con- 
 stantinople ; but a time came when the divine guest passed 
 away from these lands, the current of the stream was turned 
 aside, and mysteriously diverted into other channels. Had 
 the time come when France, so long the fountain of Christian- 
 ity, was to see the waters flow out of her midst, and depart 
 irrevocably to fertilize distant and more faithful lands ? The 
 history of other peoples was there to show a precedent for 
 this dispensation, and there were few signs to bid the most 
 sanguine hope that the kingdom of Clovis and St. Louis was 
 not doomed to share the fate which had overtaken the coun- 
 try of St. Augustine. 
 
 There was one man, one only, in whose hands, as far as 
 human judgment could see, the power was vested of averting 
 the final catastrophe; but he was abroad, busy with other 
 conquests than those of the kingdom which is not of this 
 world. He was destroying the armies of Europe, overturn- 
 ing thrones, keeping the eyes of all nations fixed on hira with 
 
lAff and Worki of Fi'ederic Ozanam. 27 
 
 terror and amazement. France looked on in wild exultation ; 
 everything connected with her brilliant young hero partook 
 of the character of a gigantic legend; popular enthusiasm 
 clotlied him with the prestige of a demigod. No conqueror 
 ever returned to his native country armed with a mightier 
 power over her destinies for good or for evil than Napoleon 
 after the campaigns of Egypt and Italy. Those who knew 
 him best could hardly hope that he would use it well ; that is 
 to say, nobly, disinterestedly, patriotically, like a man who 
 loses sight of himself and his personal ambitions in the pco 
 found sense of the responsibility of his mission. Except to 
 those immediately about him, little was known in France of 
 Napoleon's character and opinions beyond that he was a 
 republican and a great military commander ; the official re- 
 ports of his harangues and proclamations which appeared in 
 the Moniteur were not full or honest enough to reveal him to 
 the public at home as he was known to his generals and the 
 army. It was not known, for instance, that he boasted loud- 
 ly in the East of having ** overturned the cross " ; or that in 
 addressing the Arabs he had said, '* We also are true Mussul- 
 mans. Have we not destroyed the Pope, who wanted us to 
 declare war against the Mussulmans ? " * But it was known 
 and remembered by many, that a year before, in his speech 
 at the Luxembourg, he had declared " religion to be one of 
 those prejudices which the French people had yet to over- 
 come" (Christmas, 1797). Almost anything might be expect- 
 ed from so elastic a believer; but no one was prepared for 
 what really did come. 
 
 On the 1 8th of June, i8oo, four days after the battle of 
 Marengo, Napoleon assisted publicly at a solemn Te Deum 
 in the cathedral of Milan, and on coming out observed 
 jocosely to his staff, that '* the atheists of Paris would be furi- 
 ous when they heard of it.'* And he said truly; they were. 
 
 A priest named the Abb6 Fournier f was one of the first to 
 
 * Manifesto of July %, 179B. 
 
 t Sea introduction to Concordat \r§ rattaUk 
 
i8 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 hear of the extraordinary occurrence, and, in a sermon which 
 he preached the next day at St. Roch, he announced it to his 
 audience in an impassioned and picturesque form ; he evoked 
 the image of a young hero, who, after gathering glory on a 
 thousand battle-fields, was suddenly overpowered by a sense 
 of gratitude to the God of armies, and flew publicly to invoke 
 His blessing on France and the victorious soldiers who were 
 about to return to her. 
 
 The republic was so shocked at the scandalous libel, that 
 the Abb6 Fournier was immediately arrested as a madman, 
 carried off to the lunatic asylum of Charenton, dressed in the 
 humiliating costume of its inmates, and locked up. 
 
 It required the influence of several statesmen, including 
 Portalis, to obtain his deliverance after eight days' detention. 
 Meantime the truth of the supposed libel had travelled to 
 Paris; four months later the Abbe Fournier was named a 
 bishop, and about a year later the Concordat was signed. 
 
 This great transaction, which M. Thiers speaks of as " the 
 most important which the Court of Rome ever concluded 
 with France, perhaps with any Christian power," and which, 
 if we are to believe the Abb6 Pradt, Napoleon often spoke of 
 as the greatest mistake of his reign,* gave almost universal 
 dissatisfaction to the French people. The republicans were 
 furious, because the re-establishment of the Church was like 
 the triumph of royalism, and the defeat and humiliation of 
 the Revolution. 
 
 The royalists were angry, because the Concordat robbed 
 them of their chief grievance, and broke the strongest weapon 
 in their hand ; hitherto the cause of royalty had been synony- 
 mous with that of the Church, henceforth it ceased to be so. 
 
 The philosophers were indignant, because it belied their 
 triumphant prophecies concerning the death of Christianity, 
 and its final burial under the reign of atheism and reason. 
 
 The Constitutional clergy f were angry, because it placed 
 
 * Le« quatre Coooordata. 
 
 t Tktae who took the oath \a the Civil 
 
Ufe and Works of Frederu Ozanam, 19 
 
 Ihcm in a false position ; the rank they held from the Revo- 
 lution was now compromised, perhaps nullified. 
 
 The faithful clergy, who might have had real grounds foi 
 rejoicing, were afraid to do so; they dared not trust the 
 treaty ; it might prove after all but an exchange of bondage. 
 Time showed how much sagacity there was in this instinctive 
 mistrust, which at the moment was regarded as treasonable 
 by the suggesters of the new treaty. 
 
 Few measures, perhaps, have been more diversely judged 
 by history than this of the Concordat. The enemies of Na- 
 poleon ridicule and condemn it as an elaborate piece of 
 hypocrisy, while his admirers extol it as the wisest and grand- 
 est achievement of his reign. It was undeniably an admira- 
 ble piece of statecraft; a measure of policy worthy of the 
 deep and lofty mind that compiled the Code Napol6on. 
 
 We have no reason to believe that Napoleon was actuated 
 by higher motives, by respect for the Church, and belief in 
 her supernatural vitahty ; but his actions proved on many oc- 
 casions that he was not devoid of the religious sense, although 
 it may not have carried him beyond a certain instinctive 
 superstition. On the other hand, his knowledge of human 
 nature and of the history of mankind taught him to recognize 
 the absolute necessity of a Church of some sort in every State, 
 of an altar where the people could meet and worship, a God 
 whom, if they did not love, they would at least fear, and who 
 would serve the purposes of state by constituting a kind of 
 supreme court of appeal, whose tribunal, having its seat in 
 the conscience of the citizen, would facilitate the exercise of 
 the law, and bring its influence to bear on the governed and 
 the governing alike. Starting from this general principle, 
 Napoleon was, moreover, clear-sighted enough to discern the 
 radical Catholicism of France, and to see that no other re- 
 ligion could ever supply or supplant the old one in the heart 
 of the people. " Ninety-three " had done its best, and that 
 best had been terrible, but it had not succeeded in crushing 
 the seeds of Catholicism out of the soil, so as to leave it 
 
30 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 ready for the sowing of a new faith j the Cathoh'c Church, 
 despised, decimated, downtrodden as she was, had still an 
 inalienable hold on the hearts and consciences of the people ; 
 she was still, therefore, a power to be reckoned with, and it 
 is to the credit of the legislator's genius at least that, sur- 
 rounded as he was by atheists and scoffers, and himself per- 
 sonally careless enough on the score of religion, he saw and 
 acknowledged this fact. Unbelief was rampant in all classes, 
 more especially in the educated ones, but Napoleon was not 
 deceived by this surface aspect of the national mind. Since 
 the State must have a religion, that religion could be no 
 other than the Catholic. 
 
 The Concordat of 1801 was the practical expression of this 
 belief. Napoleon was never a devout, perhaps not even a 
 sincere. Catholic, but he never failed to exhibit in public re- 
 spect for the religion he professed ; he upheld it as a necessary 
 element in good and sound government ; he regarded it as 
 the most valuable police a nation can maintain, an institu- 
 tion not to be served by, but to serve, the State. His subse- 
 quent conduct towards the Holy See was quite consistent with 
 these opinions, was in fact their logical outcome. The official 
 history of the Concordat, and the correspondence between its 
 author and Portalis connected with its execution, attests at 
 every page that, as First Consul and as Emperor, Napoleon 
 regarded the clergy and the hierarchy very much in the light 
 of a body-guard of soldiers and mayors; the bishops, "my 
 bishops," were so many mitred prefects in command of an 
 army of minor functionaries — the priests — with a Minister of 
 Public Worship holding command over all. A sous-prdfei 
 under the second Empire was a more independent personage 
 than a bishop under the first. The latter could not leave his 
 diocese for a day without permission from the Minister of 
 Public Worship, who could not grant it without the authoriza- 
 tion of the First Consul. The Bishop of Meaux, the succes- 
 sor of Bossuet, was suffering from a severe attack of ophthal- 
 mia, and had to wait some time for \eave to go to Paris for 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 31 
 
 medical assistance; it came at last direct from Napoleon 
 himself, and coupled with an injunction that the bishop should 
 ** occupy himself diligently with the affairs of his diocese 
 while in Paris." 
 
 The same petty despotism was exercised, as far as possible, 
 towards the Holy See. No decree of the Sovereign Pontiff 
 was valid, or even made public, until it had received the 
 sanction of the Government — a system which placed the clergy 
 in the constant dilemma of having to choose between obedi- 
 ence to the Church and the mandates of the Pope, and their 
 allegiance as citizens to tlie civil power. Such a state of things 
 was calculated to test severely the mettle of the ecclesiastical 
 body, and it must be said to their honor that, as a body, they 
 came nobly out of the ordeal. Not a few were found who 
 rendered to Caesar more than Caesar's due, but the great ma- 
 jority contrived to ally prudence with becoming independence 
 and to maintain the dignity of their sacred character intact. 
 We must bear in mind, in order to appreciate this fact as it 
 deserves, that it was long since the political and social state 
 of France had been favorable to the growth of dignity and in- 
 dependence, or to the formation of manliness of character. 
 The reign of Louis XV. had not been a school for confessors, 
 though the timid priesthood of that dissolute reign would no 
 doubt have furnished its contingent of martyrs had they been 
 called for tlien, as they were later by the Revolution. Na- 
 poleon, on his advent to power, found a clergy who had been 
 inured to suffer and trained to die, but who had lost the art 
 of fighting. His quick sagacity detected the weak point in 
 the shield, and hit there. He began by professing unqualified 
 respect for the doctrines of the Church, guessing well that if he 
 had laid the tip of his finger on that sacred deposit the bishops 
 would have defied him, and laid their heads on the block 
 rather than capitulate on the smallest point ; but when he is- 
 sued a decree ordering them to send in their pastorals to be 
 overlooked by the prefect before being read to their fiocks, it 
 never entered their heads to demur; at any rate they did not, 
 
 y 
 
52 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 although the tyranny was the more absurd and offensive from 
 the fact of the prefect being frequently a Protestant, and still 
 oftener an athiest. The decree continued in force all through 
 the Consulate and under the Empire.* 
 
 Minute and stringent laws were enacted concerning reli- 
 gious institutions. No community of men or women, whether 
 for prayer, teaching, or the service of the sick and poor, could 
 be opened in France until the rules and statutes of the order 
 had been investigated and endorsed by Napoleon and Porta- 
 lis ; and there is something cynically comic in the way the 
 latter, in his reports to the Emperor, discusses the purpose, 
 organization, utility, and dangers of the religious life, the first 
 elements of which were as familiar to him probably as the 
 household arrangements of the Grand Lama. 
 
 The Press, that other powerful engine in the State, was not 
 3ikely to be allowed more liberty than the Church. It was 
 gagged, and became a mere tool in the hands of the Gov- 
 ernment. The few journalists who refused the general tribute 
 of flattery and obsequiousness were dismissed from their posts, 
 their journals were suppressed or given into other hands. 
 
 The department of Public Instruction remained next to be 
 dealt with, and nothing could be more summary than the way 
 in which it was done. Every vestige of liberty which the 
 Revolution had spared was swept away. Under the Revolu- 
 tion and the Consulate the rights of parents at least were 
 respected ; the State opened schools, but it left parents free 
 to send their children there or not; secular and religious 
 schools had fair play from the Government, and were not 
 interfered with.f With the Empire all this was changed. 
 Liberty of teaching was so completely abolished that the 
 right of opening a school of any description, for any class of 
 scholars, became the exclusive monopoly of the State. The 
 Imperial University was founded, and replaced all previous 
 institutions of the sort. Christian parents had to choose be- 
 
 * L'Bglis* Samaitu tt Ufrtmitr Sm^, par M. d'HauMoorille, t. t. pjk vi^-wgt 
 t See Foiuet's Lift of Lattrdair*, vol. i. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 33 
 
 tween the privation of all education for their sons, or the 
 almost certain ruin of their faith ; as a rule they adopted the 
 latter, and generally with the result foreseen. Let home train- 
 ing be ever so careful, it could not be expected to resist the 
 influence of the majority, of those imperious and sympathetic 
 tyrants, companions of their own age, who so powerfully sup- 
 plemented the teaching, direct and indirect, of Professors for 
 the most part infidels, and, at any rate, always chosen with- 
 out the slightest regard to their religious principles. 
 
 Such a system of education was in truth a sort of conscrip- 
 tion of souls, as arbitrary and far more fatal than those lev/es 
 en masse which the great captain was accustomed to raise for 
 the maintenance of his armies. The only possible remedy 
 for such a state of things would have been free competition, 
 and this was rigorously proscribed. By a decree of 1809, the 
 most obscure village school was compelled to choose between 
 suppression, or the official badge of the imperial schoolmas- 
 ter. The letters of M. de Lamennais to Brut6 show us what 
 a superfluity of zeal the Government thought it worth while 
 :o expend on hunting down a few humble village priests who 
 ventured to help some young Breton peasants in preparing 
 for the seminary by teaching them the rudiments of Latin. 
 These very seminaries, which the charity of the Church 
 opened to this humble class of students, were placed under 
 the control of the Imperial University, whose authority de- 
 cided the choice of the masters, and obliged the scholars to 
 follow the classes of the infidel Lyceums and Colleges. 
 
 The Empire went further still. It created purely civil 
 faculties of theology, with the right of conferring grades, the 
 possession of which was made a sine qua non for obtaining 
 ecclesiastical dignities; while the men who conferred these 
 grades were obliged to swear obedience to the Grand Master 
 of the University, M. de Fontanes — a wily and bold strata- 
 gem for transferring superior theological training from the 
 Church, where it na'.urally resides, into the hands of the Im 
 perial University. 
 
34 Life ^^(i Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 Napoleon writes to his Minister of Public Worship :* ** A 
 priest who has never been under any other superintendence 
 than that of his ecclesiastical superiors cannot occupy a posi- 
 tion of the first rank unless the University confers it on him, 
 which it may decline to do in the event of his being known 
 to hold ultramontane opinions, or others dangerous to au- 
 thority." 
 
 So comprehensive a scheme of spiritual tyranny has no pre- 
 cedent in ancient or modern history, and yet this yoke was 
 borne by France all through the Empire, under the specious 
 pretext that it was the safeguard of national unity. 
 
 The department of morals fared no better than that of 
 dogma. Napoleon established divorce, thereby violently out- 
 raging the law of the Church. Portalis issued a decree for- 
 bidding priests to refuse the blessing of the Church to persons 
 who chose to marry again after being divorced. 
 
 The Sabbath was altered from the seventh day to the 
 tenthjt not perhaps so much as a measure of political econo- 
 my, as from Napoleon's desire to show his power to set aside 
 a time-honored law of Christendom. His efforts proved a 
 failure. It is still related in parts of France how the very 
 ^ oxen resented the violation of the Divine law, and knew the 
 day of rest instinctively, moaning and lowing in expostulation 
 as they drew the plough reluctantly through the fields. 
 
 The story of the Concordat of Fontainebleau has been told 
 '.00 often, and too exhaustively, to need more than passing 
 mention here. But we read history superficially, and too 
 often by the light of our own prejudices and the spirit of our 
 times; and many of us, in judging of this event, are apt to 
 overlook the main features of the case, the long series of 
 harassing persecutions that prepared it, the crafty system of 
 oppression, treachery, and humiliation which brought the 
 clergy of France into that state of unworthy subjection which 
 was the primary condition and prelude of the Concordat 
 
 • '^jerrapondance, torn. xiii. p. 15, St. Cloud, 30 J unlet, t8a& 
 
 * S^ Le^n Tme, suite au ^me ComoHmdenicnu 
 
Life and Works of Frcderu Ozanam, 35 
 
 The old man at the Vatican was the bite noire of the man 
 vho had brought all the crowned heads of Europe, except 
 one, to bow down to him. Napoleon hated him as Haman 
 hated Mordecai, for, like that stiff-necked Jew, who sat at the 
 gate in his rags, and defied the oppressor of his people, the 
 Pope remained the permanent affirmation of a power that de- 
 fied Caesar, and withstood ahke his bribes and his threats. 
 Nothing had been left undone to bring this stubborn power 
 into subjection — caresses, bribes, insults, impfTSonment, and 
 exile; but so far everything had failed, Pius VII. had now 
 been four years a prisoner at Fontainebleau, his dominions 
 confiscated, his spiritual action virtually arrested, for he was 
 cut off from all external relations with the clergy and with 
 Christendom, and from the power of carrying on the govern- 
 ment of the Church. Napoleon governed it in France ac- 
 cording to his own views ; but he had now come to a diffi- 
 cult pass : death was thinning the ranks of the hierarchy, and 
 how was he to replenish them witj^ut the Pope ? He had 
 recourse to one of his characteristic expedients. He con- 
 voked an assembly of Italian and French bishops — " his 
 bishops " — in Paris, gave it the name of a National Council, 
 and ordered it forthwith to pass a decree, whereby, if the 
 Pope did not, within six months, institute a certain number of 
 bishops, named by the Emperor, they should be consecrated 
 by the Metropolitan. 
 
 The bishops, scared by the audacity of the order, sought to 
 gain time, and timidly proposed that they should draw up a 
 report on the imperial proposal, and refer the case by deputa- 
 tion to the august captive of Fontainebleau. Napoleon met 
 this act of rebellion by one of those paroxysms of imperial 
 anger which he had often found effective when other argu- 
 ments failed, and without condescending to further expostula- 
 tion, declared the National Council dissolved. Three of the 
 members were seized tliat night and carried off to Vincennes, 
 and detained there until they sent in tlieir resignation of their 
 respective sees. The other bishops, before they had recov- 
 
36 lAfe and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 ered from the panic caused by this violent proceeding, were 
 summoned one by one into the presence of the Minister of 
 PoUce, and terrified into pledging themselves to deliver up the 
 hierarchy into the hands of their imperial master. 
 
 Napoleon, pacified by this act of submission, once more 
 convened his National Council, and this time the shameful 
 decree went through the mockery of a discussion, and was 
 passed. 
 
 It is alleged, in extenuation of the cowardly behavior of the 
 bishops, that they were told the Pope had yielded his assent ; 
 but the monstrous falsehood never should, never could, have 
 imposed upon them for a moment ; their conscience, as well 
 as their experience, must have told them it was a lie and an 
 impossibility. 
 
 Pius VII. had been at this date four years in confinement, 
 cut off from every friendly face, from all knowledge of what- 
 ever was going on outside the walls of his prison, insulted, 
 threatened, subjected to every species of moral torture, until 
 at last the cruel skill prevailed. Broken in mind and in body, 
 led to believe that he was deserted by Christendom, betrayed 
 by the clergy and hierarchy, fascinated too, at intervals, by 
 the magnetic personal ascendency of Napoleon, moved more 
 by his caresses than his threats, the Pontiff signed the fatal 
 deed on the 25th of January, 1813. 
 
 The momentary aberration was quickly Vepented of and 
 disavowed, but it remains an eternal example of the danger 
 which the Church must run when she forfeits her temporal in- 
 dependence, and is stripped of the protecting bulwarks of her 
 temporal power. 
 
 Napoleon thought that he had now compassed his long- 
 desired end, that he had henceforth nothing to fear from the 
 decrepit old Pontiff, or the cowed priesthood whom his weak- 
 ness had misled, and who were still ignorant of his prompt 
 ftnd vehement recantation. The conqueror of Europe beheld 
 
Ufe and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 37 
 
 himself in spirit the centre of an apotheosis, wielding the 
 sceptre over the souls as well as the bodies of all Christendom ; 
 he beheld the stern majesty of the Church of Rome prostrate 
 at his feet, as the Greek Church was at the feet of his brother 
 C^ssar of Russia. What a serene and glorious pageant was 
 that which passed in fancy before the eyes of the great war- 
 rior, as he paced the green alleys of Fontainebleau, while close 
 by, within the palace walls, Pius VII. was weeping bitter, 
 penitent tears I 
 
 The partisans of Napoleon I. are proud of claiming for him 
 the gratitude of the Church of Christ. They say that he came 
 and found her in the mire, a beggar and an outcast where she 
 had once been queen, and that he stretched forth his hand and 
 raised her up, and clothed her in scarlet and gold, and placed 
 a crown upon her head. It is true he did all this, and then 
 he claimed his reward. It was not much, only the imme- 
 morial bargain of which Satan first pronounced the formula in 
 the desert outside Jerusalem nearly two thousand years ago — 
 si cadens cuioraveris me, 
 
 God*s hour came ; Waterloo came. Napoleon fell, and the 
 Church of Christ remained. No wonder she hailed with 
 joy the return of the Bourbons to France. The restora- 
 tion appeared to her like the dawn of freedom and 
 dignity. 
 
 The Sabbath was passed into a law, bishops recovered the 
 direction of their seminaries, religious orders were encouraged 
 by the State ; in fact, religion was patronized in high places. 
 Many of the Ministers were sincere Catholics, and threw the 
 weight of their influence honestly into the effort at a general 
 reform amongst the people. To this effect missions were 
 opened in the towns and villages; there was preaching in the 
 market-places and in the fields ; processions were seen wind- 
 ing through the valleys as in olden times; pilgrims journeyed 
 to distant shrmes, and filled the forest glades with tne long- 
 forgotten sound of hymns and canticles. The reign of faith 
 was restored to France, and seemed enthroned more ferventljr 
 
jS Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 than ever in the hearts of her people. So it seemed ; but it 
 was not so in reaUty. 
 
 There was no doubt a good deal of sincere individual piety 
 in all these demonstrations, but, as regarded the general re- 
 sult, the movement was an utter failure. Nor can we wonder 
 at this. The Revolution had destroyed and profaned the old 
 temples, and done its best to crush every spark of faith out of 
 the country, and if the work of annihilation had not been 
 complete it was universal and tremendous. Napoleon, 
 emerging at this period of social chaos, had judged it advis- 
 able to curb the lawless infidelity of the nation by imposing 
 on it a State religion. The yoke had been accepted out- 
 wardly; but despotism makes few converts-— it makes hypo- 
 crites instead ; and in the present instance, not being rein- 
 forced by the sanguinary orthodoxy of the Inquisition, it 
 merely engendered corruption and a cynical contempt of all 
 religion. The people were not to be driven by law into keep- 
 ing the commandments and obeying the precepts of the 
 Church because the Emperor decreed they were to do so. 
 The old edifice was sapped to its foundation, and it must take 
 more than a nod from Caesar to rebuild it. 
 
 When, therefore, Louis XVIII. inserted a bona fide clause 
 in his charter constituting the kingdom Catholic, the kingdom 
 laughed — laughed in defiance and derision. Whatever the 
 faults of the French are, hypocrisy never was one of them ; 
 and to be thus officially labelled as members of a Church 
 which they had ceased to believe in, roused all that remained 
 of native honesty and independence in the national mind. 
 It had taken more than a generation to make them atheists 
 and sceptics, and it was not to be expected they would now 
 •urn Christians at the bidding of a State paper. The efforts 
 of the Government to bring about such a result only irritated 
 and aggravated the existing evil by provoking a spirit of 
 direct antagonism. 
 
 For instance, it had taken years to wean the working 
 classes from the routine observance of the Sabbath, but hav- 
 
Ufe and JlW/:s oj Rcdcrk Ozanam, 39 
 
 ing finally broken with the habit, they had no mind to take il 
 ap again; they had grown used to open their shops on Sun- 
 days, and it required the constant and active intervention of 
 the law to make them close them ; even at the present day, 
 as we all know, this reform remains a struggle in which the 
 Fourth Commandment is but partially triumphant. The 
 Catechism of 1793, written in the blood of their murdered king, 
 and enforced by the guillotine, had taught the people hatred 
 of all constituted authority, and this hatred was more specially 
 directed to the highest expression of authority on earth. They 
 had seen the Church thrown down, and trampled under foot 
 by anarchy, then picked up to serve as an instrument in the 
 hands of despotism ; she had lost all prestige in their eyes, 
 and become the symbol of a despised and fallen rigime^ the 
 wreck of a power whose day had passed to give way to the 
 day of Voltaire. The reign of Voltaire had succeeded to the 
 reign of Christ. So long, however, as this succession was 
 tacitly admitted, the zeal of the worshippers was slack enough ; 
 but no sooner did a Christian Government appear, and an- 
 nounce its intention of reinstating the Gospel in its lost su- 
 premacy, than the smouldering zeal of the Voltairians leaped 
 out in a flame. Voltaire's works had not been reprinted once 
 under the Empire, but from 181 7 to 1824 no less than twelve 
 fresh editions were called for and exhausted in France. Na- 
 poleon had given back to divine worship the churches which 
 the Revolution had taken from it ; but it was one thing to 
 restore churches, and another to restore the faith that had 
 worshipped there; so it was easy now to throw down Vol- 
 taire's statues, and to cast out his unhallowed dust from 
 beneath the consecrated altar of the living God, but it was 
 another thing to overturn his empire in hearts from which his 
 presence had banished the reign of " the Galilean." 
 
 The restoration opened schools, and paid Christian teach- 
 ers, but it could not provide docile pupils to attend them ; 
 the children of men who used up twelve editions of Voltaire 
 in eight years were not likely to prove willing listeners to 
 
40 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 masters who cried anathema on Voltaire and his doctrines; 
 they had imbibed a spirit which was instinctively hostile to 
 the spirit of the Gospel; they were thirsting for other lessons. 
 
 But although undoubtedly this was the general rule, it was 
 redeemed by exceptions. The old tree had been stricken, but 
 there was life in its roots still, and the sap was rising through 
 the seared branches, and putting forth young shoots here and 
 there. Amidst the youth born of this period, there were 
 many who thirsted for purer and stronger waters than those 
 poisoned ones from which their fathers had drunk ; there were 
 seeds of fiery activity in their natures, which only required to 
 be fostered by the right guide in order to bring forth good 
 fruit. Men cannot summon these guides to their own rescue, 
 but God, who loves His creatures, and holds the thread of 
 their destinies, even when they stray from Him, can and 
 often mercifully does. He never leaves Himself without a 
 witness on the earth, although at times it seems as though He 
 did, as if He abandoned humanity to its own perverse and 
 wayward folly, letting falsehood prevail and truth perish, but 
 in His own appointed time He comes forth and produces His 
 witness to exalt the one and confound the other. 
 
 Those who have made any serious study of the state of 
 society in France at the period when Frederic Ozanam, in 
 his capacity of a Christian teacher, first appeared on its scene, 
 will hardly tax us with exaggeration if we claim for him the 
 grave and bright responsibility of having been in his sphere 
 one of these witnesses of God to his generation. He himself 
 was, as we have seen, early imbued with the idea that some 
 special mission would be confided to him ; that he would at 
 a given time be employed in the defence of truth. This 
 dominant idea permeates his whole mind, and recurs fre- 
 (|uently in his letters during his sojourn at M. Ampere's, and 
 he never ceases to urge his fellow-students to aspire to the 
 same glorious mission, and prepare themselves to accomplish 
 it worthily. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 1832. 
 
 Few things in the condition of society in France during 
 the years which followed the revolution of 1830 were more 
 remarkable and more dispiriting than the apathy which per- 
 vaded all classes. Indeed, the sound portion of society, the 
 party of order, as they have come to be called, have at all 
 times displayed, in the strongest degree, this criminal weak- 
 ness; whenever a crisis comes, they collapse; resignation 
 and passive endurance become the practical epitome of 
 their creed ; they He down and let the communists of the 
 hour walk over them. 
 
 When Ozanam came to Paris, the department of Public 
 Instruction still showed signs of this fatal inertia, which had 
 deadened it under the Empire, when open hostility to reli- 
 gion and morals had given way to sleek oppression and an 
 outward varnish of respect as offensive as it was paralyzing. 
 
 The Restoration had inaugurated a new era, but the 
 energy to profit by it was wanting; indifference and the 
 laisser-alkr spirit had become a rooted habit in men's minds, 
 and was not to be cured in a day. 
 
 These periods of coma are the grand opportunity of false 
 prophets and founders of new religions ; then it is that they 
 stand forth and call around them the restless spirits who, 
 impatient at the general stagnation, chafe under the dead 
 weight, and burn to find an outlet for their pent-up 
 energies. The Abb6 de Lamennais was the great false pro- 
 phet of this period. Partly the creation, partly the reaction 
 of the spirit of his times, he responded fully to its cry, and 
 
 4» 
 
42 Life a?id Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 took a hold upon the sympathies of his fellow-men unparal* 
 leled perhaps in the history of similar influences. 
 
 Before this bright misleading star had risen, the St. Simo- 
 nians were in the field, promising to lead humanity to the 
 second earthly Paradise, attracting great numbers of the 
 young by their specious and brilliant theories. 
 
 Frederic Ozanam had drawn his maiden sword against 
 them, as we saw, and with considerable local effect; but the 
 ranks of the St. Simonians were growing. He saw this in 
 Paris better than he could have done at Lyons. The various 
 classes which he attended bore evidence to the necessity for 
 some counteracting force to stem the torrent of absurd and 
 impious doctrines which pojiired out daily from these foun- 
 tains where the young generation came to drink. Frederic 
 was fond of relating an incident connected with the lectures 
 at the College de France. M. Letrone, the Professor, was 
 lecturing on the Deluge, and was at great pains to prove 
 that the story of the universal flood was a popular fallacy ; 
 there had not been one great, but several smaller deluges, at 
 different epochs and in different places. This theory, besides 
 its novelty, had the immense advantage of throwing discredit 
 on the " legend of Genesis," if it could be maintained. 
 The audience listened with profound attention, but Ozanam 
 could not conceal his impatience. A young man named 
 Lallier noticed the angry glances and expressive shrugs in 
 which he vented his feelings at every fresh absurdity pro- 
 pounded by the learned Professor. M. Lallier, who, for the 
 same reason as Frederic, had kept aloof from companions 
 of his own age in Paris, determined, as soon as the lecture 
 was over, to go and make acquaintance with him. Ozanam 
 however, left before the end of it, and the opportunity was 
 lost. Several weeks elapsed before they met again ; it was 
 at a lecture of the Abbe Gerbet's. On issuing from the 
 room, Frederic was at once surrounded by a group of stu- 
 y dents, who were discussing with great animation the ideas 
 ' set forth by the lecturer ; M. Lallier went up and spoke to 
 
Life and Works of Frederic (. zanam. 43 
 
 him, and it was not long before the chance acquaintance 
 ripened to a friendship which lasted without a cloud until 
 Ozanam's death. 
 
 The number of Catholic young men was thus augmenting 
 in the various classes, or it might be more accurate to say 
 they were finding each other out, and, gathering courage 
 from union, were holding up their heads more boldly. Fear 
 of public opinion, that plague of religion and morality in 
 France, had held many back from avowing themselves Ca- 
 tliolics, because they fancied they were alone. One young 
 student, who had often seen Ozanam at the Ecole de Droit, 
 and been attracted by his quiet diligence and the kindly 
 charm of his manner, but had never ventured to seek his 
 acquaintance, met him one day coming out of St. Etienne 
 du Mont. ** What !" he exclaimed, '* are you a Catholic ? 
 How glad I am j let us be friends ; I thought you were an 
 atheist !" 
 
 The following incident is also significant. These two 
 young students, in company with a third, went one day to 
 attend a sermon in one of the largest churches in Paris. 
 They arrived late, and found every seat taken. Ozanam and 
 his friend at last secured places, but their companion, after 
 elbowing his way up to the pulpit, could only find standing- 
 room, and there he remained. He was six feet high, and 
 otherwise of a striking appearance, so that the cur6, who was 
 seated with his clergy in the bancd^ceuvre opposite, noticed 
 him, and, taking for granted that he was standing there out 
 of disrespect, rose and publicly rebuked him, adding, ** Your 
 attitude shows that you are more accustomed to frequent the 
 theatre than the church." The young man blushed deeply, 
 but held his ground until the sermon was over, when he 
 went to the sacristy and had an explanation with the cur^. 
 The latter, as may be imagined, was greatly distressed at his 
 mistake, but, after making an ample apology, remarked, 
 " We so seldom see a young man in our churches, except it 
 be, as I said, from a bad motive — to mock or criticise — that it 
 
44 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 never occurred to me you were an exception to the rule.*' 
 The exceptions, however, were increasing notably. Frederic 
 had been little more than a year in Paris when he writes to 
 Ernest Falconnet : 
 
 •'We are more numerous than we thought. I have met here with young 
 men strong in intellectual vigor, and rich in generous sentiments, who devote 
 their thoughts and researches to the high mission which is also yours and 
 mine. Every time a rationalist Professor raises his voice against Revelation, 
 Catholic voices are lifted up to answer him. We have, several of us, banded 
 together for this purpose. Twice already I have taken my share of this noble 
 work by addressing my objections in writing to these gentlemen. We have 
 had our chief success at X.'s class. Twice he attacked the Church, first by 
 treating the Papacy as a temporary institution, born under Charlemagne, and 
 now dying out, and the next time in accusing the clergy of having at all times 
 favored despotism. Our answers were publicly read, and produced the best 
 effect, both on the Professor, who as good as retracted his words, and on the 
 audience, who applauded. The most useful result of all this is that it enables 
 us to show the students of the present day that one tnay be a CatJiolic and have 
 common sense, that one may love liberty and religion at the same time ; also it 
 stirs them up from their fatal religious indifference, and accustems them to 
 grave and earnest discussion. 
 
 " But the most interesting and consoling thing of all for us young Christians 
 are the ' Conferences' which have been undertaken, at our request, by the 
 Abbe Gerbet. Now we may say with truth that light shines in the darkness, 
 — Lux in tenebris lucet. Every fortnight we have a lecture on philosophy and 
 history ; nowhere does language more penetrating, or doctrine more profound, 
 resound in our ears. 
 
 " The system of Lamennais, as expounded by him, is no longer that of his 
 provincial partisans ; it is the immortal alUance of faith and science, of charity 
 and industry, of power and liberty." 
 
 A more serious passage of arms occurred between the two 
 parties a few weeks later. 
 
 TO HIS COUSIN FALCONNET. 
 
 "The chair of Philosophy at the Sorbonne was the battle-field. Professor 
 Jouffroy, one of the most illustrious rationalists of our day, thought fit to 
 attack Revelation, the very possibility of Revelation. A young man, a Ca- 
 tholic, addressed some remarks to him in writing, to which the philosopher 
 promised to reply. He waited fifteen days, to get ready his weapons no doubt, 
 and then, without reading the letter, he just made a sort of analysis of it, and 
 tried to refute it after his own fashion. The Catholic student, seeing that he 
 was misunderstood, sent a second letter to the Professor, who this time took 
 no notice of it, but continued his attacks, protesting that Catholicism repudi- 
 ated both science and liberty. Thereupon we all met and drew up a protest 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanajti. 45 
 
 which embodied our real sentiments ; it was signed hastily by fifteen studerts, 
 and addressed to M. Jouffroy. This he could not avoid reading. The au- 
 dience, composed of over 200 persons, listened with respect to our profession 
 of faith. The philosopher hummed and hawed, confounded himself in apolo- 
 gies, declared that he never meant to attack Christianity in particular, which 
 he held, on the contrary, in the highest veneration, and promised to endeavor 
 for the future not to wound the belief of any of his Catholic hearers. But 
 above all, he mentioned a fact which is most significant, and most encouraging 
 for our times: * Gentlemen,' he said, 'five years cigo all the objections sent 
 in to me were dictated by materialism ; spiritualistic doctrines met with the 
 fiercest resistance ; to-day this feeling is greatly altered : the opposition has 
 become quite Catholic' It is sad to see him struggling to solve the problem 
 of human destinies by the mere force of reason ; the most absurd inconsisten- 
 cies and contradictory admissions escape him every day. Lately he declared 
 it was false that the righteous were ever unhappy, or that the wicked were 
 ever spared in this world. Yesterday he confessed that the cravings of the 
 intellect are insatiable, that science, far from satisfying them, only serves to 
 discover their boundlessness, and leads man to despair by showing him the 
 impossibility of ever reaching perfection. 
 
 " He admitted that material knowledge did not suffice to our minds, and 
 that after exhausting it the void remained, and he himself felt impelled to 
 seek for supernatural light. My dear friend, one must pity them, these poor 
 philosophers of rationalism 1 If you could but hear their extravagant propo- 
 sitions and their stupid attacks on Christianity, mere servile declamations 
 from Voltaire, always on the same key ; if you could hear one of them, for 
 instance, trjing to explain away miracles by asserting that, the laws of nature 
 being beyond our reach, we cannot appreciate their derogations, and that the 
 resurrection of a dead man would present nothing miraculous to a savant of \y 
 our day ! — if you could but hear all this, would you not congratulate Chris- 
 tianity on having such adversaries ? 
 
 " Let us cheer up ; our enemies are weak ; these fine doctors of incredulity 
 could be worsted by the simplest of our village priests : let us cheer up, I say, 
 for the work of God is advancing, and will be accomplished by the youth of 
 this very day ; who knows ? perhaps even by you and me 1" 
 
 The zeal and ability which the growing group of young 
 Catholics displayed in the service of truth certainly justified 
 this sanguine expectation. Frederic was as yet far from real- 
 izing that he was himself the mainspring of the movement, 
 yet such was already the case. From this time forward a no- 
 table change was observed in the tone of the Professors of 
 the Sorbonne; their teaching continued as radically anti- 
 Christian as before, but they were more guarded in their lan- 
 guage, more considerate for the feelings of the Christian por- 
 
 / 
 
46 Ufe and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 tion of their audience. This change was attributed by every 
 one to young Ozanam's influence. He modestly speaks of 
 the able letter which had been written to M. Joufifroy as " a 
 protest which we drew up," but it was in reality entirely his 
 work, and displayed an amount of scientific and historical 
 knowledge which showed the infidel philosopher that Chris- 
 tianity would defend herself with those very weapons which 
 he and his school fancied were their own exclusive possessioa 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Frederic's residence with M. Ampere was an advantage 
 lo him in many ways. The patriarch of mathematicians, as 
 he was styled, soon conceived a fatherly affection for his 
 young guest, and yielded to his virtues and talents that gen- 
 erous tribute of admiration which true greatness so readily 
 pays to both. He liked nothing better than to call Frederic 
 into his study, and converse with him by the hour on philoso- 
 phy and science ; he frequently solicited his assistance at his 
 work, and long treatises on scientific subjects are still pre- 
 served written half by one and half by the other. Even after 
 Frederic had left him, on the return of his son from Germany, 
 and gone to live in chambers, M. Ampere constantly sent to beg 
 his help in some urgent and difficult work. Once, when he had 
 only a few days to remain in Paris for the completion of a plan 
 for the classification of sciences, to which he attached great 
 importance, he writes to the hard-worked student — " Come, 
 I entreat you, for the sake of all the friendship you bear me ; 
 there is not a moment to lose, if you will not deprive me of a 
 thing to which I attach immense interest." M. Ampere used 
 to say that if Ozanam had devoted himself exclusively to sci- 
 ence he would have been the first mathematician of his age. 
 There can be no doubt but that his literary power was greatly 
 strengthened by the scientific knowledge which he acquired, 
 almost by contagion, from M. Ampdre. He had always a 
 great horror of becoming simply a man of letters, and nothing 
 else ; a man whose mind only worked in one way and on one 
 subject like a machine. While still a mere boy he felt that 
 true instinct of genius which rebels against a groove, and 
 longs for space. He began very early to plough up his mind 
 
4^ Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 in every direction, and sow a variety of seeds in order that he 
 might reap many and various crops. Science proved a valu- 
 able helpmate to him ; he owed to it, probably, in a great 
 
 ^ measure his sheer inability to treat any subject superficially. 
 He loved it, too, for its own sake, because it opened out to 
 him resources in every part of nature, revealing secrets which 
 literature cannot discover, but only describe ; because it fur- 
 nished him with contrasts and comparisons of endless variety 
 and beauty, and was unconsciously educating him to be deep, 
 philosophical, and harmonious as a writer. Sometimes in 
 these intimate conversations, the sense of the mysteries and 
 beauties of nature which M. Ampere's own remarks or re- 
 searches suggested would throw the Christian savant into a sud- 
 den ecstasy of admiration and reverent self-abasement. Many 
 a time he would break off abruptly in what he was explaining 
 or investigating, and burying his great white head in his hands 
 cry out like one overpowered by some high presence, *' Oh 
 how great God is, Ozanam ! how great God is I" 
 
 The example of the old man's strong and simple faith was 
 a constant lesson, and sometimes a great support to Frederic. 
 His own faith was sound and fervent, but it was not proof 
 
 v/ against those intervals of decouragement* and occasional 
 sinkings of the heart which are consistent with the firmest 
 intellectual belief. He was all his life a sufferer from both, 
 and now, overdriven as he was by work, weary sometimes of 
 the sustained effort which seemed to bring such little result, 
 while all around him egotism and infidelity were prosperous 
 and rampant, he was occasionally assailed by a feeling of 
 bitterness, almost of resentment, against the faith which ruled 
 his soul, but which was slow to repay the constant sacrifice 
 it demanded. One day, while a prey to this feeling, he went 
 out, and, walking in the direction of St. Etienne du Mont, 
 turned in, more from routine, or some unconscious impulse, 
 than from any deliberate prompting of piety ; he advanced 
 
 *The word has no exact equivalent in English. " Low spirita " will noi do, w • maa ouwr to 
 ]• kigh spints and yet Uii 44e»wtaf<l. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 49 
 
 meclianically towards a favorite shrine, where, as usual, a 
 group of humble worshippers, women and children for the 
 most part, were collected, and there kneeling in the midst of 
 them, in an attitude of rapt devotion, he beheld M. Ampere. 
 The sight, the lesson it conveyed, went straight to the young 
 man's heart; he burst into tears, and falling on his knees, 
 repented of having harbored, even in passing, a disloyal 
 thought toward that faith before whose sublimest mystery his 
 great and venerable master knelt in lowly and joyous adora- 
 tion. 
 
 This tendency to decouragemeni, which remained all his 
 life a source of keen suffering to Frederic, doubtless in some 
 degree resulted from physical conditions, from a health 
 naturally delicate, and whicli, from his earliest years, he 
 had pitilessly overtaxed ; but it may be still more regarded 
 as part of the price which most men pay for high mental and 
 spiritual gifts. As life went on, dccouragement became in him 
 a kind of self-weariness, a profound recoil from self, the 
 natural result of that ceaseless inward strife which, with the 
 help of grace, he was carrying on, and also of his finely dis- 
 ciplined nature. The sense of failure in the life-long unsur- 
 rendering battle did not disturb the harmony of his mind ; 
 the sadness it engendered was of that noble kind which, in 
 pure and compassionate souls, grows out of the experience of 
 life, and pours itself out in pity ; it never turned sour, like 
 that of a disappointed man who vents his bitterness in hatred 
 and sterile denunciations, and too often lapses from sheer 
 despair of mankind into unworthy self-betrayal. Ozanam's 
 fault was, on the contrary, to believe too much in his fellow- 
 creatures, to attribute virtue and goodness to them instinc- 
 tively, and to lay the responsibility of their follies and crimes 
 too exclusively at the door of that abstract criminal called 
 Society. He reserved his severest denunciations for himself, 
 and he is unsparing enough of them. Alluding to this very 
 %v^]tz\.Q{ decoura^ement,\{Q. gives the following explanation 
 of it : " There are two sorts of pride , one is satisfied with 
 
 y 
 
5© Life a?id Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 self: this is the commonest and tlie least bad. The other is 
 discontented, because it expects great things from self, and is 
 disappointed. This latter kind, the most refined and by far 
 the most dangerous, is mine." Great minds are commonly 
 humble ones; for humility is, after all, but a clear, compre- 
 hensive view of the gulf that divides self, as we are supposed 
 to see it — as the Christian, or even the philosopher, sees it — 
 from the ideal self that we are aiming at. The grandest 
 minds are apt to realize this best, as the finest natures are 
 sure to suffer most from the sense of failure, in virtue of their 
 finer sympathies and higher aspirations. 
 
 At an age when the steadiest boys are thinking chiefly of 
 their amusements, Frederic Ozanam was brooding over the 
 miseries and wants of his time, suffering from them as those 
 do who love the sufferers too well to take refuge in indifier- 
 ence or callous despair. " We must (^o something, but what 
 can we do ?" was his constant cry; and this anxiety as to 
 his vocation preyed upon him, and was made a matter of 
 ardent prayer. A career was not in his eyes a mere means 
 of livelihood or honorable labor. He realized, as few men 
 do at the outset of life, that every Christian has his work ap- 
 pointed in the scheme of Divine Providence, and that though 
 we are free to reject the ordinance, we are not free to escape 
 the consequences of our rejection. He still maintained the 
 same indifference as to the exact nature and sphere of his 
 work. It was immaterial to him whether it cast him in what 
 the world calls a brilliant position, or left him hidden in 
 some obscure corner. His one anxiety was to be where God 
 wished him to be. This conscious purity of intention and 
 sincere conformity to the Divine will did not, however, pre- 
 vent him from feeling that natural anxiety concerning the 
 future which his circumstances suggested; but he strove with 
 all his might against it. 
 
 " How often have I wished beforehand to build the edifice of my own life," 
 he says to Falconnet, " gathering up in fancy all that seemed to me best cal- 
 culated to make it beautiful and grand fronj my childish school-days, when I 
 
Life and Works of l^rcderic Ozanam. 51 
 
 dreamt in Latin verses, until now, when I dream of so many other things. 
 You remember those endless conversations in our walks together, when we 
 tised to talk over the things we were to accomplish some day. 
 
 " Poor mortals that we are, we cannot tell whether we shall ever see to- 
 morrow, and we want to settle what we will do in twenty years hence ! We 
 know not what we are capable of doing, or what is for our happiness, and we 
 want to trace out a road for the development of faculties whose verj- exist- 
 ence we are not sure of, in order to attain to a happiness which is a mystery to 
 us. Besides, think of this : of what use is ii to know beforehand what we are 
 to do, except in order to do it well ? What is the use of knowing our destina- 
 tion unless it be to accomplish it ? What good is it to see our way except to 
 walk ? Provided, then, that the traveller sees ten steps before him, will he 
 not arrive as surely a^ if he saw to the end of the road ? Provided that the 
 workman knows every hour of the day the task he has to perform the next 
 hour, will he not arrive as well at the end of his work as if he had the com- 
 plete plan of the architect before his eyes ? And does it not suffice for us to 
 know our duty and our destiny for the nearest point of the future, without 
 seeking to peer beyond it into the infinite ? Is it not enough for us to know 
 what God appoints for us to-morrow, without troubling ourselves about wlmt 
 He may command us to do ten years hence, since between this and then He 
 may call us to our rest ? I don't mean by this that we should be careless or 
 lazy in following a vocation clearly pointed out, but I mean that we ought to 
 content ourselves with knowing a portion of it, and pursue that calmly and 
 bravely, and not worry ourselves about the rest that is hidden from us. The 
 uncerUinty of human things should not unnerve our courage or damp our ac- 
 tivity ; on the contrary, it should attach us more firmly to our duty in the pre- 
 sent, because of our ignorance of the future. We should find great peace if 
 we could imbue ourselves with this thought, that we are here solely to accom- 
 plish the will of God ; that that will is accomplished from day to day ; and 
 that he who dies leaving his task unfinished, is just as far advanced in the 
 eyes of supreme justice as he who has leisure to accomplish it fully ; that 
 man can no more create his moral being than his physical ; that we cannot 
 make ourselves artists, poets, orators, men of genius, but tnat we become 
 such little by little, and insensibly, by God's leading. The greatest men are 
 those who never planned their own destinies beforehand, but let themselves 
 be taken by the hand and led." 
 
 The holidays of this year, 1833, were spent in a journey to 
 Italy. Mme. Ozanam accompanied her husband and sons as 
 far as Florence, and there they parted, she remaining with a 
 married sister, while the others went on to Rome, Naples, 
 Milan, Loreto, etc. Frederic had from his childhood shown 
 a keen sense of the beauties of nature, yet, strange to say, this 
 feeling, which was developed in so high a degree later, does 
 not seem to have been strongly called out by this enchanting 
 
52 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 A 
 
 tour; his letters during the course of it show little trace of 
 enthusiasm in this respect, while every page bears witness to 
 his delight in the beauties of art which meet him at every 
 step ; he is in raptures with the poetry of the land of Tassa 
 and Petrarch, but the feeling which transcends all others is his 
 sympathy with the philosophical idea everywhere embodied 
 in art and nature ; this penetrates and absorbs him to the ex- 
 clusion, comparatively speaking, of all other studies and con- 
 templations. Dante is the ideal impersonation of this phi- 
 losophy, and Ozanam falls a prey to the spell which the semi- 
 divine poet has for centuries cast upon so many lofty and im- 
 passioned souls. Recalling the precise spot where this spell 
 was first cast upon him, he writes, many years afterwards : 
 
 "When, after accomplishing a pilgrimage long dreamed of, you visit 
 Rome for the first time, and with a thrill of reverent curiosity ascend 
 the grand staircase of the Vatican, and behold the wonders of every age 
 and country united in the hospitality of that magnificent abode, you come at 
 last to a spet which may be called the sanctuary of Christian art— the cham- 
 bers of Raphael." 
 
 Here, in presence of that immortal masterpiece, the Dis- 
 pute on the Blessed Sacrament, he is seized with enthusiastic 
 admiration ; but what strikes him first, what impresses him 
 i/ above everything else, is the laurel-crowned figure of Dante. 
 How came the Florentine poet to stand thus amidst the most 
 venerable and accredited defenders of the Divine mystery ? 
 This question takes hold of Ozanam, and leaves him no peace 
 until he has worked out its solution, as we shall see. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 1833. 
 fH« requirements of the young Catholic party grew witb 
 thair numbers, and they soon began to feel the want of a 
 meeting-place where they could coalesce and discuss theii 
 plan of action. This primary want was unexpectedly sup- 
 plied by M. Bailly. M. Bailly, or the Pfere Bailly, as the 
 affectioLate familiarity of his young friends had nicknamed 
 him, was a worthy old gentleman, the proprietor of a printing 
 jstablishment and a newspaper, who received into his house a 
 certain number of young men studying for their droit. His 
 newspaper, the Tribune Catholique, was a remarkable institu- 
 tion ; it had no subscribers to speak of, but appeared regular- 
 ly three times a week, and was sent gratis to everybody who 
 would read it. It had been founded in 1828, under the name 
 of the Correspondant^ and soon became the recognized organ 
 of Catholicism, and continued so until 1830, when M. de 
 Lamennais came to Paris and founded the Avenir^ which kill- 
 ed it M. Bailly, foreseeing this result, had advised M. de 
 Lamennais to take up the Correspondant and graft his new 
 journal upon it, instead of founding an original one ; but M. 
 de Lamennais declined the offer. Restarted the ^i;<?«/>, and 
 almost immediately the Correspondant died. M. Bailly soon 
 saw, however, that the success of the brilliant new journal 
 represented a danger more to be deplored than the fall of his 
 own paper, and that it was absolutely necessary to oppose a 
 breakwater of some sort to the extreme doctrines which were 
 pouring out from the Avenir, with the bewildering force and 
 beauty of a mountain-torrent let loose. Accordingly, in 1831, 
 he started the Tribune CatJwlique^ which, like its predecessor, 
 appeared every second day, and went gratis to everybody who 
 
54 ^f^ ^nd Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 would read it. M. Bailly composed the whole of it himself j 
 politics, literature, news, reviews, all issued from his indefatiga* 
 ble pen, supplemented occasionally by an article from one of 
 his pupils, who were proud to contribute in the measure of 
 their ability to the heroic newspaper. 
 
 The desire to give these young men an occupation which 
 would be exciting, and at the same time useful — which would 
 keep them at home of an evening, and furnish them with 
 interesting and wholesome subjects of discussion — had had its 
 share in P^re Bailly's motives for founding the Tribune Ca- 
 tholique. While, however, rendering full justice to his disin- 
 terestedness, and that keen sympathy with the young, with 
 their aspirations, efforts, and special temptations, which made 
 them delight in his society, we must not lose sight of the fact 
 that M. Bailly was the proprietor of a printing-press, and that 
 his enterprise, if it brought him dubious profits, involved but 
 little or no pecuniary risk. He and the Tribune Catholique 
 lived at No. 7 Rue du Petit Bourbon St. Sulpice, and here it 
 was, in the spacious office of the newspaper, that he proposed 
 Ozanam and his friends should assemble once a week, and 
 after hearing a lecture from him on history and rhetoric, the 
 improvised class-room should be turned into a debating-hall, 
 and the students should hold forth amongst themselves. 
 
 M. Bailly's first idea had been to admit none but Catholics 
 as members, but he soon saw that this would not do. In the 
 first place, the Catholics were too few and too scattered, and 
 in the next place, if the members were all of one mind, the 
 debates would die of inanition ; it was absolutely necessary to 
 feed them by introducing an element of contradiction. So 
 the barrier receded, and the circle soon extended indefinitely. 
 Voltairians and Fourierists, Rationalists and St. Simonians, 
 Greeks, Parthians, and dwellers in Mesopotamia, flocked in, 
 and the debates became proportionally lively and interesting. 
 After a while, they became so popular that the oflices of the 
 Tribune Catholique could hold the crowd no longer. P^re 
 Bailly again came to the rescue by transferring th? field of 
 
lAJe and Wot1c% oJ Frederic Ozanam. 55 
 
 battle from his own premises to a spacious hall in the Place 
 dc I'Estrapade, which had formerly belonged to the Bonnes 
 Etudes, a society founded in 1811 for literary and scientific 
 studies, and whose members contracted a special obligation 
 to help each other to get on in the world. This society had 
 been suppressed by the Revolution. M. Bailly continued to 
 give his weekly lectures gratis as heretofore, and, besides this, 
 paid the rent of the place and all the expenses connected with 
 it ; he was a poor man, but whenever there was a service to 
 be rendered toTHe cause of truth, or to the young, he contriv- 
 ed somehow to find the necessary means. 
 
 The scope and power of the young debaters seemed to 
 widen with their enlarged space. The polemics on both sides, 
 the Christian and the anti-Christian, became so earnest that 
 the combatants had to devote all the time they could steal 
 from their regular studies to preparing answers and attacks. 
 The popularity of the St. Simonians, which had been at its 
 culminating point only a little while before, had suddenly 
 wavered, and was now on the decline; but they had still 
 great influence, and some of their leaders were amongst the 
 most prominent of the debaters. They were, moreover, gen- 
 erally the aggressors, and this gave them the advantage of 
 arriving in the field with their speeches prepared ; whereas the 
 attacked party had to answer impromptu, and thus, from not 
 being ready with chapter and verse to prove the fallacy of an 
 argument or the error of a statement, were sometimes appar- 
 ently worsted in the fight. Ozanam, as the recognized leader 
 of the Christian party, took a foremost part in the debates, 
 and displayed here, for the first time in public, that impas- 
 sioned and sympathetic eloquence which was later to win him 
 such brilliant triumphs at the Sorbonne. There was also a 
 sort of legal club, where the students played at judge and 
 counsel, which seems to have been very amusing, as well as 
 instructive. Frederic was one day called upon, at an hour's 
 notice, to supply the place of attorney-general in a heavy 
 and complicated cuse ; and though he acquitted himself to 
 
ffi ZAfe and Works of Frcderit Ozanam. 
 
 the signal approval of the court, be was apparently less satis- 
 fied with the result himself. 
 
 *• I felt nervous and weak," he says to Falconnet, "because I was not sufS- 
 ciently master of my subject " ; and then, going on to speak of the other de- 
 bates, he says, " But the historical debates are quite another thing ; we meet 
 every Saturday, and there it is an open field— history, philosophy, literature, 
 everything has free play. The doors are open to all opinions, and this results 
 in the livehest emulation. Then every composition, after it has been read, is 
 handed over to a committee, which criticises it, dissects it, and names a re- 
 porter, who is to be its organ before the meeting ; nothing escapes the sever- 
 ity of this censorship : it goes into the most minute details, and exercises i 
 control that is sometimes exceedingly amusing. Lastly, a superior committee 
 is established to give one general impulse to the whole conference, to point out 
 means of advancement, to draw up the general reports, and testify to the re- 
 sults of the common work. There have been some most interesting disserta- 
 tions, and some charming pieces of poetry ; six or seven compositions are 
 read at each sitting,*' 
 
 Frederic had a sincere love of poetry, which he always con- 
 sidered a vital element in intellectual, almost in moral cul- 
 ture. 
 
 " We want something that will take hold of us and transport us," he says, 
 * something that will at once possess and elevate our thoughts. We have 
 need of poetry in the midst of the cold, prosaic world where we live, and, at 
 the same time, of philosophy, which will give a reality to our ideal concep- 
 tions. This twofold benefit we find in Catholicism, to which, for our greater 
 happiness, we are bound. Here then is the starting-point of all our intellec- 
 tual labors, as well as the cream of our imagination ; here is the central point 
 to which they should all converge." 
 
 This ever-recurring burden of his song, love of the faith, 
 and steady, persevering efforts in its service, begins henceforth 
 to shape itself into a more definite purpose. 
 
 "You know," he says, "what the great object of my desires was before 
 leaving Lyons. You know tltat I yearned to form a reunion of friends work- 
 ing together at the edifice of science^ under tJie flag of Catholic ideas. This 
 desire remained sterile for a long time, until at last a friend opened to me the 
 door of a small literary assembly, the last plank of what was once the Soci^te 
 des Bonnes Etudes, and where the want of scientific thought and study al- 
 most precluded philosophy and serious research. We assembled in a small 
 room ; fifteen students, at most, were faithful to the rendezvous, and the 
 great questions of the past and future were scarcely touched upon. Thanks, 
 however, to the zeal of a few, the little society has increased in a wonderful 
 auinoer ; it numbers to-day sixty members, many of whom bear names nof 
 
r 
 
 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 57 
 
 anknown to fame ; a numerous audience is present at our meetings, and 
 the large hall is filled to overflowing. We were obliged to make certain severe 
 conditions for the admission of candidates, but nevertheless they continue to 
 multiply, and we recruit daily young men of superior ability. Some of them 
 are precocious travellers, who have visited various parts of Europe ; one even 
 has been round the world ; some have gone deeply into the theories of art ; 
 others have sounded the problems of political economy ; the greater number are 
 devoted to the study of history, and a few to philosophy. We have even two 
 or three of those chosen spirits to whom God has given wings, and who will 
 one day be poets, if death or the storms of life do not break them on the way. 
 The noisy domain of politics is closed to our discussions, but in every other 
 respect we have entire liberty. From day to day grave questions are mooted ; 
 youug philosophers come forward, and summon Catholicism to render an ac- 
 count of its doctrines and its works, and then, seizing the inspiration of the 
 moment, one of us stands up and meets the attack, explains the Christian 
 idea which is misunderstood, appeals to history for proofs of its application, 
 and not unfrequently, warmed on to eloquence by the grandeur of the subject, 
 establishes, on a solid basis, the immortal union of true philosophy with faith. 
 Needless to say, it is not theological propositions which are thus dealt with, 
 but merely the scientific and social bearing of the Gospel. The lists are open, 
 and opinions of every shade may ascend the tribune. As, however, the Chris- 
 tians are equal in numbers to their adversaries, and as, on the other hand, 
 they are animated by more order, zeal, and assiduity, it is nearly always in 
 their favor that the victory is decided. I must add, that the frankest cordial- 
 ity reigns amongst us, a sort of real fraternity ; with the others we are on 
 terms of courtesy and good-will. There are about ten of us Catholics united 
 in a closer union of heart and mind, a sort of literary knighthood, all devoted 
 friends, without any secrets from one another, but who share all, heart to 
 heart, in common joys, hopes, and sorrows. 
 
 " Sometimes, when the air is balmy and the night-breeze soft, and the 
 moonbeams are lighting up the majestic dome of the Pantheon, that gnmd 
 edifice which seems about to lift itself to the skies, and whose sximmit has 
 been robbed of the cross, as if to break the impetus of its upward flight- 
 sometimes, I say, the sergent-de-ville stops on his beat to cast an unquiet eye 
 on six or seven young men, who, arm-in-arm, promenade for hours together 
 In the silent, deserted square. Their countenance is serene, their gait mea- 
 sured, their conversation full of enthusiasm, of sensibility and gladness. 
 They discourse concerning many things on earth and in Heaven ; they speak 
 of God, of their fathers, of friends whom they have left at the old fire- 
 side ; they speak of their country, and of humanity. The stupid Parisian 
 who elbows them as he hurries on to his pleasures does not understand their 
 language; it is a dead language which few here understand. I, who was 
 with them, understood it, and, as I listened to them, I seemed to feel my 
 heart expand ; I felt myself a man, and, weak and cowardly as I am, I drew 
 from my contact with them some moments of energy for the morrow's work. 
 Another source of life to us are the soirees of the young and gifted Count de 
 If ontalembert ; there the most illustrious champions of Catholicism opes to 
 
58 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 us tha rich stores of their conversation. Some are to be seen there who have 
 fought with the sword, and sealed their convictions with their blood : there 
 are young Polish and Belgian officers, and distinguished diplomatists ; then 
 there are men of another school, who come like pilgrims from another 
 empire to contemplate for a moment the spirit of union and gentleness which 
 reigns amongst their adversaries ; there in turns you meet MM. Ballanche 
 and Sainte-Beuve, Savigny the younger and Beauffort, Ampere fils and 
 Alfred de Vigny, de Mero and d'Ecstein. ^Last Sunday Lherminier was 
 there. I even chatted a moment with him : then a most interesting conver- 
 sation was started between him and M. de Montalembert ; we stayed till mid- 
 night listening to them. jVictor Considerant was there also ; a great deal 
 was said about the misery of the people just now ; it is considered a very sad 
 omen for the future. But we talk politics very little, and science, on the 
 other hand, a great deal. M. de Montalembert does the honors with won- 
 derful grace. He talks very well, and is remarkably well-informed." 
 
CHAPTER VIL 
 
 But while the Catholics were thus drawing together, their 
 adversaries were not idle. The chairs of all the faculties in 
 Paris resounded daily to impious and insidious attacks on 
 the doctrines of Chrisiianity. Not satisfied with this, the 
 learned Professors had recourse to calumny, history and 
 experience having taught them that it generally proves a 
 more successful weapon against truth than logic. Every 
 lecture was full of false quotations and historical inaccuracies, 
 perfidiously prepared with a view to mislead their hearers as 
 to the fundamental teaching and spirit of the Gospel. Oza- 
 nam was a daily witness of this disloyal warfare, and it fired 
 him with indignation. His able retort to Professor Jouffroy * 
 had had the effect of silencing direct attack from that bril- 
 liant psychologist by winning his personal respect for the 
 juvenile champion of the cause. But the hostility continued 
 unabated from every other quarter. Frederic meantime was 
 pursued by the idea that deeds, not speech, should be 
 opposed to the enemy. " It is all very well talking and 
 arguing and holding one's own against them, but why can 
 we not i/o somef/ii/ig ^" he constantly repeated. Perhaps the 
 necessity for "doing something" was in a certain degree 
 prompted or pressed upon him by the St. Simonians, who, in 
 answer to their defence of the gospel, continually taunted 
 him and his party with, *' Show us your works !" They 
 admitted the past grandeur of Christianity, but persisted in 
 declaring that it was now a dead tree that bore no fruit. 
 
 Even the historical debates of the Place de TEstrapade, 
 
 • Jouffroy, on his death-bed, ten years later, returned to the fafth which he had spent the 
 greater part of his life in attackinfr. His dying words to a phMosophcr frieid. wb.i stood 
 beside him, were, "AH the systems put together are not worth one page of the Catechism i" 
 
 59 ^ ^ ^ 
 
6o Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 which every week were the occasion of some briUiant display 
 of Frederic's talent, were becoming distasteful to him, because 
 their character was merely literary and rhetorical ; they were 
 not a direct effort in the interests of truth ; they were useful 
 and delightful, but quite inadequate to the service of truth as 
 he understood it. 
 
 One day, after taking part in a more than usually fiery 
 debate on some historical question, he left the conference- 
 hall in company with two friends, M. Lallier and M. La- 
 mache ; they walked on to the Hotel Corneille, where the 
 latter resided, discussing as they went what could be done 
 to stir up the Catholic camp to more strenuous efforts, and 
 to the necessity of utilizing these weekly meetings for some 
 higher purpose. They went up to Lallier's rooms and held a 
 long consultation as to what could be done. It was sug- 
 gested that the leaders should contrive to meet at the house 
 of one or other of them every week, so as to discuss more 
 exhaustively the points it was essential to bring out against 
 their adversaries, that they might thus arrive at the meeting 
 armed efficiently, and prepared all along the line; by this 
 means also they would gradually bring back and maintain the 
 debates within the special sphere they desired. Ozanam 
 mentioned casually in the course of the conversation that, in 
 discussing the matter with a friend the day before, it had 
 occurred to them it might be possible to organize a meeting 
 where they would occupy themselves not with discussions 
 but with good works, and thus oppose a practical denial to 
 the reproach of the St. Simonians. The suggestion met with 
 no immediate response from his two companions, but it had 
 in reality dropped unawares the seed of the future Society of 
 St. Vincent de Paul. Nothing particular was decided that 
 day, but the trio parted with the understanding that they 
 were to convene the heads of their party at an early date for 
 the purpose of arranging some preparatory discussions for the 
 historical debates. 
 
 In the interval, none of them could say why or how this 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 6i 
 
 notion of an exclusively practical meeting, which had been 
 incidentally thrown out by Ozanam, grew in their minds, 
 while, on the other hand, the importance of the proposed 
 preparation for the debates insensibly diminished. They 
 communicated the coincidence to each other, and then of one 
 accord went off to consult Pere Bailly. He saw at a glance 
 the value of the idea, and once more placed the office of the 
 Tribune Catholique at their disposal. 
 
 Here, in the month of May, 1833, they held their first meet^ 
 ing. They begged M. Bailly to take the chair, which the 
 dear old man of course did, together with the tide of Presi- 
 dent. He had as yet only eight members to preside over; 
 the scheme seemed quite Utopian to the rest of the party, 
 who s^ood aloof and contented themselves with wishing suc- 
 cess to their more sanguine and energetic companions. 
 
 It was settled at the very first meeting that their work 
 should be the service of God in the persons of the poor, whom 
 they were to visit at their own dwellings and assist by every 
 means in their power. 
 
 " If you intend the work to be really efficacious," said M. 
 Bailly, " if you are in earnest about serving the poor as well 
 as yourselves, you must not let it be a mere doling out of 
 alms, bringing each your pittance of money or food ; you 
 must make it a medium of moral assistance, you must give 
 them the alms of good advice " (Vaumone de la direction). 
 
 A portion of the very greatest misery of the poor often 
 proceeds from their not knowing how to help themselves out 
 of a difficulty once they have got into it; they fall into dis- 
 tress through accidental circumstances, arising from their own 
 fault or other people's, and they are too ignorant to see their 
 way out of it. The law frequently has a remedy ready for 
 them, but they don't know this, and there is no one to tell 
 them. Their one idea when they fall into distress is to hold 
 out their hand for an alms, a system which generally proves 
 as ineffectual as it is demoralizing. M. Bailly suggested to his 
 young friends that they should try to remedy this lamentable 
 
62 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 state of things by placing their education, their intelligence, 
 their special knowledge of law or science, and their general 
 knowledge of life, at the disposal of the poor; that instead of 
 only taking them some little material relief, they should strive 
 to win their confidence, learn all about their affairs, and then 
 see how they could best help them to help themselves. 
 " Most of you are studying to be lawyers," he said, " some to 
 be doctors, etc. ; go and help the poor, each in your special 
 line; let your studies be of use to others as well as to your- 
 selves; it is a good and easy way of commencing your apos- 
 tolate as Christians in the world." 
 
 Ozanam was sitting at M. Bailly's right hand, and one of 
 those present recalls vividly the expression of his countenance 
 as, with his black eyes aUght, and his irregular, expressive fea- 
 tures quivering with sympathy, he listened to the Presfdent's 
 words, and then burst out into joyous assent. The idea of 
 this aumoiie de la direction was all the more welcome from the 
 fact that the young men had very little else to give. They 
 were somewhat perplexed at first from not knowing any poor 
 people to visit. This difficulty was, however, easily com- 
 passed : M. Bailly advised them to go off to that beautiful, 
 grand soul, Soeur Rosalie, and ask her to help them. She re- 
 ceived the young apostles of charity like the mother that she 
 was, was overjoyed at their idea of the moral help they pro- 
 posed, gave them much valuable advice as to the way of 
 dealing with her beloved poor, and a list of needy and de- 
 servingj families to visit. The Society was of course too poor 
 to have bons * in its own name, so Soeur Rosalie sold them 
 some of hers. The members placed themselves under the 
 protection of St. Vincent de Paul, whose name they adopted, 
 and this done they were fairly afloat. Each member had a 
 poor family to look after ; they met every week to report 
 their experiences, discuss the wants of their protigis^ and 
 the means of relieving them ; the meeting began and ended 
 
 * Tickets for provisioos, coal, etc. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Czanam. 63 
 
 with a prayer, and a collection was made to pay for the bons. 
 The proceeds of the collection were, as may be imagined, 
 exceedingly small ; but by and by the members were mys- 
 tified by finding four five-franc pieces amongst the sous and 
 rare little silver coins that were dropped into the leather 
 bag. Who was the Croesus in disguise who contributed this 
 magnificent sum ? M. Bailly, after enjoying their curiosity 
 for a while, disclosed the secret. He was in the habit of ask- 
 ing Ozanam and one or two of the others to review books for 
 the Tribune Catholique^ and as they naturally scouted the idea 
 of being paid anything by that most disinterested of journals, 
 the editor took this way of remunerating them according to 
 his slender means, knowing they could not reject it. 
 
 The rules of the Society were simple but stringent. It was 
 forbidden to discuss politics or personal concerns at the meet- 
 ings; these topics were not even to be mentioned indirectly; 
 the Society was never to be made use of as a stepping-stone 
 to worldly advancement. This clause, which was emphatically 
 expressed, seemed rather superfluous, considering how remote 
 the chances were of the members being in a position to vio- 
 late it ; but it was inserted as a counterpart to the Bonnes 
 Etudes on which the historical conferences were in a certain 
 sense grafted, and whose members were pledged to help each 
 other on in the world. Nothing of the sort was to be tolerated 
 in the new confraternity; no selfish principle was to inspire its 
 action ; it was to be animated only by charity, by love of God 
 and of suffering humanity, without any kind of reference 
 to self. The same spirit was to preside at the weekly confer- 
 ences ; there was to be no display of eloquence or learning, no- 
 thing but the reports of the week summed up in a business- 
 like manner, and the interests of the poor discussed in brief 
 and simple language. 
 
 The service of the members embraced the sick and infirm, 
 and those who were out of work from some just cause, either 
 illness or external conditions not of their own making ; every 
 precaution was taken against the help of the Society being di- 
 
64 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 verted into unworthy channels, and serving as an encourage- 
 ment to idleness and pauperism. 
 
 Ozanam's first personal experience was a striking illustration 
 of the wisdom of M. Bailly's advice as to the way they should 
 practise charity. There fell to his lot a poor mhtage^ composed 
 of a hard-working mother with five children, and a drunken 
 husband, who beat them all round, though, as the wife con- 
 scientiously explained, " not every day, only from time to 
 time." But what he never failed to do was to drag every 
 penny of the poor creature's earnings from her and spend 
 it at the tavern, while she and the five children starved at 
 home. She was in the last stage of misery and despair when 
 Ozanam found her out. He quickly discovered that the sup- 
 posed marriage was no marriage at all, and that mother 
 and children were free to leave their brutal master if they 
 chose. Her astonishment on hearing this was only equalled 
 by her thankfulness. At first she could not believe it ; in her 
 complete ignorance of law and morals, she saw no reason why 
 it should be so. Ozanam had to go to the Procureur du Roi 
 (Attorney-General) and bring her a written opinion stating 
 the fact in legal form before her incredulity was overcome. 
 She then gladly accepted her protector's offer to remove with 
 her half-starved family to another room out of the house of 
 their tormentor. The fury of the latter was very great on dis- 
 covering that his means of living and drinking were thus 
 suddenly taken from him, and he threatened all sorts of vio- 
 lence. Ozanam got an order from the police for him to quit 
 Paris, but the woman, hearing of this, entreated that he might 
 be rather forbidden to leave it, and that she and the two 
 youngest children might be sent on to Brittany, where her 
 mother lived, and would gladly receive them. This was ac- 
 cordingly done. Ozanam made a collection, which in a few 
 days produced the necessary money for the journey, and they 
 set off as happy as birds set free. The two eldest boys, little 
 fellows of eleven and twelve, were employed in M. Bailly's 
 printing-office, and taken care of at his house. This was the 
 
Life and ll^orks of Frederic Ozanam. 65 
 
 Deginning of tliose patronages which are now established in 
 every parish in Paris, and almost in France. 
 
 At first the eight members thought to limit the confraternity 
 to themselves, fearing that the simplicity of its design might 
 suffer if new-comers were admitted, and that the humble little 
 society might grow into a bustling, official organization. M. 
 Bailly, however, was of a different opinion, and declared that 
 the work must expand and grow; accordingly, on certain 
 stringent conditions, a i^vf new members were admitted. One 
 of them, for a time, repeated the trick of the President, drop- 
 ping splendid alms, in the shape of five-franc pieces, into the 
 bag. He was found out and commended for his modesty, as 
 well as for his self-denial in conforming to the rule, which for- 
 bade a member, however rich, to give any alms to the family 
 he visited, except what was supplied from the general fund. 
 Such were the small beginnings of the great brotherhood of 
 St. Vincent de Paul. Twenty years afterwards,* Ozanam, 
 inaugurating a new Conference at Florence, thus relates its 
 early history and unexpected progress : 
 
 "We were just then invaded by a delug^e of heterodox and philosophical 
 doctrines that were clashing all round us, and we felt the need of strenjjthen- 
 ing our faith in the midst of the assaults made upon it by the various systems 
 of false science. Some of our fellow-students were Materialists, others Si- 
 monians, others Fourierists, others Deists. When we Catholics sought to call 
 the attention of these wandering brothers to the marvels of Christianity, they 
 said to us, ♦ Yes, you have a right to speak of the past. In bygone days 
 Christianity did indeed work wonders, but to-day Christianity is dead. And 
 you, who boast of being Catholics, what do you do ? What works can you 
 show which prove your faith, and can claim to make us respect and acknow- 
 ledge it?' And they were right ; the reproach was but too well merited. 
 Then it was that we said to one another, ' Let us to the front I Let our deeds 
 be in accordance with our faith,' But what were we to do ? What could we 
 do to prove ourselves true Catholics except that which pleases God most ? 
 Succor our neighbor, as Jesus Christ did, and place our faith under the safe- 
 guard of charity. 
 
 " Eight of us united in this idea, and at first, as if jealous of our new-found 
 treasure, we would not open the door of our little assembly to any one else. 
 But God had other views with respect to us. The association of a few inti- 
 mate friends became, in His designs, the nucleus of an immense family of 
 
66 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 brothers that was to spread over a great part of Europe. You see that we 
 cannot with truth take the title of founders, for it was God who willed and 
 who founded our society. 
 
 "I remember that in the beginning one of my own friends, for a moment 
 misled by the theories of the St. Siraonians, said to me with a sort of pity, 
 ♦ But what do you hope to do ? You are only eight poor young fellows, and 
 you expect to relieve the misery that swarms in a city like Paris ! Why, if you 
 counted any number of members you could do but comparatively nothing I 
 We, on the contrary, are elaborating ideas and a new system which will re- 
 form the world and banish misery from it altogether ! We shall do for hu- 
 manity in a moment what you could not accomplish in several centuries.' " 
 
 Nearly a quarter of a century had gone by when Ozanam 
 related this; the St. Simonians had died away, and with them 
 the transcendental theories which were to transfigure the 
 world, while the " eight poor fellows " whom they despised as 
 lunatics had increased to two thousand in Paris alone, where 
 they visited five thousand poor families, or an average of 
 twenty thousand individuals, which represented one-fourth of 
 the poor of that vast city. The conferences in France num- 
 bered five hundred, and there were others established in Eng-, 
 land, Belgium, Spain, America, so far off even as Jerusalem. 
 Thus had the grain of mustard-seed, the smallest of all seeds, 
 sprung up into a great tree, beneath whose branches a multi- 
 tude of wayfarers found comfort and shade. 
 
 Ozanam always repudiated the tide of founder of tlie soci- 
 ety — " We were eight," he would affirm emphatically ; never- 
 theless the title and the glory have clung to him whom the 
 others looked upon as their leader and the animating spirit 
 of their efforts. He deprecated the idea of its having a 
 " founder " at all, or of laying any stress on the human in- 
 strumentality in works of the kind generally. " I firmly be- 
 lieve," he says, *'that the most solid institutions are not 
 those which man creates after his own fashion, with a delibe- 
 rate purpose, and with elements of his own creation, but those 
 which spring, as it were, from circumstances, and out of ele- 
 ments already existing." 
 
 About one month after the bjrth of the society, its members 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozatianu 6j 
 
 publicly unfurled their banner by a courageous act of faith, 
 
 which Ozanam thus deacribcs to his motiier: 
 
 "June 19, 1833. 
 
 " . . . If I were to tell you that on the Feast of Corpus Christi three 
 harebrained young gentlemen sallied forth from Paris by the Champs Ely- 
 sees, at eight o'clock in the morning, I should probably excite your curiosity ; 
 if I announced to you that at ten o'clock thirty students were following the 
 procession at Nanterre, I should no doubt edify your piety ; if I were to add 
 ^hat at six o'clock in the evening two-and-twenty of the said students were 
 comforting the inward man round a table at St. Germain-en-Laye, I siiould 
 mystify you still more ; finally, if I confided to you that on the stroke of mid 
 night, or thereabouts, three youtiis knocked at the door of No. 7 Rue des 
 Ores,* that they were all three in high good-humor, that their legs were 
 shaky, and their shoes covered with dust, and that, moreover, one of the three 
 rejoices in chestnut locks and a broad nose and gray eyes, which are not quite 
 unknown to you — if I were to relate all this, my good little mother, what 
 would you say ? You would most certainly cry out, ' Halloa 1 this looks very 
 like a dangerous lark ! ' Well, now I see that I have struck the right chord, 
 and lighted on one day in the year whose history is safe to interest you, 
 
 •' You know that in Paris, as at Lyons, religious processions are prohibited ; 
 but it does not follow that because a certain number of roughs choose to pen 
 up Catholicism in its temples in the great cities, we young CathoUcs should 
 be deprived of one of the most touching ceremonials of our religion ; accord- 
 ingly, some of us determined to follow the procession at Nanterre, the quietest 
 of little villages, the birthplace of the gentle St. Genevieve. 
 
 " Sunday dawned serene and cloudless, as if heaven intended to adorn the 
 festival with its own splendor. I set off early with two friends, and we 
 arrived the first at the humble rendezvous. By degrees the little group in- 
 creased, and we were soon thirty. First came ail the intellectual aristocracy 
 of the Conference— Lallier, Lamache, Cherruel, a converted St. Simonian, de 
 la None, who writes such charming verses ; then came natives of Languedoc, 
 of Franche-comte, Normans, and last, but not least, Lyonnese ; several wore 
 moustaches, and six of the band measured five feet eight inches. We dispersed 
 and fell in with the peasants who followed the canopy ; it was such a pleasure 
 to elbow these good people, to sing with them, and to see their naive astonish- 
 ment at our fine appearance and our piety 1 The procession was ntimerous, 
 and the decorations full of simple elegance ; all the houses were festooned, 
 and the roads strewn with flowers. The faith and piety that we beheld on all 
 sides it would be difficult to describe. Some venerable old men, who were 
 too feeble to walk In the procession, waited at the threshold of their doors for 
 it to pass ; it was principally in front of their houses that the altars were 
 erected. The ceremony lasted nearly two hours. Then we assisted at High 
 Mass, where the crowd overflowed from the open church doors into the street. 
 When it was all over, Henri, I think, proposed that we should go and dine at 
 
 • The house where Frederic lodged after leaving M. Amp^'f. 
 
68 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 St. Germain. Six or eight poltroons cried out about the distance ; we let them 
 cry and turn their steps towards home, and the remaining twenty-two, in 
 groups of three or four only, so as not to make any disturbance, set forth, 
 kicking up the dust on the road to St. Germain. Pleasure gave wings to our 
 heels ; we gathered wild strawberries in the woods as we went, and in due time 
 arrived at the end of our walk. We went into the church for a quarter of an 
 hour while vespers were going on, then we visited the grand old castle, so rich ia 
 memories, so proud of its antiquity, 
 
 " Then, having disported ourselves some time on the terrace,, we took our- 
 selves off to a worthy innkeeper, who undertook to spread the board for forty 
 sous a head. Here comes the ticklish part of the day's entertainment I How 
 many heroes have been conquered by the seductions of the dessert 1 How many 
 sages have seen their wisdom break like brittle glass at the contact of the foam- 
 ing bottle of champagne ! We were wise enough to flee the temptation ; the 
 modest Maconnais, doubly baptized by mine host and his guests, was the only 
 wine admitted to the feast. So, dear mother, no one rolled under the table, 
 nobody burdened the shoulders of any one else with a melancholy load t We 
 started homewards in the cool of the evening. The moon rose presently, and 
 lighted us through the forest. It was a dehcious hour. ... As night 
 closed in we lost sight of each other ; some took the omnibus at Neuilly ; 
 two of my comrades walked with me to my own door. Monday had begun. 
 Only my heart can tell how often I thought of you during this day, one of the 
 most charming of my life." 
 
 This brave manifestation on the part of the Catholic stu- 
 dents was not without its effect, and it was significant of the 
 ground they had gained that although the adventure was 
 quickly circulated through the ranks, not a single word of ridi- 
 cule was spoken about it or the bold young confessors. 
 
 But these humble individual protests did not satisfy Oza- 
 nam. He felt that, as the evil was greatest amongst the 
 most cultivated intellectual classes, it should be attacked 
 there before any deep or lasting reform could be hoped for. 
 For this warfare, however, a powerful and brilliant champion 
 was needed, and where was he to be found ? 
 
 God, meanwhile, was preparing His weapon. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 1834. 
 
 The history of the Church offers no parallel to the fall of 
 M. lie Lamenijais and the scatiering of the brilliant galaxy of 
 writers and orators of which that misguiding star had made 
 itself the centre. His disciples, stunned at first, could hardly 
 believe in so great a fall. They strove to arrest the master on 
 the brink of the abyss, pleading with him like children striving 
 to save a father from suicide ; they left nothing untried — re- 
 monstrance, entreaties, caresses; they clung to him to the 
 last ; then, seeing that all was in vain, they left him sorrow- 
 fully, and each went his way. 
 
 Tlie Abb^ Gerbet withdrew into solitude, and in course of 
 time gave to the world those works which, for suavity and 
 grace, have been so often likened to the style of F6nelon. 
 
 M. de Montalembert had plunged into the dusky shadows 
 of Benedictine lore, from wliich he was one day to emerge, 
 holding in his hand the Life of St. Elizabeth, that incompara- 
 ble story where the delicate graces of an artist and the kind- 
 ling enthusiasm of a biographer are blended with the rigid 
 accuracy of an historian . 
 
 Tlie Abb6 Lacordaire, after a period of seclusion and study, 
 was the first to stand forth once more in pubHc Hfe — public at 
 least compared with the profound isolation which had pre- 
 ceded it. 
 
 The history of the great Dominican has been amply writ- 
 ten, and is already familiar to the greater number of our 
 readers ; but they may not be so generally aware that a por- 
 tion of his career, its most brilliant one, was closely, though 
 silently, connected with Frederic Ozanam. We are not, 
 
70 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 therefore, straying from our subject by a digression which 
 tends to show that Ozanam's influence touched the destinies 
 of the orator whose genius and sanctity may have had their 
 own share in influencing the destinies of France. 
 
 The anti-Christian spirit which Ozanam and his Httle army 
 were combating so strenuously was deep-seated as ever in those 
 higii centres where the youth of France came to look for intel- 
 Ijctual guidance and inspiration. The Sorbonne had been 
 more guarded in its utterances of late, but its plulosophy was 
 none the less deeply imbued with the spirit of infidehty. 
 Jouflroy and his colleagues were steadily carrying on the cru- 
 sade of Atheism against God, of Voltairianism and rational- 
 ism against the Gospel. What was needed to cope with 
 these men was a theologian, who was at the same time a man 
 of genius, who would unite science and learning and eloquence 
 to faith, and would thus have sufficient prestige, in the first in- 
 stance, to gain a hearing for an unpopular subject. Ozanam felt 
 that this was the only remedy which could be applied with any 
 chance of success. One day, on coming out of the Sorbonne 
 from one of these displays of sophistry and false science, he 
 observed to a companion, " What we want is a man of the pre- 
 sent time, young like ourselves, whose ideas sympathize with 
 ours, that is, with the aspirations and struggles of the young men 
 of our day." Where was this man, this theologian uniting elo- 
 quence, holiness, learning, science, and modern sympa- 
 thies, to be found ? There were able and eloquent divines 
 amongst the clergy of Paris, but they were all elderly, most 
 of them old men, and all cast in the venerable but antique 
 mould of St. Sulpice, which had given so many learned and 
 devout priests to France, but which, if we may apply so un- 
 seemly a word to such a subject, had gone out of fashion. 
 Their mode of preaching belonged to a period that had 
 passed away ; the young sceptics and sophists of the day 
 were not to be lured into the churches by sermons which they 
 knew would be cast in the identical form the world had been 
 used to for generations and grown tired of; they did not 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 7 1 
 
 care about Christian doctrine, and would listen to no exposi- 
 tion of truths they had ceased to believe in, unless it was pre- 
 sented to them in the guise of some attractive novelty ; for it 
 was simply a question of preaching the gospel to a generation 
 which was practically as ignorant of it as, and more antagonis- 
 tic than, the Gentiles whom the twelve apostles went forth to 
 evangelize. It was not a question, as in the middle ages, or 
 even the seventeenth century, of converting men to repent- 
 ance, of waking them up to the terrors of God's wrath; the 
 very foundations for such an apostolate no longer existed; 
 there was, so to speak, no basis of operation for it. If Bos- 
 suet himself had come back to Hfe and preached the glowing 
 sermons which electrified the dissolute court of Louis Quar- 
 torze, he would have produced no effect on the sceptics of the 
 nineteenth century beyond exciting their admiration of his 
 eloquence ; his thunders would have waked no more echo in 
 their souls than the roaring of the lion does from the trees of 
 the forest. What did it avail to draw vivid pictures of the 
 last day, of hell and judgment, and the wrath of an angry 
 God, before the eyes of men who n^d ceased, and whose 
 fathers had ceased, to believe in those awful truths, who ac- 
 knowledged no God but their own bodies, and bowed to no 
 divinity but their own reason? It had all to be begun from 
 the very beginning, and it must be done by one whose voice 
 was attuned to the spirit of the century, while faith lifted him 
 beyond it and above it. 
 
 Henri Lacordaire was essentially a child of this sceptical 
 age; the burning breath of unbelief had swept over his soul, 
 and for a few young, precious years dried up the fountains of 
 faith, until a touch from the finger of God caused the waters 
 to gush forth purer and more abundant than ever. The ex- 
 perience had been full of peril, but it had done its work, anh 
 lefl behind it, in Lacordaire's heart, a bond of sympathy and 
 intelligence wiih those undergoing the same trial which con- 
 stituted, to the last, one of his most persuasive arms. 
 
 His first oratorical successes were achieved in Paris in the 
 
72 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam» 
 
 chapd of the College Stanislas, where the superior, the Abb6 
 Buquet, had invited him to come and address the pupils. He 
 also preached a sermon at St. Roch, but it was written out 
 and composed after the usual model of sermons, and proved 
 a complete failure. Every one left the church saying, '' The 
 Abbe Lacordaire will never be a preacher." He thought so 
 himself. " It is clear to me that I have not sufficient physical 
 power, nor sufficient flexibility of mind, nor sufficient compre- 
 hension of the world, where I have always lived and always 
 shall live in solitude — in a word, sufficient of anything that 
 goes to make a preacher in the real sense of the word."* At 
 the same time his impromptu discourses in the College Chapel 
 met with a success that filled him with consolation. " The 
 young suit me," he writes ; " whenever I have been called 
 upon to address them in our college chapels, I have done some 
 good." And he adds to M. de Montalembert, " If I am ever 
 destined to utilize my powers for the Church, it must be in the 
 apologetical style — that is to say, in that form which gathers 
 up the glories and beauties of the history and polemics of re- 
 ligion in order to exalt Christianity in the minds of the hear- 
 ers, and by this means compel their belief in it." Ozanam, 
 who had heard the Abbe Lacordaire at Stanislas, drew pre- 
 cisely the same conclusion as to the direction of his gifts and 
 the nature of his mission. " There is the man we want to 
 confound Jouffioy and his school ! " he cried on issuing from 
 one of these wonderful improvisations. Here was the man he 
 had dreamed of and longed for as the champion of the Gospel 
 against the infidels and sophists of the Sorbonne. And im- 
 mediately the thought occurred to him that if they could ob- 
 tain from the Archbishop of Paris a series, not of sermons, 
 but of conferences at Notre Dame by the Abb6 Lacordaire it 
 would be a glorious gain. 
 
 He confided this idea to two law students, great friends of 
 his, M. Lejouteux and M. de Montazet ; they fell in with it 
 enthusiastically, and, with that delightful spontaneity of youth 
 ♦ Letter to Ml Lorrain, 6 Mai, 1833. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 73 
 
 which believes in all it hopes, they settled off-hand to go next 
 day and propose the thing to Monseigneur de Qu^len. 
 
 The Archbishop was then lodging at the convent of Les 
 Dames de St. Michel, Rue St. Jacques, his palace having 
 been burned down in the Revolution of 1830. 
 
 Monseigneur de Qu61en was the type of a noble ecclesias- 
 tic, gracious, simple, and possessing at the same time a state- 
 liness of demeanor and a dignity of manner which commanded 
 admiration and inspired respect. He received the three young 
 men with great kindness, listened to them with interest, and 
 promised to give their proposal immediate thought He ex- 
 plained to them, at the same time, that he saw grave .Lnpedi- 
 ments in the way. Emboldened by his condescension, they 
 urged the state of public feeling, the absolute need of apply- 
 ing a remedy to the prevailing hostility towards religion, and 
 at last ventured timidly to mention the Abb6 Lacordaire as 
 the man most fitted for their design. Monseigneur de Qu6- 
 len agreed with their views, and acknowledged the talent of 
 their candidate, but still replied that there were many points 
 to be considered before he could decide upon inaugurating a 
 novelty such as they proposed. He conversed with them 
 some time, and, while lamenting the infidelity and impiety of 
 the times, declared that he was persuaded the dawn of a 
 better day was at hand, and that they would live to see reli- 
 gion come triumphantly out of the present struggle. 
 
 *' Yes," he added impressively, " I have the conviction that 
 a crisis is at hand, and that God is preparing for Himself a 
 signal victory." 
 
 He took leave of the three youths with emotion, gave them 
 his blessing, and then clasping their three heads in one em- 
 brace, he said, « I embrace all the Catholic youth of France 
 in your persons." 
 
 They went away very much elated by the half promise 
 that had been held out to them. The impetus was now 
 given, and the scheme must work its own way on to final 
 accomplishment. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul took it 
 
74 Life attd Works of Frederic Ozattam. 
 
 up with the ardor of youthful neophytes, and the project grew 
 in possibihty from being discussed on all sides. 
 
 The Abbe Lacordaire, meantime, heard nothing of the 
 plan which concerned him so closely. He was just then liv. 
 ing in a convent situated in the remotest part of Paris, plunged 
 in study, and as much aloof from the movement fermenting 
 outside his room as if he had been buried in La Trappe. He 
 was disturbed one day in his studious retreat by the Abbe 
 Buquet, who had been much struck by the extraordinary 
 effect which his itw previous exhortations had produced on 
 the pupils of the College Stanislas, and who came now to beg 
 him to undertake a regular course of *' conferences " in their 
 chapel. Lacordaire, who believed that this was precisely 
 his appointed mission, consented at once. Ozanam and his 
 friends knew nothing either of this proposal or its acceptance; 
 but they still held to their idea that the Abbe Lacordaire was 
 the man who should inaugurate the Conferences of Notre 
 Dame; accordingly, just ten days before he began his lectures 
 at the college, Frederic determined to make another attempt 
 with the Archbishop. He himself drew up a petition, ran 
 about Paris till he got the signatures of two hundred Catholic 
 students appended to it, and, accompanied this time by his 
 friends Lallier and Lamache, set out once more to the Rue 
 St. Jacques. 
 
 Ozanam passed all his life for being extremely shy and 
 timid, but in reality he was neither ; he was too innately sim- 
 ple to be shy in the ordinary sense, and his apparent timidity 
 was but an excess of modesty which made him keep in the 
 background while there was any one else to take the initia- 
 tive, but when he was called upon to do it, he did so with 
 perfect self-possession. 
 
 The Archbishop received him and his companions with even 
 greater cordiality than on Frederic's first visit, encouraged the 
 latter to speak freely, and was impressed by the clearness and 
 depth of his views, his judgment of the times, their necessities 
 and characteristics. The sagacity he displayed would have 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 75 
 
 been remarkable in a man of mature years; in a boy of 
 rri^enty it was surprising. Monseigneur de Quelen assured 
 him that he had not forgotten their conversation of eight 
 months past; that he had turned the subject in his mind, 
 and had determined to have a course of sermons preached 
 at Notre Dame by the best preachers of the day. 
 
 But this was not what the young men wanted. The 
 audience they wished to reach would never go to a sermon ; / 
 the name in itself would be a repellent force, no matter how 
 able the preacher might be. What the petitioners wanted was 
 something entirely out of the beaten track — lectures or con- 
 ferences where the vital questions then agitating the schools 
 would be handled in a brilliant and polemical manner, where 
 religion would be presented in its relations with society, and 
 where the teaching of the anti- Christian press and periodicals 
 of France and Germany would be indirectly met and com- 
 bated. No man of the present day, Ozanam urged, was so 
 qualified for this mission as the Abbe Lacordaire. He was 
 well known to the public through the lawsuit before the 
 Chamber of Peers, where, in company with M. de Montalem- 
 bert, he had displayed such magnificent forensic talent. He 
 held the popular sympathies more than any ecclesiastic in 
 France, and he was esteemed by Catholics as a devout, dis- 
 interested, and zealous priest. 
 
 Monseigneur de Quelen admitted all this, but still he hesi- 
 tated. At last, pressed into a corner by the entreating of the 
 young men, he said he thought he saw a way of satisfying 
 them, and that he would certainly do something. As he spoke 
 the door opened, and M. de Lamennais was announced. 
 
 The fears which for a moment had filled the hearts of the 
 great journalist's disciples were lulled of late ; no one dreamed 
 that M. de Lamennais was at heart a traitor, and on the eve 
 of stabbing the Church with a parricidal hand; still, consider- 
 ing recent events, the extreme cordiality of the Archbishop's 
 greeting caused some little surprise to Frederic and his com- 
 panions. He ran forward and embraced M. de Lamennais, 
 
76 Life and Works of Frederic Ozariam. 
 
 and then, still holding him by the hand, he said, turning to 
 the young men, " Gentlemen, here is the man who would 
 suit you. Ah ! if the feebleness of his voice would only per- 
 mit him to preach, we should have to throw open the great 
 doors to let in the crowd, and even then the Cathedral would 
 not be vast enough to hold the numbers who would flock 
 round his pulpit ! " 
 
 *' Alas ! Monseigneur, my career is ended," replied M. de 
 Lamennais sadly. 
 
 It was indeed ended — Monseigneur de Quelen little guessed 
 how fatally. He little dreamed, while thus lavishing marks 
 of confidence and esteem on that brilliant genius, and desig- 
 nating him to the youth of France as the powerful and ac- 
 credited champion of the faith, M. de Lamennais had already 
 sent the MS. of his Paroles d'un Croyant to M. de Sainte- 
 Beuve, begging him to hurry on the publication as quickly as 
 possible ; and yet for at least a fortnight after this he kept up 
 the semblance of submission to the Holy See, and outward 
 deference to its representatives. His mere presence at the 
 Archbishop's on this day was an act of treason, and the mo- 
 tive of the visit still remains unknown. 
 
 The young men withdrew, leaving their petition in the 
 hands of his Grace. They had done it all very quietly ; no 
 one but themselves knew of the visit. Their surprise and 
 vexation may therefore be imagined on reading a full account 
 of it in the columns of the Univers next day. Lamache at 
 once confessed himself the culprit. He had confided the 
 story to an indiscreet friend, who had evidently betrayed them 
 to the Univers. The two others rushed off immediately to 
 the Rue St. Jacques — Lamache was ashamed to go with 
 them — to make their apologies to the Archbishop. He was 
 more amused than annoyed, and consoled instead of rebuking 
 them. " I had not seen the article," he said good-humoredly, 
 " but it is just like those newspapers ! " He pressed them to 
 his heart, and then, conducting them to the door of an adjoin- 
 ing salon, he said they would find there the preachers whom 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 7 J 
 
 he had charged to carry out their wishes, and that they could 
 not do better than go in and talk over the matter with 
 ces Messieurs whilst he was taking his breakfast. 
 
 The young men were terribly disappointed. The seven 
 preachers to whom they were thus suddenly introduced did 
 not in the least realize their plan. They obeyed the Arch- 
 bishop, however, and opened their programme with frankness 
 and simplicity. The assembled ecclesiastics, amongst whom 
 were some of the lights of the French clergy, were astounded 
 by the boldness and novelty of the design ; but the young 
 men held their ground, and presently the discussion became 
 warm and excited on both sides; three of the preachers alone 
 took a direct part in it, the others listening and chiming in with 
 notes of approval or disapprobation. Ozanam, who had not 
 sat down, was arguing the point with an elderly vicar, who 
 was especially scandalized at the " novelty " of the scheme, 
 and held forth in a loud voice, backing as he spoke, and ges- 
 ticulating with great vehemence, while Ozanam, advancing as 
 the other backed, displayed a corresponding warmth of manner. 
 The discussion was at its height, when suddenly the door 
 opened, and the majestic figure of the Archbishop appeared 
 upon the threshold. Ozanam, who had his back to the door, 
 was made aware of his presence by his interlocutor suddenly 
 thrusting out his arms as if to keep somebody off, while he 
 cried out entreatingly, " Monseigneur, nous nous entendons 
 parfaitement avec ces Messieurs! " 
 
 " Ah ! " replied the Archbishop, surveying the scene with a 
 smile ; " si vous ne vous entendez pas, au moins on vous en- 
 tend ! " And he laughingly withdrew. 
 
 The opinion of the ecclesiastics prevailed. A series of ser- 
 mons was preached at Notre Dame on the i6th of February. 
 In spite of the undeniable talent and zeal of the seven 
 preachers, the result entirely justified Ozanam's predictions. 
 The want of unity in the design, inevitable from the variety 
 of the preachers, marred the effect of the whole, and the fact 
 of their being all priests of the old school prevented curiosity, 
 
7 8 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. ' 
 
 and failed to attract any portion of the public they were 
 specially intended to reach. 
 
 This very public, meantime, was crowding into the small 
 chapel of the College Stanislas, where the Abbe Lacordaire 
 was pouring out his improvised addresses every Sunday. The 
 €rst of these took place on the 19th of January, 1834. 
 
 There were one hundred free seats in the chapel, and on 
 this first day many were unoccupied, but on the following 
 Sunday every one was taken long before the conference be- 
 gan, and the Sunday after that again the affluence was so 
 great that the pupils were sent away to make room for the 
 strangers, who before long numbered six hundred. Amongst 
 them were some of the most illustrious names in France, 
 Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, etc. ; 
 Christians and sceptics, royalists and republicans, all came 
 indiscriminately, drawn by the power of genius. Berryer, 
 who had been in attendance from the beginning, arrived late 
 one day and found the doors closed ; he sent in haste for a 
 ladder and got in through a window; the same thing hap- 
 pened to Chateaubriand. There could be no doubt but that 
 the Abbe Lacordaire had found out the secret of his audience. 
 The " old formula was swallowed up," the antique mould was 
 broken; instead of a sermon written out beforehand, begin- 
 ning with a text, divided into heads, and abundantly fortified 
 with Latin quotations from the old Fathers, the speaker stood 
 up and spoke from the fulness of an overflowing heart; it 
 was a spontaneous utterance, ardent, impassioned, a young 
 mountain-torrent bearing down all before it in its magnificent 
 and sparkling impetuosity. His whole being preached; his 
 eye, like a flame, kindled where it fell; his voice was not 
 modulated to the grave and measured tones of the con- 
 ventional type, but rang out natural and unrestrained, now 
 piercing, now persuasive, now supplicating, now menacing. 
 P^re Lacordaire has been called a revolutionary; even to this 
 day there are to be found some who apply the term to him as 
 a stigma and a reproach. In one sense the accusation is per- 
 
Life and Works of Frederic OzdJiam. 7^ 
 
 fectlyjust: he made a revolution in the pulpit. But it was 
 entirely in the outward form that he revolutionized it. The 
 subjects were the same immemorial ones that have been 
 preached from all the pulpits of Christendom since St. Peter 
 and Paul to our own day — God, Creation, the origin of evil, 
 original sin, the redemption, human nature, the prophecies, 
 the Incarnation ; there was no novelty in all this, nor in his 
 interpretation of the doctrines embodied in each subject; 
 nothing was new except the j]iod& of treatment, rendered irre- 
 sistible by the genius of the orator. The stereotyped preacher 
 had become a personal presence, a soul identified with the 
 souls he was addressing, sharing their fears, understanding 
 their doubts, sympathizing with their hopes, an apostle long- 
 ing to convince them, to win them to God by the contagion 
 of his own faith, filled with too mighty a compassion to leave 
 any room for scorn. M. de Montalembert, speaking of 
 Henri Lacordaire as he saw him shortly before this period of 
 his life, describes him as the impersonation of " virtue armed 
 for the defence of truth." And the master touch paints him 
 well. Like David in the flower of his shepherd days, when 
 he came down and slew Goliath, Lacordaire stood forth in the 
 bright meridian of his youth, girt with a warrior's courage, 
 and strong with the strength of his consecrated virgin heart, 
 ready to give battle to the enemies of his God. 
 
 The effect was like nothing the world had seen since the 
 days of Bossuet. Ozanam, who was always one of the earliest 
 in the chapel with his body-guard of St. Vincent de Paul, 
 listened entranced and inconsolable. Why was this glorious 
 apostolic voice confined within narrowing college walls, in- 
 stead of waking the echoes of the grand Cathedral ! He re- 
 solved that nothing should deter him from pursuing the pro- 
 ject which, now more than ever, he felt to be well inspired. 
 While waiting and working for its fulfilment let us see how it 
 fared with the yoang student in his own life and personal con- 
 cerns. For this purpose we cannot do better than refer to 
 some of his letters. 
 
CHAPTER IX, 
 1834-5- 
 
 TO FALCONNET. 
 
 January 7, 1834. 
 
 " I AM undergoing, at this moment, one of the most painful trials perhaps 
 that life has in store for us — uncertainty as to my vocation. All this is be- 
 tween ourselves ; but such is the flexibility and weakness of my character that 
 there is no study, no work which does not possess a certain charm for me, and 
 in which I cannot fairly succeed, while there is not a single one capable of 
 absorbing all my faculties and concentrating my powers. I cannot occupy 
 myself with any one thing without thinking of a score of others, and yet, you 
 know, no work can be great unless it be otie. I used to fancy, in my ignorance, 
 that it was possible to be at one and the same time a savant and a barrister ; 
 but, now that my legal studies are drawing to a close, I must choose between 
 the two ; I must put my hand in the urn, and shall I draw a black number or 
 a white one ? I am surrounded, in a certain way, by seductions of every sort ; 
 I am sought after, put forv.ard, pushed, as it were, into a career foreign to 
 my studies ; because it so happens that God and education have endowed me 
 with a certain grasp of ideas, and a certain breadth of observation, people 
 want to set me up as a sort of leader of the Young Catholic party. A number 
 of young men, of great merit, favor me with a degree of esteem of which I 
 feel most unworthy, and men of mature age make advances to me. I must 
 take the lead in every movement ; and when there is anything difficult to be 
 done, I must bear the burden of It. They cannot hold a meeting, a conference 
 of law or literature, but I must take the chair ; five or six reviews and news- 
 papers want articles from me ; in one word, a number of circumstances, inde- 
 pendent of my will, besiege and pursue me, and drag me from the path I had 
 tracea out for myself. 
 
 " I am not prompted by vanity in telling you all this ; on the contrary, I 
 feel so keenly my own insufficiency — I, who am not yet twenty-one — that all 
 these compliments and eulogies humiliate me, and make me often inclined to 
 laugh at my own importanre. But it is in truth no laughing matter. I sometimes 
 endure downright torture from the fear that all this incense may goto my head 
 and intoxicate me, and thus cause me to miss what I have hitherto considered 
 as my proper career, tlie one which the wishes of my parents pointed out, and 
 towards which I myself felt willingly drawn. And yet this convergence of 
 outward circumstances, may it not be an indication of God's will ? I cannot 
 tell ; and in my perplexity I do rot rush forward, nor make a single step in 
 advance, but stand quietly and resist, and then, when the pressure is too 
 
 So 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 8i 
 
 great, I give way. For some time past — above all, since I have seen some 
 very young men laid low by death — life has worn a different aspect to me. 
 Although I never gave up the practice of my religion, the idea of the other 
 world had not sunk deeply enough into my heart, and I only began now to 
 realize that I had not hitherto been mindful enough of two companions who 
 are always walking by our side, even when we do not notice them — GoJ and 
 death. I began to feel that Christianity had been to me hitherto a sphere of 
 thought, a sphere of worship, more than a sphere of action, of intention, of 
 morality. Silvio Pellico's writings esp>ecially brought this home to me ; and 
 the more I dwell on it, the more I feel myself grow in disinterestedness, in 
 kindness, and in peace. I seem to understand better the conditions of life, 
 and to have more courage to go forth and meet them. It seems to me also 
 that I am less proud than I used to be. Don't fancy, for all this, that I have 
 turned saint or hermit. I am unluckily a long way off from the former, and 
 I have no vocation for the latter. While feeling all that I have described, I 
 contrive to be very jolly, asking nothing better than to enjoy myself, busying 
 myself, perhaps rather too much, with literature, history, and philosophy, 
 doing a little law, and, as usual, losing a good deal of time." 
 
 He said truly ; the " jolly " element was not excluded from 
 this thoughtful life, but its manifestations were of the most 
 innocent kind. Some of the survivors of those bright days 
 still recall, with a thrill of the old merriment, a certain 
 memorable soiree given by Ozanam, to which the guests 
 were invited to bring their own chairs, his apartment only 
 boasting of three. A procession of young gentlemen was, 
 accordingly, seen one evening filing down the Rue des Gres, 
 each carrying a chair on his head, to the infinite amusement 
 of the public, who trooped after them, while the laughter of 
 the chair-bearers themselves endangered their own and their 
 chairs* equilibrium, and brought out the concierge in amaze- 
 ment to enquire the meaning of the singular cortege. About 
 eleven o'clock they came down again, holding their chairs 
 aloft as before, and quite as steadily, for the hospitality of 
 their host had been as simple as it was cordial, syrups and 
 little cakes being the only excesses indulged in. " But oh ! 
 how we did enjoy ourselves," exclaimed the narrator from 
 whom we hold the story ; " we nearly died of laughter, and 
 between times there was such earnest, enthusiastic talk on so 
 many deep subjects, I don't believe young men know how 
 
82 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 to amuse themselves or laugh nowadays, as we used to do; 
 they want so much money for everything; we used to be 
 jolly on nothing at all !" 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER. 
 
 " i6th May, 1834. 
 "According as one g;rows older, and sees the world nearer, one finds how 
 hostile it is to all one's ideas and most cherished sentiments. The more one 
 sees of men, the more one discovers their immorality and selfishness — pride in 
 the learned, foppery in men of the world, coarse debauchery amongst the 
 people. When one has been brought up in the pure atmosphere of a Chris- 
 tian family, the sight of all this turns one aside with disgust and indignation, 
 and inclines one to murmur and curse. But the Gospel forbids it, and tells us 
 to devote ourselves, heart and soul, to this same society which repulses and 
 despises us. One feels all this deeply at my age, and those realities which 
 destroy one's illusions leave me often sombre and grave as a man of forty. I 
 feel that my duty is to fill some place, but I cannot see where it is ; ambitions 
 are so numerous, and capacities so multiplied and various, that it is difficult 
 to break through the lines. How can a poor little ear of wheat pierce its way 
 up through the masses of tares growing all around it ? And then, even if I 
 saw my place clearly marked out, I want the necessary energy to fill it ; you 
 know this is the constant burden of my complaint — irresolution and frailty. I 
 never can say to-day, ' I will do this,* and then to-morrow do it. But per- 
 haps, after all, I am too young, and it is wrong of me to worry myself so, and 
 to want to be a grown man when I am still so near childhood in many points ; 
 but I cannot forget that this year my education will be finished, and that in 
 the month of August I may be a barrister if I wish — I, a barrister 1 After 
 all, it is no great things, a barrister." 
 
 Frederic had no taste for politics, and troubled himself 
 little about them, although he was destined later to exercise 
 a certain indirect political influence in his sphere. The fol- 
 lowing letter, written at this period, will be read with interest. 
 The opinions it expresses were, as we shall see, those to 
 which he adhered throughout his life : 
 
 " As to political opinions, I should like to see the annihilation of the spirit 
 of politics for the benefit of the social spirit. I have for the old royalty all the 
 respect which one owes to a glorious invalid, but I would not lean on him, 
 because with his wooden leg he could not keep pace with the new generation. 
 I neither deny nor repudiate any combination of government ; I regard them 
 all merely as instruments for making mankind happier and better. If you 
 must have a formula, here it is : 
 
 " I believe in authority as a means, in liberty as a means, in charity as an 
 end. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. S3 
 
 " There are two principal kinds of government, and these two kinds may 
 be animated by opposite principles. 
 
 " Either it is the sacrificing {exploitation) of all to the profit of one, as in 
 the monarchy of Nero — a monarchy which I abhor. 
 
 ♦* Or it is the sacrifice of one to the profit of all, as in the monarchy of St. 
 Louis, which I revere and love. 
 
 ♦♦ Or it is the sacrificing of all for the profit of each one, as in the republic 
 of the Terror, and this repubUc I curse. 
 
 " Or it is the self-sacrifice of each one for the benefit of all ; and this is the 
 Christian republic of the primitive Church of Jerusalem. Perhaps it may be 
 also that of the end of time, the highest state to which humanity can rise. 
 
 " Every government is respectable in my eyes, insomuch as it represents 
 the Divine principle of authority. In this sense I understand the omnis 
 potestas of St. Paul. But I think that in every government the sacred prin- 
 ciple of liberty should be admitted, and I believe that we may energetically 
 defend this principle, and that we may raise our voice in stem and courageous 
 accents to warn the authority which sacrifices it instead of sacrificing itself. 
 Speech is meant to be the dam which should be opposed to power ; it is the 
 grain of sand against which the waves break. 
 
 ♦'Opposition is useful and admissible, but not insurrection; active obe- 
 dience, passive resistance ; the Prigione of Silvio Pellico, not les Paroles <fun 
 croyant. 
 
 " You and I are too young just now to take any part in the social struggle, 
 but this does not compel us meantime to remain idle in the midst of the 
 world suffering and groaning around us. A prep)aratory way is open to us 
 before trying to aid in the public good ; we may do good to a few before 
 regenerating France ; we may succor a few of her poor sons. This is why I 
 long to see all yomtg men ttlio have intelligence and heart united in some 
 scheme o/c/uzrity, that thus a vast and generous association for the relief of 
 the poorer classes might be formed all over the country." 
 
 The holidays of 1834 were spent at Lyons in the quiet 
 circle of his family. Frederic's impression of the changes 
 which had taken place during his absence of two years is 
 thus described to Lallier : 
 
 *' I feel almost a stranger here after two years' absence. Old acquaintances 
 are gone ; little cousins have made their appearance during my exile ; older 
 ones have gone through their philosophy, and are getting ready to goto Paris. 
 Some have got married, others have lost their wives. My old confessor is 
 dead, and nearly all the priests in the parish have been changed. The town 
 itself is changed. The cannon of the ' joum^es * of April have destrcyed some 
 of the houses, but, by way of compensation, our hills are crowned with brand- 
 new fortresses, with green glacis and white walls, and cannons of the finest 
 bronze. Trade is nowhere, and the workmen are emigrating to Switzerland ; 
 but then we have a splendid garrison, reviews, practising of f re-arms, patrols, 
 
84 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 and sentries at every step. The quays are carpeted with uniforms, and long 
 sabres ring pleasantly on the pavement and in the public squares. If a few 
 manufactories are empty, what then ? Prisons, and those haunts which sup- 
 ply them with inmates, are full to overflowing. In many places the cannons 
 and bullets have damaged entire neighborhoods, so that the fronts of the 
 shops have to be completely rebuilt. In fact I can hardly recognize this poor 
 old city of Lyons. On the other hand, I have found some new joys awaiting 
 me here. Our family from Florence has come to live here ; my uncle and 
 aunt and cousins are most affectionate and kind to me ; add to this the love 
 of my parents and my two brothers, and you will say I ought to be satis- 
 fied ; that this is enough. Well now, my dear L., I think I may say it, without 
 ingratitude to Providence, it is not enough. God has placed in our souls two 
 cravings which resemble each other, but which we must not confound. We 
 want kindred to cherish us, but we also want friends who are attached to us. 
 The tenderness that springs from blood, and the affection that springs from 
 sympathy, are two distinct enjoyments which we cannot do without, and 
 neither of which can replace the other. The love of kindred is the more 
 sacred of the two, because it is planted in the heart by God Himself ; friend- 
 ship, on the other hand, is the more seductive, from being our own achieve- 
 ment." 
 
 TO LALLIER. 
 
 " Of all my recent pleasures the greatest has been a pilgrimage to St. Point 
 to see M. de Lamartine. Dufieux, who knows him, had asked permission to 
 bring me. We set out together one Sunday morning for Macon, where we 
 arrived towards evening, after passing through a charming country. There 
 we heard that M. de Lamartine was at his Chateau de St. Point, five leagues 
 beyond Macon, in the mountains. Accordingly on Monday morning after 
 breakfast we started in a light char-a-banc, driven by a small charioteer in 
 rags, who took us over the road of the ancient and celebrated Abbey of Cluny. 
 When we had admired from a distance the ruins of this old house of God, we 
 struck off to the left through the wide and beautiful valley where the great 
 man's abode is situated. On a knoll at the foot of the mountains there is a 
 little village, overshadowed by a semi-Gothic church and a castle ; the castle 
 belonged formerly to the dreaded Count of St. Point, who rivalled in cruelty 
 the Baron des Adrets. The hamlet consisted, twenty years ago, of a group of 
 coarse, ignorant, and wicked peasants, M. de Lamartine has civilized the 
 entire place. He repaired, enlarged, and embellished the castle ; he rebuilt 
 the steeple ; he has bought a house to serve for a hospital and schools ; he has 
 opened roads to establish communications between the village and the high- 
 road, and he is at this moment building a magnificent bridge over a ravine. 
 These improvements have drawn numerous inhabitants to the valley. White 
 houses are rising on every side, and the whole region wears an aspect of ease 
 and content. The manners of the people have become pure and gentle, and 
 the stranger who comes to visit the poet meets good folks at every turn who 
 volunteer to serve him as guides. And now here we are at the gates of the 
 castle! An elegant Gothic porch adprns the eotrance, while three lordly 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozatiam, 85 
 
 towers lend it a somewhat majestic appearance. We cross the threshold of 
 the salon^ where Madame de Lamartine greets us with the utmost kindness ; 
 she is an excellent lady, good and pious, an Englishwoman converted to the 
 Catholic faith. It so happened that this day there were a great many people 
 at St. Point, an English family amongst others, so we saw to our disappoint- 
 ment that we should not be able to enjoy the undivided society of him whom 
 we had come so far to see. At last M. de Lamartine himself appeared. No- 
 thing could be more friendly than the way he welcomed Dufieux, and he re- 
 ceived me with the greatest affability. He took us off to a pavibon, where we 
 sat chatting, all three, for nearly two hours. He explained to us his large 
 and generous political views, and his beautiful literary theories. He asked 
 innumerable questions concerning the young men of the colleges of to-day, 
 and the spirit which animates them, and seemed full of hope in the future. 
 His ideas are linked together with solid logic, his language is picturesque and 
 brilliant ; he thinks more like a philosopher than a poet, and speaks more like 
 a poet than philosopher. I have rarely seen a man who combines more 
 noble qualities. He is fifty-three years of age, and bears on his countenance 
 the impress of sorrow borne with dignity, and of glory accepted with modesty. 
 His forehead is very broad, his eyes large and bright, the lines of his mouth 
 at once gracious and severe, his features are thin, his height commanding. 
 
 *' At table and in the salon he struck me as full of charm ; he pressed us 
 cordially to remain and spend a week with him, and, as we could not do this, 
 he made us promise to go and see him in Paris this winter. We dined, slept, 
 and next day he took us to see his two other houses of Milly and Monceaux. 
 All along the road the peasants saluted him with an air of affection ; he 
 accosted them and chatted with them, enquiring about their vintage, their 
 affairs, and their families ; they all seemed to love him, and the children ran 
 after him, calling out Bon jour ^ Monsieur Alphonsel At Monceaux I found 
 M. de Pierreclare. We dined together, and in the evening took leave of our 
 illustrious host and relapsed into our native obscurity." 
 
 These pleasant episodes did not distract Ozanam's mind 
 unduly from graver interests. Amidst the pleasures of his 
 holiday he was mindful of the poor and their friends of St. 
 Vincent de Paul. 
 
 TO M. X. 
 
 *♦ I think you have taken what was best worth taking amongst us in seizing 
 a charitable idea, which was latent in your own heart, no doubt, but had not 
 yet found its outward expression. In a work like this, I think we should 
 abandon ourselves much more to the inspiration of our heart than the calcu- 
 lations of our head. Providence sends us counsel and advice in the form of 
 external circumstances, of thoughts and inspirations. I think you will do bet- 
 ter to follow this guidance freely, and not hamper yourself with rules and for- 
 mulas. Besides, the end which we propose to ourselves in Paris is not pre- 
 Ctselj the same, it seems to me, which you have in the provinces. We aw 
 
S6 Life and Works of Frederic Ozananu 
 
 birds of passage, at a distance from the paternal nest, and over whom that 
 vulture, incredulity, hovers, hoping to make a prey of us. The first thing 
 was, therefore, to gather these poor birds of passage under some sort of pro- 
 tecting shelter, and to form an association of tmttual encouragement for Catho- 
 lic young men, a centre where they would find friendship, support, and the 
 stimulus of example ; where the elders would welcome the new-comers from 
 the provinces, and give them a sort of moral hospitality. Now, the strongest 
 tie, the principle of true friendship, is charity. Charity cannot exist in the 
 hearts of many without outwardly overflowing ; it is a fire that dies for want 
 of being fed, and the food of charity is good works. Since we have been in 
 existence we have distributed about two thousand four hundred francs, some 
 books, and a pretty good quantity of old clothes. Our resources consist in 
 the collection we make every Tuesday, the alms of some charitable persons 
 who come to the rescue of our good will, and our cast-off clothes. As it is 
 possible that at the beginning of the new scholastic year our numbers will be 
 increased to a hundred, we shall bs obliged to divide, and split into several sec- 
 tions, which will all periodically hold a common meeting. When those new 
 arrangements have been made, I will let ycu know. For, notwithstanding 
 what I have just been saying of the difference which exists between our special 
 aims, this should not diminish their union and harmony ; on the contrary, 
 just as divergent rays tend to the same centre, so should our various efforts, 
 tending to different points, resolve themselves into the same motive and pro- 
 ceed from the same principle. We must therefore be united so as to double 
 our strength; we must hold frequent communication with each other, so that 
 we may all be stimulated and made proud and happy in common by the suc- 
 cesses of each individually. In writing to our little society in Paris I begged 
 leave to draw up a list of correspondents with your name at the head, and 
 then those of your friends. This will not be an empty academical form, but 
 a real correspondence, for which you may count on my punctuality as I count 
 upon your friendship." 
 
 On his return to Paris after the holidays he writes to the 
 same friend : 
 
 '*I did not forget the^ report that you asked me for. Our President, M. 
 Bailly, looked for it amongst his papers, but has failed to find it ; the docu- 
 ment must therefore be lost. It is no great misfortune ; there was perhaps a 
 germ of pride in this written resume of our work, and God, who forbids our 
 left hand to know what our right hand does, may have allowed us to lose a 
 title-deed whose only use was to gratify a foolish vanity. Charity should 
 never look back, but always forward, for the number of her past benefits is 
 always very small, while the present and future wants that she has to relieve 
 are infinite. Look at the philanthropical societies, with their meetings, re- 
 ports, summings-up, bills, and accounts ; before they are a year old they have 
 volumes of minutes and so forth. Philanthropy is a vain woman who likes to 
 deck herself out in her good works and admire herself in the glass ; whereas 
 charity is a mother whose eyes rest lovingly on the child at her breast, who 
 
Ufe and Works of Frederic Ozanatn, 87 
 
 has no thought of self, but forgets her beauty in her love. Neither do I con- 
 sider this loss of much consequence to you. It is better that you should raise 
 your work by your own strength, under the inspiration of your own heart, 
 according to local circumstances, and under the guidance of the venerable 
 priest who presides over you ; with all this you will easily do without a model 
 which was at best very imperfect ; you will not do as we did, but better than 
 we did. 
 
 "This prediction is no flattery ; it is simply the expression of the feeling 
 inspired by your letter, of that apostolic fire which has inflamed the Christian 
 world, and of which your soul has caught the sacred spark. It would have 
 been selfish to keep such a pleasure all to myself ; I felt I must communicate 
 your glowing words to our little gathering, so I took your letter with me, and 
 read the greater part of it to our colleagues and the cure of the parish, who 
 had kindly come to take the chair that day. The impression it produced will 
 be best conveyed to you in the words of one of the members, who exclaimed, 
 ♦ Truly this is the faith and the charity of the first centuries ! ' Oh ! the faith 
 and charity of the first centuries 1 It is not too much for ours. Are we not, 
 like the Christians of those early times, thrown into the midst of a corrupt 
 civilization and a society that is falling to pieces ? Cast your eyes on the 
 world around you. The rich and the happy ones, are they much better than 
 those who made answer to St. Paul, * We will hear you another time ' ? And 
 the poor and the people, are they much more enlightened and better off 
 than those to whom the apostles first preached the Gospel ? Equal evils, 
 therefore, demand an equal remedy ; the world has grown cold, and it is fqr 
 us Christians to rekindle the vital fire ; for us also to reopen the era of mar- 
 tyrdom. For to be a martyr is possible to each of us ; to be a martyr is to 
 give ourselves up to God and our brethren, to give to Heaven all that we have 
 received — our goods, our blood, our whole being. This offering is in the 
 hands of each of us ; we can all make this sacrifice. It only remains to choose 
 the altar whereon we will lay it, the divinity at whose shrine we will conse- 
 crate our youth and the days that are to follow ; let us decide whether our 
 rendezvous shall be in the temple of the idol of egotism, or in the sanctuary 
 of God and of humanity. Humanity in our times is very much like the tra- 
 veller in the Gospel : while journeying along the road traced out for it by 
 Christ, it was seized upon by robbers, by wicked men, who despoiled it of all 
 it possessed, the treasure of faith and love, and then left it naked and moan- 
 ing, lying by the wayside. The priests and the Levites passed, and this time, 
 as they were true priests and Levites, they drew nigh to the sufferer whom 
 they fain would have healed, but in his delirium he did not recognize them, 
 and thrust them from him. 
 
 " Let us, in our turn, poor Samaritans that we are, weak and of little faith, 
 draw near to the wounded man. Perhaps he will not take fright at us, being 
 only what we are, but will let us try to probe his wounds and pour balm into 
 them ; let us breathe words of consolation and peace into his ear, and then, 
 ■when his eyes are opened, we will place him in the hands of those whom God 
 has constituted the guardians and physicians of souls, and who are, so to 
 speak, our hosts on the road of our pilgrimage here below, since they feed our 
 
88 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 famished spirits with the word of life and the promise of a better world. This 
 is the task that is before us, this is the divine vocation to which Providence 
 calls us." 
 
 The resuming of Ozanam's studies was the signal for a 
 return of the old scruples and anxieties from which we have 
 already seen him suffering. He writes to one of his college 
 friends, M. Dufieux : 
 
 " My conscience does not spare me. I may say it to my own shame and the 
 greater glory of God, nobody perhaps has received more than I have : good 
 inspirations, holy desires, noble ambitions ; there is no virtue, there is not a 
 good work, moral or scientific, to which this mysterious inner voice has not at 
 some time or other invited me ; there is perhaps not a vine in the Father's 
 vineyard that has been surrounded with more care, and to which He may with 
 greater justice address those words, ' Quid potui facere vinese et non feci ? ' 
 But I, hke an ill weed as I am, have not expanded under this divine breath, 
 nor struck my roots deep into the soil that has so lovingly worked all around 
 me. At this very moment, when the call from above is sounding in my ears, 
 when I feel inspiration withdrawing from me as it were in wai^ning, even at 
 this moment I cannot voill^ I cannot do, and I feel the weight of daily neglected 
 responsibility gathering on my head. 
 
 " I pour out to you my feelings as they come, without order or forethought ; 
 but that you may the better believe me, and that your indulgent affection may 
 not attribute this confession of weakness to a moment of passing excitement, I 
 will explain myself more clearly. 
 
 "There are two things especially that fire us young Christians with a gene- 
 rous ardor ; these are science and virtue. I was taught early to love both, and 
 I fancied myself made for them. I had resolved on deeper studies and a more 
 complete moral reform for those two years that I have to remain in the capi- 
 tal ; I placed my hopes under the auspices of our celestial Mother, and I 
 trusted much in my own good will. Well, since then three months have 
 slipped away, and here I am with my hands empty ! Continual malaise and 
 wearisome efforts began to quench my ardor, and when I at last found my- 
 self with full leisure and all needful facilities, I fell into a state of languor 
 from which I cannot rouse myself. Study, that I so loved formerly, now fatigues 
 me ; my pen is like lead in my fingers ; I can no longer write. Stretigth^ 
 that g^ft of the Holy Spirit so necessary to the men of this age if they are to 
 traverse its perils without failing, strength is not in me. I am blown about by 
 every wind of my imagination. Piety is a yoke to me, prayer a mere habit of 
 the lips, the practice of Christianity a duty which I accomplish with 
 cowardice, the last branch I cling to so as not to roll to the bottom of th- 
 abyss, but whose nourishing fruits I do not cull. I see young men of my age 
 advancing proudly in the path of real progress, while I hang back, despairing 
 of ever following them, and spending in idle lamentation th? tiipe I should b^ 
 up and doing." 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 89 
 
 The month of March, 1835, which opened in such depres- 
 sion for Ozanam, had a great consolation and triumph in store 
 for hira, as we shall see in the next chapter. 
 
 In the autumn of this year we find the following letter 
 
 TO LALLIER. 
 
 •♦ Lyons, September ^i, 1835. 
 
 ** . . • You know I left Paris on the 12th, as I was anxious to be at 
 Lyons for my mother's/*?/^ on the 15th ; and also to hear Mass on that day, it 
 being the/e/eot the Blessed Virgin. I had therefore to halt at Macon, twelve 
 miles from hence, to assist at the Holy Sacrifice, hoping 10 find a coach that 
 would take me on later in the day. But I reckoned without my host ; there 
 was no conveyance to be had but shanks' mare, and so I had to spend the 
 beautiful day of the Assumption tramping over the dusty road ; at last, within 
 a few leagues of Lyons, I came up with a shaky old trap that jogged me to 
 my destination by eight in the evening, just as they were all assembled to 
 wish my mother joy— father, mother, brothers, uncle, aunt, cousin^, all were 
 there, and I leave you to guess what a joyous meeting it was. 
 
 "But a certain sadness was mmgled with this first embrace. The fears I 
 had entertained about ray mother's health were but too well founded. You 
 remember that terrible day, and the sweet letter that I showed you ? My 
 terrors and grief were shared in the same degree by my father and my 
 brothers. For two months my mother was a prey to a languid exhaustion of 
 which it was impossible to foretell the end. Some grave symptoms were added 
 to this weakness, and the fears of those who were near her at Lyons were no 
 less acute than mine in Paris. Happily, before my return a great improve- 
 ment had taken place ; she is no longer ill, but she still bears the traces of her 
 recent sufferings. When I kissed her, I was frightened at the thinness of her 
 cheeks. I am at rest for the moment, but I cannot help trembling for the 
 future. I cannot but see that this precious health is seriously shaken ; that 
 her sensitiveness has become excessive ; that the most trifling thing distresses 
 and alarms her; that her angelic sweetness and goodness are constantly 
 struggling against a ner\ous and diseased organization. And with all this 
 she redoubles her good works, and imposes on herself an amount of fatigue 
 which I, young and strong as I am, would recoil from. The thought of next 
 winter fills me with anxiety. Dear friend, if you have two places to spare for 
 me in your prayers, give the first one to my mother, and the other to myself ; 
 if you have only one, let it be for my mother ; to pray for her is to pray for 
 me. 
 
 *' Added to these personal anxieties I found a general impression of terror 
 prevailing at Lyons. The cholera, which has been making such fearful 
 ravages in the southern provinces, seemed to be steadily advancing to our 
 gates. It had come up the Rhone, within twelve leagues of our city, driving 
 before it crowds of fugitives, who flew to us with the most frightful accounts, 
 and brought with them a degree of terror worse even than the plague itself. 
 
9© Life and Works of Frederic Ozana?n, 
 
 Our impressionable city was terribly excited. The ignorant and brutal part 
 of the population began to talk of poisoned waters, and to make ready for the 
 invasion of the pestilence by riots and insurrection ; while, on the other hand, 
 a multitude of the faithful besieged Notre Dame de Fourvieres, singing peni- 
 tent canticles within the church and in the open air outside ; while numbers of 
 devoted persons presented themselves to serve as nurses for the poor when the 
 epidemic should have actually come. Fifteen hundred had their names in- 
 scribed beforehand. 
 
 " Well, God has for the second time glorified His Mother and consoled our 
 city; once more His hand, which was raised to threaten, has been opened to 
 bless. The most ancient church of old Gaul, the church of Lyons, is proud, 
 happy, and grateful for the magnificent privilege which has been granted to 
 her. The name of the Dame de Fourvieres no longer brings a smile to the 
 lips of the sceptic, who cannot but think that to her protection he owes per- 
 haps his life." 
 
 Ozanam alludes here to a circumstance which is spoken 
 of to this day with emotions of lively gratitude by the 
 faithful of Lyons, and with respect by all. In 1831 the 
 cholera was raging fiercely in the surrounding towns, and had 
 reached within a short distance of the city. The panic- 
 stricken population rushed in thousands up the hillside of 
 Fourvieres, and placing themselves under the protection of 
 the Mother of God, vowed to commemorate their gratitude 
 for their deliverance, if she obtained it, by painting a me- 
 morial-picture in her honor, and placing it in the church. 
 The vow was heard; the pestilence advanced to the very 
 gates of Lyons, and then suddenly halted ; not a single case 
 occurred in the city. In 1835 the same miraculous pro- 
 tection was granted to a similar manifestation of faith in 
 Mary's power and clemency ; nor has the charmed circle 
 which she drew around the favored city ever been broken 
 since. In recent visitations the cholera has gone all around 
 it, ravaging the immediate neighborhood, but never entering 
 Lyons. This fact is so well known, that as soon as a cry is 
 raised announcing the approach of the dreaded visitor, great 
 numbers flock in from the towns and villages, thus, humanly 
 speaking, multiplying the chances of contagion by fright and 
 overcrowding. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 1835-6. 
 
 The extraordinary success of the Abb^ Lacordaire*s Con- 
 ferences the year before had caused alarm in grave and 
 influential quarters. The clergy looked on with a certain 
 vague uneasiness at first, and then with absolute terror, at the 
 popularity which was drawing all the intellect of Paris to the 
 feet of the young preacher. Not a word was to be said 
 against his orthodoxy, but the form and manner of its enuncia- 
 tion was novel, and novelty was next to heresy. Nothing 
 was held in greater horror at archiepiscopal headquarters than 
 novelty. Lacordaire, who, before the end of the Conferences 
 at the College, had been overpowered by invitations from the 
 various cures in Paris to go and preach in their churches, went 
 to consult the Archbishop as to which he siiould accept, and 
 was dismayed to find the latter reluctant to let him continue 
 the ministry of preaching at all. The Abb6 Buquet counted 
 on his resuming his Conferences at Stanislas in the course of 
 the year, but the Archbishop appeared to hesitate at consent- 
 ing even to this. He did not, however, venture to say so at 
 once ; he merely requested that Lacordaire would refrain from 
 preaching anywhere during Lent; "Not," he added, "that 
 I am jealous of talent, but it is better not to provoke invidious 
 comparisons." 
 
 Lacordaire submitted without a word, and promised that 
 he would not speak in public during Lent, but the Arch- 
 bishop still hesitated about the Conferences, and said he must 
 have eight days to think the matter over. 
 
 Meantime the enemies of the new apostle were bringing all 
 influence to bear against him in the mind of the Archbishop. 
 
92 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 It was alleged that even the Government had taken fright 
 and looked in displeasure at the spirit of revolution, nay, of 
 anarchy, which pervaded the language of Lacordaire. It 
 dreaded the effect of this exciting eloquence on the young 
 men of Paris, and it was to be feared that, if the Conferences 
 were resumed, they would witness the painful scandal of an 
 interviention by the authorities. There was not the smallest 
 foundation for any such fears on the part of the Government, 
 and this representation of them was immensely exaggerated ; 
 but Monseigneur de Quelen, who did not see exactly where 
 to distinguish between malice and hearsay, was exceedingly 
 disturbed, so that when at the end of a week Lacordaire re- 
 turned, he found him more nervous and vacillating than be- 
 fore. The fact of his having no definite grounds for his pro- 
 hibition made it seem unjust and cruel. Lacordaire defended 
 himself firmly, but with a certain calm indifference as to the 
 issue. The Archbishop admitted that none of the theologians 
 who had assisted at the Conferences had detected a single 
 flaw in any part of his doctrine. " Then, Monseigneur," 
 argued Lacordaire, " since my orthodoxy is above suspicion, 
 what signifies the divided opinion of parties ? What work, 
 since the foundation of Christianity, was ever accomplished 
 without giving rise to divided opinions ? " 
 
 As to the political complications upon which his opponents 
 laid stress, he denied their existence, but observed that if on 
 investigation they were found to exist, he would for the present 
 renounce preaching anywhere. The Archbishop shrank from 
 imposing this sacrifice upon the zealous young priest, and 
 above all upon the Catholic youth who were clamoring im- 
 patiently for him. If he had acted on the impulse of his own 
 judgment, he would have desired Lacordaire to go on as he 
 had begun; but his judgment was warped by pressure from 
 those around him, and by his ingrained horror of novelty. 
 The policy of the higher clergy at that time was to let well 
 enough alone, to make no stir, above all to do nothing new, 
 and to avoid giving any new impulse to the public mind, lest 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozatiam. 93 
 
 it should provoke opposition, which it might be difficult to 
 appease. Such a policy was, as we have seen, tlie very anti- 
 podes of that which animated Uzanam and his friends, who 
 looked to Lacordaire as the herald of their cause. 
 
 But Lacordaire, much as it grieved him to disappoint these 
 eager young spirits, and the multitude of others outside them, 
 whose souls were longing for bread, refrained from pressing 
 Monseigneur de Qu61en too hard. When they were parting, 
 the latter said, " I don't forbid you to resume the Conferences ; 
 I cannot do it; but reflect, examine, take counsel." He was 
 very kind, but agitated and undecided. Lacordaire left his 
 presence mentally determined not to resume them. He com- 
 municated this decision the same day to two or three intimate 
 friends, who confirmed him in it. A few days' reflection, 
 however, made them change their opinion as to its wisdom. 
 
 Lacordaire, likewise, who felt free to decide for himself, 
 since the Archbishop had left him the right to do so, began to 
 ask himself if it was just to others as well as to himself to dis- 
 appoint these ardent expectations. " If," argued his friends, 
 **you give up now, you give up for ever; the Archbishop has 
 not forbidden you; on the contrary, personally he sympa- 
 thizes with you. Why yield to paltry cavilling and prejudice ? " 
 A weightier argument than this was, that in lapsing into 
 silence he was abandoning a mission which no one else could 
 fulfil. 
 
 While Lacordaire was still hesitating, drawn one way by 
 the €l sire to do whatever was most agreeable to his Arch- 
 bishop, and the other by the longing to continue a fruitful 
 ministry, the Superior of the College Stanislas received a 
 message from the Archbishop informing him that the Con- 
 ferences would not be resumed that year. Lacordaire was 
 immediately apprised of this, and was wounded to the quick 
 by what seemed to him a want of frankness and even justice 
 on the part of Monseigneur de Quelen. He wrote to him 
 and protested respectfully, but with the warmth of just indig- 
 nation, against the stigma wliich this direct prohibition cast 
 
94 i^\f^ ^fi^ Works of Frede7'ic Ozanam. 
 
 upon him. " Monseigneur," he cried, " I have but one talent; 
 if I may not utiUze it, I am reduced to nothingness as a 
 priest. . . . Monseigneur, I ask for justice at your hands; 
 I claim the one possession, the one honor of a priest — the 
 nght to preach Jesus Christ, until at least I fail in orthodoxy, 
 which is the first of all things, the thing which, with God's 
 help, I will never fail in, never at least wilfully." There was 
 no doubt a leaven of human feeHng in this remonstrance ; it 
 would have been more perfect in the priest to have bowed 
 down and accepted the humiliation in silence; bat we must, 
 on the other hand, consider that, at a period when manly in- 
 dependence was at a discount in all classes, the dignified 
 bearing of the Abbe Lacordaire was a fine and salutary ex- 
 ample. Monseigneur de Quelen, however, could not see it 
 in this light ; he was shocked at the vivacity of his young 
 subordinate, but replied, in a tone of gentleness and dignity, 
 that he feared the perils of improvisation, and proposed to 
 him, as a condition of resuming his Conferences, that he 
 should write them out beforehand, and submit the MS. to the 
 censure of certain persons, who should be named for the pur- 
 pose. Lacordaire knew from experience that such a plan 
 would utterly paralyze his powers ; he said so, and, thanking 
 the Archbishop for the intended kindness, declared his deter- 
 mination to renounce the Conferences altogether. 
 
 All this occurred in December. The sacrifice once made, 
 Lacordaire was calm and satisfied. He could not help feel- 
 ing, at the same time, that his position was perilously com- 
 promised. If the Archbishop allowed him to remain under 
 this prohibition, it was tantamount to an interdict. 
 
 Ozanam and his friends meanwhile were in despair. 
 Measuring the event by their own regrets and disappoint- 
 ment, they magnified it into a positive disaster. This feeHng 
 was shared by the Abb6 Liautard, the founder of the College 
 Stanislas, and its late Superior, who had made their cause his 
 own. Whatever the result might be, this was a great moral 
 victory, for the Abbe Liautard was a man whose opinion 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 95 
 
 had greater weight perhaps than that of any ecclesiastic of the 
 day in France; the clergy held him in high esteem for his 
 zeal, piety, and learning, and the Government had, more than 
 once, been compelled to reckon with him, on account of his 
 influence with the noblest families in France, whose sons he 
 had educated. The Abbe had seen, and appreciated better 
 than any one, the effect of Lacordaire's Conferences in the 
 college chapel; he had rejoiced as at the advent of anew 
 prophet, and he was proportionately indignant on seeing the 
 Archbishop's better judgment overruled by the puerile policy 
 and petty jealousies of a narrow-minded party. He wrote a 
 vigorous expostulation on the subject, condemning boldly the 
 weakness of the Archbishop's conduct and administration, 
 and this document was circulated in manuscript amongst the 
 clergy of Paris, on whom it produced a great effect. 
 
 Early in January, about a month after Lacordaire's letter 
 to the Archbisliop, when he had ceased almost to think of 
 the painful episode, and was once more quietly absorbed in 
 his studies, he was one day walking through the gardens of 
 the Luxembourg, when a friend accosted him, and, after the 
 usual salutations, remarked irrelevantly, " Why don't you go 
 and see the Archbishop, and have an explanation with him ? " 
 The Abb^ replied that there was nothing further to explain, 
 and that he had no pretext for intruding on his Grace. Be- 
 fore he had gone many steps further he met another frignd, 
 who said almost in the same words, " Why don't you go and 
 see Monseigneur de Quelen ? I am sure he would be glad 
 to see you, and to make it up with you," 
 
 Lacordaire, who was prone enough to see the finger of 
 Providence in the events of daily life, was struck by the 
 coincidence, and resolved on the spot to go at once to the 
 Rue St. Jacques. * " It was not the portress who opened 
 the door," he says; "it was a choir nun, who liked me, 
 because, as she said, every one was down on me.~ Mon- 
 
 • See Foissct's Life of Lacordaire^ vol. i. chap, viii., for this incident and the foregoing 
 
g6 Life and Worh of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 seigneur had forbidden his door, it seemed, * but,' said the 
 sister, < I will go and tell him it is you, and perhaps he will 
 see you.' The answer was favorable. I found the Arch- 
 bishop walking up and down the room with a triste, pre- 
 occupied air. He gave me but a slight sign of welcome, and 
 I turned and walked up and down with him without his 
 uttering a word. After a long silence, he stopped suddenly, 
 and, looking at me with a scrutinizing glance, said, * I have a 
 /notion of confiding to you the pulpit of Notre Dame ; would 
 you accept it ? ' The sudden overture, the motive of which 
 was entirely unknown to me, did not dazzle me in the least. 
 I replied that the time for preparation was short, the theatre 
 was solemn, that though successful before a small audience, 
 I might easily fail before an assembly of four thousand souls. 
 I ended by asking for twenty-four hours to reflect." 
 
 What meantime had worked the sudden revulsion in the 
 
 mind of the Archbishop ? He had that very morning seen 
 
 the Abbe Liautard's pamphlet, and had just finished reading 
 
 it when Lacordaire was unexpectedly announced. The idea 
 
 /6f answering and confounding his own accusers, of appoint- 
 
 / ing Lacordaire to the pulpit of Notre Dame for the Lenten 
 
 ^ sermons, occurred to the Archbishop a moment before, and 
 
 the coincidence of the young preacher's arrival when his 
 
 mind was thus occupied about him seemed providential, and 
 
 Monsieur de Quelen carried out the impulse as we have seen. 
 
 It is needless to say how triumphantly the unpremeditated 
 step was justified by the results. Never had the venerable 
 walls of Notre Dame witnessed so magnificent a victory from 
 its pulpit over the hearts of men. The young men of Paris 
 were jubilant, none more so than Ozanam. 
 
 " These Conferences on the Church, her infallibility, her 
 constitution, her history, etc., were all most beautiful," he 
 writes ; " but the last was eloquent beyond anything I ever 
 heard. Monseigneur de Quelen, who was present at all of 
 them, addressed at the end his solemn thanks to M. Lacor- 
 daire, and named him canon of the Cathedral. This does 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 97 
 
 indeed pour balm into our wounds!" Nothing could be 
 more generous than the way in which the Archbishop gave 
 this public testimony of his admiration to the man whose in- 
 fluence he had for a moment so mistrusted. When the last 
 words of the final Conference were spoken, and the vast 
 assembly was about to kneel to receive the blessing of the 
 Prelate, the latter rose, and with that incomparable majesty 
 which lent such weight to his words in private and in pubUc, 
 expressed his thanks to him, " on whom God had bestowed 
 piety and eloquence, and, still more, that virtue which con- 
 stitutes the priest— obedience ! " He called him, moreover, 
 his " faithful and excellent friend, the joy and consolation of 
 his heart." 
 
 Looking back on those glorious days when the young 
 ranks of St. Vincent de Paul closed, like the advance-guard 
 of a victorious army, round the pulpit of Notre Dame, Lacor- 
 daire once exclaimed, with emotion, " Ah ! Ozanam is an 
 ancestor ! " 
 
 Ozanam, in his turn, claimed for his illustrious friend a 
 share in his own paternity towards the militia of charity, and 
 always spoke of him as one of its early fathers. He certainly 
 proved its chivalrous defender in the hour of peril. When 
 a despicable cabal threatened it with suppression by the 
 Government, Lacordaire, from his pulpit, appealed to the 
 Catholic heart of France in behalf of those young men " who 
 had placed their chastity under the guardianship of charity — 
 the fairest of virtues under the faii[est of guardianships." 
 
 " What blessings," he exclaimed, " will not this knighthood 
 of youth, purity, and fraternity draw down upon France in 
 behalf of the poor ! Let the gratitude of the country prove 
 at least the safeguard of its liberty." 
 
 We will close this chapter with a letter of Ozanam*s: 
 
 *• Paris, 16 ^fay. 
 " In these days we have need of great virtues and strong men. It is true 
 the reig^n of evil is being undermined in all directions, and the time is drawing 
 ue^r when truth will be hailed anew as queen of the world ; but so lon^ as 
 
y 
 
 98 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 the earthly life of humanity lasts, evil will still live in the midst of it ; evil is 
 always abroad somewhere on the earth — sometimes as a tyrant, sometimes as 
 a slave ; and its efforts are never so formidable as when it sees its empire 
 threatened and in danger of escaping from its grasp ; every religious reaction 
 is sure to provoke a corresponding reaction of impiety. Thus it is that, while 
 the idols of the eighteenth century see their shrines deserted, while our tem- 
 ples, so long forsaken, see their solitude repeopled, and the Abbe Lacordaire 
 thunders forth the Word of God over an assembly of six thousand men, 
 crowded into the mighty nave of Notre Dame, while these things are being 
 accomplished, rationalism is not idle ; it is busy muliplying its periodical lite- 
 rature, organizing its seductive propaganda, casting its nets round the youth 
 of the day, besieging our most illustrious men, causing the fall and ruin of 
 those who but yesterday were our glory, dethroning the Abbe de Lamennais 
 from the pure heights where faith and genius had placed him, making us 
 tremble for the virginal muse of Lamartine. These things are sad, but they 
 are true. We Catholics are punished for putting our trust rather in the 
 genius of our great men than in the power of our God ; we are punished for 
 having prided ourselves too much in them personally, for having met, with 
 too much scorn, the taunts of the unbelievers, and for holding up, to justify 
 ourselves in their eyes, not the Cross of our Redeemer, but our philosophers 
 and our poets ; we are punished for having leaned upon those human reeds, 
 melodious as they were, and they have broken in our hand. Henceforth we 
 are taught to look higher for our help ; it is not a fragile staff that we need in 
 journeying through the world ; it is two wings, the wings that bear the angels 
 — faith and charity. We must make haste to fill the places that have become 
 vacant. Genius has failed us ; let us be led by grace ; we must be courageous 
 and persevering ; we must love unto death ; we must fight unto death. . . ." 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 1837. 
 
 OzANAM terminated his legal studies by the usual examina- 
 tion, and with such success that he resolved to go up, as 
 soon as possible, for the degree of Doctor of Law. The bar 
 was now open to him, but he continued undecided as to his 
 real vocation. He could not divest himself of the feeling 
 that in becoming a barrister he was betraying his true calling; 
 that Literature, not Law, was the mistress who claimed his 
 first allegiance, and who would best requite his services. 
 Reason, interest, the wishes of his family, all pleaded in 
 favor of the bar, but he himself was conscious of an insur- 
 mountable repugnance to the profession. Might not this be 
 a warning and a presentiment ? 
 
 *• The moment of choosing our destiny is a solemn one, and everything 
 that is solemn is sad," he said to Lallier. *' I am suffering from this absence 
 of a vocation which shows me the dust and stones of every road, and the 
 flowers of none. The one to which I am nearest just now, the bar, strikes 
 me as especially uninviting. I have talked it over with several legal men. I 
 have seen what one must be satisfied to put up with in order to get business 
 and what annoyances, on the other hand, accompany the business. People \ 
 are fond of saying that barristers are the most independent of men ; they are '. 
 at least as much slaves as the rest, for they have tvfp sets of tyrants equally 
 insupportable — ^the attorneys to begin with, and clients by and by." 
 
 Duty to his father, who had made great sacrifices to keep 
 him for five years in Paris, pointed emphatically to the bar, 
 however, as his legitimate career ; so Ozanam, conquering all 
 personal antipathies, bravely entered on his duties as a bar- 
 rister. The briefs were rare, and the few that came were not 
 followed by any brilliant results. Here is his own account 
 of these beginnings: 
 
 '• Will it interest you to hear something of the kind of life I am leading 
 now ? It is always the same odd life, divided between interrupted studies and 
 
 4*v 
 
lOO Life and Works of Frederic Ozanarn. 
 
 wearisome occupations. I reckon irreverently amongst the latter the few briefs 
 that take me to the Courts. The famous case of interdiction that was pending 
 when you left has been pleaded twice since then, and will be decided perhaps 
 to-morrow. On two other occasions I distinguished myself at the bar of the 
 Civil Tribunal and at that of the Police Correctionnelle for some trifling 
 cases. This week the Assizes have given me plenty to do. On Monday a 
 poor devil, who was defended by me, got condemned to five years' hard labor, 
 not so much for the crime in question, which was not proved, as for his ante- 
 cedents, which were villanous beyond a doubt. The day before yesterday the 
 scene changed ; and if your evil genius had conducted you to the great hall of 
 the Hotel de Ville, you would have beheld your most humble servant by the 
 side of Pitrat, the director of the Gazette du Lyonnais^ cited for having at- 
 tacked the King's Government ; you would have heard a lengthy harangue 
 from the King's counsel, invoking the utmost rigor of the law against the 
 pitiful little newspaper, and the young advocate endeavoring, according to his 
 laudable custom, to maintain a neutral position between the accuser and the 
 accused, to justify the latter without exasperating the former ; you would have 
 heard a statesman of four-and-twenty delivering judgment, with unblushing 
 audacity, on the highest questions of constitutional law, and on the weightiest 
 conterhporaneous facts. I cannot tell whether, in company with almost the 
 entire audience, you would have counted, at the close of the proceedings, on 
 a verdict of acquittal ; but I know for a fact that, not being deaf, you would 
 have heard a sentence of condemnation, which, for not being unduly severe, was 
 none the less disappointing to the plaintiff and his counsel. I was very much 
 complimented on my speech ; but you know that my poor speechifying has the 
 luck to gain applause much oftener than conviction. Having now led you 
 through the most memorable scenes of the barristerial life I have been leading 
 these few months past, I leave you to guess the rest." 
 
 In the month of April Frederic went to Paris on account 
 of his approaching examination for the Doctorship of Letters. 
 He was recalled suddenly by the death of his father. It was 
 no ordinary love that Doctor Ozanam had inspired in his 
 children ; they not only revered him as their father, but looked 
 up to him as a model of all the Christian virtues. Frederic 
 was fond of tracing to his parents every moral and intellec- 
 tual gift he possessed, and this with genuine simplicity. 
 " You did not know him," he says to a friend, to whom he is 
 announcing his loss, " but if ever your indulgence found any- 
 thing in me worthy of esteem or love, attribute it to my father, 
 to his advice and example." This idea was not the result of 
 present sorrow j it was a conviction which he retained all his 
 life. A month before his death^ summing up all the mercies 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozairevt, loi 
 
 and blessings of his life, he makes the foilowiiiji; ithattsgiving 
 for his father : 
 
 •• Thou didst preserve his faith amidst many evil times. Through revolu- 
 tions, adversities, and in the soldiers' camp his nature remained noble ; he 
 maintained his sense of justice unimpaired, his charity to the poor unwearied. 
 I bear this witness to my father : when I was compelled to the sad duty of 
 looking into his accounts for the settlement of our inheritance, I found that 
 one-third of his visits had been made without remuneration, to the poor re- 
 cognized as such. He loved science, art, and labor, and he sought to inspire 
 us with the love of the good and the beautiful. When he left the Hussars 
 he had read the Bible of Dom Calmet from one end to the other ; he knew 
 Latin as few of us professors know it nowadays." 
 
 Frederic inherited probably from his father his great love 
 for the sacred text. He read the Bible himself in Hebrew 
 ever since he understood that tongue, and his mother was 
 fond of relating a little circumstance in which his knowledge 
 of it once served him rather humorously. Several Protestant 
 clergymen at Lyons were in the habit at one time of coming 
 to hold theological discussions with him. One day one of 
 them kept him four hours at it, the point in dispute being a 
 text which each interpreted differently. At last Frederic ex- 
 •claimed : " But why should a learned man like you argue 
 from a translation ? Let us get the Hebrew version and fight 
 it out over the original." His antagonist had to admit that 
 he was not a Hebrew scholar, and when Ozanam proceeded 
 to give his direct translation of the text he refused to accept 
 it, observing that he would consult some higher authority, 
 and then come back to finish the argument. " But," the 
 mother of the young savant would add proudly, " he never 
 came back ! " 
 
 Frederic now devoted all his energies to comforting his 
 mother, and endeavoring to replace the protector who had 
 been taken from her when apparendy she most needed him. 
 
 "Happy the man to whom God has given a holy mother !" he exclaims. 
 •' But why is it decreed that in proportion as the halo of sanctity shines more 
 brightly round that beloved head the shadow of death dra^s'S flfear to it ? WTiy 
 in the languages of men is perfection synonymous with the end ? WTiy does 
 God give us nothing here below, but only lend to us ? O dear friend, pray 
 
J 
 
 50,2 Lifiand Works of Fre dene Ozanam, 
 
 with me that my feiother may be spared to me ; that she may be spared to my 
 brothers, who also have such need of her ; that this home, which you saw so 
 happy and so full of love, may not be laid desolate, filled with mourning, and 
 emptied of all joy, given as a spectacle of human vicissitudes, and made a 
 scandal for the unrighteous, who, seeing how severely Christian families are 
 dealt with, may ask in their insolence, * Where then is the God in whom they 
 hoped ? ' Ubi est Deus eoruni ? 
 
 "It is in Him that I have placed all my hope, and I am resolved to follow 
 only the indications He gives me in the shifting circumstances of life. 
 
 " I continue by letters the steps I was taking in Paris. Meantime, I have 
 not neglected my literary labors ; they are always one of my most salutary 
 consolations. I am still busy on Dante." 
 
 The steps to which he alludes had reference to a Professor- 
 ship of Commercial Law, which some influential persons had 
 proposed getting established at Lyons in order that Ozanam 
 should be named to it. The municipal body, amongst whom 
 he had many friends, received the suggestion cordially, and 
 immediately sent up a petition to that effect to the Minister 
 of Public Instruction at Paris. Some time must, however, 
 elapse before the affair could be definitely settled, and pend- 
 ing this Ozanam worked on diligently at his law business. 
 
 *' I have now pleaded twelve times," he says ; " three times only before the 
 Civil Tribunal, where I gained my verdict each time. The emotions of plead- 
 ing are not without their charm, but the emoluments are slow in making their 
 appearance, and the relations with men of business are so painful, so humili- 
 ating, so unjust that I cannot get reconciled to them. Justice is the last moral 
 asylum, the last sanctuary of existing society, and to see it surrounded with 
 dirt is for me a source of indignation which is provoked at every instant. This 
 kind of life irritates me too much ; I nearly always come back from Court 
 deeply wounded, for I find it as hard to resign myself to the sight of evil as 
 to its endurance. Yet I am far from entertaining the idea of renouncing a 
 profession which present circumstances render it more than ever essential for 
 me to persevere in. After the holidays I will commence a lesson of law to 
 three young fellows who are trap grands seigneurs to go and sit on the 
 benches of the Ecole, and whose fees I shall be very happy to pocket." 
 
 The necessity for securing some more definite and satisfac- 
 tory returns than these chance fees, and those which his occa- 
 sional briefs brought him, made Ozanam turn his eyes longingly 
 in the direction of the proposed chair of Law, which was being 
 zealously forwarded by his numerous friends both in Paris and 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Czanam, 103 
 
 at Lyons. He was very sanguine as to the success of these 
 efforts, but tried to maintain himself in a state of placid indif- 
 ference. 
 
 *♦ If," he says, '* all these negotiations have no other result, they will at any 
 rate have proved to me the affection of my friends ; the good wishes of all 
 have helped on the efforts of many. Meantime I remain passive. I feel a 
 sort of religious awe, perhaps superstition, concerning the present uncertainty 
 of my destiny. Having once placed it in the hands of Providence, I fear to 
 meddle with it. It seems to me as though the success or failure of this affair 
 is to decide whether I shall remain in the world, or take leave of it when cir- 
 cumstances shall have set me free. You perceive from this how daring my 
 dreams are, and to what sacred heights they venture to soar. But in truth I 
 envy the lot of those who devote themselves without reserve to God and to 
 humanity. Again, on the other hand, the question of marriage presents it- 
 self frequently to my mind, and never without leaving behind it the most in- 
 credible repugnance. I am weaker than many others, and the wanderings of 
 my imaigination might easily have carried my heart out of its depth, but some- 
 how I feel that there is a manly virginity which is not devoid of honor and a 
 certain charm, and that we abdicate this to a certain extent in conjugal union. 
 It may be that this feeling arises from an unjust contempt for women. Yet 
 Our Blessed Lady, and my mother, and a few others make me forgive a gjeat 
 deal to those daughters of Eve. But I declare to you that in general I do not 
 understand them. Their sensibility is sometimes admirable, but their frivolity, 
 the inconsistency of their mind, is hopeless. Can you conceive an)thing 
 more capricious, more disjointed, than their conversation ? And then to think 
 of binding one's self without reserve and without end to the society of any 
 human creature, mortal, infirm, and wretched, let her be ever so perfect ! It 
 is the perpetual nature of the partnership which is to me so full of terror ; this 
 is why I never can assist at a marriage without shedding tears, as at an ordi- 
 nation or a taking of the veil. I never could understand the gayety that one 
 generally sees at weddings. . . . About a week ago a prolonged medita- 
 tion on my own wretchedness, internal and extemaJ, threw my mind into such 
 a state of perturbation that I was reduced to the impossibility of either think- 
 ing or acting. My brain was on fire, driven in every sense by the most dread- 
 ful thoughts and fancies. At last the excess of the evil compelled me to have 
 recourse to the physician — the physician, I mean, who has the secret of all hu- 
 man infirmities, as well as the balm of Divine grace. Well, when, with an 
 energy which I seldom display on such occasions, I had laid bare my misery 
 and my distress to the charitable man whom I address as * father,' what do 
 you think he said to me ? He answered me in the words of the apostle : 
 Gaudete in Domino semper. You will admit tliat it was a strange reply. A 
 poor fellow has just had the greatest misfortune which can befall him in the 
 spiritual order, that of offending God ; the greatest misfortune which could 
 befall him in the natural order, that of losing his father ; he has an aged and 
 infirm mother, whose every movement, every look, every expression he watches 
 
IC4 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 from day to day to see how long she is hkely to be spared to him ; he finds 
 himself detached by absence or by death from many friends who were dear to 
 him ; he is, over and above all this, a prey to anxiety about a most precarious 
 future, overpowered with troubles and business of a most disagreeable na- 
 ture ; * if he falls back upon himself in order to escape from what is painful 
 without, he finds nothing but imperfections, weakness, and faults, . . . 
 and in the teeth of all this he is to]d, not to be resigned, to take comfort, but 
 to xt.\d\Q.&—gatidete semper I It needs assuredly all the boldness, all the pious 
 insolence of Christianity to hold such language. And yet Christianity is 
 right." 
 
 The added dignity of Doctor of Law, which the young 
 barrister had acquired this year, does not seem to have at- 
 tached him more closely to the profession, which, so far, 
 yielded but slight encouragement; clients continued scarce, 
 and during the following year he made but little head against 
 the difficulties of a beginner. 
 
 In a letter where he announces the approaching marriage 
 of a friend, Frederic observes that, in order to fortify himself 
 against the matrimonial contagion, he set off to visit la 
 Grande Cha?'freiise : 
 
 •' I shall not attempt to tell all I saw ; suffice it to say that I beheld scenery 
 which I have not the talent to describe, and men whom I shall never have the 
 strength to imitate. The impression left by this pilgrimage, however, is very 
 different from what I anticipated. I had heard of nothing but sublime hor- 
 rors — torrents, precipices, deserts, frightful austerities ; instead of all this, I 
 found a delightful solitude, a magnificent vegetation, rich meadows, forests 
 where the green foliage of the beech intermingled with the gloomy shade of 
 the fir-trees, rocks on which roses flowered, rivulets bounding in elegant cas- 
 cades over beds of sward and moss, on every side masses of blue campanulas, 
 broad feathery ferns like diminutive palm-trees, flocks and herds on the 
 mountains, birds in the woods ; and there in the valley the mighty, majestic 
 monastery ; the monks with serene countenances beneath their antique cowl, 
 their features beaming with peace and happiness ; chants rising, full and har- 
 monious, at every hour of the day ; hymns ascending to Heaven in the silent 
 night-time, when crimes are being multiplied on the earth, and the vengeance 
 of God is provoked ; then the lovely chapels of Notre Dame at Casaliban, and 
 of Bruno, with their fountains and their memories of seven hundred years. 
 Perhaps it is a far-fetched fancy of mine, but La Chartreuse, suspended thus in 
 a hollow of the mountain, seems to me like a nest in the desert, where holy 
 
 * The duty of collecting and administering his father's limited means had devolred entirely on 
 Frederic, and brought his sensitive nature in contact with much selfishness and worldly hvd- 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 105 
 
 souls are gathered together and hatched under the maternal wings of religion 
 until they have attained their maturity, when they peacefully take flight to 
 heaven. 
 
 " Religion, like a mother full of indulgent kindness, as she is, has surround- 
 ed this sacred nest with all the harmonies of nature and all the graces of crea- 
 tion. And it is a fact worthy of remark that hermits and monks of all times, 
 while cutting themselves off from the artificial pleasures of society, and exiling 
 themselves from the tumult and enjoyments of the city, and maltreating their 
 flesh, never denied themselves the delights of the eyes, but chose for their soli- 
 tude picturesque sites, extensive views, and magnificent landscapes. This re- 
 mark is verified at every step in Italy, where every other mountain- top is 
 crowned with a monastery. It was the same in our old France long ago. 
 Wherever there was a bold, overhanging mountain, a smiling valley, a forest 
 with sombre shade, the traveller was sure to descry a steeple surmounted by a 
 cross, and to meet traces of the anchorite's sandals on the lonely pathways. 
 
 " Nature, in her virginity, is profoundly Christian ; she abounds in sol- 
 emn sadness and ineffable consolations ; she speaks but of death and resurrec- 
 tion, of past faults and future glorifications. Mountains especially have a 
 voice which appeals to the soul, of which they are in a certain sense the image 
 — riches and nakedness, immeasurable height and fathomless abysses, im- 
 mense disorder, traces of bygone convulsions, soaring peaks, efforts to reach 
 the skies, ever powerless, ever renewed 1 Is not all this a symbol of our life 
 here below ? Mountains, with their variety, resemble human nature, as the 
 ocean, in its immensity, resembles the Divine nature. So it is that the globe, 
 which we tread under our feet, is a tablet on which are written, in indelible 
 characters, the lessons of a sublime philosophy, and this philosophy is none 
 other than that which is written in letters no less indelible in the pages of the 
 Gospel." 
 
 To some who knew Frederic from his childhood, and 
 witnessed his piety, and his enthusiasm for the silent, heroic 
 life of the cloister, it was rather a surprise that he manifested 
 no signs of a vocation in that direction ; but this sympathy 
 was, in truth, more ideal than practical. Pure as his heart 
 was, and sustained as was the flight of his soul in those bright 
 and lofty regions, there was in his nature a chord of human 
 tenderness which had hitherto remained silent, and only now, 
 for the first time, began to warn him of its presence by certain 
 faint vibrations which he confides to a friend, who has writ- 
 ten to inform him of his intended marriage : 
 
 " Love has this in common with the divine nature, that it gives without im- 
 poverishing itself, that it communicates itself without growing less, that it 
 multipUes itself, is present in many places at the same time, and that its inten- 
 
io6 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 sity augments in proportion as it expands. In your wife you will love first 
 God, whose precious and admirable work she is, and then humanity, that race 
 of Adam of whom she is the pure and gentle daughter ; her tenderness will be 
 your consolation in days of sorrow, and you will draw courage from her ex- 
 ample in moments of peril ; you will be her guardian angel, and she will be 
 yours. Henceforth you will know no more faintheartedness, no more discou- 
 ragement, nor any of those vain terrors which are apt to seize upon us at cer- 
 tain moments of our lives, for you will no longer be alone ; you will never 
 again be alone ; the union you are about to contract will be immortal ; what 
 God has once united He will not part ; He will surround with one glory in 
 heaven those whom He made companions here below in the same exile. 
 
 " But I am stammering in a language which I do not know, and talking of 
 things which have not been revealed to me. With me, imagination was de- 
 veloped early, but sensibility mucn later. Although I am at what is called 
 the age of the passions, I have as yet scarcely felt their first approach. My 
 poor head has had to suffer a good deal, but my heart has as yet known no af- 
 fections but those of kindred and friendship. And yet it seems to me, for 
 some time past, that I am conscious of symptoms that are the foreshadowing 
 of a new order of sentiment, and I am frightened at it. I feel a void growing 
 within me which neither friendship nor study can fill. I know not who is des- 
 tined to fill it. Will it be God, or will it be a creature ? If it is to be a crea- 
 ture, I pray that she may present herself as late as possible, when I shall have 
 become worthy of her. I pray that she may bring with her just enough of ex- 
 ternal charms to leave no room for regret ; but, above all, I pray that she may 
 be endowed with an excellent soul, with great virtues ; that she may be infi- 
 nitely better than I am ; that she may lead me upwards, and never let me de- 
 scend ; that she may b^ courageous, because I am often pusillanimous ; that 
 she may be fervent, because I am lukewarm in the things of God ; and, lastly, 
 that she may be compassionate, so that I may not have to blush before her on 
 account of my inferiority. Such are my dreams, but, as I have said, nothing 
 is more impenetrable to me than my own future," 
 
 Ozanam began now to realize the difficulty for him, 
 amounting to impossibility, of combining the profession of 
 the bar with the pursuit of Hterature, as he understood it. 
 
 "... Once upon a time," he says, "I used to flatter myself that my 
 life might be divided in equal portions between action and study, one half 
 given up to the tumult of business, the other devoted to the peaceful cultiva- 
 tion of letters ; but now I find myself fatally impelled to the painful alterna- 
 tive of abandoning one or other of these careers, which I had fondly hoped to 
 combine. My poor head is not big enough to hold one train of thought with- 
 out turning out all rivals. Literature can never be a relaxation for me. Yt»u 
 have seen with your own eyes what it costs me to write ; and yet, whether 
 from self-love or some other better motive, I cannot bring myself to bid a 
 final farewell to that severe mistress who makes me pay so dearly for her in- 
 tercourse. On the other hand, I feel that if I had devoted exclusively to the 
 
Life and Works of Fredrric Ozanam. 107 
 
 study of law all the faculties God has given me during the five years' so- 
 journ in Paris, I might have attained to a position at the bar at which I can 
 now never hope to arrive. " 
 
 While suffering from this uncertainty and agitation, Oza- 
 nam was always ready to combat in others a like sense of de- 
 pression and discouragement. " Yes," he says to a fellow- 
 student, who was hesitating at that point where the roads of 
 life diverge — " yes, we are useless servants, but we are ser- 
 vants, and the wages are given only on condition that we do 
 the work in the vineyard of the Lord in that precise place 
 that is assigned to us. Yes, life is contemptible, if we con- 
 sider the use we make of it ; but not if we calculate the use 
 we may make of it if we look upon it as the most perfect work 
 of the Creator — the sacred garment with which the Divine 
 humanity clothed Himself. Oh ! then life is beautiful, and 
 worthy of all reverence and love. Let us pray for one an- 
 other, my dear friend ; let us mistrust our mistrust, our ennuis^ 
 and our sadness. Let us follow with simplicity the lead of 
 our merciful Providence, satisfied just to see the stone on 
 which we place our foot at each successive step, and without 
 trying to discover the whole length of the road, nor its turns 
 and windings." 
 
 His own cares and anxieties left abundant room in his 
 thoughts for those of others. He had taken great interest in 
 the proposed journey of a young artist companion, M. Jan- 
 mot, to Italy, and, after giving him all the hints he could be- 
 forehand as to the best way of profiting to the full by his 
 d\)portunity, he goes over the ground in imagination with 
 him on the traveller's return. 
 
 "... I assume that when this letter reaches you it will find you still under 
 the impression of the delightful journey you have just made through Umbria, 
 If I am not mistaken, it is one of the most beautiful countries of beautiful 
 Italy ; the majesty of great mountains crowning fair and smiling valleys ; con- 
 trasting climates ranged as in an amphitheatre to make room for all the riches 
 of vegetation from the pine and the oak to the orange-tree and the aloe ; cities 
 planted or suspended here and there in the most imposing attitudes, and every 
 city, every hill, every rivulet, every stone abounding in memories: Spoleto, 
 whose humble gates remained closed against Hannibal, while Capua's fell 
 
io8 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 back at the first sound of his footsteps ; the lake of Trasiniena, where two 
 giant peoples fought with such fell fury that, while the fight raged, an earth- 
 quake destroyed whole towns without its being felt ; Orvieto and its Etruscan 
 antiquities, the inheritance of a civilization that passed away and left no his- 
 tory behind it ; the lonely lake of Bolsena, and the island where a queen died 
 of hunger. And then the Christian traditions that have purified and em- 
 balmed all these places ! Here we have the miracle of Bolsena immortalized 
 by Raphael ; there the marvellous legend of St. Margaret of Cortona ; but be- 
 yond and above all floats the great memory of St. Francis. I don't remember 
 whether it is at Foligno that they show you the rose-tree on whose thorns he 
 lay an entire night, and which ever since remains laden with flowers perpet- 
 ually renewed. It was on Monte Alverno that the glorious stigmata were im- 
 printed on his hands and feet. It was along the roads through which you 
 passed that he used to go calling to the little birds to come and sing the praises 
 of God ; it was there that he gave his cloak in exchange for the lamb which the 
 butchers were leading to the slaughter. But it is, above all, Assisi that is full 
 ot him ; Assisi and its cloister, that contained formerly six thousand monks, 
 and its two churches, symbol of the twofold life of the saint, one terrestrial 
 and mysterious, the other immortal and resplendent — its two churches, where 
 the inspired painting of the middle ages unfolds itself from its cradle to its 
 maturity, from Cimabue and Giotto to the days of Perugino and his disciple. 
 . . . And we, my dear friend, shall we do nothing to resemble those saints 
 whom we love ? shall we remain satisfied with mourning over the sterility of 
 the present, while we each one of us carry in our hearts a form of sanctity 
 which would blossom forth at the mere bidding of our will ? ... If, in the 
 middle ages, a deceased society could only be cured by the immense effusion 
 of love which was poured upon it especially by St. Francis of Assisi ; if later 
 on new sufferings called for the healing hands of St. Philip Neri, St. John of 
 God, and St. Vincent de Paul, how much greater need have we now of charity, 
 of self-devotion, of patience, to cure the sufferings of the nations ! . . , The 
 question which divides men in our day is no longer a question of political 
 forms, it is a social question — that of deciding whether the spirit of egotism or 
 the spirit of sacrifice is to carry the day ; whether society is to be a huge traffic 
 for the benefit of the strongest, or the consecration of each for the benefit of 
 all, and above all for the protection of the weak. There are many who have 
 already too much, and who wish to possess still more ; there are a greater num- 
 ber who have not enough, and who want to seTze it if it is not given to them. 
 Between these two classes of men a struggle is imminent, and it threatens to 
 be terrible — on one side the power of gold, on the other the power of despair. 
 It is between these two opposing armies that we must precipitate ourselves, if 
 not to prevent, at least to break, the shock. Our youth and the mediocrity of 
 our position makes easy this role of mediatorship which our title of Chris- 
 tians renders obligatory," 
 
CHAPTER XIL 
 
 1838-9. 
 
 Towards the close of 1838 Ozanam went up for his de- 
 gree of Doctor of Letters. His Latin thesis was on the de- 
 scent of the heroes into hell, a study from the ancient poets. 
 Dante was the subject of the French one. The success of 
 the first was marked, but that of the latter surpassed the liigh- 
 est hopes of his most admiring friends. It was more than a 
 success, it was a revelation. Frenchmen had hitherto known 
 the great Florentine poet almost exclusively as the singer of 
 Francesca di Rimini's woes, and of the ghastly tragedy of the 
 Hunger Tower; they had not discovered that he was a theo- 
 logian as well as a poet, and that his influence had been as 
 fertile and enduring on the religious feeling of his country- 
 men as upon their art. Oxanam had studied the character 
 and the genius of Dante until he had come to love him with 
 something of religious enthusiasm. In revealing the unsus- 
 pected beauties of the )f»athetic, mysterious figure, he rose to 
 heights of inspiration which it is seldom given to human elo- 
 quence to reach, and never except when it is the inspired 
 messenger of the soul. He evoked the spirit of the dead 
 poet, and bid the living look upon him. As at the voice of a 
 magician, the clouds rolled away, and the luminous figure 
 stood revealed against the background of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, crowned with its triple halo of exile, poet, and theolo- 
 gian. The audience, spellbound with admiration, listened in 
 breathless silence. M. Cousin, one of the examiners, and a 
 qualified judge of eloquence, bore it while he could; but at 
 last, like one beside himself, he cried out, " Ozanam, how is 
 it possible to be so eloquent ?" Tears flowed on every side 
 and choked applause, until the orator, himself overcome with 
 
 109 
 
it 16 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 emotion, descended from that tribune which he had con- 
 quered as the pedestal of his future glory; then the entire 
 hall rose with an irrepressible shout. This thesis, so long and 
 laboriously prepared, was the kernel of a volume which Oza- 
 nam published later, under the title of Dante et la Philosophie 
 Catholiqne au Treizieme Steele. 
 
 The affair of the Chaire de Droit was still undecided, and 
 continued to drag on in endless preliminaries and negotia- 
 tions. 
 
 His mother's rapidly-declining health increased his anxiety 
 to obtain the appointment. " I am witnessing the saddest of 
 all spectacles," he writes to Lallier — " the failing of my poor 
 mother's strength. In proportion as her sight steadily decays 
 her moral energy gives way ; her sensibility seems to increase 
 with our anxieties." 
 
 His inability to remove from his mother's mind this poig- 
 nant anxiety concerning the future of her younger sons, and 
 surrounding her last days with peace and comfort, was a con- 
 stant thorn in his heart. 
 
 "After all the sacrifices my dear father made for my education," he sa5rs, 
 *' I ou^^ht to be able to replace him now, and to be the support of my family ; 
 I am, on the contrary, only an additional burden. A lesson in law which I 
 give every day is the most stable part of my income ; my clients leave me 
 large leisure. With the exception of two cases at the assizes, which made a 
 good deal of noise and very little money, and two law-suits which I conciliat- 
 ed, one that I pleaded before the Tribunal of Commerce last week, a memo- 
 rial which I drew up in a dispute between two tradesmen, a certain number of 
 consultations gratis, I have had nothing to do for the last five months in this 
 worthy profession of the bar, one of those at the end of which a man is surest 
 of making a fortune provided he does not die of hunger at the beginning ; and 
 yet -must I confess it ? -these small itenns of business are stiil repugnant to 
 me. I cannot get acclimatized in the atmosphere of chicanery ; discussions 
 that turn solely on pecuniary interests are painful tome. There never was a 
 case so good but that there are wrongs on both sides ; and let a defence be 
 ever so legal, one has always some weak point to dissemble. There are habits 
 of hyperbole and reticence which the most respectable members of the bar 
 practise, and which one must submit to ; all the figures of rhetoric are reduc- 
 ed into action before the tribunals which recognize no other language. It is 
 understood that you are to claim two hundred francs damages when you only 
 want fifty ; that your client is infallibly right in everything he alleges, and 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozandm, 111 
 
 that his adversary is a scoundrel. Venture to express yourself in more re«r 
 sonable terms, and you are set down as having given in, made concessions, 
 confessed yourself conquered ; your colleag:ues reproach you ; your client 
 cries out that he is betrayed ; and if you happen to meet in society one of 
 the judges who presided in the case, he accosts you with * My dear fellow, 
 you are too timid ! ' " 
 
 Ozanam's leisure at the bar left him plenty of time for lite- 
 rary work, and he employed it in enlarging his thesis on Dante, 
 which had grown imperceptibly to the dimensions of a vol- 
 ume, and which he finished in the month of May, and sent 
 on to Paris for publication. 
 
 At last the long delays came to an end, and on the 2ist of 
 February, 1839, he announces his official appointment: 
 
 " The Municipjal Council, by a majority of twenty-eight votes out of thirty- 
 six, has named me Professor of Commercial Law. This nomination has yet to 
 be confirmed by the Minister of Public Instruction. I have therefore written to 
 M. Cousin to say that, while gratefully thanking him for the offer of the 
 Chair of Philosophy at Orleans, I was moved by a sense of duty to my family 
 to choose the Chair of Law at Lyons." 
 
 M. Cousin, who was well acquainted with Ozanam, judged 
 rightly that Pliilosophy was a fitter sphere for him than Law, 
 and, pending the ultimate decision of the municipality, he had 
 written to his young friend offering him the Philosophical pro- 
 fessorship at Orleans. The offer was tempting, and it was 
 not without a struggle that Ozanam declined it. 
 
 " Tell me what you think of my choice," he says to Lallier, '* and what my 
 friends in Paris think of it. Here I have been almost blamed for it. Most 
 people were of opinion that my true interests were on the banks of the Loire. 
 For myself, I confess that I was attracted by the prospect of an exclusively 
 intellectual career— an existence which henceforward would have been irrevo- 
 cably fixed, and consequently peaceful ; the neighborhood of Paris also drew 
 me ; but, as a set-off against this, there was the total isolation in a strange 
 town, the necessity of leaving my mother for six months of the year, with the 
 riskof receiving some day a letter like that of the 1 2th of May, 1837.* . . . There 
 is some talk of founding a School of Law in these parts ; and if so, the muni- 
 cipal Professor would stand a fair chance of getting a chair there — that is to 
 say, an honorable position /br li/e, with the right of enlarging the sphere of his 
 lectures as much as he liked. If God gives me life and strength, and settles me 
 by a definite vocation in these quiet functions, I should like to bring my per- 
 
 * Announcing his Cher's accident. 
 
112 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 sonal labors into harmony with my public duties by writing a book on the 
 Philosophy and the History of Law, treated from the Christian point of view ; 
 this, it seems to me, would fill up a great void in science." 
 
 His nomination to the Municipal Chair was settled finally 
 in the month of July. M. Cousin writes himself to announce 
 it: 
 
 " My Dear Ozanam : I did not write to you so long as I had nothing posi- 
 tive to tell you. Now I come to announce to you that in the council of yester- 
 day it was settled that you were to be named to the Chair of Commercial 
 Law. 
 
 " I would much rather have seen you in my own regiment, but I don't de- 
 spair of it yet, and in any case I am satisfied that with me, or without me, you 
 will always love and serve true philosophy. 
 
 *' Don't quite forget me, for you are always sure to find in me a friend." 
 
 These personal matters did not make him relax his active 
 interest in the progress of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. 
 
 ♦' Our little Society," he writes to Lallier, " has become sufficiently impor- 
 tant to be regarded in the light of a providential fact. See that you are pre- 
 sent as often as possible at the particular meetings ; call on the presidents from 
 time to time ; take an interest in the meetings of the board of direction. . . . 
 I fully approve of your idea of speaking in a forthcoming letter of the exterior 
 spirit of the Society, the absence of secrecy, and the necessity for remaining in 
 the background. It would perhaps be well to lay down this principle, that hu- 
 mility is obligatory for associations quite as much as for individuals, and you 
 might illustrate it by the example of St. Vincent de Paul, who severely repri- 
 manded a priest of the mission for speaking of the Society as ' our holy society.' 
 Servi inutiles sumus is the testimony which those who serve God and their fel- 
 low-men should bear to themselves. It would then be well to dwell a little on 
 the nature of humihty, and to show how it should exclude all collective pride, 
 which disguises itself so often under the name of love of a community, and 
 those imprudent displays before strangers under pretext of edification or pro- 
 selytism. On the other hand, one might mention that silence is not the inevi- 
 table form of true humility, but may sometimes be even contrary to it, for 
 people are only silent concerning what they believe to be important, and they 
 compensate themselves amongst each other for the admiration they cannot 
 claim from without. Thus, not to show ourselves^ but to let ourselves be seen^ 
 might be our formula, and it is pretty much the one that we find amidst the 
 maxims of a great apostle of charity, St. Francis de Sales. We have had 
 ample opportunity here of practising this doctrine, surrounded as we have 
 been by two kinds of dangers. On one hand the rivalry of some other pious 
 confraternities, and on the other the too expansive zeal of certain members 
 who went about praising our little work; the exaggeration of the reports 
 made us appear suspicious in the eyes of the former, and ridiculous in those of 
 
Ufe and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 113 
 
 others. It was prophesied to us that publicity would be our death ; but, 
 thank God, the prophets of evil have proved false ones. We kept ourselves 
 lowly ; people pitied us and allowed us to live. 
 
 '•I will tell you, in a letter addressed to M. Bailly, about another work 
 which we have undertaken without prejudice to this one, and which it would 
 be desirable to see established wherever there is a conference ; that is, the 
 propagation of Christian instruction amongst the soldiers of the garrisons. 
 Here we have got up a library and a school for reading, writing, and arithme- 
 tic for the soldiers, and already the results are consoling." 
 
 It was not, however, to be expected that a work of such 
 growing importance as the Society of St. Vincent de Paul 
 should attain its maturity without making enemies and en- 
 countering opposition. 
 
 ♦' It is impossible to blind ourselves to the fact," says Ozanam ; •* the society 
 has everywhere met with mistrust. If at Lyons it hcis escaped the censure of 
 the ecclesiastical authorities, if even a few venerable priests have encouraged 
 it, it has never ceased to be the object of vexations on the part of seculars, the 
 big-wigs of orthodoxy, fathers of the council in dress-coats and strapped pan- 
 taloons, doctors who lay down the law between the morning's newspaper and 
 their business accounts ; persons to whom whatever is new is unwelcome, and 
 by whom everything emanating from Paris is assumed to be wicked, whose 
 personal opinion on politics is a thirteenth article of the creed to them, who 
 appropriate works of charity as their own belongings, and declare modestly, 
 putting themselves in the place of our Lord, 'Whosoever is not with me is 
 against me.' You would hardly believe the tricks, the cavilling, the insults, 
 the meannesses we had to bear from these people, who are all in perfectly 
 good faith. The most estimable have been carried away by the general feel- 
 ing, and we had a great deal to suffer even from those who love us. But why 
 should we complain when we have to do with a generation which anathema- 
 \y' tizes M. Lacordaire, declares M. de Ravignan unintelligible, and the Abbe 
 Caeur a man to be suspected ? Chaurand and I, as chief founders and promo- 
 ters of the work, have been continually in the breach, and find it a very weari- 
 some post ; one's spirit must iirbibe a certain bitterness, charity must more or 
 less suffer in the conversations that one is forced to have on this subject. On 
 the other hand, there is a heavy responsibility attached to our ofi&ce, humble 
 as it is, for the faults one commits are doubly serious when they fall back on 
 the work one is directing. The heads of pious associations ought to be saints, 
 in order to draw down upon them the blessing of God. I often ask myself 
 how I dare, I so bad and so weak, remain the representative of so many ex- 
 cellent young men. This is why I long for the moment when it will be possi- 
 ble for me to resign the presidentship. 
 
 " We are reading at present at our meetings the fife of St. Vincent de Paul, 
 in order better to penetrate ourselves with his maxims and traditions. A pa- 
 tron saint should not be a signboard to a society, like a St, Denis or St. 
 
114 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 Nicholas over the door of a tavern. It is a type tliat we sliould strive to real- 
 ize, as he himself reaHzed the Divine type, wliich is Jesus Christ. It is a life 
 that we must continue, a heart where we must seek to warm our hearts, an in- 
 telligence to which we must come for light ; it is a model for us on earth, and 
 a protector in heaven ; we owe hun consequently the twofold homage of imi- 
 tation and invocation. It is only on this condition of appropriating the 
 thoughts and virtues of the saint that the Society can escape from the personal 
 imperfections of its members, and, by rendering itself useful to the Church, 
 justify its existence." 
 
 In drawing up the rules of the confraternity no provision 
 had been made for prayers and other charitable offices in be- 
 half of those who might be called away. It was not long, 
 however, before this oversight, natural enough in the young, 
 met with a sad and stern rebuke in the death of some of the 
 youngest of the little brotherhood. 
 
 Ozanam was the first to think of repairing the omission, 
 and suggested that every year, on the first Monday of Lent, 
 a Requiem Mass should be celebrated for the deceased mem- 
 bers, all the associates assisting, that by this means they 
 might still maintain unbroken the bonds of charity whicli had 
 united them on earth. 
 
 He attached great importance to a correspondence being 
 regularly kept up between the various conferences, and gently 
 upbraids Lallier, who was in Paris, for growing remiss in this 
 respect. These sort of epistles were heard with attention, 
 and often bore good practical fruits. " You are therefore 
 earnestly entreated to resume a correspondence which had 
 about it something of the apostolic times, and which you 
 have, I suspect, suspended simply because of that too great 
 modesty against which I wage war so pitilessly." "You 
 can form no idea," he urges elsewhere, " of the magic there 
 is in words that come from a distance. Your letter has re- 
 vived the ardor of the work among the soldiers, which was 
 beginning to languish. The links that bind us to the Society 
 of Paris are like those which united those celebrated twins 
 whose separation caused their death ; life and blood circulate 
 interiorly." 
 
 He believed much in this power of association for good, 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 115 
 
 and referred to it continually as the most efifectual counter- 
 poise to the fatal strength of union amongst the wicked. 
 
 / "Alas I" he exclaims, *' we see the division which exists in society g^rowing 
 deeper and wider every day. It is not political opinions that divide men ; it 
 is something less than opinions ; it is their interests that sunder them. Here 
 is the camp of the rich, there the camp of the poor. One only means of sal- 
 vation remains to us — that is, that Christians, in the name of love, interpose 
 between the two camps, passing like beneficent deserters from one to the 
 other, collecting abundant alms from the rich, and resignation from the poor ; 
 carrying gifts to the poor, and words of gratitude to the rich ; teaching them 
 on both sides to look upon each other as brothers ; and communicating mutu- 
 al charity to all, until this charity, paralyzing and stifling the egotism of both 
 parties, and every day lessening their antipathies, shall bid the two camps 
 arise and break down the barriers of prejudice, and cast aside their weapons 
 of anger, and march forth to meet each other— not to fight, but to mingle to- 
 gether in one embrace, so that they may henceforth form but one fold under 
 one pastor y«««wi ovile, unus pastor ^^ 
 
 His faith in the power of friendship was indeed as strong 
 as his personal delight in it was boundless. " Friendships," 
 he says, " formed under the auspices of faith, in a double 
 confraternity of religious discussions and charitabje deeds, far 
 from growing cold by absence, draw closer, and become as 
 it were more concentrated. They live in memory, and mem- 
 ory beautifies all things, idealizes all realities, purifies every 
 image, and retains the pleasant far more vividly than the 
 painful ones." 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 1839. 
 
 The position which Ozanam had waited for so long and 
 anxiously did not bring him the peace of mind he had ex- 
 pected. His chief motive in coveting it was the power it 
 would give him of surrounding his mother's declining years 
 with greater comforts; and this privilege, now that he had 
 gained it, seemed likely to be of short duration. Madame 
 Ozanam's health had reached that point when all that could 
 be hoped for was that the end, which was swiftly drawing 
 near, might be peaceful, and free from unendurable suffer- 
 ing. 
 
 As regarded Frederic himself, he had confidently looked 
 to his nomination as to an event which would set at rest for 
 ever all doubts as to his vocation, believing that henceforth 
 he would feel perfectly reassured as to his appointed work. 
 Here, too, he was deceived, this disappointment being, in- 
 deed, a natural consequence of the former one. Since his 
 mother's death was likely to set him free so soon, and to re- 
 move all necessity for his continuing in a worldly career, had 
 he done wisely in trammeUing himself with fresh responsibili- 
 ties and ties ? Might he not have thereby set up a barrier be- 
 tween him and his true vocation — the priesthood ? There 
 was nothing, except his present duty to his mother, to indi- 
 cate that he was not called to the sacerdotal life, and there 
 were many inward voices, attractions, aptitudes, antipathies, 
 which whispered to him sometimes loudly, sometimes more 
 faintly, that he was. His ardent desire to serve the cause of 
 truth, to do something for God and humanity, to lead a life 
 of self-forgetfulness, labor, and sacrifice, was as strong as ever, 
 while his repugnance to marriage continued insurmountable. 
 
 S16 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 117 
 
 A letter written to a friend who consulted him on the subject 
 of his own intended marriage gives a clear idea of what his 
 views were at this period. He was now six-and-twenty years 
 of age : 
 
 "... I am greatly touched by your confidence. There is no more severe 
 trial than this uncertainty concerning a question on which one's whole life de- 
 pends, and in these circumstances the full and complete acceptance of the Di- 
 vine will must be most meritorious. You are too deeply imbued with this be- 
 lief for your decision, whatever way it may be, not to turn out for your happi- 
 ness and your salvation. But I cling to the hope of seeing you preserve your 
 liberty a little longer ; of seeing you wait a little before contracting new duties 
 which would enchain you completely and leave you no time for study or for 
 action. The solitary life you are leading just now is no doubt sad and dreary ; 
 but work can fill it up, and religion can console it. God and science, cliarity 
 and study, are not these enough to charm your youth ? And then, if I may 
 say out all I think, is virginity a virtue fit only for the daughters of Eve ? 
 Was it not, on the contrary, one of the principal glories of our Redeemer ? 
 Was not this what He cherished above all in His beloved disciple ? Is it not the 
 fairest flower that is cultivated in the garden of the Church ? Do you feel no re- 
 gret in letting it wither before the hour of noon ? Would you not be glad to take 
 it with you to heaven, were you called away during those perilous years which 
 precede perfect maturity ? Does not the day after a marriage always bring 
 you a kind of pang ? Believe me, a man abdicates a great part of his dignity 
 the day that he chains himself to a woman's arm. Read over St. Paul. Do 
 not imagine from this that I am an advocate for eternal and universal celi- 
 bacy. Heaven forbid 1 But I should like men to postpone marriage to the 
 time when it has become necessary, and therefore ceases to be fatal ; to the 
 period when the mind has reached its development, when the will has acquir- 
 ed all its energy, and when one is committed by one's work, one's engage- 
 meiits, one's antecedents of any sort, so as no longer to be able to disengage 
 one's self ; until one has gained some right to the joys of domestic life by 
 work and solitude; when one has something to offer, and not everything to 
 receive ; to that period, in a word, when a man is sure of being his own mas- 
 ter, and free externally. 
 
 "You speak of the sweets of family life ; but, my dear friend, is it quite 
 opportune, this material or sentimental well-being, this twofold egotism ? Is 
 society so happy, is religion so honored, is our Christian youth so numerous 
 and so active, are the few who can work for the general good so full of lei- 
 sure, as that you, to whom God has given such ability, who are surrounded by 
 acquaintances and encouragements, and who are conscious of an inner voice 
 calling you to work, should feel justified in withdrawing from the field like a 
 tired laborer who has borne the heat and burden of the day ? Were you not 
 in earnest, after all, in what you have said and-<lone and written, and in what 
 your friends have repeated and striven for with you ? Do you despair of the 
 regeneration of the countr)', and the amendment of ideas ? Or is it that you 
 
ii8 ' lAfe and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 despair of j'ourself — that is to say, of God, who created, redeemed, and sancti* 
 fied you ? You say, forsooth, that it is so hard to find out your post here be- 
 low ! May we not all say the same thing ? And is this a reason for commit- 
 ting suicide ? and is it not suicide for you, being what you are, to go off to 
 X. to sow turnips ? 
 
 " I entreat you, go and see Montalembert, or rather ask him where he is to 
 be found. I have reason to think that he could suggest to you many projects 
 capable of occupying your mind, and diverting you from your present intel- 
 lectual idleness." 
 
 This period, which outwardly seemed one of calm and defi- 
 nite appointment, was in reality the most agitated of Ozanam's 
 life. The municipality of Lyons had just created a professor- 
 ship expressly for him, and he was pursued on all sides by 
 the most seductive offers. M. Cousin did not disguise his 
 hope of ultimately luring him into '^ his regiment," as he call- 
 ed the school of philosophy ; the leaders of the Catholic party 
 were appealing to him for articles in the various periodicals 
 and newspapers ; M. de Montalembert, who was just then 
 founding one, writes to him : " I implore of you, give us 
 a few fragments of your work, a few splinters of the monu- 
 ment that you are chiselling ; I ask this service as of a friend 
 and brother-in-arms, on whose sympathy I can count, as you 
 must always count on mine." 
 
 If these encouraging invitations had come a year sooner, 
 Ozanam would have hailed them with gratitude and delight ; 
 but with the threat of his mother's death before his eyes, and 
 his own consequent emancipation from the duties which 
 bound him to his present career, they were only a source of 
 pain and perplexity. 
 
 He had watched with intense interest the Abb6 Lacordaire's 
 scheme for the reintroduction of the illustrious order of St. 
 Dominic into France, which was now on the eve of its ac- 
 complishment. Affection for Lacordaire himself, admiration 
 for his genius and holiness, and, at the same time, a sort of 
 personal pride in him as a Caiholic and a brother-in-arms, all 
 tended to draw Ozanam's sympathies strongly in the direction 
 of the order which had once shed such lustre on the Church 
 of France, No dpubt Lacordair^ saw this, an<^ jt was nat- 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanatn. 119 
 
 ural that he should endeavor to follow up the advantage. 
 There is no power so terrible on the battle-field as a virgin 
 heart; it was this that made trained warriors tremble before 
 the frail Maid of Orleans, and the poet expressed one of the 
 deepest truths of Christian life when he sang of King Arthur's 
 blameless knights, " Their strength was as the strength often, 
 because their hearts were pure." No one understood this 
 truth better than Lacordaire, and it is not to be wondered 
 that he should have been lovingly and longingly bent upon 
 the conquest of Ozanam's strong, pure heart, and that, when 
 the grave had closed over his friend, he should have alluded 
 to his failure in capturing the prize with a sense of disappoint- 
 ment, mingled with a tenderly implied though unmerited re- 
 proach. 
 
 " On Thursday, the 7th of March (1839) — feast of St. Thomas Aquinas — we 
 leave Paris," he wrote to Ozanam ; *' we shall be at Lyons on the loth, and 
 on the i2th we embark for Milan. I shall be so delighted to see you and all 
 our friends, and I expect that you will help us to perform the pilgrimage which 
 no good Catholic omits at Lyons." 
 
 Ozanam prepared a welcome for his illustrious friend by 
 convoking the various conferences of St. Vincent de Paul to 
 meet him, and hear once more that eloquent voice which had 
 so endeared itself to the Catholic youth of France. It was a 
 solemn and tender meeting. Lacordaire himself was deeply 
 moved, and his emotion inspired him with one of those sud- 
 den, soul-stirring bursts of eloquence which a large gathering 
 of souls seldom failed to call forth from him. He spoke with 
 great simplicity; he told them the story of his present mission, 
 the long efforts that had preceded its approaching fulfilment j 
 he explained, with the familiarity of a brother speaking to 
 brothers, the aim and object of his work, which had been so 
 often misunderstood and falsely interpreted; he told them all 
 about St. Dominic and the special apostolate of the Preach- 
 ing Friars, whose rule he was going to embrace; he dwelt 
 much on the necessity of recalling religious orders to France; 
 and concluded by speaking in terms of the warmest affection 
 
120 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 of the members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and 
 asking them to pray for him and his two companions. These 
 young men, it was said, had been drawn from the dark haunts 
 of the Carbonari by Lacordaire's siren voice. Everything 
 conduced to render the scene impressive : the numerous as- 
 sembly of young men, whose faith was in enthusiastic sympa- 
 thy with that of the young priest going forth from their midst, 
 sacrificing a career already illuminated with the purest glory, 
 in order to devote himself to a life of austere labor, of pover- 
 ty and suffering, voluntarily chosen. It was a spectacle cal- 
 culated to move, by a sudden and irresistible impulse, the 
 whole course of a life in those who witnessed it. There were 
 many present who never afterwards lost the impression of 
 that hour, and there were few dry eyes in the assembly when 
 the Abb6 Lacordaire and his two fellow-pilgrims passed out 
 of it. 
 
 It will readily be imagined that Ozanam was not one of the 
 most indifferent amongst the spectators. 
 
 Soon after his arrival in Rome, P^re Lacordaire wrote to 
 him, giving an account of his journey, his arrival at the Domi- 
 nican convent, the affectionate welcome he and his companions 
 had met with from their Italian brethren, and his own recep- 
 tion into the order — a pleasant, friendly letter, full of spon- 
 taneous information about himself and his happiness in his new 
 vocation, but not containing an allusion, direct or indirect, to 
 the possibility of this vocation being shared by his correspon- 
 dent. If the reticence was calculated with a view to eliciting 
 responsive confidence, the strategy succeeded perfectly, as 
 the following extract from Ozanam's reply proves : 
 
 ** Issto^^y August 26, 1839. 
 ** . . . When your letter from La Querela came to inform me of the happy 
 termination of your pilgrimage, the welcome given you by the family of St. 
 Dominic, and the souvenir w^hich, in the midst of so many absorbing interests, 
 you retained of the members of St. Vincent de Paul, I hesitated long betw^een 
 the desire to express to you my gratitude' for this unexpected honor, and my 
 fear of intruding inopportunely upon the laborious solitude of your novitiate. 
 But, in a recent journey to Paris, I learned that your friends had not given up 
 
Life atid Works of Frederic Otananu 121 
 
 corresponding with you ; and since you condescend to give me this title, I feel 
 at liberty to avail myself of its privileges. It is so short a time since you left 
 the great capital yourself that the impressions of a traveller of yesterday can 
 be of little interest to you. There is no need to tell you, what you know al- 
 ready so well, that the movement to which you gave such a powerful impulse 
 from the pulpit of Notre Dame has not ceased to spread amongst the intelli- 
 gent classes. I have seen with my own eyes republican Carbonari changed 
 into humble believers, young artists with fiery passions asking for the rules of 
 the Confraternity. I recognized the disorganization, the discredit of the ra- 
 tionalistic school, which has rendered it powerless, and compelled its two 
 principal organs, the Revue Fratigatse and the Revue des Deux Mondes. to 
 beg for the collaboration of Catholics, or, as M. de Bulos says, of honnStes 
 gens. Meantime M. de Montalembert has succeeded in forming, in the Cham- 
 ber of Peers, a phalanx ready to fight for ihe good cause ; and M. de Cam6 
 affirms that in the Chamber of Deputies fifty votes will soon be forthcoming 
 in favor of the religious questions : on the other hand the little Society of St. 
 Vincent de Paul sees its ranks growing with astonishing rapidity. A new 
 conference has been formed of students from the Ecole Normale and the Poly- 
 technique ; fifteen young men, forming about a third of the seminary of the 
 University, have asked as a favor to spend two hours every Sunday, their only 
 day of liberty, in working for God and the poor. Next year Paris will count 
 fourteen conferences, and we shall have a like number in the provinces ; alV 
 this represents a total of more than one thousand Catholics impatient to join 
 in the intellectual crusade which you will preach. . . . 
 
 '•Meantime I, the humble witness of those things so full of hope, am now 
 probably settled for some time to come in a position which I had long desired, 
 that of Professor of Commercial Law. I am thankful for a post which fixes 
 me near my mother, now old and infirm, and which does not at the same 
 time tear me from ray taste — unlucky, no doubt, but incurable — for literary 
 and philosophical work. ... I feel just at present more than ever the need 
 of a spiritual direction, which would supplement my weakness and deliver me 
 from my own responsibility. To speak quite openly, I have felt more than 
 once, in presence of the illness of my mother, which is making such fearful 
 progress, and when the possibility of that awful loss has come upon me, that 
 there is no reason why I should retain a position which filial duty alone led 
 me to seek ; and then uncertainty as to my vocation comes back with greater 
 anxiety than ever. I commend to your charitable prayers this interior trial, 
 from which I have long suffered ; for, if God deigned to call me to His ser- 
 vice, there is no army in which I would more gladly serve than that in which 
 you are enrolled. I should even be glad to know something of its conditions 
 beforehand, so that, with the help of my confessor, I might come to some de- 
 termination. The Rule of the Preaching Friars does not figure in our libra- 
 ry ; can you tell me where it is to be found ? You would thereby add one 
 more obligation to the many which I already owe you." 
 
 P^re Lacordaire did not leave this letter long unanswered. 
 After touching on the manifestations of a change in public 
 
122 Lije and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 feeling, which Ozanam alluded to in his opening lines, he 
 goes on to say : 
 
 "... We shall see greater things than these. Do we not already see 
 Don Carlos driven out of Spain, and the Revolution mistress of the country 
 until such time as the vsrind of the Lord shall arise over Spain, as well as 
 over France ? The Revolution, as Mirabeau said, will go the round of the 
 world, but with the Catholic Church behind it. You must know, my dear 
 friend — for, in truth, I entertain this feeling towards you — you must know 
 that in a book which was printed at the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
 if not earlier, and which treats of the life of a certain Madame d'Escobar, it is 
 said that she had a vision where she beheld, at the same time, England being 
 converted while Spain was being perverted. It was the same saint who fore^ 
 told that one day the orders of St. Dominic and St. Ignatius would be per- 
 fectly reconciled and united. 
 
 " I saw in the Univers, which we take in, that your Dante has been reprint- 
 ed ; I am glad of it. You must on no account lay aside your pen. Writing 
 is a hard trade, no doubt, but the press has become too powerful for us to de- 
 sert our post there. Let us write, not for glory, not for immortality, but for 
 Jesus Christ. Let us crucify ourselves to our pen. If nobody should read us 
 in a hundred years hence, what does that signify ? The drop of water that 
 falls into the sea has gone to swell the fiood, and the flood never dies. * He 
 who has been of his time^ says Schiller, ' has been of all time.* He has done 
 his work, he has had his share in the creation of things which are eternal. 
 How many books there are now forgotten on the shelves of our libraries that 
 contributed three hundred years ago to bring about the revolution which we 
 are witnessing 1 Our fathers themselves are unknown to us, but we live by 
 them. Moreover, nothing that you have written should dishearten your pen. 
 You have a nervous, brilliant style, and solid erudition. I advise you strong- 
 ly to go on working, and, if I were the director of your conscience, I would lay 
 it on you as an obligation. 
 
 '* The close of your letter, where you tell me of the persevering instincts that 
 impel you to the service of God, touch me deeply. The hope of seeing you 
 some day one of ours is dear to me. I don't know where you could find our 
 rule. A Paris publisher ought to be able to procure it for you. But even 
 then I doubt whether you would be able to disentangle clearly the mechanism 
 of our order. I think a few words would explain it to you more satisfactorily. 
 The end is preaching and the Divine science ; the means are prayer^ mortifi- 
 cation of the senses^ and study. The prayer consists in psalmody, or rather 
 the recital of the Canonical Office, which takes us about two hours and a half 
 every day. We only sing Compline, except on great feast-days, when we sing 
 Tierce and Vespers also. The mortification consists in perpetual abstinence, 
 with fasting every Friday, and from the 14/// of September to Easter, But 
 this mortification being only a means to an end, the Superior can dispense 
 from it when necessary. So also with the woollen shirt, from which one can 
 be dispensed in case of its causing serious suffering. We have no extraordi- 
 nary penance, and no one oeed practise any, except they feel the want of it, 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 123 
 
 and then with the advice of his director. We have eight or nine hours a day 
 for study, and we may be exempted from choir in certain cases, which increas- 
 es this time. The real novices, that is, those who enter the order from eigh- 
 teen to twenty, study for ten years, are lodg^ed separately, and only enjoy the 
 liberty of the fathers when they have reached the priesthood, even before they 
 have completed their studies. We rise at five, and we go to bed between 
 nine and ten. As to the government, it is elective and admirably free. 
 Faults against the rule involve no sin, unless they be accompanied by contempt 
 0/ the rule, or else, what is very rare, there has been a precept in virtute obe- 
 dientice. Faults are punished by prostrations on the ground ; formerly, when 
 they were grave, they were liable to be punished by the discipline on the 
 naked shoulders in full chapter. The decline of the monastic spirit has al- 
 most entirely done away with this custom. 
 
 *' These few words, my dear friend, will tell you as much about our life as 
 it is possible to know without having practised it. A week p>assed with us, 
 when we shall have a novitiate, will put you au courant better than ten 
 volumes. 
 
 " As regards myself, I am very happy ; I have nothing to regret here, ex- 
 cept the want of a certain severity,* which is necessary to us Frenchmen. 
 When we become monks, it is with the intention of being so up to our eyes. 
 Here all is grave, spiritual, mortified even — useful; but one feels that one is in 
 a country where calm reigns, at least on the surface." 
 
 The event which Ozanam had been dreading for more 
 than a year came to pass one month after the date of this let- 
 ter. It was sudden at tlie last. On Christmas eve he thus 
 describes the closing scene in a letter to Lallier : 
 
 "... Alas ! what havoc this death has made in my mind as well as in my 
 heart. No, I am wrong ; what so crushed me was the long illness that I be- 
 held day by day destroying her, and which — shall I say it ? — seemed as if it 
 were going to dishonor the sacrifice before consuming it, by quenching the 
 intellectual faculties and blunting the moral feelings. This thought was horri- 
 ble, and haunted me constantly ; I seemed to see her soul dying with her 
 body ! Mercifully the trial was shortened ; just at the end the energy of her 
 soul revived, and Christ, in descending into the heart of His beloved servant, 
 left there strength for the supreme struggle. She remained for three days 
 calm, serene, murmuring prayers, or acknowledging our caresses and services 
 by a few words of ineffable sweetness. At last the fatal night came ; it was I 
 who was watching. I suggested to my dear mother the acts of faith, hope, 
 and charity, the same that she had taught me to lisp after her as a little 
 child. Towards one o'clock new symptoms showed themselves and frightened 
 me. I called my elder brother, who was resting in the next room. Charles 
 heard us and got up ; the servants hurried in. We knelt round the bed ; 
 
 • Pere Lacordaire subsequently succeeded in establishing the Dominican rule in France in its 
 primitive severity. 
 
124 L^f^ ^^^ Works of Freddric Ozanam. 
 
 Alphonse said aloud those heartrending prayers, to which we answered with 
 sobs. All the succors which religion reserves for this solemn hour — absolu- 
 tion, indulgences — were once more applied. The memory of an immaculate 
 life, of good works, which, too numerous and too fatiguing, had hastened its 
 end ; three sons preserved in the faith amidst these stormy times, and united 
 here now as by a providential coincidence ; added to this the hopes, so near 
 to us, of a happy immortality — all this contributed to lessen the horror and 
 lighten the darkness of death. There were no convulsions, no agony, only a 
 slumber that left her countenance almost smiling, a faint breathing that grew 
 gradually fainter, until at last it ceased, and we rose up orphans. How shall 
 I describe the desolation that broke forth then, and at the same time the in- 
 expressible, incomprehensible inward peace that we all felt, the sense of a new 
 blessedness that, in spite of ourselves, filled our hearts to overflowing — not 
 ours only, but those of all those nearest and dearest to us ? Then the im- 
 mense concourse at her funeral, the tears of the poor, the prayers offered up 
 on all sides spontaneously, and without any solicitation of ours, and then all 
 the kindly sympathy of friends like you, who hastened to condole with us, and 
 must have been surprised often to find us so tranquil in our great grief. 
 
 ** Happy the man to whom God gives a holy mother ! 
 
 •* This dear memory will never forsake us. Often in our solitude now, in 
 the midst of the anguish that weighs down my soul, the remembrance of 
 that august scene returns to sustain and uplift me. I think of how short life 
 is, how soon we shall be reunited with those from whom death has parted us, 
 and then I feel all temptations of self-love, all the unworthy instincts of my 
 nature, fade away, and my desires are concentrated in the single one of dying 
 like my mother. 
 
 ««Oh ! how I rejoice now that I did not abandon that blessed death-bed 
 to run after the vague promises of University honors. If at this trifling sac- 
 rifice I should only have earned the privilege of passing a few more months 
 near her, of being there on that last night, I am more than paid for it." 
 
 Seldom did the virtues of the dead justify more fully the 
 tender and passionate panegyric in which the first outburst of 
 sorrow expresses itself. It was no wild rhapsody of grief, but 
 the result of his life's deepest and most sacred experience, to 
 which Frederic gave utterance when he said of his mother 
 that she had been '* the living image of the Church, and the 
 most perfect revelation of Providence to her children." He 
 continued all his life to invoke her in his necessities, to con- 
 sult her in moments of doubt and distress, as when she was 
 on earth, and he believed that her love and wisdom were em- 
 powered to help him as of yore. Two years after her death 
 he writes to a friend, who had just lost his mother : 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozviam, 125 
 
 ** Nothing is so appalling as the growing sohtude, the void that death creates 
 around us. I have gone through it all ; but this state did not last long. 
 There followed quickly another, when I began to feel that I was not alone, 
 when I was conscious of something infinitely sweet in the depths of my soul. 
 It was like an assurance that I had not been left alone ; it was a benign, 
 though invisible, neighborhood; it was as if a cherished soul, passing 
 close by, touched me with its wings. And just as formerly I used to 
 recognize the step, the voice, the breath of my mother, so now when a fresh 
 breeze revived my strength, when a virtuous thought entered my mind, 
 when a salutary impulse stirred my will, I could not but think it was still my 
 mother. After a lapse of two years, when time might have dispelled what 
 was merely the effect of an overwrought imagination, I still experience the 
 same thing. There are moments when a sudden thrill passes through me, as 
 if she were there by my side ; above all, when I most stand in need of it, 
 there are hours of maternal and filial intercourse, and then 1 shed more abun- 
 dant tears, perhaps, than in the first months of my bereavement, but an inef- 
 fable peace is mingled with their sadness. When I am good, when I have 
 done anything for the poor, whom she loved so tenderly, when I am at peace 
 with God, whom she served so well, I see her smiling on me in the distance. 
 Sometimes, when I am praying, I fancy I hear her voice praying with me, as 
 we used to do together at the foot of the crucifix every night. Often, in fact 
 — this I would not breathe to any one, but I confide it to you — when I have 
 the happiness of communicating, when our Saviour comes to visit me, it is as 
 if she followed Him into my wretched heart, as many a time she followed 
 Him when He was borne in Viaticum to the dwellings of the poor ; and then 
 J believe firmly in the real presence o/my mother near «*," 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 1840-41. 
 
 The Cours de Droits for which Ozanam had so longed for 
 his mother's sake, was not inaugurated until after her death. 
 His opening speech made a sensation, and at once attracted 
 crowds to the lectures. " The crowd was very great," he 
 says to his cousin Pessonneaux, " and ever since the hall has 
 been equally well attended. It holds more than two hundred 
 and fifty persons. I permitted myself, nevertheless, all sorts 
 of philosophical and historical digressions ; I did not even 
 shrink from enunciating severe truths, while at the same time 
 I seized any available opportunity of raising a smile on the 
 countenances of my hearers, and so, as De Maistre says, the 
 needle made the thread pass. The rector is enchanted at 
 this success, and is vigorously pushing on my nomination in 
 Quinet's place." 
 
 These lectures lasted but one scholastic year. They have 
 been published by M. Foisset from the notes left by Ozanam. 
 In an introductory notice, M. Foisset, himself a distinguished 
 judge and jurist, observes that *' those who did not know 
 Ozanam as a jurist did not know him fully. . . . Law was 
 for him not merely what makes a good practitioner at the 
 Courts ; it was not the bare application of judicial texts to the 
 business of daily life. Law was for him, above all, a branch 
 of philosophy ; it was a portion of history ; it was even one 
 side of literature. When a municipal chair of law was creat- 
 ed for him in his native town, he took possession of it, at the 
 age of six-and-twenty, armed at all points on philosophy as 
 on history, and on the positive theory of that portion of sci- 
 ence which he was charged to teach. Deeply penetrated 
 
 xai 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 127 
 
 with the true mission of the Professor, he did not aim at ac- 
 cumulating in his lecture subtle judicial problems ; he did not 
 lose himself in endless discussions on contested points. He 
 preferred teaching principles to doubts, inculcating rules of 
 law, and clearly demonstrating their wisdom, instead of initiat- 
 ing his hearers, as he said himself, ' in the twofold scandal of the 
 obscurity of laws and the contradictoriness of judgments.' " * 
 These external compensations could not, however, fill up 
 the blank which death had made in his life. His two broth- 
 ers were absent, one on the mission, the other finishing 
 his studies, and Ozanam, on coming home after his day s 
 work, found no society by the once happy fireside but that of 
 the devoted old Gui-gui. It was natural enough that doubts 
 about his vocation, for a moment laid to rest, should now re- 
 turn stronger and more perplexing than ever. It seemed an 
 aimless life, with no object but a personal career in view, dis- 
 coursing a couple of hours a week at his class, poring over 
 books with no very definite result, and only his labors amongst 
 the poor to vivify the dry, commonplace routine. He felt all 
 the old repugnance for the married state, and endeavored to 
 dissuade nis friends from embarking in it when they asked his 
 opinion. Loneliness and recent sorrow had so detached 
 him from life, and made him so realize its brevity and vanity, 
 that he shrank with a kind of horror from the thought of forg- 
 ing new chains which would bind him to it again. " In 
 these arduous times," he says, " the ordinary engagements of 
 marriage and paternity cannot suffice to generous souls, and 
 outside the domestic sanctuary they continue to seek strength 
 for the fight through associations of another kind. ... As 
 for myself, I look on without arriere-pensee^ determined as I 
 am not to occupy myself with the project of a state of life be- 
 fore the end of the next vacation. I owe at least one year's 
 mourning to the memory of my poor mother. I shall mean- 
 time be able to see the Abb^ Lacordaire on his return from 
 
 • Foissct, Preface aux Notts cTun Court de Droit. CEuvrcs completes d'Ozanam, vol. viii. p. 
 
128 Life and Works of Frederic Ozatiam. 
 
 Rome, and to assure myself whether Divine Providence may 
 not be willing to open to me the doors of the order of St. Do- 
 minic. Between this and then I shall strive to win some lit- 
 tle claim to fuller lights from above, by acquiring more aus- 
 tere habits and greater control over my passions, that thus I 
 may have more certainty of being actuated by the right in- 
 spiration. I invite all my friends to help me with their pray- 
 ers in these grave and decisive circumstances." 
 
 Yet it seems to us, as we watch the tenderness of his na- 
 ture unconsciously revealing itself, that a friendly heart, near 
 enough to his to hear its throbbings, could scarcely fail to re- 
 cognize certain premonitory symptoms which might fairly be in- 
 terpreted as signs of the future vocation. There is no ascetic 
 note in the following joyous sympathy with the happiness of 
 a young father : 
 
 "... And so we are really to salute you in sober earnest by that title of * fa- 
 ther, ' which we gave you in the old days as a merry nickname ! Has God given 
 you the unspeakable consolation of seeing your youth come to life again un- 
 der the features of childhood in the person of your own son ? Happy the first- 
 born of an early marriage 1 He will enjoy his parents in their green season ; 
 he will not see them growing gray until he has reached maturity himself and 
 the farewell of death will be only the signal of an approaching rendezvous ; 
 and you, too, will have had time to see your work accomplished. ... If the 
 responsibilities of paternity alarm you, the hour is yet distant when they will 
 be difficult, and meanwhile it is not a burden that God has given you, but a 
 little angel, whose presence will sanctify your hearth, making virtue appear 
 more lovely, and the path of life brighter. . . . 
 
 *' We, on our side, are doing our best to keep alive that sacred fire of chari- 
 ty that you helped us to light. The little fire of St. Vincent de Paul lives and 
 grows. The extraordinary demands of this winter revived our zeal. We are 
 makingsomeprogressin the art of plundering the rich in behalf of the poor. . . . 
 But how little all this is, my dear friend, in presence of a population of sixty 
 thousand workmen, demoralized by indigence and by the propagation of evil 
 doctrines F Freemasonry and socialism trade upon the misery and the angry 
 passions of these suffering multitudes, and God alone knows what a future is 
 in store for us if Catholic charity does not interpose in time to arrest the • ser- 
 vile war ' that is at her gates ! 
 
 " Unhappily our ranks have more than one vacant place to show. There 
 have been several departures, and one death. . . . WTiile one poor friend was 
 taking his flight to a better world, another was binding himself to this one by 
 casting the golden anchor of a rich and happy marriage. You are aware, of 
 course, that I allude to Chaurand. God has rewarded his many virtues by 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 129 
 
 granting him all that constitutes happiness here below. These nuptials cele- 
 brated between two truly Christian families were very touching. There was 
 none of the noisy merriment of a worldly /tV<f, but a calm happiness that re- 
 minded one of the marriage-feast of Cana, and recalled the memory of Isaac 
 and Tobias." 
 
 Yet it is certain that, while entering with poetic sympathy 
 into the pure joys he describes, Frederic's heart continued as 
 yet free from any conscious desire to share them. He confides 
 to a friend that he is obliged to be extremely circumspect in 
 accepting invitations to soiries, as kindly-intentioned persons 
 are setting matrimonial traps for him on every side, and he is 
 exceedingly anxious to avoid being caught. Some of these 
 friends, with a view to facilitating their benevolent designs, 
 petitioned the Chamber of Commerce to grant the young 
 Professor an increase of salary, which was very graciously 
 done. Frederic's first thought on receiving the information 
 is, *' Oh ! why is my mother not here to make me glad of it?" 
 His worldly prospects were brightening daily, now that he 
 had become indifferent to them. 
 
 In the holidays he made a journey to Paris : 
 
 "... The happy advent of the Easter holidays had interrupted my class, 
 and restored full liberty to my locomotive faculties, when the necessity for 
 settling some publishing matters, and perhaps, also, a longing to breathe the 
 intellectual atmosphere of Paris, decided me to start off incog, on a little jour- 
 ney in that direction. . . , Everything turned out just as I wished, and I had 
 the satisfaction at the same time of meeting the greater number of my old 
 friends. I found them all contented and busy ; great activity in the religious 
 press ; new writers, like Veuillot, carried off from the enemy and recruited to 
 the good cause ; everywhere converts of M. le Cur6 Desgenettes ; * the pul- 
 pits filled by the Abbe Coeur, M. Bautain, the P^re de Ravignan, and an Abb6 
 Marcelin, who, if we may judge by his cUbut, bids fair to compete with all 
 of them one day. 
 
 "Thus the faith remains entire in the midst of the splitting-up of parties 
 and schools. There were already three different shades of opinion amongst 
 the Legitimists, more than six distinct categories amongst the Dynasties, and 
 now the rancorous divisions of the Republican opposition are manifesting 
 themselves. On the other hand, the days are far off when the Globe rallied 
 the ilite of the young press to rationalism ; when the triumvirate, Cousin, 
 Guizot, and Villemain, filled a tribune at the Sorbonne no less powerful than 
 
 • The saintly old parish priest of N. D. des Victoircs, which, when he was named to it, was 
 the most impious and wicked parish in Taris. 
 
130 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 that of the Palais-Bourbon. To-day there is not a single review, not one pub- 
 lic class bold enough to formulate a doctrine ; there is no stand-point for hete- 
 rodox literature between sterile criticism and licentious profligacy. In such 
 a state of things we should be masters of the field if we had men enough, if 
 these men were united in distributing their forces, and if they were supported 
 by sympathy from without. But, if I am not mistaken, this is precisely the 
 result that is being prepared, and for no very distant period. The humble 
 efforts of the lowly and obscure will perhaps have had their share in clearing 
 the way for great men and great doings. It is evident that the movement, 
 which hcis been manifesting itself in divers forms, by turns weak and violent, 
 pusillanimous and rash, philosophical and literary, the movement which pro- 
 duced the Correspondattt, the Revue Europeenne, the Avenir, the Viiiver- 
 stte, the Annaies de Philosophie Chreitenne, the Ujiivers, the Conferences of 
 Notre Dame, the Benedictines of Solesme, the Dominicans of the Abbe La- 
 cordaire, and even to the little Society of St. Vincent de Paul — facts of very 
 unequal importance assuredly — it is evident, I say, that this movement, modi- 
 fied and restrained by circumstances, has begun to sway the destinies of the 
 age. . . . Then, again, the orthodox Propaganda of England and America, 
 the Catholic resistance in Ireland, Spain, and Germany, are one with us in 
 their aim, their pxjlemics, their manifestations ; and the most cordial union 
 on all these points exists between those whose influence is leading events 
 and directing the general opinion. The Cattolico of Madrid, the Dublin Re- 
 view^ the Journal 0/ Religious Science of Rome, the Catholic Miscellany of 
 Charleston, the Courrier of Franconia, all hold out their hand to us. . . . 
 
 " We are entering on a period of which no one can foresee the vicissitudes, 
 but whose advent it is impossible to deny. It is nevertheless of good omen 
 that it opens with an act of justice to the past. Filial piety brings luck. In 
 linking ourselves once more by the old traditional bond to the eternal truths 
 of Christianity, and to the laborious conquests of human experience, we shall 
 be enabled to follow with less danger the progressive instinct which should 
 enrich, and not repudiate, this glorious inheritance. Science will advance at 
 a swifter pace when it finds the ground of first principles no longer disputed ; 
 talent will no longer be wasted calling into question, in this nineteenth cen- 
 tury of ours, problems which Christianity had solved definitively, after they 
 had vainly exhausted all the forces of human genius during four thousand 
 years of ig^norance and doubt. 
 
 " The Society of St. Vincent de Paul was not one of the least sources of joy 
 and hope which I met with in my last visit to Paris. I saw assembled in the 
 amphitheatre where it holds its sessions more than six hundred members, 
 which does^iot make the total of its body in Paris. The majority was com- 
 posed of poor students, but set off, as it were, by a few persons of the very 
 highest social position. I elbowed a Peer of France, a Councillor of State, 
 several Generals and distinguished writers. I counted twenty-five pupils of 
 the Ecole Normale (out of seventy-five that it numbers), ten of the Polytech- 
 nique, one or two of the Ecole d'Etat Major. That morning one hundred 
 and fifty members had gone up to the altar together. Letters were received 
 from more than fifteen towns in France where conferepces are in full oper«^- 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 131 
 
 tion ; a similar number have been set on foot this year. We are now nearly 
 two thousand young men enrolled in this peaceful crusade of charity. . . . 
 Now, too, that an ever-increasing pauperism stands face to face, in rage and 
 desperation, with a moneyed aristocracy whose bowels of mercy have grown 
 hardened, it is well that there should be found mediators who may prevent a 
 collision of which no man may foretell the horrible disasters, who will gain a 
 hearing in both camps, and who will carry words of resignation to one and 
 counsels of mercy to the other, giving everywhere the f)assword : reconcilia>- 
 tion and love." 
 
 It is only at the end of this long letter that he mentions 
 a matter of serious interest to himself personally. Monsieur 
 Cousin, who still coveted him for his own department, 
 received him most affectionately, when Ozanam, as in duty 
 bound, paid his respects to '• his most honored patron at the 
 ministry." He invited him to breakfast, and enquired with 
 friendly interest into his young protege's position and pros- 
 pects. " He told me of his intention to name me to Quinet's 
 place next year," says Ozanam, " but he put a price upon 
 the favor, of which he is naturally the master. He exacts 
 that I shall come to Paris in the month of September to 
 compete for the Agre'gation de Ittiirature^ a new institution 
 whose success he holds to with an author's natural affection. 
 He has repeated this invitation to me through several 
 friends, then through the rector, and finally by a formal 
 letter, so that it is impossible for me to get out of it. And 
 yet the difficulty of the programme, bristling with the most 
 knotty Greek texts, almost throws me into despair, and, with 
 the work that my class gives me, I have the greatest diffi- 
 culty to make out as much time as is absolutely necessary for 
 the most superficial preparation." 
 
 He continued nevertheless to go on with it, and describes 
 himself as devouring an enormous quantity of Latin without 
 prejudice to the Code of Commerce, and being on the point 
 of losing his head, if God does not come to the rescue. " At 
 the same time," he says, " the Propagation of the faith could 
 not be neglected, and in the July number of tlie Annales you 
 will find a long article, detestable in form very often, but 
 important in substance, which I wa3 obliged to write, in 
 
132 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 order to give from authentic sources a general statistic of the 
 missions." 
 
 The Agregation in question was a competitive examination 
 which candidates for professorships in the University were 
 obhged to undergo in virtue of a recent decree of M. Cousin. 
 Ozanam, once fairly embarked as a competitor, threw all his 
 energy into the necessary preparation. Now, as on the 
 occasion of his nomination to the Chair of Law, he resolved 
 to accept the issue as the final indication of his destiny. If 
 he succeeded, and if the University were open to him, he 
 would regard it as a sign that he was to serve truth in that 
 spliere. He had never wavered in the internal conviction 
 that whatever real good he was to do for his fellow-men, as a 
 secular, must be done by teaching, not merely the law, as at 
 present, but philosophy and history. The only way in which 
 he could fulfil his vow was by making knowledge, in so far 
 as he possessed it, instrumental in the manifestation of truth, 
 and using science as a weapon to serve the cause of Chris- 
 tianity. He could not disguise from himself that Paris was 
 the centre where this service could be best performed. At 
 Lyons young men had neither time nor inclination for at- 
 tending philosophical lectures ; as soon as they had finished 
 their college studies and taken their baccalaureat they went 
 into business. If, therefore, Ozanam succeeded at the ap- 
 proaching examinations, was it not essential, looking at his 
 vocation from the point of faithfulness and self-devotion, that 
 he should go forth from his own people and begin life anew 
 in Paris ? M. Ampere, whose opinion had greater weight 
 with him perhaps than any other, strongly urged him to 
 adopt this course. While he was revolving these problems 
 in his mind a change was at hand which was to render 
 their solution still more difficult to him. 
 
 The Abb6, now the Pere, Lacordaire was still in Rome, 
 but he had written to Ozanam, giving him a radiant descrip- 
 tion of his life in the novitiate, where he had been joined by 
 eight young Frenchmen, all elect souls, one more gifted than 
 
lAfe and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 133 
 
 the other. Ozanam, in spite of his sympathy and admiration 
 for these high examples, did not feel any more definite at- 
 traction to follow them. He saw no hand distincdy beckon- 
 ing him on. He would wait and see Pere Lacordaire, and 
 examine the matter more closely. The Abbe Noirot, who 
 knew him better than any one, had stood prudently aloof 
 while the young man was thus groping his way to the light : 
 but whenever Ozanam opened his heart to him on the sub- 
 ject, his answer invariably was '' Manez vous, man chet^ 
 mariez-vous." And the other would shake his head, not ven- 
 turing to offer a flat contradiction to tiie advice of so wise a 
 friend, though inwardly resenting it. The Abb6 had always 
 remained unshaken in his opinion that Ozanam had no voca- 
 tion for the monastic life, that there was in him a need of 
 tenderness and sympathy and encouragement, whicn made it 
 desirable for him to marry ; he had, moreover, settled in his 
 own mind the wife that would best suit him out of all the 
 young ladies in Lyons. But the old philosopher was far too 
 cunning a judge of human nature, and of this particular 
 specimen of it, to mention this, or even to make any attempt 
 to bring about a meeting, shrewdly suspecting that the gen- 
 tleman's perverse indifference and systematic habit of flying 
 from those decoy birds, whom he classed in a body as " ces 
 demoiselles," would frustrate the opportunity. Providence, 
 however, who loves the pure of heart, and takes their destiny 
 in hand, was gently leading Ozanam blindfold on to his. He 
 went one day to pay a visit to M. Soulacroix, the rector of 
 tlie Academy. In passing through the drawing-room to his 
 host's study, he stopped to present his respects to Madame 
 Soulacroix, and, while doing so, noticed seated in the window 
 a fair young girl, who was too busy attending to an invalid 
 brother to pay any particular attention to the stranger whom 
 her mother was speaking to. The stranger passed on, but 
 while discoursing on philosophy and other lofty matters with 
 the learned host, his eyes involuntarily wandered through the 
 open door to the group in the window, where the bright, fair 
 
134 ^ife and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 face was bending over the young brother, caressing and 
 amusing him. " How sweet it would be to have a sister hke 
 that to love one!" sighed Ozanam, as he watched the two; 
 and, though he did not then suspect it, from that hour he was 
 a lost man. 
 
 At the end of September he went to Paris to pass the most 
 formidable examination he had yet encountered. He gives 
 us the history of the event himself in a letter written three 
 weeks later : 
 
 ♦' I came up in a terrible fright, convinced that my candidature would play 
 me a sorry trick by causing me to lose whatever little consideration I enjoyed 
 already in the minds of the Professors. When the dreaded day came, we 
 were, seven of us, shut up under lock and key in a hall of the Sorbonne, with 
 eight hours before us, for a Latin dissertation ' On the Causes which arrested 
 the Development of Tragedy among the Romans.' I happened to be up in 
 the question, but, not being in the habit of composing quickly, I was at bay 
 wlien the fatal hour struck, and I was obliged to hand in a rough copy dis- 
 gracefully drawn up. The same adventure next day with the French disser- 
 tation ' On the Historical Value of Bossuet's Funeral Orations.' The auspices 
 were so unfavorable that, if it had not been for the indiscretion of one of the 
 judges, who hinted to me that my compositions had succeeded, I should have 
 withdrawn from the competition. 
 
 " Then came three separate argumentations on different days, and of three 
 hours each, on Greek, Latin, and French texts, given twenty-four hours in 
 advance. In Greek, I had to explain a chorus of Euripides' Helen and a frag- 
 ment of Halicarnassus' Rhetoric— \try little philology, as you may imagine, 
 and a vast amount of words, Helen considered as a poetic creation and a re- 
 ligious myth ; the history of oratorical art in Athens and Rome. Finally, a 
 fragment of Lucian and a theological chapter of Pliny, discussion on the role 
 of Caesar and on the revolutions of religious doctrines amongst the Romans. 
 
 " In French, La Fontaine's Philemon et Baucis and Montesquieu's dialogue 
 of Sylla and Eucrates ; here came in a few bold conjectures on the causes of 
 Sylla's abdication, a still more rash comparison between Montesquieu and St. 
 Thomas Aquinas. This lively outburst of Catholicism, and two or three 
 others which I indulged in, gave offence neither to the audience nor the jury ; 
 and a few reminiscences of Roman law, brought in in order to interpret cer- 
 tain passages which without this would have been difficult of comprehension, 
 were equally well received. 
 
 "After this ordeal followed the examination in the four foreign literatures. 
 I went in at once for Dante, where T felt at home ; Spanish, in which I had 
 taken ten lessons, succeeded wonderfully. I pulled through Shakespeare ; and 
 as I had the luck to fall on one of the finest and most touching passages of 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 135 
 
 Klopstock, the emotion with which I translated it produced the best effect. 
 There still remained two lectures on different subjects for each candidate, and 
 designated by lot, one twenty-four hours, the other one hour, beforehand. 
 The subject of ancient literature for me was ' The History of the Greek and 
 Latin Scholiasts.' This looked really like a spiteful trick of fate, and it was 
 so well known that I was not up in this philological specialiti that when the 
 ticket which fell to me was read aloud, a mischievous titter ran through the 
 public, composed chiefly of University men. I gave myself up for lost, and — 
 although one of my rivals, M. Egger, with great generosity, passed on to me 
 some capital books which he had by him — after a night of watching and a day 
 of anguish, I was more dead than alive when the moment came for me to 
 speak. Despair of myself prompted rae to make an act of faith in God such 
 as I never made before ; never either was I so rewarded. In short, your friend 
 held forth on the scholiasts during seven quarters of an hour with a freedom, 
 an assurance that astounded himself ; he succeeded not alone in interesting 
 but in moving and captivating both the judges and the audience, and 
 withdrew with all the honors of war, having brought over the laughers to his 
 side." 
 
 The last ordeal was comparatively easy, being a literary 
 criticism on the century of Louis XIV., where Ozanam, to 
 use his own words, " gave himself his fling." He was terrified 
 for a moment at his own audacity. " I feared that I had 
 blown up the ship," he says, " but all was taken in excellent 
 part." They proceeded to the ballot (scruiin)^ and his name 
 came out first. He could hardly credit it. His slowness in 
 composing, and his great difliculty in improvisation, made 
 him pronounce the verdict "un mensonge bizarre," seeing 
 that amongst the competitors were five young professors, 
 " who to great learning united a ready, brilliant, and graceful 
 improvisation." 
 
 ♦• If all this be not a dream," he adds, " or an impertinent trick of chance, 
 there is but one way of justifying it. God gave me the grace to bring to the 
 struggle a faith which, even when it does not seek to manifest itself outwardly, 
 animates the language, maintains harmony in the intelligence, and imparts 
 warmth and life to the speech. Thus I may truly say, in hoe vict\ and this 
 idea, which at first sight seems the result of pride, is precisely what humbles 
 at the same time that it reassures me. 
 
 " I am confounded by so wonderfully providential a success. I seem to see 
 in it what you see — an indication of the designs of God upon me ; a real vo- 
 cation, what for so many years my prayers have been imploring. My eldest 
 %Other is of the same opinion ; I shall therefore walk, still in tremb\in|f, but 
 
136 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanatn. 
 
 with a calmer step, in the new career which has been opened to me by this 
 singular event." 
 
 M. Fauriel, Professor at the Sorbonne, immediately offered 
 Ozanam the position of Assistant Professor in the Chair of 
 Foreign Literature, which he himself held. The position was 
 a precarious one, he being liable to lose it in the event of M. 
 Fauriel's health being sufficiently restored to enable him to 
 dispense with a supplea7ii^ as it is termed, and the salary was 
 not quite a hundred pounds a year. The duties were, how- 
 ever, such as Ozanam felt especially qualified to fill, and the 
 offer, coming immediately upon his extraordinary and un- 
 looked-for success, seemed like a direct invitation from Provi- 
 dence. The subject which he was to treat in the coming 
 year was the literature of Germany in the middle ages, begin- 
 ning with the Nibehmgen and the Book of Heroes. His. 
 "literary conscience," as he called it, determined him to 
 undertake a short tour in Germany, in order to study the 
 country upon whose literature he was going to lecture. 
 
 It was an interesting and critical moment for studying the 
 religious aspects of that country. The Archbishop of Cologne, 
 Monseigneur de Droste-Wischering, was in prison owing to 
 the firmness which he had displayed against the Prussian 
 Government when it issued a decree ordering the Catholic 
 clergy to conform to the prescriptions of the Prussian law on 
 the subject of marriages between Catholics and Protestants. 
 A few prelates thought fit to yield to the pressure of the State, 
 and not to exact from the husband and wife the promise that 
 the children should be brought up Catholics. Monseigneur 
 de Droste was the foremost to set the example of uncompro- 
 mising resistance, conformably to the canonical laws as laid 
 down by Pius VIII. in a Brief of the 25th of March, 1830. 
 He was forthwith seized, in the middle of the night, by order 
 of Frederic William III., King of Prussia, and imprisoned in 
 the fortress of Minden, fron^ which he was soon after trans- 
 ferred to that of Colberg in Pomerania. On hearing of this 
 Pope Gregory XVI. pronounced an allocution in full con- 
 
Life and Works jf Frederic Ozanam. 137 
 
 sistory, and therein loudly expressed his admiration of the 
 captive prelate's courageous conduct, and his sympathy with 
 his sufferings. 
 
 Ozanam made but a short stay at Aix-la-Chapelle, where 
 he visited the tomb of Charlemagne, " the great black stone, 
 with its two words of sublime simplicity — Carlo magno^ He 
 hurried on to Cologne, the classic soil of German Catholicism, 
 where the air is filled with marvellous legends, in which faith 
 and superstition are so fascinatingly interwoven that the peo- 
 ple cease to distinguish between the contending claims, and 
 Accept them all in childish and exuberant credulity. He 
 visited the glorious cathedral, unfinished after its centuries of 
 existence, and laments over its desolate condition as of one 
 '* who has passed the age of hope and has not even the con- 
 solations of memory." 
 
 ", , , I saw the archiepiscopal throne empty," he writes, "but the 
 church was full to overflowing. The crowd was packed so close that in some 
 places it was impossible to kneel down. Picture to yourself the great audience 
 of Notre Dame, but fancy it believing and praying. I must admit, neverthe- 
 less, that this German piety would astonish us a little by the imperturbable 
 calm of its attitudes — always standing up, with big blue eyes lifted to the 
 roof or wandering over the stained-glass windows, its ear evidently turned in 
 the direction of the organ, its hands hanging, or fingering a book whose 
 leaves don't turn over ; from time to time a long, methodical sign of the 
 cross, then the final genuflexion, and the Ite mtssa est taken literally. Worse 
 than this, the shops are almost universally open on Sunday, and the crowds 
 that pour straight out from Benediction to the /ites of the Casinos testify to 
 an inconsistency ot character, or a want of proper instruction, which leads 
 one to deplore still more deeply the absence of the pastor." 
 
 He revels for one day amidst the bewildering beauty of the 
 churches of Cologne, once *' the Rome of the Rhine." 
 
 " My souvenirs of Italy are still fresh," he says ; " nevertheless, I must con- 
 fess that nowhere, except in Rome, did I meet with anything to be compared 
 to the variety, multiplicity, and antiquity of the sacred edifices through which 
 I wandered with delight the whole day, . . . crying out with David, only 
 in a less perfect sense, ' Quara dilecta tabernacula tua, Domine virtutum 1 ' 
 No, it was not without reason that our fathers would have it so. The house 
 of God ought to be loved by men, and the place that was to be holy should 
 also be beautiful. Admiration is eminently a moral sentiment ; it elevates, 
 purifies, and prepares. Vandalism and Jansenism gave us a naked, im- 
 
138 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 poverished worship, a sombre piety. They effaced, as scandals, the pictures 
 which attracted the gaze of childhood ; they silenced the music, whose power 
 lifted up the hearts of the young men ; they destroyed the dim twilight that 
 fell softly on the old man's eyelids'; they suppressed those popular solemni- 
 ties, those pious representations, those triumphal processions, to which the 
 people flocked so joyously. Under pretence of driving out the venders from 
 the temple, they have driven away the little ones who cried Hosanna ! And 
 in the midst of those walls, whitewashed and despoiled, they have placed a 
 new divinity, powerful in evoking silence and void around her. She is called 
 Ennui. ''^ 
 
 These reflections suggest to him the necessity of seconding 
 all efforts tending to the restoration of Christian art. His 
 artistic sense is shocked at every step to see these magnificent 
 architectural chefs-d'oeuvre disfigured and mutilated by " unen- 
 lightened repairs and offensive decorations, daubing and ig- 
 noble coloring thrown for the past five-and-twenty years over 
 these beautiful edifices by the official trowel of the engineers." 
 And yet the architects of these lovely wonders were Germans 
 of from the eighth to the eleventh century, " great-grandsons 
 of the Franks of Clovis, whom two hundred and fifty years 
 of Christianity had sufficed to initiate into the most sublime 
 and delicate mysteries of true beauty ! " 
 
 Ozanam took ample notes of all these things as he passed 
 rapidly along the Rhine, and observes with satisfaction that 
 he is gleaning much that will be useful to him in his future 
 studies. 
 
 " When I shall have seen Mayence, where I arrive this evening," he says, 
 ** Frankfort, and Worms, the Germany of the Middle Ages will have passed 
 before my eyes. It was there, it was at Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle, that 
 the emperors were crowned and deposed, that the diets were held, that the 
 crusades organized. The names of Charlemagne, of the Othos, the Henries, 
 and the Frederics, reappear wherever there is an historical stone ; and there is 
 not a stone, not a rock, but has its history, its tradition, or its fable." 
 
 The weird, grandiose, and poetic landscape of the Rhine- 
 country surprises and enchants him. It is unlike anything he 
 has seen elsewhere, in France, in Italy, or Switzerland. The 
 fantastic lines of the mountains as they rise and fall and sally 
 in and out by the banks of the broad, deep, limpid stream, 
 whose waters do no*; strike him as " bine," but as a " beautiful 
 
Life and Works oj Frederic Ozanam. 139 
 
 sea-green," fill Ozanam with enthusiasm. He is quite pre- 
 pared to accept the marvellous legends that echo through 
 those solemn and airy hills. 
 
 "Here is the rock of the dragon, where a German maiden, the Christian 
 Andromeda, crucifix in hand, confounded the infernal serpent to which her 
 idolatrous countrymen had exposed her ; opposite rises the great stone of Ro- 
 land ; the hero came hither to mourn for his fiancie and die. . . . The 
 Nibelungen, the Carlovingian epic, and the cycle of the Holy Grail are there 
 face to face. Myths still more ancient peopled the hill of Lurley and the 
 caves of Kedrich with elfs and dwarfs. But, above myths and popular tradi- 
 tion, arise the grave realities of history." 
 
 He touches with a light and accurate finger the prominent 
 events that pass before his historical eye — the Konigs-Stuhl, 
 where the electors of the empire held council in days of trou- 
 ble and alarm ; the Castle of Rheinstein, where the freeboot- 
 ing barons, who made the terror of the Rhine and sat as 
 portraits for so many of its gigantic myths, used to assemble 
 to divide their plunder, and cut each other's throats when they 
 could not agree about their respective share in it ; the ruins 
 of the monastery where St. Hildegard wrote her visions, the 
 chapels founded by St. Helen, the bridge of Drusus, " the 
 soil where, for the first time, the Roman eagle was planted, 
 and where, for fifteen years, ours too reigned ; the battle-field 
 of our exploits of yesterday, and — who knows ? — perhaps ot 
 to-morrow." 
 
 While Ozanam is tracking these footprints of the past, and 
 indulging in the meditations which they naturally suggested to 
 so reflective a mind, a certain sadness steals over him at the 
 thought that these bright and beautiful scenes, which have 
 flitted before him like a vision, are now about to vanish and 
 rejoin others once equally enjoyed, but now mere memories 
 that grow paler and dimmer as the days go by. ** I wish," 
 he says, '* that I could at least carry away in my mind all that 
 my eyes are forsaking; but my memory does not retain the 
 look of places. The shadow they leave behind fluctuates 
 there for a while, and too often ends by vanishing altogether." 
 He begins to fear, moreover, that his excursion has been a 
 
140 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 foolish escapade, that he has been like those scribblers of 
 feuilletons who fly off " to discover " a country, or, at best, 
 that it has been but a flimsy satisfaction granted to his scru- 
 ples, " a shuffling pretence," as he says, " to enable me to say 
 to my audience this winter: Gentlemen, I have seen! Just 
 as, when I was a little boy, I used to dip the tips of my fin- 
 gers into the water, in order to be able U> say to my mother 
 without telling a lie, ' I have washed myself.' Or, to fall 
 back on grander comparisons, I am something like Caligula, 
 who went as far as the Rhine, picked up pebbles, and came 
 back to Rome to receive the honors of a triumph, with the 
 surname of Gerfnanicus/" 
 
 On his return from this flying expedition, Ozanam was 
 called upon to prove himself by ofte of those elections which 
 ^are seldom forced upon ordinary destinies ; one of those deci- 
 sions that place a man face to face with conscience and prin- 
 ciple, leaving him no alternative but to renounce his ideal, or 
 cleave to it with a fidelity little short of heroic. 
 
 That passing interview which had moved his gentle envy 
 of the brother who had "such a sweet sister to love him," 
 had been followed up by others, and soon there was kindled 
 jn Frederic's heart as pure a flame as ever earthly love lighted 
 in a manly breast. He offered himself to M. Soulacroix as a 
 candidate for his daughter's hand, and was accepted. M. 
 Soulacroix had long admired Ozanam, and watched his career 
 with interest, augurmg great things for him in the future. 
 He was not a rich man himself, and he was not ambitious 
 that his child should marry one; at the same time he had 
 that far-sighted parental prudence which makes a French 
 father consider it little short of criminal to give his daughter 
 to a man who cannot show a reasonable guarantee for her 
 future. 
 
 Ozanam's pecuniary position was fair enough, seeing that 
 he was not yet seven-and-tvventy, and that his talent was 
 steadily raising him to fame. But all this was compromised 
 now. The recent triumph in Paris, by inviting him to the 
 
Life and Wvrks of Frederic Ozanant. 141 
 
 Sorbonne, left him no choice, if he accepted, but to throw up 
 his position at Lyons, and embark on his new honors with a 
 precarious salary of ;£^ioo a year, and the possibility of losing 
 this any day by the death of M. Fauriel. When he came to 
 consider the matter by the prosaic light of pecuniary considera- 
 tions, it was not satisfactory to a man about to take charge 
 of a wife. What would the wife herself say to it ? Above 
 all, what would her father say ? Before he had summed up 
 courage to lay the case before M. Soulacroix, an incident 
 occurred which still further complicated things. M. Ville- 
 main, who had succeeded M. Cousin as Minister of Public 
 Instruction, heard of Ozanam's engagement to the daughter 
 of his friend the rector of the Academy, and wrote to offer 
 hira the Chair of Foreign Literature in the University of 
 Lyons, recently vacant through the promotion of M. Quinet 
 to the College de France. This, with the Chair of Law, 
 which he would continue to fill, and other lectures that he 
 gave at Lyons, brought his income up to close on ;^6oo a 
 year. The position, moreover, in both cases, was for life. 
 Here, indeed, was an opportunity of proving the sincerity of 
 his ideal vocation. Should he renounce this substantial cer- 
 tainty, and go to Paris on a precarious hundred a year, sim- 
 ply because, as he believed, he could serve the cause of 
 Christian philosophy more efficaciously there than in his 
 native city ? After asking for light that he might see God's 
 will, and then at any and every sacrifice accomplish it, he 
 went to consult M. Soulacroix. The rector's first movement 
 was, naturally enough, one of emphatic disapproval. It 
 seemed a mad imprudence on Ozanam's part, and it certainly 
 would be on his if he encouraged it, or sanctioned his daugh- 
 ter's marriage under the circumstances. Ozanam, however, 
 pleaded his cause so eloquently that the wise elderly man 
 had to admit there was something to be said on the side of 
 the heroics. He had, moreover, almost unlimited confidence 
 in tlie young man's energy and talent, and knew that he 
 would avail himself to the full of the magnificent opportunity 
 
/ 
 
 142 Life ami Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 which the Sorbonne opened to him, and that he was likely, 
 moreover, to reach eminence much sooner by being brought 
 into personal contact, as he would be in Paris, with the influ- 
 ential men who could serve him. But it was one thing to 
 admit all this in the abstract, and another to counsel his son- 
 in-law to act upon it. Ozanam, with a stroke of policy 
 worthy of Talleyrand, determined to appeal to his fiancie^ 
 shrewdly suspecting that if he won her consent the day was 
 gained. He laid the case frankly before her. If they 
 remained at Lyons, he could offer her comfort, security for 
 the future, and the happiness, which both of them valued, of 
 remaining amongst their own people; but by doing this he 
 would forfeit what he believed to be the noblest part of his 
 service, that which involved sacrifice and self-renunciation. 
 In going to Paris they would have to face poverty; but he 
 would have a wide field for usefulness, and all the conditions 
 of a noble mission. Had she sufficient trust in herself and in 
 him to choose the higher and harder part ? Amelie placed 
 her hand in his, and said, " I will trust you." 
 
 And so they went forth together, rich in mutual confidence, 
 in love and faith, though poor enough in the goods of this 
 world. 
 
 The moment this choice was approved and his marriage 
 decided, the most profound peace succeeded to the anxiety 
 and agitation to which Ozanam had been a prey during the 
 interval of uncertainty. 
 
 " Oh ! how much I have to say to you," he writes to Lallier, " and how 
 suddenly this grave question of vocation, so long doubtful, has been solved I 
 Just as Divine Providence calls me back to the perilous sojourn of the capital, 
 He sends me an angel to guard and console my solitude ! I now go, leaving 
 behind me an engagement which is to be concluded on my return. I should 
 have had recourse to your good advice if events had not precipitated them- 
 selves with such unforeseen rapidity. I have now recourse to your prayers. 
 May God preserve, during these six months, her whom He seems to have 
 chosen for me, and whose smile is the first sunbeam of happiness that has 
 brightened my life since my poor father's death . 
 
 "You will find me very tenderly smitten. I don't attempt to disguise it, 
 although sometimes I cannot help laughing at myself I I thought my heart 
 was more invulnerable. . . . 
 
Life and Works of Ftederic Ozanam. 143 
 
 " You will find me very happy. It will be a compensation for all the times 
 that you shared my sorrows." 
 
 His marriage took place on the 23d of June, in the sunny 
 month of the roses. 
 
 " Last Wednesday," he informs Lallier a week after the event, "at ten 
 o'clock in the morning:, in the church of St. Nizier, your friend was on his 
 knees ; at the altar his eldest brother lifted up his sacerdotal hands, while the 
 younger one made the liturgical responses. At his side you would have seen 
 a young girl dressed in white, and veiled, pious as an angel, and already — she 
 gives me leave to say it — tender and affectionate as a friend. Happier than 
 I, she was surrounded by her parents ; all that Heaven has left me of a family 
 here below was there ; and my old comrades, my friends of St. Vincent de 
 Paul, with numerous acquaintances, filled the choir and peopled the nave. 
 It was beautiful. The strangers who had strayed in by chance were deeply 
 moved. As to me, I did not know where I was. I could scarcely restrain my 
 tears, big, delicious tears, as I felt the Divine blessing descending on us with 
 the consecrated words. 
 
 " O my dear Lallier ! you, the companion of my toils and weariness, 
 you, the consoler of my evil days, why were you not there ? I would have 
 asked you to place your signature to the commemorative deed of this great 
 fete. I would have presented you to the charming bride who has been given 
 to me, and she would have greeted you with that smile of hers that enchants 
 every one ; and since then, during those few days that we have been together, 
 what calm, what serenity reigns in that soul that you have known so unquiet, 
 so ingenious in self-torture ! I let myself be happy. I take no count of hours 
 or moments. The lapse of time is nothing to me. What do I care about the 
 future ? Happiness is in the present — it is eternity. ... I understand 
 heaven now, 
 
 " Help me to be good and grateful. Each day, in revealing to me new 
 perfections in her whom I possess, increases my debt towards Providence. 
 . . . What a difference from those days in Paris when you saw me so sad ! 
 
 " I am almost forgiven for having shown you a certain letter then ; I shall 
 be forgiven entirely when you are known to the offended person. You are 
 invited to the house-warming in the month of November." 
 
 " My happiness is great," he writes a few days later to the son of his kind 
 protector, M. Ampere; " it surjiasses all my hop>es and dreams. Since the 
 day that the benediction of God descended on me, I am dwelling in a sort of 
 enchanted calm, so serene, so sweet that nothing can give an idea of it. The 
 angel who is come to me clothed in every grace and virtue is like a new reve- 
 lation of Providence in my obscure and laborious destiny ; I am illuminated 
 with interior joy. But this light, which fills my soul, casts no shadows over 
 the memories of the past, and above all on those where gratitude plays a part. 
 The thought of you was present to me amidst those friends who crowded 
 round me at the foot of the altar. And afterwards, in those delightful cod- 
 versations with my new family, who like to hear me talk over bygone yea.'s. 
 
t44 ^tf^ ^«^ Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 your name, like that of your venerated father, comes up at every instant, and 
 is always greeted by the most sincere expressions of gratitude. I could never 
 express mine as I wished, and yet — I know you will forgive me for saying it — 
 I feel almost as if I were quits with you when I hear you praised by those lips 
 whose every word thrills through me." 
 
 No wonder he was happy, entering as he did on the mar- 
 ried life with such pure aspirations, such a lofty idea of its 
 duties and privileges. Here is his description of what a 
 Christian marriage should be : 
 
 ** In marriage there is not only a contract, there is, above all, a sacrifice, a 
 twofold sacrifice. The woman sacrifices that which God has given her, and 
 which is irreparable, that which was the object of her mother's anxious care — 
 herkfresh, young beauty, often her health, and that faculty of loving which 
 women have but once. The man, in his turn, sacrifices the liberty of his 
 youth, those incomparable years which never return, that power of devoting 
 himself to her he loves, which is only to be found at the outset of his life, and 
 that effort of a first love to secure to her a proud and happy lot. This is what 
 a man can do but once, between the age of twenty and thirty — a little sooner, 
 a little later, perhaps never. This is why I say that Christian marriage is 
 a double sacrifice. It is two cups : one filled with virtue, purity, innocence ; 
 the other with an untainted love, self-devotion, the immortal consecration of 
 the man to her who is weaker than himself, who was unknown to him yester- 
 day, and with whom to-day he is content to spend the remainder of his life ; 
 and these two cups must both be full to the brim, in order that the union may 
 be holy, and that Heaven may bless it." * 
 
 After spending a month in the Dauphine, the young 
 married couple set out on a tour through Italy. The sacrifice 
 of a portion of the sum set aside to furnish their house de- 
 frayed the expenses of the journey. It was a little rash, per- 
 haps, but they were both young and overflowing with trust in 
 the future and in one another. 
 
 " Only have confidence in me," said the young husband, when they settled 
 to part with the money that would have adorned their little home, "and I 
 will, please God, before long give you the prettiest furniture that is to 
 be had." 
 
 They travelled, of course, with the utmost simplicity, but 
 from first to last " the journey was like an enchanted dream." 
 They loitered longer than they should have done in Sicily, 
 
 • Les Fcmmes Chretiennes. Vide Civilisation au s»t/ iikle, vol. ii. p. 07. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 145 
 
 fascinated by " the rich African nature," so different from 
 anything they had seen elsewhere. 
 
 ♦• A real tropical vegetation ; the fig-trees of Barbary and its gigantic aloes 
 enclosing, like an impenetrable wall, gardens where the cotton-tree, the papy- 
 rus, and the sugar-cane grow ; terrestrial paradises, where every variety of 
 the cedrate, the citron, and the orange clustered luxuriantly with their golden 
 fruit ; the seashore covered with little palm-trees ; the myrtle and oleander 
 flowering by the roadside ; while here and there the tall palm rose high into 
 the air with its crown of broad leaves, and bunches of dates suspended from 
 them. All this hemmed in in the Strait of Messina, at the foot of Etna, with 
 its brow of snow, in that gulf of Palermo whose wild beauty surpasses, to my 
 idea, all the boasted beauties of Naples." 
 
 But what interests him most are the traces of Greek and 
 Roman antiquity that he finds scattered throughout Sicily : 
 the empty tombs, the ruined temples, the fragments of marble 
 gods, pillars, theatres, baths — all the rich and varied vestiges 
 of a classical past. He takes volumes of notes as he wan- 
 ders through the silent, solemn ruins, seeing everywhere "the 
 grand inspirations of genius and all its follies ; the progress 
 of art, from the austere nakedness of its first monuments to 
 the somewhat over-exuberant decoration of its latest." He is 
 charmed to find the people cherishing, with a kind of filial 
 worship, this precious inheritance of the past ; to find also 
 that they retain the old faith in its fervor, and the primitive 
 manners of their fathers. 
 
 *'One evening," he says, in a letter to his father-in-law, "in a pretty ham- 
 let by the seashore, when the Angelus had rung for the churches to be closed, 
 we saw the inhabitants shut their doors behind them and go off in procession 
 to salute the Blessed Sacrament with a last homage. Again and again we 
 have met with the most patriarchal hospitality from a venerable jjeasant host 
 in passing through a village or descending from our litter. We have been sur- 
 rounded and compelled to enter some humble dwelling, where they would 
 place the little children on our knees to get a kind word or a caress. In the 
 monasteries we have come in contact with eminent and excellent men, some- 
 times with an amount of learning that confounded me, and always with a de- 
 gree of politeness that enchanted Amelie. She will always remember the 
 Capuchins of Syracuse and the Benedictines of Catania. But it wouid seem 
 that she possesses, above all, the gift of charming the good religious of St. 
 Francis, for in our journey from Naples to Rome she was the object of the 
 kindest attentions of the old Procureur-GSniral of the Observantines, who 
 ever since accosts us with the blandest smile in his long white beard. Yester- 
 
146 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam 
 
 day, again, at San Pietro, in Montorio, a Capuchin of whom we enquired the 
 way offered her a bouquet of roses. In fact, it would be enough to make one 
 tremble, if in this country virtue was not equal to courtesy." 
 
 But the ten days which the travellers passed in Rome were 
 the crowning joy of their expedition. What they achieved in 
 the way of sight-seeing and visits, besides taking notes for 
 future use, is absolutely incredible. Everything was as fresh 
 a wonder to Ozanam as if it had been his, as well as his 
 young bride's, first glimpse of the Eternal City. He is filled 
 with pious exultation when the colossal vision of St. Peter's 
 bursts upon them as they approach the city by sea, and they 
 behold the dome, the vast and wondrous dome, "like the 
 diadem of the Papacy suspended between heaven and earth." 
 They go up to the neighboring hills to watch the sun setting 
 behind the neighboring basilica, and it appears to Ozanam as 
 " the emblem of that institution which we behold ever erect 
 and immovable while we are passing on the waves of time, 
 and on which the last sun of humanity will set." 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 1842. 
 
 The chair to which Ozanam was named was one which 
 his mental and moral endowments fitted him admirably to 
 fill. It was the realization, moreover, of those ambitions 
 which he had cherished, like the presentiment of a mission, 
 and for whose fulfilment he had bten preparing himself from 
 his early boyhood. 
 
 But the Professor's fitness for his post did not obviate the 
 fact that it was one of peril, beset with dangers and diflScul- 
 ties. 
 
 MM. Guizot, Villemain, and Cousin had for some years 
 past formed a triumvirate of genius which had raised the 
 standard of professorships at the Sorbonne to the highest 
 point of critical severity; it was therefore a tremendous 
 ordeal for the inexperienced young provincial doctor of law to 
 be brought into competition with such rivals. This rivalry 
 was none the less formidable from the fact that the three 
 celebrated masters owed no small portion of their popularity 
 and oratorical success to their being the champions of a 
 strong political opposition, and to the fact that with them the 
 Professor's chair was frequently transformed into a political 
 tribune, where science and literature disappeared to make 
 way for theoretical disquisitions that tickled agreeably the 
 ears of a socialist, and even revolutionary, audience. But 
 Ozanam, even if he had not been too humble to court popu- 
 larity for its own sake, was far too scrupulous to have conde- 
 scended to any foils or arts for the purpose. He was bent 
 solely on the accomplishment of his mission as a teacher of 
 youth. But here, at least, the example of his illustrious col- 
 leagues afforded a valuable precedent; it justified him in 
 
 »47 
 
J 
 
 148 Life a?id Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 using his rostrum in the University as a pulpit for the propa- 
 gation of truth through the medium of science, poetry, and 
 history. It might have been more prudent in his own inter- 
 est if he had confined himself to lecturing on these subjects in 
 themselves, instead of making them the vehicle of Christian 
 philosophy ; but personal considerations weighed lightly with 
 Ozanam against the dictates of duty. He remembered his 
 vow, and he kept to it as the stars keep to their course. He 
 knew perfectly that in adopting this conduct he was com- 
 mitting himself to a manifestation of faith which would in all 
 probabihty cost him dear. 
 
 The times were excited ; the public mind was envenomed 
 against religion, or liable to become so at the slightest touch ; 
 reprisals were violent and prompt. The grand question of 
 freedom of education {la liberti d'' enseignement) was being 
 hotly contested in the Press and the Tribune. M. de Monta- 
 lembert, the chivalrous captain of the Catholics, was breaking 
 lances with all comers in the cause of liberty, charming the 
 chilly souls of his antique brother peers by the spell of his 
 eloquence, and firing them with a passhig thrill of his youth- 
 ful enthusiasm. All who would fight stood armed at his call, 
 ready to follow him on to any encounter. There were divisions 
 in the camp — as when have th^re not been ? — but there was 
 not a single traitor. Ozanam, from his peculiar position, was 
 marked out to a post in the advance-guard. Montalembert 
 had called him a brother-in-arms, and the time had come for 
 him to vindicate a title which he was proud to bear. 
 
 It was nearly half a century since the voice of a Christian 
 teacher, a teacher identified with the Christian faith, had been 
 ^ heard in the Sorbonne, while, on the other hand, its walls had 
 echoed unceasingly to every false and fantastic doctrine of the 
 Voltairian and Rationalistic schools ; and this absence of 
 talent, or at least this silence among the Catholic men in the 
 'great seat of learning, went far to sanction the popular idea 
 that talent, not to say genius, had utterly disappeared from 
 the Catholic ranks. But now a new era had begun. At the 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 149 
 
 age of seven-and-twenty Ozanam took his seat amongst the 
 veterans of the proud old University, and electrified young 
 and old by the splendor of his gifts and the burning ardor of 
 his faith. It was a strange coincidence that the same 
 audience which so lately had listened with deiigiit while 
 Villemain and Cousin exposed their favorite theses should 
 now hear, with no less favor, those same theses energetically 
 denounced from the same rostrum by the daring new-comer. 
 
 It was a rash experiment on his part. The State as yet 
 held the monopoly of the University, and looked with an 
 evil eye on the men who were leading the war against it 
 in behalf of the rights of the Church. It was natural 
 enough, too, that an assembly of young men, all enlisted in 
 warm partisanship on one side or the other, but amongst 
 whom the opponents of the Church largely predominated, 
 should form a dangerous audience for a Professor of 
 Ozanam's ardent religious convictions. But he did not 
 stop to calculate risks ; and Fortune, who sides mostly with 
 the brave, stood by the young champion of the GospeL 
 Here was no sophist, no subtile philosopher striving to 
 palliate hard sayings, or smooth down unpalatable propo- 
 sitions, but a dauntless knight, who rode into the lists with his 
 drawn sword flashing in the sunlight, and, flinging down his 
 gauntlet, dared all comers to pick it up. He dealt in no 
 compromise, he make no concessions to the hostile suscepti- 
 bilities of his hearers. The sceptics heard him in astonished 
 admiration, the Catholics applauded with a sense of victory. 
 *' Athens listened," says the P^re Lacordaire, ** as she would 
 have listened to Gregory or Basil, if, instead of returning to 
 the solitudes of their native land, they had poured out at the 
 foot of the Areopagus, where St. Paul was preaching, those 
 treasures of science and taste which were to illustrate their 
 names." 
 
 The field of Ozanam's new labors embraced an almost 
 boundless horizon, for it was not a question of initiating his 
 hearers into the familiar beauties of Greek and Roman 
 
15© Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 classics, but of introducing them to the unknown and endless 
 storehouses of foreign literature — the poets, philosophers, 
 historians, writers of every nation who have enriched their 
 native tongues with a legacy of genius. He had qualified 
 himself for the task by a thorough knowledge of modern lan- 
 guages and literatures, and he held from nature that gift which 
 is the crown and compendium of so many others — eloquence. 
 Like many gifts of the highest order, it was purchased at a 
 price. To the end of his life a debut was always a painful 
 ordeal to Ozanam. It did not matter where it was, in the 
 solemn precincts of the Sorbonne, in a quiet schoolroom, in a 
 iete-a-iete with a student, or in a drawing-room circle, so long 
 as he had not spoken he shrank from speaking. He would 
 remain an entire evening listening to the conversation going 
 on around him without ever volunteering a remark unless it 
 was direcdy elicited ; but if any one appealed to him he an- 
 swered willingly, at first with a certain hesitation, as if he were 
 looking for his words, but after a few sentences the dumb de- 
 mon was exorcised, and his conversation flowed on in a clear 
 and brilliant stream. Nor did the silence, which he was sure 
 to command the moment he began to talk, intimidate, but 
 the contrary : it stimulated and encouraged him. 
 
 The same effect was visible, only in a much more striking 
 degree, in his public speaking. Those who attended his lec- 
 tures at the Sorbonne continued year after year to note with 
 wonder the distress that invariably accompanied the opening 
 sentences. His appearance, as he ascended the rostrum, be- 
 trayed a high degree of nervous agitation. He was pale al- 
 most to ghastliness ; his dark eye wandered over the heads 
 of his audience, as if dreading to encounter a direct glance; 
 his utterance was labored, his whole manner constrained. 
 You were unconsciously reminded of a musician trying to 
 master an indocile instrument whose notes refuse their office 
 to his beseeching fingers, and only send forth broken and inar- 
 ticulate sounds. Tins interval never failed, but it was of short 
 duration; after a h\N minutes it passed away swiftly and im- 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 151 
 
 perceptibly ; the speaker resumed his self-command, emotion 
 overcame diffidence and burst the bonds of the tongue-tied 
 spirit; his eye kindled, and met responsive glances boldly; 
 his action, always simple, grew animated and expressive; his 
 voice rang out in full and thrilling tones, until the audience, 
 wrought to sympathy with the rising flame, caugiu tire at it 
 and broke out into short but irrepressible bursts of applause. 
 The victory once gained, the orator held it to the end, rising 
 to loftier flights as he proceeded, and keeping his hearers cap- 
 tive to the close. 
 
 If we except this passing impediment, resulting in a great 
 measure, no doubt, from a weak and highly nervous physical 
 temperament, Ozanam possessed all the elements of the purest 
 eloquence — a ready and retentive memory, a clear conception, a 
 facility for rigidly sketching the outline of his subject, and fill- 
 ing it up in strong, brilliant, and delicate colors. Many would 
 have been dazzled by the inheritance, or would at least have 
 remained satisfied with so ample a birthright, and spared 
 themselves the toil of laborious cultivation; but Ozanam 
 worked as if nature had denied him everything but the facul- 
 ty of working. The gifts he held from the gratuitous bounty 
 of God were but so many incentives to the acquirement of 
 richer and greater things by patient and persevering labor. 
 Nothing better illustrates this than his manner of preparing 
 his lectures. Most men, feeling themselves thoroughly mas- 
 ter of their subject from long previous study, would have 
 been satisfied with rapidly reviewing it, and jotting down a 
 few notes on the leading points to be treated. But Ozanam 
 proceeded differently. On the evening before his cours he 
 retired early to his study, and selecting from his accumulat- 
 ed materials the notes and texts he wanted, he proceeded to 
 classify them in orderly sequence. This done, he placed his 
 subject before him and meditated on it until the central idea 
 clearly disengaged itself, and the moral truth that it embod- 
 ied stood out in distinct relief. He would pass long hours in 
 this solitary and direct contemplation of the beautiful and the 
 
152 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 true, and the night was often far gone when an anxious voice 
 broke in upon his musings. Early next morning he would 
 resume the interrupted chain of thought, and then, when the 
 time came, after invoking on his knees the Hght and aid of 
 the Holy Spirit, he went forth to deliver his message. 
 
 As he hurried on his way through the gardens of the Lux- 
 embourg, his head bent, his brow still contracted in deep 
 thought, you might have taken him for a man in a dream. 
 Thus it was that the savant presented himself at the Sorbonne, 
 and ascended his chair to encounter that terrible moment of 
 ajigoisse which we have described. 
 
 His manner of lecturing was full of charm ; he dispensed 
 his vast erudition with the simplicity of a boy, and with a 
 prodigality that belongs only to inexhaustible abundance. 
 Every one of his lectures was a book condensed into a chap- 
 ter, and he frequently compressed into a sentence an amount 
 of thought and information which a mind less magnificently 
 replenished would have diluted into a chapter, telling away 
 in an hour, like the intellectual spendthrift that he was, the 
 treasure it had taken years to accumulate. He stripped 
 knowledge of half its difficulties by his way of imparting it. 
 Knowledge with him was not so much an intellectual system 
 as a mental habit, which had become a part of his being ; he 
 did not divest himself of it, as some men do, taking it up and 
 i'aying it down at stated times ; when the signal came for him 
 to impart it officially, he did not seem to stand up and per- 
 form the functions of a Professor so much as to avail himself 
 of an opportunity for reveahng the rich deposit of thought, 
 scientific analysis, and observation which life-long study had 
 left in his mind ; he gave it out naturally, spontaneously, and 
 with the real enthusiasm of a devout scholar, devout in the 
 sense of devoted; his devotion to science, ^nd to his own 
 particular branch of it — history — partook of the nature of his 
 rehgion; it was to his mind what faith was to his soul. It 
 was the spontaneity of his method, united to its finished art, 
 which exercised such fascination on all, and possessed such 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 153 
 
 an unrivalled power of attraction for the young. They were 
 interested and enchanted even before they were convinced. 
 If they arrived at the lecture-hall ignorant of the subject or 
 indifferent to it, tliey were quickly excited to a curiosity 
 which put an end to indifference and stimulated to enquiry 
 and investigation. Few minds ever possessed, in a higher 
 degree, the faculty of kindling the minds of others with his 
 own — a faculty winch may be taken as llie supreme test of 
 mental and moral power. Ozanam followed the Socratic 
 method, of which he had learned the secret from M. Noirot. 
 Taking hold of the mind on every side, by sympathy, by the 
 reason and the imagination, he compelled the student to 
 work with his own brains, while following the working of 
 another's. 
 
 M. Cousin once exclaimed, on coming out from a lecture 
 of Ozanam's, " The Lyceums and Colleges send us distin- 
 guished Professors, but the Abbe Noirot sends us men." 
 Following in the footsteps of his venerable master, Ozanam 
 strove, above all, to make men of his pupils, to impart to 
 them his own manly, vigorous spirit and love of work. No 
 one admired fine native gifts more than he did ; but there 
 was something that he prized even more than talent; this 
 was industry, energy — bonne volonie\ as he termed it. He 
 would take endless pains with a student whom he saw trying 
 to supplement by diligence and courage a nature scantily 
 endowed. He was gentle, even respectful, to dulness, as he 
 was to poverty in every shape ; and it sometimes happened 
 that, under his fostering influence, those who had utterly 
 failed with other masters unexpectedly developed with him 
 latent capacities which had hitherto remained stubborn and 
 unproductive. There was one poor lad at the College Stan- 
 islas who had been so long a fixture at the bottom of his 
 class that the masters had ceased to pay any attention to him, 
 looking upon him as hopelessly stupid. Ozanam, on being 
 appointed Professor at the College, watched the boy for a 
 time, and then called him up to his desk one day and encour- 
 
154 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanarn, 
 
 aged him kindly, taking great pains to make liim understand 
 the subject of the lesson. The lad was so touched and sur- 
 prised that, when Ozanam was gone, he sat down and wrote 
 to thank him, assuring him his kindness should not be lost. 
 " /<? vous jure que je ferai V impossible pour vous prouver ma 
 reconnaissance^' he said, and he kept his word. At the end of 
 the year he carried off the first prize at the Grand Concours, 
 and at the present moment he is a member of the Academy. 
 Nor was this an isolated case. Stanislas stood low amongst 
 the Paris colleges when Ozanam was named Professor of 
 Rhetoric there ; none of its pupils had ever gained a single 
 prize at the Grand Concours.* The first year of his profes- 
 sorship they carried them all away, and the number of pupils 
 m his class had doubled. He had contrived, during that 
 short time, to inspire them with such a passion for study that 
 many, of their own free impulse, asked permission to double 
 their year of rhetoric. The pupils loved him almost to 
 idolatry. When he appeared amongst them for the first 
 time he said, " I shall never punish you ; I mean to treat you 
 as ggen, to do my best for you, and to trust to your doing the 
 same. If you do not agree to this, if you behave like gamins^ 
 I will not lose my time with you." They took him at his 
 word. During the eighteen months that he remained their 
 Professor, he never had so much as to call one of the boys to 
 order. Their respect showed itself in a reserve not common 
 to schoolboys : they never laughed at him. One morning, 
 when he was suffering severely from toothache, he entered 
 the room with a cap pulled down over his ears ; one of the 
 boys tittered, and made some joke at the master's expense ; 
 he was immediately seized and hustled out of the class before 
 Ozanam was aware of any disturbance. No man in his 
 position was ever so much beloved in Paris ; it was almost an 
 adoration. After hanging upon his lips at the Sorbonne, 
 bursting out every now and then as if in spite of themselves 
 into sudden gusts of applause, and then hushing one another 
 
 • The Grand Concours ic r. yearly competition between all the first colleges in Paris. 
 
Life and Works of Frederk Ozanatn. 155 
 
 for fear they should lose one of the master's words, his young 
 audience would follow him out of the lecture-hall, shouting 
 and cheering, putting questions, and elbowing their way up 
 for a word of recognition, while a band of favored ones 
 irooped on with him to his home across the gardens. They 
 never suspected what an additional fatigue this affectionate 
 demonstration was to the Professor, already exhausted by the 
 preceding hour and a halfs exertion, with its laborious proxi- 
 mate preparation. No matter how tired he was, they were 
 never dismissed; he welcomed their noisy company, with its 
 eager talk, its comments and questions, as if it were the most 
 refreshing rest. There was, indeed, only one reward that 
 Ozanam coveted more; this was when some young soul, who 
 had come to the lecture in doubt or unbelief, suddenly moved 
 by the orator's exposition of the faith, as it was embodied or 
 shadowed forth in his subject, opened his eyes to the truth, 
 and, like the blind man in the Gospel, cried out, " giving 
 thanks." 
 
 One day, on coming home from the Sorbonne, the follow- 
 ing note was handed to him : 
 
 ** It is impossible that any one could speak with so much fervor and heart 
 without believing what he affirms ; if it be any satisfaction, I will even say 
 happiness, to you to know it, enjoy it to the full, and learn that before hearing 
 you 1 did not believe. What a great number of sermons failed to do for me, 
 you have done in an hour : you have made me a Christian I . , . Accept this 
 expression of my joy and gratitude." 
 
 You have made me a Christian / Oh ! let those who believe 
 and love like Ozanam tell us what he felt, what joy inundated 
 his soul when this cry went forth to him, 
 
 He loved the young, and had the secret of gaining their 
 fullest confidence. The students came to him in all their 
 troubles, consulted him about their studies, about everything 
 in which they wanted direction, and he gave himself up to 
 them as if it was his most important business. He saw them 
 every morning from eight to ten, except on the day of his 
 courSj and for these two hours the room adjoining his study 
 was besieged as if it had been the ante-chamber of a minister. 
 
156 Life afid Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 He never hurried the most tiresome lad away, no matter how 
 busy he was or how inopportunely the visitor had interrupted 
 his own important work. 
 
 It has been said with truth that Ozanam himself was never 
 young; that he was a man from liis childhood, aged prema- 
 turely by anxiety, thought, and study ; it is certain that, as a 
 friend who had known him from childhood said, " he had 
 no youth in the stormy sense of the word " ; but it is equally 
 true in another sense that he remained always young — young 
 in sympathy with the ideal aspirations, the ardent efforts, the 
 bright dreams, the high resolves and enthusiasms which con- 
 stitute the glory of the vision of youth and its loveHest pre- 
 rogative. All this Ozanam held to the last. He had seen 
 some of his own dreams vanish and his hopes denied, but 
 when he beheld a young spirit standing on the shore of Hfe, 
 and taking wing for its seductive visionary flights, his heart 
 beat high in responsive pulses ; he was never the one to chiH 
 by the cold smile of experience the faith of the young pilgrim 
 in his fair vision of hope. What if he soared too high at first, 
 and fell, ruffling and bruising his wings in the descent ? It 
 was better than never to have risen — better than to remain 
 crawling on the low, safe level of selfish aims and narrow inte- 
 rests and ignoble pleasures. Faith in the ideal was too strong 
 with Ozanam for the experiences of life, however disappoint- 
 ing, to destroy it. 
 
 His letters to his family prove better than anything how 
 earnestly he had at heart the Professor's duties which were 
 now his life's vocation. 
 
 TO M. SOULACROIX. 
 
 •* January 27, 1842. 
 " I have resumed my class, and although the subject begun last year is now- 
 more restricted, more special and less attractive, the audience continues as- 
 siduous ; always numerous and well-disposed. 
 
 *' But the fuss of our arrival, the multiplicity of visits, the things that must 
 be seen to, a few articles for the newspapers, have not left me the necessary 
 /eisure to occupy myself with writing a book. 
 
 " Many of my hindrances arise from the actual condition of science and 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 157 
 
 thought in our time. Nowadays the progress of historical and literary science 
 has led them to proceed like mathematical and natural sciences ; they isolate 
 themselves in their special sphere, they create a technical language for them- 
 selves, and, being thus inaccessible except to the small number of the initiated, 
 they cease to be popular. Hence it follows that books and lectures which are 
 accessible to the generality of enlightened minds acquire no consideration 
 amongst a certain class of men, whose works, in their turn, dishearten general 
 readers by the severity of their form. Assuredly, with genius one would know 
 how to avoid both the pedantry of the learned and the superficial mediocrity 
 of the vulgar ; but genius is a rare and supreme gift which God bestows once 
 or twice in a century, and which has not been lavished in the present one. 
 For myself, I have almost always found that my best and happiest works have 
 been the least enjoyed by men of the guild. 
 
 •' My class has had precisely the advantage of collecting a great number of 
 hearers, and consequently being accessible to them, without at the same time 
 failing in the gravity due to a special theme. Nevertheless, amongst the many 
 weighty personages who have followed it, no one has advised me to publish 
 my lectures simply revised from the stenographer. Besides, as I touched upon 
 many questions that are hotly contested in Germany, a book on this subject, 
 in order to be strong and weighty, would exact an immense amount of verifi- 
 cation. Criticism has a much firmer hold upon written than spoken words ; 
 it is also doubtful whether if in France, where purely literary questions excite 
 but feeble interest, a book on German literature in the middle ages would 
 meet with any great popularity. Several persons whom I consulted, especially 
 M. Mignet and M. Ampere, have advised me to choose for the theme of my 
 lectures something less general, an episode, so to speak, which would be more 
 restricted, so that I might treat it thoroughly, and thus satisfy the more exact- 
 ing judges ; at the same time, it should have a general and positive interest, 
 in order to attract favor from the wider public. 1 think I have hit upon these 
 very conditions in some lectures of last year — the best, perhaps, I have ever 
 given — on the Holy Roman Empire of the middle ages. The empire, the 
 universal monarchy of Christian times, as the genius of Charlemagne con- 
 ceived and his successors imp>erfectly realized it, developed in the public law, 
 in the philosophy and the p)oetry of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth 
 centuries, engaging in a struggle with the Pap>acy, falling in the struggle, and 
 leaving behind it nothing but a German empire dwindled at the present day 
 to the proportions of an Austrian one. 
 
 " It is not the history of the facts in detail ; it is above all the philosophical 
 history of the institution, such as the German writers represent it, that I find 
 stamped with this idea. A work like this, which has never yet been written, 
 would throw great light on the general affairs of old Europe. It would dis- 
 cover to the world the causes of the fall of Italy and the greatness of France ; 
 there would be room in it for the most celebrated personages of those times : 
 Gregory VII., Innocent IV., Frederic Barbarossa, Rodolph of Hapsbui^, The 
 gjeat doctors, jurists, and poets would figure on the scene as witnesses, and 
 thither all my studies would converge, only remanipulated and put into 
 action." 
 
 y 
 
15^ J^iffi and IVorks of F?eiieric Ozanatn. 
 
 K\ the close of the scholastic year he thus relates his own 
 impressions of its results : 
 
 TO LALLIER. 
 
 ^^ August 17, 1842. 
 
 " It ffias only at the close of my lectures that the serious interest of the 
 subject revealed itself to me distinctly. It is a case of proving that Germany 
 owes her genius and her whole civilization to the Christian education she re- 
 ceived ; that her greatness was in proportion to her union with Christendom ; 
 that she drew her power, her light, her poetry, from her fraternal connections 
 with the other nations of Europe ; that for her, as for others, there is, there 
 can be, no real destiny except through Roman unity, the depository of the 
 temporal traditions of humanity, as well as of the eternal designs of Provi- 
 dence. All this looks simple, natural, almost trivial in its self-evident truth 
 this side of the Rhine ; but. on the other hand, the national pride plumes 
 itself in dreams of an autochthonous civilization from which Christianity has, 
 by the way, caused them to decline ; in a literature which, without contact 
 with the Latin, would have developed into unexampled splendor ; in a future, 
 in fact, which promises to be magnificent, provided it steeps itself in unmixed 
 and unalloyed Teutonism. The German type is no longer Charlemagne, but 
 Arminius. 
 
 ' ' These doctrines pierce in divers forms through the various philosophical, 
 historical, and literary schools, from Hegel to Goethe, from Goethe to Strauss. 
 It seems to me advisable to attack them at home, on their own ground ; to 
 show how alone they were simply barbarians ; how, thanks to their bishops, 
 their monks, to the Roman faith, the Roman language, the Roman law, they 
 entered into possession of the religious, scientific, and political inheritance of 
 modern nations ; how in repudiating it they fell back gradually into bar- 
 barism. An introduction which will precede and conclusions that will follow 
 the history of the literature of German chivalry, the principal object of my 
 book, will, I hope, bring out this idea in strong relief. 
 
 *' I am occupied at present with the introduction. My former lectures are 
 of very little use to me for this chapter, whose importance I discovered rather 
 late. I have had to make immense researches — Germany under the Romans, 
 its military institutions, municipal organization, schools ; the first preaching 
 of Christianity before the invasion of the barbarians ; the action of the 
 Church in presence of and after the invaision ; the formation of the State, the 
 empire on one hand, the towns on the other ; lastly, the preservation and 
 propagation of letters ; the uninterrupted teaching of the languages and arts 
 of antiquity ; the admirable works achieved in the monasteries of Fulda and 
 of St. Gall become the schools of Germany. 
 
 *' In the absence of general treatises, I had to hunt through particular histo- 
 ries, through the lives of saints and the chronicles of the towns. I think I 
 have discovered unknown and conclusive facts, which will establish the perpe- 
 tuity of the learned tradition, in an epoch that we are accustomed to hear 
 branded with the name of barbarous, from Charles Martel to the Crusades, I 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Gzanam. 159 
 
 am going to put this into shape (it will extend to about two hundred and fifty 
 pages), and I will print a portion of it in the Correspondant in order to elicit 
 some good advice." 
 
 TO HIS BROTHER CHARLES. 
 
 " To-day is Sunday. We are in a little palace with a garden on the edge 
 of the Luxembourg, whose green alleys form a delightful prospect from our 
 windows. This abode was built for Murat, brother-in-law of the Emperor 
 and King of Naples ; it came later on into the hands of the Prince de Clermont 
 Tonnerre ; from one fall to another it fell finally into the possession of M. 
 Bailly, who has kindly allowed us to take up our residence here during the 
 great heat. 
 
 *' I remember that Alphonse must by this have left Lyons, that you are 
 alone, and that consequently a little brotherly visit will not come amiss to 
 you. And this reminds me, my dear boy, that we must strengthen our mind 
 and our heart so as not to be afraid of solitude and not to give way to those 
 temptations to melancholy which are sure to assail us in it. You will soon 
 be eighteen ; at this age I had to leave all — for in those days we had all to 
 leave — and to come away here, where I had not, like you, a brother and many 
 friends. Instead of that I had a lonely room, books that had no memories for 
 me, strange laces everywhere around me. 
 
 '• For you, whatever God's will may be, wheresoever your vocation may lead 
 you, you will find a brother who will be a guide and a support to you ; you 
 will find the wav oreoared for you, a circle of friends, many less dangers 
 awaiting you. You are in one of those periods of life when all the faculties 
 take a rapid development ; we feel-ourselves growing and maturing. If 1 were 
 near you, I would try and be of use to you ; I would perhaps help to clear 
 away your doubts, to direct your reading. It is a great pleasure to philoso- 
 phize. Only yesterday I spent more than an hour and a half discussing the 
 ideas of Plato with a friend. If you wrote to me fully on certain difficult 
 points, I would try and answer them by long and full explanations ; but you 
 will do better to talk them over with your fellow-students, some of whom have 
 great ability and experience. As to your reading, the most modern works 
 may prove useful if you use them under proper guidance. Read Descartes 
 and Malbranche ; I told you to get Mr. Dugald Stewart's Moral Philosophy. 
 You will lie sure not to neglect the history of philosophy, without which any 
 other science is of small account. 
 
 "These coming holidays, if you have not taken your bachelor's degree, I 
 may be of greater use to you. You are beginning to find out what a hard life 
 a young man has of it. Formerly it was the war, now it is the examinations. 
 Certainly there are seasons of hard work that are as good as a ramp>aign. In 
 1837, for five months 1 worked regularly ten hours a day, without counting the 
 classes, and fourteen or fifteen the last month. One has to be prudent so as 
 not to injure one's health by the pressure, but, little by little, the constitution 
 grows used to it ; we become accustomed to a severe active life, and it benefits 
 the temper as much as the intellect. 
 
i6o Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 ** Adieu, my dear Charles. My love to our old Marie. I congratulate her 
 on her famous health ; they tell me she comes and goes and does wonders." 
 
 This furore of work, which Ozanam here describes as a 
 thing of the past, continued almost to the same extent in his 
 present life. 
 
 ♦* Beware," M. Victor le Clerc would say to him during the first year of his 
 cours ; •' moderate the ardor of this verve that carries you away ; be always 
 an orator, but be more calm. This ardent, impassioned utterance that breaks 
 forth after prolonged meditation, this enthusiasm that you cannot master 
 and that masters you, is a source of uneasiness to your friends. Think of the 
 future ; we want you not to curtail any fraction of that future which is due to 
 you ; we desire it for you and for ourselves." 
 
 His cours and his literary work were not the only calls upon 
 his time and energy. He was continually appealed to from 
 one side and the other to speak in charitable assemblies and 
 at working-men's meetings, and he never refused. He pre- 
 sided at a literary conference for many years, and directed the 
 studies of a number of young men who, thanks to his enlight- 
 ened guidance, have since risen to eminence. It was no vain 
 flourish of rhetoric, but the sincere promptings of his heart, 
 that dictated the following words, addressed one evening to 
 an assembly of young men at the Cercle Catholique : 
 
 "Every day our friends, our brothers, are killed as soldiers or missionaries 
 on the soil of Africa or before the palaces of the mandarins. What are we 
 doing meanwhile ? Seriously, do you imagine that God has appointed for 
 some to die in the service of civilization and the Church while others walk 
 about with their hands in their pockets, or lie down on roses ? O gentle- 
 men ! you, toilers of science, and you. Christian men of letters, let us prove 
 one and all that we are not cowardly enough to believe in a division which 
 would be an accusation against God who would have made it, and an ignominy 
 on us who would accept it. Let us be ready to prove that we too have our 
 battle-fields, and that, if need be, we can die on them:' 
 
 He did prove it when the time came. Meantime, the work 
 that he accomplished in his sphere will never be known in 
 this world. God only knows the harvest that others have 
 reaped from his prodigal self-devotion, his knowledge, and 
 that eloquence which so fully illustrated the ideal standard 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. i6i 
 
 of human speech described by Fenelon as " the strong and 
 persuasive utterance of a soul nobly inspired." For Ozanam 
 was not merely a teacher in the Sorbonne; he was a teacher 
 of the world, and his influence shone out to the world through 
 the minds and lives of numbers of his contemporaries who did 
 not know that they were reflecting his light. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 1843-44. 
 
 The year 1843 was one of fruitful activity in the Christian 
 camp. The question of the freedom of the schools, which 
 had subsided after the condemnation of the Avenir^ had now- 
 sprung up again, and was being agitated with greater vehe- 
 mence than ever. M. de Montalembert had given it a new 
 impulse by his pamphlet on the " Duty of Catholics in the 
 Question of Free Education," which appeared just as he was 
 inaugurating his career as a political orator from the Tribune 
 of the Chamber of Peers. The Correspondant, after many vi- 
 cissitudes, had emerged from troubled waters, and was start- 
 ing in a new career, which the names of its contributors 
 promised to render brilliant. Montalembert himself headed 
 the list, and then followed a long array of writers, each well 
 known in his line — MM. de Falloux, Ozanam, Veuillot, de 
 Champagny, Audley, etc. 
 
 This same year the Cercle CathoHque was founded, under 
 the patronage of Monseigneur Affre and many distinguished 
 laymen. Its object was to create a centre for Catholic young 
 men coming to Paris for their studies. A library was formed, 
 and lectures were given on literary and scientific subjects. 
 Ozanam presided over the literary conference, and frequently 
 spoke himself. The Pere Lacordaire, who had returned from 
 Italy with heightened prestige and a more matured genius, 
 went there from time to time. M. de Montalembert, the P^re 
 de Ravignan, the Abbe Bautain, whose magnificent conferences 
 at Strasbourg, exposing the danger of separating abstract 
 philosophy from the supernatural lights of revelation, had ex- 
 cited such wide notice, all came in turn to contribute to the 
 instruction and entertainment of the Cercle Catholique. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam.^ 163 
 
 A strong intellectual current was flowing through the 
 Catholic youth of that time, turning their minds to many 
 vital questions, such as the union of faith and science, the al- 
 liance of religion and liberty, the emancipation of the Church 
 from all oppressive responsibility to the State. They were in- 
 tensely interested in the philosophy of history, and in no por- 
 tion of it more than that most misunderstood and calumniated 
 of epochs, the Middle Ages. It was no uncommon thing to 
 see one of these young students devoting his leisure to hunt- 
 ing out the authenticity of a breviary, or the solution of some 
 disputed point concerning the notation of music in the thir- 
 teenth century. Art and science absorbed them far more than 
 politics. 
 
 Ozanam exercised a decisive influence at the Cercle in all 
 artistic questions. Few, indeed, were more competent to in- 
 terpret the true mission of art, its beautiful faculty of express- 
 ing faith and love, of "translating the emotions of the soul and 
 the inspirations of genius by outward symbols and material 
 signs, while, at the same time, his erudition was as inexhausti- 
 ble on all subjects pertaining to art as if he had made this his 
 sole study. It sometimes happened that a young man who 
 had spent a week at the Royal Library wading through vene- 
 rable folios for information on some obscure point, or about 
 some comparatively unknown painter or sculptor, was aston- 
 ished to hear the President, to whom he applied for an opin- 
 ion, sum up, in a {q^^ rapid sentences, ten times the information 
 he had obtained in his week's digging. 
 
 In this first year of its existence Ozanam made a 
 speech at the Cercle Catholique which was an event. The 
 subject was the literary duties of Christians. It was one 
 in which many leading Catholics of the day felt person- 
 ally concerned, and it required to be handled with great 
 delicacy, so as not to inflict wounds where the speaker's ob- 
 ject was to heal them. The Archbishop of Paris was 
 present, knowing beforehand that Ozanam was to speak, 
 and on what subject, and his presence on this day was in- 
 
164 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 tended as a public mark of adhesion. After dilating on the 
 advance of science through faith, the impossibility of acquir- 
 ing true science without orthodoxy, and the duty of making 
 art the vehicle of faith to humanity, the orator came to speak 
 of the mission of the controversialist. 
 
 '• If," he says, " the rules of Christian controversy have been defined and 
 imposed, it is not permitted to violate them with impunity. In the heat of the 
 fight there is a danger that we do not think of. It is easy to offend God. The 
 violent instincts of human nature, restrained by Christianity, break loose and 
 manifest themselves here. . . . Tertullian, carried away by the African im- 
 petuosity of his genius, pursued with the same animosity the false gods and 
 the weak Christians who sacrificed to them ; he refused to receive them back 
 to the reconciliation promised to repentance ; he would not forgive the Church 
 for pardoning them ; and ended by apostatizing out of hatred of apostasy. 
 In the quarrels of Arianism the invectives of Lucifer di Cagliari broke forth 
 like thunder ; he remained inflexible to the scandal of the Council of Rimini, 
 but when the penitent bishops were taken back into communion with Rome, 
 he separated from her rather than share that communion with them. . . . 
 
 "Discussion has other dangers for those whom it is striving to convince. 
 Assuredly, when Christians embark on the painful service of controversy, it is 
 with the firm will to serve God and to gain the hearts of men. We must not, 
 therefore, compromise the holiness of the cause by the violence of the means. 
 Pascal understood this, and says somewhere : ' The way of God, who does 
 all things gently, is to put religion into the mind by reason and into the heart 
 by grace. . . . Begin by pitying the unbeliever ; he is already wretched 
 enough. . . .'" 
 
 Then, calling to witness the examples of the Fathers of the 
 Church, Ozanam goes on to quote the conduct of St. Basil 
 keeping up a touching correspondence with the sophist Liba- 
 nius, surrounding his old pagan master with the filial piety of 
 a disciple, and never despairing of him ; St. Augustine faith- 
 fully pursuing his faint-hearted friend Licentius ; then he con- 
 tinues : 
 
 "We must never begin by despairing of those who deny. It is not a ques- 
 tion of mortifying but of convincing them. Refutation is humiliation enough 
 for them, when it is conclusive. Whatever be the disloyalty or the brutality 
 of their attacks, let us show them the example of a generous controversy. 
 Let us beware of exasperating their pride by abuse, and let us not drive them 
 to damn themselves rather than retract. The number of those who doubt is 
 greater still. There are noble minds who are led astray by the vices of early 
 education, or by the force of evil example. Many of them feel bitterly the 
 Ijajsery of their unbelief. We owe them a compassion which need not e^- 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 165 
 
 elude esteem. It would be politic, even if it were not just, rot to thrust 
 them back into the lessening crowd of impious unbelievers, to distinguish 
 their cause, and not to confound strangers with enemies. . . . There aresome 
 who, after having waited a little while for these tardy ones, lose patience, and 
 grow irritated with their slowness. Let us not lose patience. God is patient 
 because he is eternal ; so likewise are Christians." 
 
 It is hard to see how words so full 'of the wisdom of Chris- 
 tian charity should have provoked anger and resentment, and 
 drawn down on the speaker that " abuse " from which he so 
 gently adjures them to refrain towards their enemies. Yet so 
 it was. A fierce article on this portion of the speech ap- 
 peared next morning in the Univers. 
 
 The following letter gives us Ozanam 's estimate of the at- 
 tack : 
 
 " I seize a moment of leisure to send you these few lines with the Bulletin 
 du Cercle Cat/tolique, in which you will find a speech by the present writer on 
 the Literary Duties o/ Christians * and the Archbishop's allocution in answer 
 to it. I was sending it about to our friends also, by way of justification against 
 a violent attack of the Univers. I allude to an article which appeared on the 
 Feast of the Ascension, entitled Moderation and Zeal, in which I was stigma- 
 tized as a deserter from the Catholic struggle. It was a reply of that journal's 
 to my speech, not a word of which was addressed to it. They have apologized 
 to me ; but I had reason to fear that my friends at Lyons were somewhat 
 alarmed about me, and this is why I send you the documents connected with 
 the whole affair. You will see therein that the Cercle Catholique invited me 
 to speak at an important meeting where Monseigneur AfTre presided. In ac- 
 cepting this honor, I consulted his Grace beforehand, and he specially entreated 
 me to dwell upon certain questions concerning which he appeared glad to 
 have an opportunity of publicly explaining himself. The greater portion of 
 the clergy of Paris highly disapprove of the passion and violence by which 
 certain newspapers and pamphlets are compromising the cause of the Church. 
 The entire assembly applauded my remarks, and those which the Archbishop 
 added to them consoled and fortified the general opinion. A few days after- 
 wards a speech of M. de Game's in the same strain induced the Cham- 
 ber of Deputies to send up the petitions to the Minister. Earnest thought 
 and serious discussion will end, thank God, by carrying the day against these 
 polemics of abuse and furj', which are more suited to our enemies than to us. 
 
 "You must not suppose, however, that in the difficulties of our present po- 
 sition we have hard words for none but the imprudent champions of truth. I 
 am doing my best, and that is but little, in concert with M. Lenormant, M. 
 Coeur, and a few others, to maintain a vigorous struggle against the doctrines 
 of the Professors of the College of France. While MM. Michelet ard Quinet 
 
 • See CompUt4 Work* qfOtanam^ vol. vii. p. 147. 
 
i66 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 vrere attacking Christianity itself under the name of Jesuitism, I tried in three 
 consecutive lectures to defend the Papacy, monks, and monastic obedience. 
 I did this in presence of a very large audience, who were stamping and hiss- 
 ing somewhere else the day before ; and yet I met with no interruption or 
 disturbance, and in continuing the literary history of Italy — that is to say, of 
 one of the most Christian countries that exist under the sun — I met at every 
 step, and I shall take every opportunity of pointing out in the course of my 
 lectures, the benefits and the prodigies of the Church, 
 
 " Help me by your prayers ; ask for me the spirit of strength and know- 
 ledge, which the whole of Christendom is imploring on bended knees during 
 these Whitsuntide solemnities." 
 
 " Of all the gifts of the Holy Spirit, that which we need most is strength,^ 
 he says elsewhere to M. Foisset ; "and we know so little what it means 
 that many fancy they have got it because they have violence and passion, 
 which are, on the contrary, like all that is convulsive, proofs of uneasiness and 
 weakness." 
 
 This spirit of strength was, above all, desirable at a crisis 
 when angry discussion tended to produce that dissension 
 which is the most fatal element of weakness. 
 
 '• You want to know if the Catholics in Paris are united," he says ; "I be- 
 lieve they were never more united as to the end, but never more divided as to 
 the means. It is easy for you to follow from a distance the movements and 
 divisions of the fighting army. . . . Amongst the foremost in the battle 
 you will perceive the enfans perdus of the Untvers, whom everybody disowns, 
 either because of its violence or its want of talent." 
 
 Ozanam's zeal was, indeed, held in check by a degree of 
 prudence and far-seeing sagacity rare in one so inexperienced. 
 
 " My fear always is," he writes, " that the Catholic questions may have been 
 raised too soon, and before our number, our influence, and our works have 
 put us in a position to maintain the struggle. I am frightened lest laymen 
 without grace d''etaty without authority, may have incurred the fearful respon- 
 sibility of drawing the Church of France into a crisis whose issue it is impos- 
 sible to foresee. But, being once inevitably drawn into it, and public opinion 
 being taken hold of, when the exaggeration, the violence, and the gross igno- 
 rance of certain writers had compromised the Catholic interests of which they 
 made themselves the organs, I rejoiced to see the controversy lifted out of 
 this wretched skirmishing, and replaced on its proper level by M. de Monta- 
 lembert, in the first instance, and after him by M. de Came, M. de Vatim^nil, 
 Pere de Ravienan, and our venerable prelates, notably the Archbishops of 
 Paris and Lyons. These are the true representatives of our rights — the ones 
 we run no risk of ever having to disown. Here it is no longer a quarrel of 
 pedagogues and beadles ; it is not even a discussion between the colleges and 
 the Uttle seminaries : it is the grand cjuestion of the relations between Church 
 
Life and Work:^ of Frcdenc Czaiiam. 167 
 
 and State, the Priesthood and the Empire, which is never terminated, but re- 
 appears at all the most eventful epochs of history— in the age of the Fathers, 
 the age of the Crusades, the age of Louis XIV., the age of Napoleon. It is 
 being stirred up now between statesmen and churchmen, and may compel the 
 former to study religion and the latter to practise liberty ; it may completely 
 detach the clergy from those traditions of absolutism to which they still cling ; 
 it may stir the country deeply ; it is right that a great people should be occu- 
 pied with great things. 
 
 " We must not, however, blind ourselves to the peril. Religious ignorance 
 is so complete and prejudice so strong, and we have so few men who are capa- 
 ble of winning over public opinion to our side ! Who knows ? This prema- 
 ture effort may give rise to a terrible reaction, may provoke an irruption of 
 Voltairianism, and the faith of a great number may perish I But at the point 
 that things have now reached it behooves us to stifle these fears and to hold 
 on together, united, and resolved to conquer or die with honor. Last year it 
 was still possible to postf>one the battle ; but now any attempt at temporiza- 
 tion would only serve to divide our forces. We must follow the inevitable 
 course of men and things, and trust to God who is leading it, holding our- 
 selves ready for every sacrifice, with the certainty that if they do not avail 
 for the success of the struggle now they will have their prize sooner or later, 
 in this world or the next ; remembering that when we are most inclined to 
 think our efforts, our time, and our trouble lost. Providence may be drawing 
 from them a far greater good than we dream of." 
 
 While Ozanam was carrying on the warfare in his own field 
 he was bravely seconded by M. Lenormant, who occupied the 
 chair of M. Guizot as assistant Professor of History. 
 
 The conquest of this distinguished man to Christianity was 
 of recent date. For three years he had been undergoing a 
 fierce inward struggle, whose final issue was awaited with in- 
 tense interest by many who were watching the event with 
 widely divergent sympathies. There are few things more im- 
 pressive and exciting than the spectacle of a human con- 
 science wrestling with itself, and, with the self-forgetting 
 simplicity of real earnestness, admitting others to witness the 
 struggle, casting aside false shame, making no secret of its 
 doubts, its faltering modification of convictions, and the 
 gradual ingress of light, until at last the fulness of truth illu- 
 minates the darkness and the triumph of faith is complete. 
 M. Lenormant had been affording this wonderful spectacle to 
 all who had attended his cours for the last three years. He 
 had come before them as a sceptic and had addressed them 
 
l68 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 as such ; but the moment his disbehef was shaken his con- 
 science was too honest to go on feigning a tone of negative 
 conviction he no longer felt. He did not hide that his philo- 
 sophical creed was staggered. He dissembled neither his ir- * 
 resolution nor his own surprise at it. At last a day came 
 when the battle was over, and victory declared itself on the 
 side of faith. The event was greeted by the young popula- 
 tion of the Sorbonne with mingled delight and indignation. 
 But the indignation largely predominated. M. Lenormant at 
 once followed up his conversion to Christianity by publicly 
 vindicating and exalting what he had formerly denounced, 
 and denouncing what he had exalted. 
 
 This conduct, as was to be expected, provoked general 
 hostihty amongst the anti-Christian majority, and the cours of 
 the savaftt^ lately so popular, became the scene of hostile and 
 riotous demonstrations. The same intolerant apostles of 
 tolerance were clamoring furiously at the cours of M. Dupan- 
 loup, where they would not allow the Professor to speak ac- 
 cording to his conscience of Voltaire, the man who, of all 
 others, had used the most reckless license in speaking of men 
 and things. Older and cooler heads were inciting and direct- 
 ing these young fanatics in their proceedings. MM. Miche- 
 let and Quinet resented Lenormant's conversion as a personal 
 insult, although " the convert of the Sorbonne," as they de- 
 risively termed him, had scrupulously avoided attacking, or 
 even indirectly refuting, the diatribes of the too revolutionary 
 tribunes of the College de France. They, however, deter- 
 mined to leave nothing undone to silence him, and their 
 influence gave a serious color to a movement which otherwise 
 might have passed off as a mere college ebullition. Ozanam 
 saw at once the gravity of the situation. He made a point 
 of attending M. Lenormant's lectures whenever he could, 
 and his sagacity soon took in the drift and motive of the tur- 
 bulent scenes that were enacted there. 
 
 "I can assure you," he says to Lallier, "it is no mere uprising of the 
 SchoolSvno fanatical onset of a troop of hot-headed boys. It is d. great deal 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 169 
 
 more and a jjreat deal less. It is an affair got up without passion, but with 
 I>erfidious cunning, in the bureaux of a few revolutionary newspapers, in 
 order to maintain the irreligious portion of the public in the kind of fever it 
 has been in these last few years, and also to create new difficulties in the way 
 of the Government. As these people have all the obstinacy of a parti pris, 
 and cLS the Government is as weak as it always is when called upon to take the 
 part of religion, there is reason to fear the rows will be repeated, and though 
 there be only, like the last time, sixty rioters, if they return to the charge ten 
 times they will end by getting the cours shut up. At any rate, it will not be 
 done without energetic protestations ; for the Catholic youth have shown 
 more than usual firmness in this matter, which will at least have the effect of 
 drawing their ranks closer and strengthening them for the contest. 
 
 " But you can imagine what a grief it is to me to see a cours so able and 
 so salutary in its doctrines imperilled by such miserable intrigues, and be- 
 trayed by those whose duty it is to defend, there as elsewhere, the cause of 
 public order. 
 
 " Alas 1 my dear friend, what an amount of harm is done in the world 
 through the inconsistency and faintheartedness of good people ! For my 
 part, I shall do my best to prevent my cause being separated from that of 
 Lenormant. So long as his lectures are disturbed I shall continue to attend 
 them, and use all my influence with a certain number of young men to re- 
 cruit the audience. If you were here you would help us by your presence and 
 your advice. Sustain us at least in the distance by your prayers. It is on 
 Thursday, the 8th, that the cours is to be resumed." 
 
 It was as Ozanam feared. The recommencing of the lec- 
 tures was the signal for the renewal of the hostile demonstra- 
 tions. M. Lenormant's appearance was greeted with hisses 
 and yells and unseemly manifestations of dislike. He began 
 to speak, but his voice was drowned in hootings and blas- 
 phemous cries. Ozanam, who was present, unable to contain 
 his indignation, leaped up beside the lecturer and stood for a 
 moment surveying the tumult with proud defiance. The 
 courageous action drew forth an instantaneous salvo of ap- 
 plause; but Ozanam, with a scornful gesture, commanded 
 silence, and proceeded to tell the assembly what he thought 
 of their behavior, and what value he set on their plaudits ; he 
 spoke with a fiery vehemence that startled all into attention ; 
 he adjured them in the name of liberty, which they so loudly 
 invoked, to respect Hberty in others, and to allow every man 
 the freedom of his conscience. The effect of the harangue 
 was magical ; the tumult ceased, and M. Lenormant con- 
 
170 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 tinued, or rather began, his lecture, and finished it without 
 interruption. The next day, however, the cours was closed 
 by order of the Government — authority thus yielding to vio- 
 lence, where by a little firmness it might so easily have taken 
 the upper hand and constituted itself the guardian of social 
 peace and the bulwark of social principles. 
 
 This cowardly and cruel precedent did not daunt Ozanam, 
 or induce him to abate one iota of his independence; he con- 
 tinued his lectures without mitigating in the slightest degree 
 the out-and-out Christian tone of his teaching. The boldness 
 of this conduct, while it heightened his prestige with his own 
 party, increased his general popularity. His name became a 
 power in its sphere, and was cited everywhere as an example 
 of the energy and growing strength of the Catholics. 
 
 It once happened, during the noisy days of the Lenor- 
 mant riots, when the learned Sorbonne was transformed into 
 a battle-field, that some person, meaning to be witty, scratched 
 out the words " litterature etrangere " after Ozanam's name 
 on the door, and wrote over them, " theologie." He was in- 
 formed of it as he was entering the hall. He said nothing 
 until he had finished his lecture, and then, as he was about to 
 descend from his chair, he observed, in a tone of great dig- 
 nity ; " I have not the honor to be a theologian, gentlemen, 
 but I have the happiness to believe, and the ambition to place 
 my whole soul with all my might at the service of truth." 
 
 The courageous profession of faith was greeted by loud 
 and general cheers. 
 
 It was, in truth, a position to the full as perilous as it was 
 glorious which he now occupied, and one which demanded 
 no ordinary combination of wisdom, tact, and courage in 
 order to reconcile personal dignity and interest with the stern 
 dictates of principle. For he had become the standard-bearer 
 of the Christian cause in the sphere where he had been the 
 first to introduce it, and he was now the central object of 
 attack from its enemies. The fate of his colleague was a 
 warning whose significance he could not misunderstand. His 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 171 
 
 own popularity might seem to offer a guarantee for his 
 safety ; but the firmest popularity is at best but a throne built 
 upon sand, which a sudden gust of wind in the shape of a 
 revulsion of public feeling may upset at a moment's warning. 
 If he opened a direct attack on the Sorbonne, it was tanta- 
 mount to giving up his chair; and his chair was his bread — 
 tliat blessed panem quoiidiamitn which represents peace of 
 mind, the one earthly ambition Ozanam had ever deliberately 
 cherished. And now he was not alone : he had a wife and 
 child to guard it for. Moreover, to resign would be to 
 desert his post, and leave the field open on every side to the 
 enemy. 
 
 The old Sorbonne, too, claimed some allegiance from him 
 as from a favorite son, on whose young head she had lavished 
 high honors prematurely. He was the Benjamin of the gray 
 old Alma Mater, and his heart went out to her with dutiful 
 affection. All the manliness and loyalty of his nature re- 
 coiled from striking her. His position was a Gordian knot 
 which seemingly nothing but a fatal stroke could sever, fatal 
 whichever way it fell. Seemingly, but not in reality. P6re 
 Lacordaire, whose judgment on Ozanara's conduct through- 
 out this critical time may be taken as conclusive, observes : ♦ 
 
 *' It is seldom that in the most delicate position, when everything seems im- 
 possible, there is not some point which reconciles all things, just as in God 
 attributes which look most dissimilar meet somewhere in the harmony of a 
 perfect unity. Ozanam retained his professorship ; it was his post in the 
 danger. He did not directly attack the body to which he belonged ; this was 
 his duty as a colleague, and he was bound to it in gratitude. But he con- 
 tinued in the most complete and avowed solidarity with us— I mean, though I 
 have no right to count myself amongst them, with those who were defending 
 with all their heart the sacred cause of freedom of education. No tie that 
 bound him to chiefs or soldiers was loosened. He took his part in all the 
 meetings, all the works, all the inspirations of the time, and what he did not 
 officially enunciate in his chair or in his writings, his influence proclaimed 
 with a boldness that was more than a confession. Nor did a shadow of mis- 
 trust or coldness ever cast a cloud for one moment on the high rank that he 
 occupied amongst us. He preserved undiminished the affection of the Catho- 
 
 * CEuvrts du F. Lacordaire— Otanam, vol. v. p. 404. 
 
172 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 lies, the esteem of the body to which he belonged, and, outside these two 
 camps, the sympathy of that floating, fitful crowd, the public, which sooner or 
 later decides all things." 
 
 Ozanam 's great and universal popularity is a matter of sur- 
 prise to many who hear of it only from a distance and cannot 
 penetrate its secret. It is difficult to appreciate this fragile 
 possession without being apparently guilty of exaggerated and 
 dubious estimates. 
 
 Popularity, as it is vulgarly understood, is a worthless thing, 
 but in its true and higher sense it is a noble privilege. To be 
 popular means to be loved not by a few but by many, by the 
 multitude. It is the empire of one soul over the souls of num- 
 bers, an empire which, if rightly used, represents the noblest 
 power any mortal hand can wield. It seldom falls to the 
 hand that tries to clutch it. It may come for a moment, gild- 
 ing life like a flitting sunbeam, but it quickly passes away, 
 leaving a chiller darkness behind. Ozanam never courted 
 popularity ; perhaps no man holding a public post ever sought 
 it less. When it found him out he only valued it inasmuch as 
 it helped him to make popular the doctrines that he taught. 
 This very obliteration of self no doubt drew the public favor 
 to him unconsciously. Then his faith was in itself a power. 
 Men delight in the sight of enthusiasm and strong conviction, 
 even when they do not share them. A faith of any sort is a 
 power. Sceptics, who do not believe in belief, envy those 
 who do. A man who represents the most unpopular convic- 
 tion, who serves it and stands by it through thick and thin, is 
 sure to gain influence in the long run. Undying devotion 
 to a cause eventually conquers the respect of its enemies, 
 though it may not make its champion popular. The qualities 
 of the man himself must do this. He must have a heart, or 
 Ije must pass for having one. Ozanam was essentially a man 
 of heart. His genius excited admiration, his piety com- 
 manded respect, but it was his kindness that made him loved. 
 Lacordaire says that he had a charm '* which, added to his 
 other gifts, completed in his person the artisan of a predes- 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 173 
 
 lined enchantment. He was gentle to all men and just 
 towards error." 
 
 Just towards error ! What a gospel of charity is com- 
 pressed into the words ! Ozanam denied to no man freedom 
 of thought, the right to differ from him. Moreover, he be- 
 lieved all his life that the majority of sceptics were ready to 
 embrace truth, could they only be induced to hear it explained. 
 This is why he strove so humbly to make his own exposition 
 of it attractive and persuasive. He had intense pity for un- 
 believers, looking upon them not as wilfully blind or as crimi- 
 nal, but as brothers who, for some unknown cause, had been 
 denied that blessed inheritance of faith which illuminated his 
 own life, and the sense of gratitude and of his own unworthi- 
 ness made him merciful. His extraordinary indulgence 
 towards error was sometimes a stumbling-block to his friends 
 when they were all young together; but there is not one of 
 them now who, on looking back, does not recognize that Oza- 
 nam's faith was all the more powerful for being so sweetly 
 tempered by charity. To youth, especially, his tolerance was 
 almost boundless ; yet no one will dare to say that there was 
 the faintest touch of cowardice or false liberality in this con- 
 descension towards intellectual error. " It was," as M. Am- 
 pere very justly observes, "a largeness of view which taught 
 him to recognize sympathies outside the camp where he was 
 fighting." It was also a deep reverence for souls which 
 taught him to respect the mysterious relationship between 
 God and his creatures — a tender humility which forbade him 
 to sit in judgment on others, or to quench the smoking flax. 
 
 He frequently pointed to M. Lenormant as an example of 
 the triumph of grace in a soul that was loyal in its intention 
 to serve the truth, even while actively attacking it, and he 
 would warn his Catholic friends of the danger of repelling 
 others in similar circumstances by harshness and unjust judg- 
 ments. This terror of alienating a seeker after truth made 
 him extremely gentle in dealing with an adversary. He al- 
 ways said that a man wlio began to examine religious doctrine 
 
174 i-^f^ ^nd Works of Prederic Ozanani, 
 
 should be treated with respect, because the moment a soul set 
 out to seek God — that is to say, truth — he was on the road 
 towards him. He resented bitterness in religious discussion 
 as an act of trespass to the faith, whose chief commandment 
 is "That ye love one another." No controversial triumph 
 was worth anything in his eyes if it was purchased at the cost 
 of charity or a violation of " the peace of love." In the 
 eleven volumes which he has left us, and which deal with a 
 variety of controversial subjects, his lash is always raised 
 against falsehood, injustice, and vice, but there is not one line 
 that is cruel or harsh to individuals. There is nowhere the 
 least trace of pique, or revenge, or anger; he holds the scep- 
 tre of truth with a steady hand, but never strikes with it except 
 at falsehood. He pleads far more than he condemns, and his 
 denunciations breathe more compassion than wrath. 
 
 The same large spirit of universal charity presided over his 
 almsgiving and all his dealings with the poor. He made no 
 invidious distinctions as to creed. Wherever there was naked- 
 ness to be clothed, tears to be wiped away, a soul to be com- 
 forted, he recognized a claim and answered it. The Abb6 
 Perreyve tells a touching anecdote which proves this better 
 than a volume of description. A Protestant congregation in 
 Paris collected a sum of money for charitable purposes and 
 gave it to their clergyman, who, having no pressing cases of 
 distress at the moment, was embarrassed as to how he should 
 best apply it. He knew Ozanam by reputation, and the idea 
 occurred to him that he would be the likeliest person to know 
 how to employ the money ; so, acting on the generous inspi- 
 ration, lie took it to him and requested him to use it according 
 to his judgment. We can fancy how touched Frederic's heart 
 was by the delicate proof of confidence. He carried the 
 offering the same evening to a conference of St. Vincent de 
 Paul, and related the incident with an emotion which spread 
 to all present. One member, however, rose, and, after prais- 
 ing warmly the disinterested charity of their Protestant bene- 
 factor, suggested that the money should be first applied to 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanant. 17 J 
 
 relieving the Catholic poor, who were more numerous, and 
 then that the surplus should be given to some indigent Pro- 
 testant families. 
 
 *'As he proceeded," says the Abbe Perreyve, "I saw Ozanam's features 
 contracting impatiently, and I guessed, by the tremulous movement of his 
 hand as he drew it nervously through his long hair, that we were about to wit- 
 ness one of those explosions which he could not control. ' Gentlemen,' he 
 said, starting to his feet when the speaker had finished, ' if this proposal had 
 the misfortune to prevail — if it be not distinctly understood that our members 
 succor the poor without reference to creed or country — I shall this moment re- 
 turn to the Protestants the alms they have entrusted to me, and I shall say : 
 Take it back ; we are not worthy of your confidence I '" . 
 
 We are not much surprised when the Abb6 adds: "They 
 did not put it to the vote." 
 
 But, if he was intolerant of intolerance, Ozanam had an 
 unmitigated, almost violent, horror of evil in itself. The sight 
 of vice or falsehood excited him as a personal wrong excites 
 most of us. He resented it with a fierceness very foreign to 
 his gentle nature; and yet, with all this, his pity for the of- 
 fender never failed. 
 
 •'Often," says the Abbe Perreyve, **on hearing any one say of a person 
 whose life was steeped in wickedness, ♦ He is a lost man ! ' Ozanam would re- 
 mark : ' After all, if it be true that God has His own secret, as I believe, we 
 may rest assured it is a secret of mercy.' " 
 
 The service of the poor occupies such a prominent position 
 in Ozanam's life that it becomes of interest to know how he 
 performed it. It was essentially a service of love. His man- 
 ner towards the poor was considerate and deferential as 
 towards his equals. He invariably took off his hat on enter- 
 ing their poor abodes, greeting them with his courteous 
 formula, " I am your servant." He never preached to them ; 
 after giving whatever he had to give, he would sit and chat 
 on any subject likely to cheer or interest them. When they 
 came to see him they were not kept in the hall, but were 
 shown into his study, where he would draw forward a com- 
 fortable chair, and behave in every way as towards visitors 
 whom he was glad to honor. At Christmas he always took 
 
176 Life and Works of Prederic Ozanam. 
 
 them some little present — a book, a picture, or some trifle he 
 knew they fancied. One New Year's Eve he was telling his 
 wife about a poor family who had known better days, but 
 were now reduced to such shifts that they had been compelled 
 to pledge a handsome chest of drawers, the last remnant that 
 remained to them of former comfort. He said he was greatly 
 tempted to go and redeem it and send it to them for their 
 New Year's gift. His Amelie was seldom inclined to check 
 his generous impulses, but she felt it right to show certain 
 prudential reasons for his not following this one. He saw the 
 force of them and yielded. The day was spent pleasantly in 
 paying and receiving friendly and official visits, according to 
 the custom of Paris ; but when evening came, and his little 
 girl was showing him the profusion of toys and bo7i-bo7is that 
 had poured in on her since morning, he turned away with a 
 sigh and sat silent and absent. Madame Ozanam enquired 
 anxiously if anything had occurred to distress him. He con- 
 fessed that the thought of those poor people without their 
 chest of drawers was weighing on him, and the sight of all 
 this money wasted on Marie's pleasure smote him like a re- 
 proach. Am61ie entreated him to go and satisfy the prompt- 
 ing of his heart. He hurried out, and in a short time re- 
 turned radiantly happy. 
 
 It was noticed by some of his friends that, after the general 
 Communion at Notre Dame on Holy Thursday, Ozanam, in- 
 stead of going straight home to his breakfast, disappeared in 
 another direction. They watched him, and found that he 
 went first to the baker's and then to a certain number of poor 
 famiHes, where he distributed loaves. He frequently ended his 
 thanksgiving by an act of charity of this sort. 
 
 Seldom is his eloquence more tenderly inspired than when 
 pleading the cause of the poor. He has left some pages on 
 Almsgiving, its duties and joys and dangers, whicli are amongst 
 his finest. Speaking of the help which honors and that which 
 humbles those who recaiA^e it, he says : 
 
 " Help is humiliating when iFappeals to men from below, taking heed of theif 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozatiam. 177 
 
 Haterial wants only, paying^ no attention but to those of the flesh, to the cry 
 of hunger and cold, to what excites pity, to what one succors even in the 
 beasts. It humiliates when there is no reciprocity, when you give the poor 
 man nothing but bread, or clothes, or a bundle of straw — what, in fact, there 
 is no likelihood of his ever giving you in return. . . . But it honors when it 
 appeals to him from above, when it occupies itself with his soul, his religious, 
 moral, and political education, with all that emancipates him from his pas- 
 sions and from a portion of his wants, with those things that make him free, 
 and may make him great. Help honors when to the bread that nourishes it 
 adds the visit that consoles, the advice that enlightens, the friendly shake of 
 the hand that lifts up the sinking courage ; when it treats the poor man with 
 respect, not only as an equal but as a superior, since he is suffering what 
 perhaps we are incapable of suffering ; since he is the messenger of 
 God to us, sent to prove our justice and our charity, and to save us by our 
 works. 
 
 " Help then becomes honorable, because it may become mutual, because 
 every man who gives a kind word, a good advice, a consolation to-day, may 
 to-morrow stand himself in need of a kind word, an advice, or a consolation ; 
 because the hand that you clasp clasps yours in return ; because that indigent 
 family whom you love loves you in return, and will have largely acquitted 
 themselves towards you when the old man, the mother, the little children shall 
 have prayed for you."* " Do you suppose you pay the priest to whom the 
 State gives a hundred crowns t a year to be the father, the schoolmaster, the 
 comforter of the poor village lost in the mountains ? or the soldier who gets 
 five sous a day to die under the flag ? Why, the soldier gives the alms of his 
 blood to the country, and the priest that of his words, his thoughts, his heart, 
 that will never know the fireside joys ! And the country does neither the in- 
 justice to think that it pays them ; it gives them an alms that will enable them 
 to resume to-morrow the lowly self-devotion of to-day, to return to the bed- 
 side of the plague-stricken or under the fire of the Bedouins. . , . Don't tell 
 me, then, that I humiliate the poor man when I treat him as I treat the priest 
 who blesses and the soldier who dies for me. Alms are the retribution of ser- 
 vices that have no salary. ... In our eyes the man who suffers serves God, 
 and consequently serves society like him who prays; he performs a ministry 
 of expiation, a sacrifice whose merits rebound on us ; and we trust less for our 
 safety to the lightning-conductor above our house-tops than to the prayer of 
 the poor woman and her little children who are sleeping on a truss of straw in 
 the garret under our roof. And let no one say that in treating p>overty as a 
 priesthood we aim at perpetuating it ; the same authority which tells us that 
 we shall always have the poor amongst us is the same that commands to do all 
 we can that there may cease to be any. . . . When you dread so much to lay 
 an obligation on him who accepts your alms, I fear it is because you have never 
 exp>erienced the obligation it confers on him who gives. Those who know the 
 road to the poor man's house, whose feet have swept the dust from his stairs, 
 never knock at his door without a sentiment of respect. They know that in 
 
 • Melanges, i. p. 29a f 300 francs 
 
lyS Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 accepting bread from their hand, as he takes the hght from God, the poor man 
 honors them ; they know that the theatre and every other place of amusement 
 can be paid for, but that nothing in this world can pay for two tears of joy in 
 the eyes of a poor mother, nor the grasp of an honest man's hand when one 
 has enabled him to wait till he gets work. We are all of us subject, unfortu- 
 nately, to movements of brusqiieiie and haughtiness towards our inferiors ; 
 but there are few men so wanting in delicacy as to speak harshly to the poor 
 man whom they have relieved, to forget that an alms commits the donor, and 
 closes his lips for ever to anything that might seem like a reproach to the re- 
 cipient."""* 
 
 Ozanam was far, however, from advocating that indiscrimi- 
 nate ahnsgiving which unwisely benevolent persons are apt 
 to indulge in. " A severe inquisition should search out hid- 
 den distress, interrogate sorrows that do not cry out, visit the 
 attic where the sick man suffers in silence, and penetrate even 
 into the prison where the unfortunate find no echo to bear the 
 voice of their anguish to the outer world." f This prudent 
 theory did not prevent his being sometimes deceived in prac- 
 tice. There was an Italian whom he had assisted for a long 
 time, and finally procured a situation for in a house of busi- 
 ness ; the man betrayed the confidence of his employers, and, 
 having again fallen into great distress, he came back for help 
 to his former protector, who, justly incensed at his behavior, 
 ordered him away, and bade him never come near him again. 
 No sooner, however, had the man left the house than Oza- 
 nam was smitten with remorse ; he said to himself that it was 
 " wrong to reduce any one to despair ; that one had no right 
 to refuse a mouthful of bread to the vilest scoundrel ; that he 
 himself would one day want God not to be inexorable towards 
 him, as he had just been towards a fellew-creature redeemed 
 by the blood of Jesus Christ." 
 
 Unable to bear the thought, he seized his hat and rushed 
 out in pursuit of the Italian, whom he overtook in the gardens 
 of the Luxembourg. 
 
 We have seen how constantly he entreated those who gave 
 to enhance the value of their benefits by bestowing them with 
 
 • De VAumdne, vid. Milanges, i. p. 398, 
 
 t CivilmtiQK an 5'W »ecle, j. 75, 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 179 
 
 their own hand, instead of through agents and valets. " How 
 can the recipients of this sort of bounty feel grateful for it, as 
 they would be if it were differently bestowed ? " he would 
 urge. *' Who ever saw any person moved to tears by the 
 regularity with which the street fountains flow every morning, 
 or the gas is lighted for them every evening ? " 
 
 He had great order in his almsgiving. The budget of his 
 charities was regulated beforehand every year. as strictly as 
 any of his personal expenses, and rose in proportion to the in- 
 crease of his means ; he advised all his friends to adopt his 
 plan, and thus save themselves the annoyance of never know- 
 ing exactly how they stood with regard to the fulfilment of 
 the duty, and from saying sometimes " I cannot afford it," 
 without being sure whether they really can or not. It would 
 be impossible to convey in words an adequate idea of the 
 sweetness, the inimitable grace with- which he accompanied 
 his own necessarily limited donations. P^re Lacordaire's de- 
 scription may be applied to him with truth : " There is a way 
 of giving, a charm that disguises the benefit, a transparency 
 that lets you look into the heart and love it, a something gen- 
 tle, simple, a kindly anticipation that draws the whole being, 
 and makes man prefer the spectacle of kindness to that even 
 of genius." 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 1844-5. 
 
 OzANAM, on coming to Paris, had settled in a small apart- 
 ment in the Rue de Fleurus overlooking the gardens of the 
 old Medicean Palace, within a few minutes' walk of the Sor- 
 bonne. The house was very simple, but full of household 
 gods that beautified it ; there were venerable old mahogany- 
 gods, that spoke to him of his kindred in remote times, and 
 blessed while they served him ; there were cherished little gods 
 that reminded him of his childhood ; there were bright gods 
 of hope and expectation, tender Madonnas, and laurel-crowned 
 poets, that smiled with a promise while they beckoned on- 
 ward and upward. His young wife was there the queen of 
 the litde Parnassus, a living centre to the dumb divinities 
 around. 
 
 They had brought Gui-gui with them. The old Lyon- 
 nese servant was a pillar of strength in the little household. 
 She had now been nearly seventy years in the service of the 
 Ozanam family, having entered as a tiny maiden in attendance 
 on the cocks and hens, until she gradually worked her way 
 up to the high functions of cook, a sceptre which she now 
 held and exercised with jealous sway. Her fabulous economy 
 was only equalled by her devotion to her master. Every 
 member of the family consulted her on all important occa- 
 sions, and she gave her opinion with rare good sense; need- 
 less to say that, as time went by, she gave it sometimes with- 
 out waiting to be asked. Gui-gui was a stanch conservative, 
 and held on like grim death to the customs of her youth ; she 
 wore the picturesque peasant dress of her native village, un- 
 modified by Parisian fashions, and mounted guard over the 
 
 180 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. i8i 
 
 family traditions witli tlie stern remonstrance, " Your grand- 
 mother did this ; your grandfather did so-and-so." Her spare 
 moments were spent saying never-ending rosaries for the souls 
 of the departed masters, whose children she looked upon as 
 her own, and whose babies she sang to sleep with the same 
 songs that had lulled four generations of the race. 
 
 Ozanam was thoroughly happy, in full swing of literary 
 work, at rest for the present, and fairly secure for the future, 
 when an event occurred which suddenly changed the whole 
 aspect of his life ; this was M. Fauriel's death. He had been 
 an invalid for years, yet the end was as great a surprise as if 
 it had overtaken him in rude health. 
 
 TO M. FOISSET. 
 
 ">/y29, 1844. 
 
 "... Yes, the death of M. Fauriel came on me like a thunderbolt. I 
 had in him a kind patron and an enlightened counsellor, whose interest in- 
 sured me, as his substitute, the perp>etual possession of a chair which hisinfim] 
 health no longer permitted him to occupy. His friendship was my security, 
 . . . Now, what are they going to do with me ? God alone knows. After 
 four years of a professorship whose success has surpassed all my hopes, to 
 which I sacrificed everything, even in some degree my health, having been 
 besides on the best of terms with everybody, and now that I hold no title from 
 the University, outside the Faculty, it is hard to suppose that they would 
 coolly dismiss me, and place another Professor in the chair I have been filling. 
 The Faculty is of this opinion, and the majority of the members are disposed 
 to present me first on the list to the Minister, which would at once settle my 
 nomination ; only they think it fit, out of respect to the memory of M. Fauriel, 
 to wait for the re-opening of the schools. A small minority, however, OfH 
 poses these kind intentions, insists on my age — thirty-one — my want of scien- 
 tific titles, and my recent entrance into the University, and suggests that they 
 should leave me time to win my spurs by prolonging the vacancy, and just 
 allow me to hold the professorship next year as chargide cours ; that is to 
 say, on a precarious title. 
 
 " I am quite alive to the perils of a provisional position in a time of strife 
 like the present, when the kindly dispositions of public feeling may change so 
 quickly. All my efforts, therefore, are brought to bear on this point. Several 
 friends are seconding me by active steps ; but all may help me by theii 
 prayers. All I ask of God is that He will take the delicate matter into His 
 own hands, so that I may neither betray the duties of my state by imprudence, 
 nor my honor as a Christian by pusillanimity. 
 
 " After all, it may be best for my salvation that I should not succeed ; and 
 in that case all I desire is firmness, resignation, and peace of heart ; to be re- 
 
1 82 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 signed to everything, even to the precarious, even to uncertainty, which is per- 
 haps the most painful of all, but which we should accustom ourselves to, since 
 God has placed it everywhere, in life, in death, in health, in fortune, and that 
 He saw fit to let us live — we who so desire to be certain of our revenues, our 
 projects, our successes — in the most terrible of all doubts, * whether we are 
 worthy of love in His eyes.' 
 
 " These sentiments, that I am trying- hard to penetrate myself with for these 
 last fifteen days, are fortunately firmly enthroned in the heart of my wife, who, 
 for my greater trial, is absent from me at this painful crisis. I had to remain 
 here in the breach, and I shall of course have to remain on through all the 
 holidays." 
 
 The trial was prolonged beyond the holidays. Ozanam 
 continued in the same uncertainty as to his fate until the 
 close of November, when he was nominated Professor at the 
 Sorbonne for life, in the vacant place of M. Fauriel, and with 
 the increased salary belonging to the position. M. Ampere 
 is the first to whom he sends the good tidings : 
 
 TO AMPERE. 
 
 " "zyi November^ 1844. 
 
 ** I come to announce the great news to you. At last, on Saturday at two 
 o'clock, the Minister of Public Instruction signed my nomination. The pre- 
 sentation of the Academical Council had already been unanimous, like that of 
 the Faculty. The Royal Council had givep its opinion similarly on Friday. 
 It seemed therefore as if nothing remained to be done but to sign ; and yet, to 
 justify what you said so truly about the terrors of the last moment, we were 
 informed that the Minister would not terminate the matter, but ordered the 
 paper for the classes to be posted up with a blank after my name, so as to give 
 him further time for reflection. M. le Clerc was obliged to exercise no ordi- 
 nary zeal and firmness in order literally to compel the signature. But at last 
 the thing was done, and was this morning executed by my taking the oath 
 before the Dean ; it is published to-day in all the newspapers, and borne by 
 these organs of publicity to my friends in the four corners of France. We 
 were looking forward to this conclusion certainly as a great happiness, and yet 
 I must confess that our joy has been far greater than we anticipated. It is 
 almost humiliating to be so much moved by a temporal advantage ; but at the 
 first moment this end of all our fears and anxieties, the new-found security, 
 the sense of peace, overcame Amelie and myself more than I dare to say. 
 
 '* I was so happy to see this dear life, superadded to my own, henceforth 
 sheltered, as far as it humanly can be, from those cares and vicissitudes which 
 wear out the noblest hearts ; to see an honorable position, and one worthy of 
 her, secured to her, and at the same time to feel myself in conditions of inde- 
 pendence which will permit me to do my duty without incurring mortifying 
 suspicions and threatening interpretations 1 Then the congratulations of ouf 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 183 
 
 friends followed quickly on these first emotions, and added to their sweetness, 
 till we can scarcely tell what has given us most pleasure, our own success oi 
 the pleasure it has given so many kind, excellent, and devoted persons. 
 
 " I knew well already, God having taught it me by experience, that we need 
 our friends in sorrow, but I had yet to learn how much we want them in hap- 
 piness. Oh I we see it now well enough by the void which your absence 
 causes us, and this is why I felt I must tell you, as to a brother at full length 
 — the way you like it — all that we felt on this great occasion. You must en- 
 joy your work a little, you who, after God, are the author of all this pros- 
 perity ; you who welcomed me as a brother into the house of your good and 
 glorious father, who started me on the road, who led me from trial to trial, 
 step by step, to this chair, where I am now seated, only because the one man 
 who is really worthy to fill it refuses it. 
 
 " How beautiful are the designs of Providence when we see them as a whole 
 and in the distance ! . . . 
 
 " We see in this event," he writes to M. Foisset, " a merciful dispensation 
 of Providence to point out to me how I am to serve God in this world, to 
 render my duties easy to me, because I am weak, and to prepare me, by a 
 moment of prosperity, for the trials of the future. How indeed can we do 
 otherwise than recognize the Divine inter^•ention in an event of which we now 
 know all the vicissitudes, the obstacles that have crossed it, and the unlikely 
 coincidences that we had to overcome ? We are really less astonished at the 
 result than at the manner in which it has been brought about, the unanimous 
 support which I obtained successively in the Royal Council, in the Faculty, in 
 the Academical Council, and this without their exacting from me a single 
 step in advance, the least concession or reserve ; without hinting, as they 
 might have done, that I should exercise more prudetice in my lectures ; with- 
 out so much as asking me to write, as it is customary to do, a letter presenting 
 myself as a candidate, lest they should seem to be imposing any conditions on 
 me. It is in fact impossible to push kindness and delicacy further than the 
 Dean of the Faculty has done. But what crowns my satisfaction is the way 
 ournuraerous friends have shared it ; one would think it was a personal suc- 
 cess for them all ; and so it is, for we have no manner of doubt that their 
 prayers helped on our success, just as we count on them now to enable us to 
 prove grateful and worthy of it." 
 
 Ozanam's youth had been a serious obstacle in his way. 
 M. Guizot, the youngest Professor the University had yet 
 admitted, was seven-and-thirty when he was nominated, and 
 Ozanam was five years younger. This precedent made his 
 success the more striking. The pupils of the College Stanis- 
 las were the only portion of his friends who did not rejoice at 
 it; they were proud of his triumph, but it was to cost them 
 dear. No Professor of the University was allowed to give 
 
184 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 lessons in any minor college, consequently their master's new 
 honors involved their losing him. Young as the boys were, 
 they had realized the privilege of his teaching, and occasion- 
 ally expressed this fact to him in verses, thanking their " guide 
 savant et aimable " for leaving the learned crowd outside in 
 favor of the humble audience of a schoolroom. One of these 
 affectionate effusions assures him — 
 
 " Votre coeur respirant du fardeau de la gloire, 
 Y trouvera du moins des coeurs reconnaissants." 
 
 In their despair at losing him they wrote to the Minister, 
 M. Villeraain, imploring him to suspend the prohibition in 
 their favor, and allow their dear master to remain with them. 
 They tried to enlist Ozanam himself on their side, and wrote 
 him a letter which is too characteristic to be omitted ; 
 
 " Monsieur : We cannot find words to express to you the painful surprise 
 with which we received yesterday the news of the misfortune which threatens 
 us. Those who have only known you a few months, and those who, after as- 
 sisting a whole year at your lectures, earnestly hoped to enjoy them much 
 longer, are all equally afflicted, and I have received the sad mission of express- 
 ing to you this universal sorrow. Still all hope is not perhaps over, and how 
 ever unworthy we may be of occupying so precious a time as yours, we dare 
 entreat you to take our cause into your own hands ^ and to preserve to us, ly pos- 
 sible, the master whom we have most loved. " 
 
 Their efforts proved unavailing. M. Villemain did not re- 
 lent, but Ozanam was touched to the heart by this letter, 
 which he carefully preserved. Yet with all his kindness they 
 had not found him an easy-going master. On the contrary, 
 he was, as a Professor, exceptionally severe. As an examiner 
 he gave no quarter. He so mistrusted his natural tendency 
 to indulgence that conscientiousness drove him into the op- 
 posite extreme, and once in his official capacity of judge he 
 was impartial almost to hardness, more especially towards 
 candidates in whom he took a personal interest. There is a 
 story told of a young proteg^ whom he had taken infinite 
 pains to prepare for his examinations, and who, when the day 
 of ordeal came, was within an ace of being dismissed, owing 
 to the merciless rigor of Ozanam's interrogations. From this 
 
Life and IVjrks of Frederic Ozatiam. 185 
 
 time forth the candidates rather feared than sought a friendly 
 recommendation to him, saying that it only doubled the chance 
 of lailuie. But his greatest severity was displayed towards 
 ecclesiastical students. One day a young seminarist called 
 on him to enquire into the reasons of his failure at the recent 
 examinations. Ozanam received him with the utmost kind- 
 ness, and pointed out to him in detail the various flaws of his 
 version; then suddenly changing his tone, and assuming a 
 severe countenance, he said : " Your very dress, Monsieur, 
 compels us to be more exacting. When one has the honor to 
 wear the livery of the priesthood, one should not lightly expose 
 it to a similar disgrace." 
 
 M. Soulacroix was named Chef de Division in the Ministry 
 of Public Instruction in the spring of the following year 
 (1845), ^ circumstance which, by drawing his wife's family 
 closer to him, was a source of sincere rejoicing to Ozanam. 
 He continued to work arduously at his pen, but complains 
 much of the inadequate results. '* I am dying with impa- 
 tience to resume my researches on Germany, which were be- 
 ginning to interest me intensely just as I had to interrupt 
 them," he says to M. Foisset. " But really I despair of ever 
 doing anything considerable, because of my slowness and my 
 facility for losing time. Ah ! if I only had the activity that I 
 see in you, in my father-in-law, and that I used to see in my 
 father, but which is becoming rare, and seems as if it would 
 disappear altogether. It strikes me that the great secret of 
 education nowadays should be to destroy this tendency of 
 the mind to wandering. Of all the qualities ofihe grand Steele, 
 that which upheld all the others was perhaps the one that 
 Bossuet prized so highly, and the want of which he so bitterly 
 deplored in his pupil — application." 
 
 This year of prosperity, as he calls it, held yet another 
 blessing in store for Ozanam, a joy that put the crown on all 
 those that went before. 
 
1 86 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 ''to m. foisset. 
 
 " August 'jth, 1845. 
 
 " My friends have a great deal to do this year helping me to give thanks. 
 After so many favors which fixed my vocation in this world and put an end to 
 the scattering of my family, a new blessing has come to me, the greatest joy, 
 probably, it is possible to experience here below : / am a father / 
 
 " We prayed much ; we begged for prayers on every side ; never did we feel 
 greater need of the Divine assistance ! We have been heard above and be- 
 yond all our hopes. Ah ! what a moment that was when I heard the first cry 
 of my child ; when I beheld that little creati\re, but that immortal creature, 
 which God has confided to me, who brought me so many dehghts and so many 
 duties ! With what impatience I waited for the moment of her baptism ! We 
 have called her Marie, which is her mother's name, as well as that of the pow- 
 erful protectress to whose intercession we attribute this happy birth. The mo- 
 ther is now nearly well again, and is able to nurse her child. Thus we shall 
 not lose the first smiles of our little angel. We will begin her education early, 
 and, at the same time, she will begin ours ; for I perceive that Heaven has sent 
 her to us to teach us a great deal, and to make us better. I cannot look upon 
 that sweet little face, so full of innocence and purity, without seeing there, less 
 obliterated than in us, the sacred impress of the Creator. I cannot think of this 
 imperishable soul, of which I shall have to render an account, without feeling 
 myself more penetrated with my duties. How could I dare teach her lessons 
 that I did not practise > Could God have found a kinder way of instructing me, 
 of correcting me, and setting my feet on the road to heaven ? Oh ! you, dear 
 friend, who exercise so worthily these grand functions of fatherhood, remember 
 me before God, and ask for your young friend the light, the inspiration, the 
 strength that he needs from above. Remember my child, too, who will pay it 
 back to you some day, I hope. Her mother, who is sincerely attached to you, 
 bids me say how grateful she would be for an Ave Maria when you are gathered 
 together for family prayers. Your paternal confidences of last year come back 
 to us, and we sigh in thinking that some day we shall perhaps have to marry 
 our little Marie ! . . . Adieu. I must terminate sooner than I wish a letter 
 that was begun, interrupted, and taken up again ten times in the midst of the 
 Baccalaureat, which keeps me at the Sorbonne all day. I scribble off ten lines 
 while M. Guigniaut and M. Garnier are examining, in philosophy, Greek, and 
 Latin, unfortunate candidates who know very little about them ; and I lay 
 down my pen to put questions in history, geography, and literature, travelling 
 over all space and time and then coming back to you." 
 
 His little treasure was a daily-increasing source of tender 
 and poetic delight to him, 
 
 " There is nothing more delicious on this earth," he says, " than on coming 
 home to find my beloved wife with her little baby in her arms. I then make 
 a third figure in the group, and I would willingly lose myself for whole hours 
 in admiring it, if presently a little cry did not come to warn me that poor 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 187 
 
 human nature is very fragile, that many perils are suspended over that tiny 
 head, and that the joys of fatherhood are only given us to sweeten its duties." 
 
 The examinations at the Sorbonne had kept him so occu- 
 pied all through the summer that he was not able to escape 
 from Paris until September, when he went with his wife and 
 child to Nogent, a little village outside Paris. 
 
 " All this summer," he writes to Lallier, at the end of August, " I have seen 
 no other verdure than the green table where we hold the examinations 
 of the bachelors. These last three days I have been seated at it from ten in 
 the morning till seven in the evening ; and I can only manage to write you a 
 line in the short interval between the question of geography and the question 
 of history. This is why I don't touch on the g^reat events of the day. . . . 
 The number of our conferences has been increased by five new ones this last 
 month. We have six now in London. Do you remember how cross we were 
 with you in 1833, when you brought us poor De la Noue, who increased our 
 number to nine ? Now we are nearly nine thousand ! So you see these poor 
 Catholics are not dead yet. Now, as in the days of St. Paul, quasi morientes 
 et tamen viventes.''* 
 
 The holidays brought rest only in the shape of a change ot 
 work to Ozanam. This year they were employed in finishing 
 what he calls his " interminable volume " on the History of 
 Christian Civilization amongst the Germans. 
 
 ♦' The quiet of the country affords me a leisure which I have not known for 
 a long time," he writes ; "we are about three-quarters of an hour beyond 
 Vincennes, on a rising ground which overlooks the Mame. The garden is 
 large, the air is pure, the weather lovely. My wife is picking up her strength 
 rapidly, and my child is opening out like a little flower. It is one of those 
 moments of bliss which are not often granted to us in life, and Which make us 
 feel more keenly the goodness of Providence." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 1846. 
 
 The year 1846 was unmarked by any event of importance 
 in Ozanam's public or private career. He continued to work 
 as if he had a second life in reserve to supplement the frail 
 one he drew upon so pitilessly. His health was giving way, but 
 he did not or would not see it. His literary work was daily 
 increasing, and absorbed all the time he could spare from his 
 professional occupations. This did not prevent his devoting 
 himself, as in the past, to the service of the poor. After the 
 exhaustion of his morning's lecture at the Sorbonne, he was 
 constantly to be heard in the evening lecturing to an assembly 
 of working-men in the crypt of St. Sulpice, and he would put 
 forth his powers as earnestly here as when addressing the 
 most fastidious and cultivated audience. Those who have 
 heard him speaking to the uneducated classes declare that it 
 was wonderful how he contrived to bring the riches of his 
 learnuig, and his lofty mind, within their reach, and how in- 
 tensely they responded to the effort. " My friends," he said 
 to them on one occasion, " we have each of us our trade in 
 this life. My trade is to wade through old books ; well, I can 
 assure you tliat under the dust of these old folios I come upon 
 lessons which the past has bequeathed to us under the most 
 fascinating form. Let me tell you one of these old stories 
 that charmed away the long evenings for our fathers." And 
 with a grace and an eloquence which the Sorbonne might 
 have envied, he went on to relate to them one of those beau- 
 tiful legends that Ireland would seem to have stolen from the 
 East, and transfigured with her Christian touch. The rough 
 
 188 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Czanam. i S9 
 
 audience listened in breathless delight, understanding and ap- 
 plauding. Then came the moral : 
 
 *• These legends," continued the orator, " are symbolical of another world, 
 where all that we have done in this one is punished or rewarded. We are all 
 of us like the weavers of the Gobelins, who, following out the pattern of an un- 
 known artist, endeavor to match the threads of divers colors on the wrong 
 side of the woof, and do not see the result of their labor. It is only when the 
 texture is complete that they can admire at their ease these lovely flowers and 
 figures, those splendid pictures worthy of the palaces of kings. So it is with 
 us, my friends ; we work, we suffer, and we see neither the end nor the fruit. 
 But God sees it, and when He releases us from our task. He will disclose to 
 our wondering gaze what He, the great artist, everywhere present and invis- 
 ible, has woven out of those toils that now seem to us so sterile, and He will 
 then deign to hang up in his palace of gold the flimsy web that we have 
 spun." 
 
 It is not surprising that Ozanam should have been a popu- 
 lar speaker with the working-men. He counted himself one 
 of them, and his eloquence had in it a note of real personal 
 pride when it dwelt upon the dignity and power of labor, of 
 human toil in every field. His works abound in fine passages 
 on labor as one of the regenerating forces of the world, and 
 of arguments and examples tending to show how the laborer, 
 oppressed and despised by Paganism, was rehabilitated by 
 Christianity. 
 
 " Let us see what Christianity has done for the ouvriers,^^ he says. *' Free 
 labor has no greater enemy than slavery, consequently the ancients, who held 
 to slavery, trampled free labor under foot ; they spurned it and stigmatized it 
 with the most offensive names. Even Cicero— that great and wise man 
 whom we are so fond of quoting — Cicero says somewhere that there is no- 
 thing liberal in manual labor ; that trade, if it be small, is to be considered 
 sordid, but, if vast and opulent, need not be too severely blamed .* . . . Ac- 
 cording to the law of the Twelve Tables, the debtor who could not pay was 
 placed at the discretion of his creditor to be sold as a slave, or else cut up into 
 as many pieces as there were creditors, so that each one might have his share. 
 In the days of Senecusthey no longer cut him up, but they compelled him to 
 sell his children, and, so far on as Constantine's reign, the children of the 
 insolvent debtor were sold on tha public market-place. This is how free la- 
 bor fared under the ancients. Christianity restored it to its original rank by 
 the example of Christ and the apostles, by that of St. Paul, who went into 
 
 * D* OgiciU, 1. i. c. 43. 
 
190 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 partnership with the Jew Aquila at Corinth rather than eat bread which he 
 had not gained in the sweat of his brow."* 
 
 Ozanam, not satisfied with proving the respectability of la- 
 bor, called in poetry to invest it with dignity and beauty. 
 
 " When we plunge into the valleys of the Vosges and the Jura, into the 
 heart of those rugged countries where the old German manners were so long 
 retained, the first thing that strikes us is the wild majesty of the scene. But, 
 on looking closer, we find that a power stronger than nature has been at work, 
 pursuing her to this sanctuary, subduing and compelling her to serve, not 
 sparing even those things which seemed created for repose and liberty. I al- 
 lude to the power of labor. Where shall we find a grander image of calm 
 than those broad trees that seem born to do nothing, like the sons of the an- 
 cient kings > They must, nevertheless, come down from their heights and go 
 and serve the peasant, who will make them uphold the roof of his cabin, or 
 the navigator, who will use them as ribs for his ships. What is freer than the 
 torrent ? And yet labor has come and seized it in its bed, and imprisoned it^ 
 and bound it like a slave to the mill. Say not that these manufactories are a 
 blot upon the wild beauty of the desert : the ring of the hammer and the smoke 
 of the forge proclaim to you that creation obeys man, and man God. " t 
 
 The universal law of labor applies with him in equal force 
 to the sons of toil who till the earth and draw water from the 
 river, and to those laborers who dig in the field of science, art, 
 or literature. Here it is that he expresses with perfect sin- 
 cerity the sense of kindred with his lowlier brother workmen. 
 
 Speaking of the progress of the French language from its 
 ruder stages under Clovis, Charlemagne, the Middle Ages, 
 and up to the period when Pascal came to define its limits, 
 and Bourdaloue and Bossuet to ennoble and refine it, and 
 bring it to that state of perfection which it is the duty of living 
 men of letters to preserve, he goes on to say : 
 
 *' Hence the obligation of work. Work is the common law of mankind ; 
 it is the law of the mind as well as of the body ; for it was also to the labors 
 of the mind that those words pronounced on the day of the Fall applied — 
 ' Thou shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy brow.' Look at that long tradi- 
 tion of labor in the Church, from Origen, the man with the bowels of brass, as 
 St. Augustine called him, who began so late, and nevertheless saw everything, 
 down to St. Thomas, who died at nine-and-forty, leaving us seventeen vol- 
 umes in folio. In more modern times, see Bossuet rising at two o'clock in the 
 
 • Civilisation ausmesiicle, vol. ii. p. 66, 
 t EtutUt Germauiqtus, ii. ch«f>. ix. p. 649. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 191 
 
 morning to resume the work he had scarcely interrupted ; see d'Aguesseau de- 
 claring that a change of work was the only recreation the mind needed ; see 
 those magistrates of the seventeenth century going forth at six in the morn- 
 ing to take their seats on \.\iq fleurs-de-lis^ giving the whole day to the public 
 functions, the evening to the education of their children, and dividing the 
 night between study and prayer. Seven or eight hours a day given to science 
 alarms the solicitude of our friends for our wretched health. Let us remem- 
 ber, nevertheless, that we are not dispensed by faith from fatigue and watch- 
 ings. Labor, the chastisement of the Fall, has become the law of regenera- 
 tion. It is labor that produces glorious epochs, when it finds inspiration 
 there, and, when it does not find it, it still produces useful men and estimable 
 nations."* 
 
 The examinations for the Baccalaureat came round, and 
 brought their usual increase of work to the Professor, who 
 again describes himself in the sultry August heat, ** sitting for 
 eight or ten hours a day at that blessed green table," and try- 
 ing to write a hurried line to a friend between Greek and 
 mathematics, " surrounded by yawning colleagues and trem- 
 bling candidates," and pining inexpressibly for a breath of 
 fresh country air. " Nothing is comparable to the pleasures 
 of the woods and fields," he says ; " the balmy air, the very 
 odors of the farmyard, are all conducive to health ; the coun- 
 try is full of teaching and full of consolation, and we deprive 
 ourselves of both by rerhaining penned up in the walls of our 
 cities." But he turns, after this little petulant outbreak, to 
 deeper sources of consolation : 
 
 " We Catholics have this happiness : that our cause wills to be served at the 
 same time in different ways, that adapt themselves to the diversity of charac- 
 ters and minds ; it requires men of war and men of peace, the crusade of con- 
 troversy and the proselytism of charity. I admire those who fight gloriously 
 in the breach, but I cannot help preferring for my friends and myself the other 
 ministry, which, if less brilliant, is also less dangerous. . . ." 
 
 But this life of arduous toil and study could not go on with 
 impunity for ever. The body is long-suffering, and bears a 
 great deal from the noble tyranny of the soul, but, driven 
 beyond certain limits, it rebels and vindicates its rights. 
 Before the end of the examinations Ozanam fell ill of a ma- 
 lignant fever, which placed his Hfe in great danger. At the 
 
 • Devoirt LilUrairet des CkritUns — Milan^u, i. p. i6a 
 
tgi Life a?id Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 beginning of September lie had begun to recover, and writes 
 to M. Leon Bore from Meudon, on the 22d: 
 
 " My long silence would have been an unpardonable ingratitude if it had 
 been voluntary ; but just as I was taking up my pen to thank you for your 
 two kind letters, I was seized with the first symptoms of a fever of such an 
 alarming character that I should probably not have got over it but for the ex- 
 cellent care of our common friend, M. Gourand, and the intelligent and cour- 
 ageous self-devotion of Amelie, which was an immense support to me through 
 this crisis. God has, however, seen good to spare me a little while longer, in 
 order that I may have time to grow better ; and as if to prolong the salutary 
 warning of the illness itself, my convalescence, which has lasted nearly a 
 month, still keeps me in a state of weakness that renders the least bodily ex- 
 ertion, the slightest mental effort, impossible. I never before,/^// what a poor 
 creature man is. I can't tell you how humiliated I feel to be eating and sleep- 
 ing well, and yet so exhausted that an hour's application suffices to fatigue my 
 head and compel me to lie down. I use the first liberty the doctors have 
 granted me to repair a delay which was weighing on my heart. ... I wai 
 for a long time overwhelmed with innumerable and imperative occupations, 
 to the excess of which, so they say, my illness is to be attributed. Now I am 
 condemned to complete idleness, and, the better to draw my mind away from 
 men and books, they have buried me in the woods of Meudon. My wife has 
 come in to protest against my writing too much. I let her take the pen out . 
 of my hand, just for the sake of giving a good example to all the husbands of 
 the earth." 
 
 The ilhiess had found him so reduced in strength that it 
 was astonishing that he should have battled through it at all ; 
 and now, though nominally recovered, he continued in a state 
 of such alarming prostration that it became a question whether 
 he had vitality enough left to rally to his normal state. The 
 doctors declared his only chance was to take a year's com- 
 plete rest. Even if pecuniary difficulties had not intervened, 
 this was a difficult prescription for Ozanam. How was that 
 ardent mind, with its sleepless activity, to be kept idle for a 
 whole year ? There was but one way of doing it ; this was to 
 spend the interval in travelling. M. de Salvandy, the Minister 
 of Public Instruction, hearing of the circumstances, hastened 
 to facilitate things by sending the Professor on a literary mis- 
 sion to Italy. It was done with the kindest intention, and 
 not with the view of turning the period of relaxation into a 
 change of fatigue ; but Ozanam's extreme conscientiousness 
 gave the mission too much of that character. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 1847. 
 
 Starting in November, 1846, Ozanam and his wife made 
 a tour in the south of France, and then went by slow stages 
 through Genoa and Florence to Rome, where they were to 
 pass the winter. Under this delightful regime his health 
 rapidly revived, although he did not spare it in the service of 
 his mission. Every journey he made produced a book, some- 
 times two. The result of the present one was his volumes en- 
 titled Unpublished Documents to serine for the Literary History 
 of Italy from the Eighth to the Thirteenth Century^ and that 
 charming book, The Franciscan Poets. The first he considered 
 his work, the latter was his recreation. But the work had 
 presently to be given up. The fatigue of copying out Latin 
 and Italian MSS. in the libraries and museums all the morn- 
 ing, then classifying and arranging them in the afternoon, 
 began to tell upon his health, still far from restored, and he 
 was compelled to give up altogether by the time he reached 
 Rome. 
 
 •* Plead for me with the mativaises langues, who are accusing me of silence 
 and laziness," he writes to his brother from Rome in February. "Ask Charles 
 to call on M. Ampere, and M. Ballanche, and Monsieur R^amier, and to tell 
 them I will write in a few days, and that I am ashamed of not having done it 
 sooner. The fact is that at Florence my time was entirely taken up with 
 researches in the libraries, etc. Since I have been here I have made a scruple 
 of writing; a line until I had finished my never-ending preface, which is draw- 
 ing to a close now. But a few days after my arrival I was seized with a ner- 
 vous malaise, without, however, experiencing any of those alarming symptoms 
 which accompanied this summer's attack of fever ; only I was incapable of any 
 sort of work, and quite in harmony with the public mind here, which was all 
 turned towards///^ and ioUificatjons," 
 
' 194 I^if^ <^^d Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 The fivsi fete that he assisted at was a Low Mass celebrated 
 by the Pope at the Church of St. Apollinarius. He describes 
 the church as decorated with draperies of red, white, and 
 blue, embroidered in silver and gold, and illuminated with 
 countless lustres, candelabras, and torches. 
 
 " These decorations are apt to shock us at first," he remarks, "accustomed 
 as we are to the naked majesty of the Gothic churches, and yet there is some- 
 thing joyous and pleasing about them. They are suited to a people who treat 
 more tenderly and familiarly with God, and they have the appearance of a 
 family rejoicing. It was indeed at a fete of this sort that we were about to 
 assist. The students of the Seminary * were drawn up on either side of the 
 door in silence, but with faces all alight with pleasure. At a quarter-past 
 eight the bells rang out, and the Pope entered with a small cortege. He wore 
 a white soutane, and carried his scarlet hat in his hand. He said a Low Mass, 
 assisted only by four priests, slowly and with great fervor. At the moment of 
 the Communion all the Seminarists approached two and two and received 
 Holy Communion from the hand of the Holy Father, who looked in truth like 
 a father in the midst of his children. Up to this point it was all most edify- 
 ing, but it became sublime when the Pope, having given Communion to all the 
 ecclesiastics, expressed the desire to distribute it to the people. Then the 
 guards fell back, and the Sovereign Pontiff descended the steps of the altar, 
 holding the Blessed Sacrament in his hands. At tlie same moment there was 
 a forward movement in the crowd to meet him and fall down before the Com- 
 munion-rails, The steps were covered with two rows of the faithful, crushed 
 together, trembling, overcome to tears; no distinction of any sort. There 
 was there the Queen Dowager of Saxony, poor Italian peasants, women and 
 men of many nations, and, in the midst of the crowd, my Amelie and I side 
 by side, as we have ever been in joy and sorrow, as we trust to be to the end 
 of life, and beyond it. . . . The sacred procession drew near to us. I 
 beheld that admirable countenance of Pius IX. all illuminated by the torches, 
 aglow with the sanctity of the act, the moment— nobler, gentler than ever. 
 I kissed his ring, the ring of the fisherman, which for eighteen centuries has 
 sealed so many immortal deeds. Then I tried to see no more, to forget every- 
 thing, in order to remember only Him who is our Master, and before whom 
 Pontiffs are but dust." 
 
 Every letter that Ozanam writes from Rome is marked with 
 tender enthusiasm for Pius IX. He describes his person as 
 " well adapted to his glorious role of popularity ; his figure 
 is lofty and well-formed, his face slightly colored, and, as he 
 is but fifty-four years of age, he would still look young if it 
 were not for the gray that has begun to streak his hair, and 
 
 * St. Apollinarius is the ctiMrch of the Seminarists in Rome« 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 195 
 
 the wrinkles which already testify to the burden of the Pon- 
 tificate. They say that he is greatly changed since his elec- 
 tion, but what has not changed is the expression of his face. 
 I never saw so much nobleness, innocence, and sweetness 
 combined. When he speaks he is quickly moved, and his 
 emotion, his penetrating voice, stirs all hearts." Their joyous 
 sojourn in the Holy City was for a time clouded by the sud- 
 den death of a young brother of Am^lie's, to whom they were 
 both much attached. 
 
 "The terrible news reached us just as we were finishing a Novena for his 
 recovery. . . . Our beloved brother died like a martyr, after living like a saint. 
 At the age of three-and-twenty he took leave of this world, I do not say 
 with resignation, but with a Divine joy. He leaves a terrible void in his family, 
 to whom his sufferings were a sorrow, but whom he consoled by his virtues, 
 his serenity, and his noble intellect. His sister has not yet got over the blow, 
 and for the last twenty days my one care has been to support her under this 
 affliction." 
 
 But Easter was at hand, and no sorrow in Catholic hearts 
 could withstand the flood of consolation which it brings, with 
 its pomps and blessings and festal glories. Ozanam grows 
 quite lyrical in his letters home now that Easter has come. 
 
 " TO M. PROSPER DUGAS. . 
 
 " Rome, Easter Sunday, 1847. 
 
 "... This is the moment to speak to you of the Papacy, now that I 
 have just assisted at its most solemn pageants, and am still under the spell of 
 the emotion called up by that most thrilling spectacle which is to be seen on 
 earth, the papal Mass and the benediction of the Urbi et Orbi. . . . 
 
 "On Easter Sunday some twenty thousand persons assisted at Mass (at St. 
 Peter's), and there was still an immense space free for the ceremonies ; you can- 
 not conceive anything more grand, more harmonious, than the arrangement 
 of the sacred cortege and its orocessions from the throne to the altar. At the 
 moment of the elevation, when the Pope turns round and holds up the blessed 
 Host and the precious Blood, and all the orders of the Church represented 
 by their chiefs and delegates, all the Christian nations represented by their 
 ambassadors, their penitents, their pilgrims, are prostrate in a common adora- 
 tion ; when all the memories of Catholicism are gathered round this altar, 
 where the sovereign pontiffs have offered the Sacrifice, from St. Peter, whose 
 tomb is underneath, to those generations of popes and saints of all times en- 
 tombed below the pavement of the basilica — oh ! then, my friend, one is con- 
 scious of an infinite joy in seeing thus worthily honored our God, so often 
 
196 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 disowned and outraged. Heretics and schismatics who happen to be present 
 are not proof against the impression ; you see them bow their heads with the 
 rest, and sometimes exclaim involuntarily, ' How beautiful 1 ' But how shall 
 I describe to you what I beheld and felt when, Mass being finished, the great 
 doors opened to pour forth the multitude on the piazza, already covered with 
 an enormous crowd ? — for it is calculated that over sixty thousand men were 
 assembled there, waiting for the blessing ! The country people came flocking 
 in in their picturesque costumes ; the soldiers stood under arms, and an im- 
 mense concourse of Romans, who are not in the habit of following these cere- 
 monies, were present this year in honor of the first Easter of Pius IX. 
 
 " And yet, when the Pope appeared on the balcony, accompanied by the 
 cardinals, all was hushed into a silence so sudden, so deep, so universal that 
 you heard from beginning to end every word of the prayers uttered by the 
 Pontiff, until the moment when he rose, with an indescribable majesty, and 
 blessed the city and the world, and then from every point of the vast piazza 
 there resounded, Amen ! It was the grandest act of faith I ever witnessed in 
 my life. 
 
 " The religious ceremony was barely concluded when the populace could no 
 longer contain itself, and, what was never known under the preceding ponti- 
 ficate, vivats burst forth, handkerchiefs and hats were waved, and the hearts 
 of the people seemed carried away by an immense love. The civic guard 
 wanted to put their shakos on the end of their guns and genuflect, and thus 
 render to Pius IX. a military honor that was only given to Napoleon ; but the 
 Pope, being informed of this intention, forbade any political demonstration 
 to be mingled with what was entirely a sacred solemnity. Nevertheless the 
 civic guard waited a long time on the piazza, amidst an enormous crowd, in 
 hopes of being able to salute the Holy Father when he passed on his way 
 back to the Quirinal. He again baffled their eagerness by delaying his return 
 until four in the afternoon, and then, when his carriage appeared, the people 
 made a rush to unyoke the horses, and when the Pope forbade this they 
 accompanied him to the Quirinal, that is to say, more than half a league's dis- 
 tance, and the palace square was instantaneously flooded with a countless 
 multitude, who greeted Pius IX. with the liveliest acclamations. He had to 
 show himself again on the balcony, and give them once more his pontifical 
 and paternal benediction. The evening before four hundred young men, 
 with lighted torches, assembled under his windows, to sing him a cantata, and 
 wish him, according to the pious custom of the country, a happy Easter. The 
 evening before that again, as he wished, over and above the official washing 
 of the feet, to ^o and wash the feet of the poor at the Pilgrims' Hospital, when 
 he went out the streets were illuminated, as if by magic, as he passed along. 
 The people did what they are in the habit of doing for the Viaticum when it 
 is carried at night : everybody went to the door or stood at the window with a 
 lamp in their hand. But these lamps that are so quickly extinguished are 
 but a pale symbol of the ardent love of the people for their bishops and their 
 prince. . . . 
 
 " You are aware what opposition the Pope meets with from a portion of the 
 Sacred College, the Prelacy, the Roman nobility, and the diplomatic body ; 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 197 
 
 but don't fancy he is as isolated as people would make out. He has rallied to 
 his views some of the cardinals who are held in the highest veneration for 
 their virtues and their capacity ; little by little he is reforming the Court, where 
 he had so many adversaries. 
 
 "There is less to build on with the laity, hitherto unacquainted with busi- 
 ness, eind with their political education yet to be acquired, so as to fit them for 
 a suitable place in the government or the administration. This is what Pius 
 IX. is strenuously aiming at, to get as many laymen as possible into the dif- 
 ferent consultative commissions which he has formed, and, what is more de- 
 cisive, in forming the tribunal of censure, recently instituted, of om ecclesias- 
 tic andyi>«r laymen. 
 
 "This institution has attracted great notice, and given umbrage to some 
 impatient spirits, who were for a brusque declaration of the liberty of the 
 Press. , Two men, however, who enjoy the full, confidence of the party of pro- 
 gress. Professor Orioli and M. d'Azeglio, have taken up the defence of the 
 edict of censorship, and shown what kindness there is in a measure which 
 tolerates the discussion of all matters of public administration, where the 
 mutual control of five p>ersons is substituted for the arbitrary censorship of one, 
 and which points out the cases where publication may be stopped, so that out- 
 side these special cases the censorship cannot interfere with a writer. Opinion 
 is accordingly begiuning to veer round towards the measure, and to under- 
 stand that it enters perfectly into the policy of Pius IX., a policy of reforma- 
 tion always, but never of revolution. 
 
 " Thus it is that he has dismissed no one, but has profited by the death of 
 several magistrates to suppress their places. . . . Thus again it is that, 
 instead of suppressing some religious orders, which were useless but not 
 scandalous, he forbade them to receive novices. . . . 
 
 •* Traits like these testify to the wisdom of a Sovereign who is as benign as 
 he is wise. I could cite you plenty of others which prove him to be a holy 
 prelate, a zealous priest, a saint in fact. . . . 
 
 " He has resumed, one by one, all the active functions of the episcopacy — 
 preaching, giving confirmation, visiting, incognito, schools and hospitals, and 
 the poor in their garrets, going to say Mass in any obscure chapel, and dis- 
 tributing Communion to all who are present, as my wife and I had the happi- 
 ness of receiving it from him. And, with all this, a purity of life that was the 
 admiration of those who knew him as a young priest, and a charity so bound- 
 less that when he set out to come to the Conclave he was obliged to borrow 
 six hundred crowns for his journey, . . . But what strikes one above 
 everything else in him are those two sentiments that have made the greatness 
 of all great Popes — an immovable faith in the Divine authority vested in him, 
 and a profound conviction of his unworthiness ; a trust in God that enables 
 him to undertake everything, and a contempt for himself that enables him to 
 suffer everything ; hence the auriole of sanctity which illuminates his counte- 
 nance, and that burning accent which pervades his discourse. 
 
 "We had the honor of being received in a private audience. His Holiness 
 made ray wife sit down, and caressed and blessed my little daughter of 
 eighteen mouths. He spoke to us of France, of the youth of our schools, of 
 
198 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 the duties of professorship, with a nobility, an emotion, and a charm that are 
 indescribable. When I said that the deserved popularity of his name would 
 hasten the return of public feeUng towards Catholicism, * I know,' he replied, 
 ' that God has worked that miracle, and that prejudice against the Holy See 
 has suddenly given way to respect and love ; but what utterly confounds me 
 is that He should have made use of a wretch like me to effect this change.' 
 
 "... I must tell you, since in your quality of father you will under- 
 stand my pride, that our little Marie behaved herself like a little angel. See- 
 ing her mother and me kneel down before the Pope, she knelt down too of 
 her own accord, clasped her small hands with an air of veneration ; and the 
 Holy Father was so delighted that three or four days afterwards he conde- 
 scended to allude to it in speaking about us to a French priest : ' They brougiit 
 me their little child, who was quite charming ; the dear Httle thing went down 
 on her knees, and looked up at me as if I were the good God ! ' 
 
 "And don't you think she was right, my little Marie ? and that she recog- 
 nized truly the representative of Him who said, ' Suffer the little ones to come 
 unto Me ' ? " 
 
 Immediately after Easter Ozanam started off alone to 
 \y Monte Cassino to make some researches in the fine library of 
 the monks. The hurried expedition, the strain of the long 
 day spent deciphering and copying from the old parch- 
 ments, together with the intense cold of the monastery, 
 brought on a return of the feverish attack he had suffered 
 from at Florence. 
 
 "I started off by diligence from Naples, and returned in the same way, 
 passing two nights on the road, and only thirty-six hours at the Abbey," he 
 writes to his brother on the 29th of April. " If I had been enticed there solely 
 by a passion for art, I should certainly have been cruelly disappointed. In a 
 place which one expects to find full of the traces of Christian antiquity, you 
 find only a church of the eighteenth century, rich in marbles and gilding, but 
 without a single painting or statue of any value. Fortunately I was able to 
 communicate at the tomb of St. Benedict, and I came upon all the Benedic- 
 tine traditions in the admirable library of the Abbey, and amongst the learned 
 monks, who did me the honors of it. They showed me some precious manu- 
 scripts, from which I made extracts ; this will not be the least valuable part of 
 my literary booty. But these good monks, who know so many things, don't 
 I know how to warm themselves, and I nearly died of cold in their fine archives, 
 and came away with an uncomfortable feeling, which end«d in an attack of 
 fever when I got to Rome. Happily it only lasted a day, and allowed me to 
 go in a tolerably fit state to the audience which the Sovereign Pontiff kindly 
 granted me on the Monday evening. I had to thank him for the support 
 which he condescended to lend me in my researches, and I wished to offer him 
 my book, and also to present to him some letters for the Society of St. Vincent 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 199 
 
 de Paul. It was nine o'clock when I was admitted, and the Pope seemed very 
 tired with the business he had been getting through with his minister and 
 several public functionaries. His Holiness, nevertheless, received me with a 
 cordiality that touched me deeply ; he enquired after my health, that of my 
 wife, and my little girl, in a tone of the most charming friendliness and famili- 
 arity. Seeing him so kind towards me and mine, I ventured to speak to him 
 of my brothers, of the one who is a priest, and I asked for his blessing on 
 both." 
 
 One last delight was in reserve for the travellers. 
 
 On the 2ist of April Rome celebrated the 2600th year of 
 her foundation. The people solemnized it by an immense 
 national banquet ; tables were laid above the Thermae of Titus 
 for eight hundred guests, while two thousand persons were in- 
 vited to be present, seated in the surrounding space, which 
 was ornamented with flTgs, mottoes, and flowers. The dinner 
 was only a pretext, for, as Ozanam remarks, " the handful of 
 dishes served would not have frightened the sobriety of Curius 
 and Cato." The real motive of the gathering was the speeches, 
 the harangues, and patriotic songs, with which the precincts 
 resounded loud and long. Many eminent men were present, 
 amongst them Orioli, the famous Professor, and Manzoni's 
 son-in-law, the Marquis d'Azeglio. The morning after this 
 merry-making a piece of important news was circulated 
 through Rome. The Pope had decreed, in a circular from 
 Cardinal Gizzi, that each province should send in the names 
 of three notable citizens, amongst which the Government 
 would choose one who should permanently represent the pro- 
 vince, and furnish such information as was needed towards 
 the accomplishment of certain reforms in its municipal insti- 
 tutions. The population was electrified by the news, and 
 Ozanam shall describe the way in which their enthusiasm ex- 
 pressed itself: 
 
 •' We knew nothing of this event, which was filling the whole city, and we 
 were bitterly regretting the only thing that was wanted to complete the de- 
 light of our visit, namely, that we had not witnessed one of those striking 
 popular ovations of which we had heard so often. Amelie, too. was inconso- 
 lable at having to leave without seeing the Pope once more, and carrying away 
 a parting blessing. We had hoped that during the evening we ipight hav^ 
 
200 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 met him out walking, as it had happened to us before, but this hope, like so 
 many others, was disappointed. We were just coming into the house when we 
 were informed that the people were getting ready to thank the Pope for his 
 new edict, and that there would be a beautifuiy^V^ aux flambeaux. We swal- 
 lowed our dinner as quickly as possible, and then, with the Abbe Gerbet and 
 a few friends, who had come to say good-by to us, we hurried to the Corso. 
 The rendezvous was at the Piazza del Popolo. Torches were being distributed, 
 and those who took them ranged themselves ten abreast, with a leader of the 
 file. But the crowd was so great that we could only get a little above the 
 Church of St. Charles. There we were able to see the outset of the triumphal 
 march. It opened by lines of men with lighted torches ; then came the circu- 
 lar of Cardinal Gizzi printed on white linen, and carried aloft like a large 
 banner ; then a band of military music ; then a dense column of men holding 
 torches, to the number, it is estimated, of about six thousand. Nothing is 
 more striking than the order which reigned in the impromptu army, and no- 
 thing was more touching than to see walking side by side, in the same ranks, 
 men of the highest classes, workmen in blouses, priests in their soutane, many 
 of them with white hair, and all united in the same feeling, expressed in the 
 same cry, Viva Pio Nono / Viva Gizzi! This is the first time I ever heard 
 vivats addressed to a minister. 
 
 " As the cortege advanced to the Corso, the houses were illuminated on the 
 road. At every story one saw the windows opening and people bending for- 
 ward with lamps ; frequently there were lanterns, colored glasses, flags with 
 mottoes, and thundering cheers were interchanged by the street and the win- 
 dows. . . . After following the crowd to the Piazza Colonna we rushed off by 
 the adjacent streets, in order to reach more quickly the Piazza of Monte Cavallo, 
 whither it was advancing. The Piazza was already filled with people. We 
 were so fortunate as to meet with some persons in a carriage, who invited 
 Amelie to get into it. I stood on the step, and we were thus enabled to take 
 in the whole scene. Presently we beheld the torch-bearers approaching ; the 
 closely packed crowd opened to make way for them, and allowed them to form 
 themselves into a square in front of the Papal palace. In the centre of the 
 square was the edict hoisted like a banner, and the music. A few pieces were 
 played, and then there arose a great shout ; lights were seen passing behind 
 the windows of the palace ; they advanced slowly to the window of the bal- 
 cony, which opened, and the Sovereign Pontiff came forward, accompanied 
 by two prelates and a few servants with torches. He appeared much moved 
 by the gratitude that was being shown to him, and bowed to the right and left 
 with his habitual grace. The liveliest acclamations answered him on every 
 side ; women waved their kerchiefs and men their hats ; there was clapping of 
 hands, and never-ending cries of Viva Pio Nono! It was not the watchword 
 of a hackneyed official ovation ; they knew well that they must ask that he 
 may live, and that the highest interests of Italy and the world are bound up 
 in his life. But what touched me most of all was this : The Pope made a 
 sign, and suddenly you heard the word isitto (hush) ! On every side, and in 
 less than a minute, the most profound silence had fallen on the excited multi- 
 lyde. You could hear distinctljr the VQice of the Pontiff rgwsed to bless hia 
 
Life and Works of Frederic OzanaiH. 201 
 
 people, and when he stretched forth his hand, and, making the sign of the 
 cross, pronounced the solemn words, one mighty Amen ! responded from end 
 to end of the vast piazza. There is no grander spectacle on earth than that 
 of a whole city thus praying with its Pontiff in the deep night-time, under the 
 starlight of a heavenly sky. And what shows that the spectators all felt it to 
 be a religious rite, the moment the Pope withdrew from the balcony the 
 torches were extinguished, and the scene was only lighted by the stray urns 
 of blue light from the terraces of the neighboring palaces. 
 
 " The idea evidently did not occur to anybody to continue the pleasure of 
 the promenade by torchlight, any more than it occurred to them, amidst so 
 many other cries, to utter one iigainst Austria, Cardinal Lambruschini, or 
 against any of the partisans of the late Government ; nothing that displayed 
 hatred or animosity, nothing but respect alone. Nor was there in this im- 
 mense crowd, with carriages and horses in every direction, the slightest dis- 
 order, not a single booby who thought fit to raise a panic to terrify the women 
 and children, as they are so fond of doing in Paris ; I might have left my 
 little Marie and her nurse walk about in the midst of it, such are the gentle- 
 ness, dignity, and even obligingness of the people here. We left the Piazza 
 oi the Quirinal with the last lingering groups at half-past nine, and found the 
 streets on our way home silent and deserted as at midnight. The Romans 
 had lain down to sleep like so many good children who before going to bed 
 come and say good -night to their father," 
 
 But Ozanam could not think of sleep ; he was too excit- 
 ed by the spectacle he had beheld, and by the novel and 
 wonderful prospect which it opened out in the future. He 
 lingered for some time at the foot of the obelisk in the 
 centre of the piazza, plunged in a deep and happy medita- 
 tion. What he had just witnessed appeared to him, no doubt, 
 as nothing less than the end of the strife, the solution of the 
 problem which had been distracting Europe for more than 
 fifty years. For over half a century Cliristendora had been 
 invoking liberty, seeking and demanding it as a sacred and 
 imperative right, and resolved to conquer it at any price. 
 But there were those who told her Ghe could only do this on 
 condition of renouncing Christianity, that the two were in- 
 compatible; and they bade her choose, but she could not 
 choose, for both were essential to ' her. Society rebelled 
 against this creed of incompatibility, and swore to prove it 
 false-; hence the rending that had torn it so long, while it ex- 
 hausted itself in the passionate effort of reconciliation. And 
 
202 Life and Works of Frederic Ozxnam. 
 
 lo! to-night, this very hour, here, under the starht sky of the 
 city of the Caesars, the reconcihation had taken place ; the 
 old antagonism had been destroyed, and the problem solv- 
 ed : the Vicar of Christ, the Pontiff and Prince of Christen- 
 dom, had taken Liberty by the hand, and signed a solemn 
 covenant with her. 
 
 Judging by the light of subsequent events, and of the pre- 
 sent, we cannot repress a smile as we watch Ozanam brooding 
 in silent exultation over his victorious ideal. We are often at 
 a loss to understand the mixture of sound philosophy, shrewd 
 sense, and Utopian chimera that flourish side by side in the 
 minds of men of genius. Ozanam presents one of those in- 
 teresting phenomena. But while considering the paradoxes 
 which he cherishes so complacently, and so devoutly beheves 
 in, we must not lose sight of the fact that he was in reahty 
 more an inhabitant of the past than of the present. He lived 
 in the middle ages ; it was from them that he took his idea of 
 democracy, from those republics which, in their most turbu- 
 lent periods, were always under strong religious control, and 
 whose democracy was as different from the anti- Christian 
 and pantheistic democracy of the present age as the wild 
 follies of the crusading armies were from the hideous license 
 of the incendiaries of the Commune. He lost sight, moreover, 
 of the fact that the republics of the middle ages were so but 
 in name, being oligarchies in reality ; the people talked loud 
 about their independence, but they meekly accepted the rule 
 of a few leaders. It is only on this condition, through the 
 unity engendered amongst the multitude by the influence of 
 one governing mind and will, that democracy can be main- 
 tained in its most modified form. No State can be secure or 
 stable that is not cemented by this unity. Happily for the 
 peace of the world, mankind knows this, and instinctively acts 
 upon it; men are gregarious, and must have a leader, who is 
 king for the time being, by whatever name he may be called. 
 
 Ozanam's idea was that religion would constitute this co- 
 hesive element in the State, that the Church would create the 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozajiam. 203 
 
 bond of unity which would enable society to govern itself. 
 He was a confirmed optimist in his estimate of the goodness 
 and governableness of mankind in general, and French man- 
 kind in particular; we see this in his frequent and tender 
 apologies for " the poor devils who are beguiled to the barri- 
 cades, but who are Christians at heart, and ready to melt at a 
 word of kindness." Such a republican carries his ideal repub- 
 lic in his head, losing sight of the one that will really result 
 from an attempt to realize his ideal — a republic of violence, 
 bloodshed, and. disorder, over which he and his views will 
 have no influence, a thing going from one excess to another, 
 led, or lured, or driven by the most wicked men, who are al- 
 ways the foremost and most aggressive, until finally it is 
 crushed by some new despotism in arms. Ozanam, likd 
 other men of genius, was so satisfied with the theoretical per- 
 fection of his ideal tiiat he was blind to the presence of un- 
 derlying elements, which would work out to results the very 
 opposite of those he looked for. He was quite right in as- 
 serting that he was no politician in the practical sense of the 
 word ; his theories were indeed lofty and beautiful, but, ex- 
 cept as applied to social questions, they were absolutely in- 
 applicable to the Europe of the nineteenth century. 
 
 He applauded the policy of Pius IX. the more enthusias- 
 tically that he fancied he saw in it the realization of Iiis own 
 political creed. He was a republican, not only because he 
 held a republic to be the best form of government, but be- 
 cause he believed it was that to which all nations were gradu- 
 ally, some unconsciously, others reluctantly, but all inevita- 
 bly, tending. He saw the day fast approaching when the 
 people would be the ruling power in every State ; it was es- 
 sential, therefore, if the world was to be well governed that 
 the people should be Christianized ; otherwise they would de- 
 stroy and subvert all authority. Democracy appeared to him 
 like the rising tide which no power on earth can stay, can 
 bid " Thus far and no farther "; it depended on the present 
 rulers of Europe — kings, statesmen, and politicians — whether 
 
204 ^if^ ^'^^^ Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 it was to be a wave that would peacefully float society ovei 
 that crisis which is inevitable in every transition from an old 
 order of things to a new, or whether it was to be a destroying 
 torrent that would sweep all before it in ruin and desolation. 
 Rome was now threatened by this rising tide, and though 
 Ozanam distinctly recognized the fact, he did not discern at 
 this moment how deeply the waters were poisoned at their 
 source. On one hand, Russia, with the schism of the Greek 
 Church and the encroaching policy of the Czars, marching 
 steadily on to Constantinople, to the possession of eastern 
 Europe, was a perpetual menace. Austria, on the other 
 hand, was a hostile force which had been jealously working 
 against the Pontiff from the moment of his election ; his 
 grand scheme of reform and his erect attitude of independence 
 alarmed and offended the Cabinet of Vienna, and it lay in 
 wait to seize any pretext that might present itself for creating 
 a disturbance in the Papal territory, for aiding and abetting 
 the slightest show of disaffection amongst the people. The 
 secret societies were spread like a net all over the country, 
 breathing hatred to Christianity and all that represented it ; 
 the Pope, who was emancipating his people from the oppres- 
 sive and retrograde system that had weighed on them so 
 long, admitting laymen to office, proclaiming the Constil/a, 
 reforming every department of the State, and this without vio- 
 lence or any irritating coercive measures — the Pope was rep- 
 resented as their worst enemy, the enemy of all progress and 
 liberty, the secret canker of Italy, which would never be free 
 until she was delivered from him. Then there was the in- 
 tense desire to drive the Russians out, which complicated 
 everything; the Father of Christendom could not make war 
 on them, for " they too were his children." 
 
 Pius IX. saw all these things, but without alarm or mis- 
 trust. He loved his people and his country more sincerely, 
 and far more wisely, than any of the " patriots " who were 
 accusing him, than any Mazzini who sought to serve both by 
 the dastardly weapons of assassination and calumny ; he saw 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 205 
 
 the evils that existed and those that threatened, but he saw 
 them with the undaunted courage of a man who seeks his in- 
 spirations higher than in the counsels of this world. Ozan- 
 am lived to see the failure of the Pontiff's noble and generous 
 efforts, but he never lost faith in their essential tightness and 
 ultimate success; he did not join with those who turned on 
 freedom and cursed it as a viper whose first use of its restor- 
 ed vitality is to sting the breast that cherished it; he held 
 firm in his belief that Pius IX. had done well in holding out 
 his hand to Liberty, and embracing her as the natural and 
 powerful helpmate of religion. The result shocked and pained 
 but did not bewilder him or throw him into despair. Even in 
 those sanguine days of the young pontificate he was prepared 
 for evil times following. He said at a public meeting on his 
 return from Rome : 
 
 *' I believe firmly the future has serious troubles in store for Pius IX, ; I be- 
 lieve it for his greater glory. God does not raise up such men for ordinary 
 difficulties. If this great Pontiff had only to cope with the over-enthusiasm, 
 the eagerness of his f>eople — a thing that so few princes have to complain of — 
 his mission would be an easy one ; it would fill too small a place in history ; 
 his bark would glide over tranquil waters. We must look out for the temp>est. 
 But let us not fear, like the disciples of little faith : Christ is in the boat, and / 
 He is not sleeping ; never has He been more wakeful than in these present i 
 days." 
 
 But with all his desire to hold the balance even, the scales 
 dipped sensibly to the side of hope, of jubilant expecta- 
 tion. 
 
 ♦• The first, the strongest, the sweetest of my hopes rests on the Pope him- 
 self," he says. " When God wishes to bring forth great events in the Chris- 
 tian world, He begins by sowing the seed of saints there. A few years ago a 
 preacher who has the gift of inspired language was evangelizing the youth of 
 France from the pulpit of Notre Dame ; casting a sorrowful glance over 
 modem Europe, he cried out, * O God, give us saints I it is long since we 
 have seen any !' Let us rejoice ; Heaven has granted more than we asked. 
 It has seated on the chair of St. Peter a saint such as the world has not seen 
 since the pontificate of Pius V. . . . This sanctity, which illuminates his 
 countenance, permeates his life and all his actions, and as it is the best part 
 of his authority, so it is the principle of all his reforms. People were greatly 
 mistaken as to the intentions of Pius IX. Some took him for a weak sover- 
 
2o6 Life arid IVorks of Frederic Ozaiiam. ' 
 
 eign, conquered by popularity ; others for a clever politician, gained over to 
 the opinions of his age. But he himself, pouring out his heart to a friend, 
 confessed that in proclaiming the amnesty he had thought only of all the 
 hearts, led astray by political hatred, whom this free pardon might win back 
 to God. And they proved he was not mistaken when, a few weeks afterwards, 
 a great number of the subjects of the amnesty assembled at the basilica of St. 
 Peter's Chains, and went to Communion together, as if to publicly proclaim 
 their return to a religion of clemency. So it was with the institution of the 
 Civic Guard, which astonished and alarmed half the Cabinets of Europe, but 
 which, in the intention of the Pope, was nothing but an energetic measure 
 against idleness, that is to say, against the chief moral plague of Italy. In 
 placing under arms the immense crowd of idlers that encumber the towns and 
 the country districts, in subjecting them to the fatigue of military exercises 
 and discipline, he not only snatched them from the temptations of idleness, 
 he formed them to work. People fancied he was raising soldiers for himself, 
 while he was solely bent on forming citizens. , , ." 
 
 The Consulta^ the decree, the provoked, the magnificent 
 popular ovation which Ozanam describes on the eve of his 
 leaving Rome, was in itself a giant stride in the road of re- 
 form. Three deputies from every town did not constitute a 
 Parliament, but they made the beginning of one; and those 
 who were wise looked on approvingly at the sagacious slow- 
 ness of the Sovereign Pontiff in thus patiently building up the 
 edifice of reform step by step, instead of rushing precipitately 
 into full-grown institutions, as the more impatient radicals 
 wished him to do. Neighboring nations looked with amaze- 
 ment at these liberal proceedings, and, remembering the feats 
 of the Commune of Paris, argued that the Pope would soon 
 regret his concessions. But history was there to show a pre- 
 cedent in his favor. The Consulta had roots in the past, and 
 closely resembled a consulting legislative body composed of \ 
 ecclesiastics, founded four centuries before by Nicholas V., 
 but which Pius IX. now revived under secular conditions 
 adapted to the needs of the age. The Roman population so 
 far amply vindicated his confidence in them. It was a noble 
 spectacle to behold them leaping at one bound into freedom 
 without violence or disorder, without the slightest offence 
 against moderation, gentleness, or sobriety. Ozanam, who 
 considered it with the eyes of a poet and the heart of a 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Czanam. 207 
 
 Christian philosopher, saw in " this revolution with flowers 
 and poetry," as he termed it, the assured triumph of his own 
 Utopian dreams. Europe beyond the Alps, accustomed to 
 revolutions of a different order, and achieved with different 
 weapons, looked on in undisguised astonishment at a people 
 inaugurating their liberty, not with barricades and gunpowder, 
 but with flowery noonday fesias and torchlight processions. 
 But in a country where poetry is the spontaneous language of 
 popular emotion, how could it be absent from the dawn of the 
 national freedom ? 
 
 " Let us not despise those populations who march forth to liberty through 
 streets garlanded with flowers and festooned with flags, flaming with lights, 
 resounding with choirs of music and hymns," cries Ozanam. " Let us not 
 shrug our shoulders like men who believe only in the power of the sword. 
 We must hope great things from a f>eople who can thus adorn the first hours 
 of their emancipation ; who are content with little ; who are neither blasis 
 nor tired of life ; whose men do not murder one another through vanity or 
 through idleness ; a people who have small experience, but a vast amount of 
 enthusiasm, and who hold firmly to faith, which is the true principle of order, 
 and to love, which is the true principle of liberty." 
 
 Ozanam was convinced that the moral strength of a nation 
 tnay be tested by the amount of liberty it is capable of bear- 
 ing without prejudice to order. A hunger for freedom he 
 held to be a sign of national health ; thus it followed that 
 where others saw only revolutionary instincts which it was the 
 duty of authority to crush, he recognized salutary inspirations, 
 which it behoved the legislator to enlighten and direct. The 
 philosophy of history, as he interpreted it, had led him to be- 
 lieve that there is no real meaning or character in the move- 
 ment of human society unless through all its changes and 
 convulsions we can discern a steady and continued progress 
 through Christianity to the dignity of freedom. This condition 
 of freedom, which he held so essential to the welfare and 
 happiness of communities, he considered equally indispensable 
 to the Church. He was consequently intolerant of the least 
 bondage for her, and impatient that a Christian people should 
 tolerate it, when at the same time they were perhaps fighting 
 
2o8 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 manfully for the emancipation of their country. If the Church 
 were free, free in the fullest sense of the word — free to guide, 
 to rule, and to teach mankind — then all legitimate freedom 
 would follow. 
 
 Immediately after Holy Week Ozanam and his wife left 
 Rome, and began a little tour through Italy homewards. 
 They visited all the shrines that lay within their reach, Sienna, 
 Bologna, Padua, etc., and beheld everywhere the footprints 
 of genius following closely on the track of sanctity. " It seems," 
 remarks Ozanam, '' as if it sufficed to bury a saint somewhere 
 for all the arts to flower out in that spot." But of all the 
 sanctuaries which they visited, none delighted them so much 
 as that of Assisi, all fragrant as it is with the memory of St. 
 Clare and St. Francis — sweet St. Francis, who made such 
 friends with the doves and the wild beasts. 
 
 Tiiey arrived at Venice late in May, and nothing that 
 Ozanam had yet seen in this land of wonders and of beauty 
 had prepared him for the surprise which here awaited him. 
 Night was falling, and the long canal by which they entered 
 the city was lighted only by a few stars overhead and the 
 beacons of the gondolas that shot past each other silent and 
 dark in their black draperies, like phantoms gliding over the 
 water. As they advanced, palaces rose on every side, until 
 the gondola turned off into the Httle canal that conducted 
 them to their hotel. After a hasty refreshment they sallied 
 forth to see the city as far as it could be seen by night. They 
 went at once to the Piazza; it was flooded with light, which 
 magnified its size to immensity. 
 
 Ozanam says he did not see this ; he dreamt it, and ex- 
 pected to find the dream vanish when he awoke at day- 
 break. 
 
 " It was ten o'clock ; music was playing on every side ; groups of young men 
 and maidens stopped beneath the porticoes to ]isten. 1 began to realize all the 
 subtle danger that lurked in this enchanted life of ancient Venice, all that 
 made the charm of that magic city, and all that had wrought her ruin, . . , 
 The dream returned for ten mornings. I have now seen the sun rise ten 
 times over Venice, and each time I have found that my dream has not 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 209 
 
 vanished. Venice has performed far more than she promised. No church of 
 Italy, not that of Pisa, whose fine colonnades I so loved, nor that of Orvielo, 
 with its paintings and bas-reliefs, nor the dome of St. Vita! of Ravenna, nor 
 the mosaics of St. Apollinarius, of Sta. Maria Maggiore, and the Cathedral of 
 Montreal, no religious monument so far has struck me as so instructive as St. 
 Mark, which combines the style of the East and of the West, and whose mo- 
 saics contain the whole history of Christendom, while the inscriptions that 
 cover its walls are in themselves a grand religious poem." 
 
 Time fled swiftly in the magic city, where life seemed a 
 dream, gliding in gondolas over the lagoons, or musing by 
 moonlight on the shores of Lido, listening to t'ne waves of the 
 Adriatic as they sang their lullaby to the stars. There were 
 little pilgrimages, too, to adjacent shrines, monasteries, and 
 temples, fragments of a glory and a prosperity once famous 
 as that of Venice herself; monks still haunted them, and kept 
 guard over that sacred deposit of the past which had survived 
 decay — books, unique manuscripts, statues, pictures, frescos. 
 All this was placed freely at the disposal of Ozanam. But 
 his enjoyment in Venice was not without alloy. 
 
 *' I saw in one of the halls of the palace," he says, *' the allegorical figures 
 of Veronese representing with pompous devices all that ever made the power 
 of Venice: Faith, nunquam dereltcta ; Justice and Strength, fundamentum 
 rei'publica, custodes libertatis ; the Navy, robur imperii ; and that liberty was 
 badly guarded, and that empire badly upheld. In the great council-hall were 
 ranged the portraits of the Doges, and, after the last, there is a vacant space 
 for those that were to follow. On the piazza are the three masts, stripped of 
 the banners of the three kingdoms that once made the glory of the Republic, 
 and on the piazzetta the Austrian cannons and Hungarian grenadiers are 
 guarding them." 
 
 The travellers returned home early in July, passing through 
 Switzerland and Belgium. Ozanam's health was to all ap- 
 pearance restored, and he was impatient for the re-opening 
 of his cours at the termination of the holidavs. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 1847. 
 
 We shall have occasion to speak of Ozanam's chief works 
 collectively, but meanwhile we cannoc forbear from making 
 special mention here of that one which was the immediate 
 fruit of this journey to Italy. Les Poetes Franciscains was pro- 
 nounced by several contemporary critics " a pearl without a 
 rival." It is a book that has all the fascination of a poem 
 combined with the reality of history ; for in dealing with facts 
 the author allows himself no poetic license. Ozanam, wan- 
 dering through the gay meadows and shadowy towns of 
 Umbria, thrust his hand, as he says, " into the nest whence 
 the eagles of Christian poetry were destined to take flight — 
 Dante, Petrarch, and Tasso." 
 
 He traces the poetic ancestry of these eagles to the humble 
 Franciscan friars. But before beginning his researches in the 
 dim twilight of mediaeval cloisters he descends into the gloom 
 of the catacombs, and patiently explores their testimony ; 
 here every broken slab, every fragment of tomb and altar-stone, 
 is a witness, speaking with authority, though often vaguely, in 
 the obscure language of symbolism and allegory. 
 
 Following our guide through the intricate mazes of the gal- 
 leries, lined with tombs and shrines, we reach the point where 
 this "mural poetry " ceases; the poetic idea breaks forth in 
 the true poetic utterance of verse, and henceforth speaks no 
 other. Soon we hear the poet Prudentius celebrating the 
 catacombs and their martyrs in the metre of Virgil and 
 Horace. Presently a new school of poetry, with a new civi- 
 lization, is about to emerge from these consecrated vaults 
 which are undermining Rome : 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 211 
 
 •' While the walls of the Eternal City are shaken by the battering-rams, and 
 the Goths and Vandals enter by the breach ; while the barbarian hordes are 
 sacking it, carrying off even to the leaden roofs of the houses and the brazen 
 gates ; at the very moment when all seems lost, the sacred sepulchres of the 
 catacombs are upheaving through the soil, and produce those admirable 
 basilicas of St. Paul, Sta. Maria Maggiore, and so many others, which, from 
 the fourth to the thirteenth century, are a refuge, a shelter, and a protection 
 for all the arts." 
 
 They find another refuge in the popular sympathies ; the 
 hymns of St. Gregory and St. Ambrose are on the lips of the 
 people, whose simple idiom was the destined vehicle of the 
 poetic current whicli broke upwards from the catacombs. 
 
 " The fable tells us," says Ozanam, in one of those happy images that were 
 familiar to him, " that Mercury, when a child, was playing one day by the 
 sea-shore, and, picking up a tortoise-shell from amongst the pebbles on the 
 beach, he began to play upon it, and thus invented the first lyre. So, like- 
 wise, the genius of Italy picked up from the dust at her feet the humble idiom 
 which was destined to be her immortal instrument." 
 
 What charms him above all in this genius is that in becom- 
 ing erudite and classical it does not cease to remain popular; 
 each age of literature has its poetry of the people. It is this 
 rich and delicate undergrowth that Ozanam purposes specially 
 to explore. He does so conscientiously, leading us on to the 
 thirteenth century, when the poet' of Assisi arose, and, taking 
 up the rustic instrument, breathed into it his wondrous inspi- 
 rations, improvising for the people in their own familiar idiom 
 that incomparable canticle to " our brother, my lord the Sun," 
 which marks a new era in Italian literature. 
 
 We know the story of the poet's early life; how he came to 
 be called Francis, from his father's predilection for France, 
 where he was travelling with his merchandise when the child 
 was born ; how the little Francis inherited his father's fond- 
 ness for the country of the troubadours, whose language was 
 the first his baby tongue was taught to lisp. It was the 
 poetry of France that taught him the first notions of romance 
 and chivalry. He learned there that there were two kinds of 
 chivalry, one ierricnne^ or earthly, one c^lestielle^ or heavenly. 
 
212 Life aiid Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 The knights of the celestielle sought glory and adventure, but 
 in no earthly cause. Tlieir example fired the ambition of 
 Francis. At the age of twenty, being reputed the handsom- 
 est cavalier of Assisi, " the flower of its youth," he joined the 
 Crusaders, and went forth to fight the infidel at Damieita ; 
 and having thus won his spurs in the ranks of the nobler 
 knighthood, he sheathed his sword and returned to his native 
 land, where the lady of his love awaited him. Slie was a 
 mistress of cold and austere mien, beautiful in his eyes alone; 
 but he loved her, and gave up all things for her sake. He 
 served her with a life-long devotion, and sang to her in accents 
 whose Divine beauty rises far beyond the reach of earthly 
 passion and the inspiration of mere human art. Listen to his 
 canticle to my Ladye Poverty and her crucified Spouse : 
 
 ** Lord ! have Thou pity upon me, and upon my Ladye Poverty ! And 
 behold her seated on a dunghill ; she, who is the queen of virtues, she com- 
 plains because her friends have spurned her, and liave become her enemies. 
 . . . Remember, Lord, that Thou didst come down from the abode of the 
 angels, in order to take her for Thy spouse, and to make her the mother of a 
 great multitude of sons who should be perfect. ... It was she who received 
 Thee in the stable and in the manger, and who, keeping company with Thee 
 all through life, took care that Thou hadst not whereon to lay Thy head. 
 When Thou didst begin the war of our redemption. Poverty attached herself 
 to Thee like a faithful squire. She stood by Thy side during the combat ; 
 she did not forsake Thee when Thy disciples fled. 
 
 "When at last Thy mother, who followed Thee to the end, and took her 
 share of all Thy sorrows — when even Thy mother could no longer reach to 
 Thee, because of the height of the Cross, my Ladye Poverty embraced Thee 
 more closely than ever. She would not have Thy Cross carefully fashioned, 
 nor the nails in sufficient number, and pointed and smooth, but prepared only 
 three, which she made blunt and rough, that they might better serve the pur- 
 pose of Thy torture. Whilst Thou wert dying of thirst she refused Thee a 
 little water, so that Thou didst expire clasped in the embrace of this Thy 
 spouse. 
 
 " Oh ! who then would not love my Ladye Poverty above all other 
 things ? " 
 
 The instinct of Catholicism alone can furnish the key to 
 this Divine philosophy. Each age has its prevailing vice as 
 well as its apparent beauty. The love of riches, the passion 
 for gain, w^g th^ dis^asQ of tlie a^e of Francis, jind he wa§ 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozatiam. 213 
 
 raised up to testify against these evils, and recruit an army 
 who would wage war on avarice, and restore to her throne 
 " the queen of the virtues, who was seated on a dunghill." 
 
 This lover of poverty was an ardent lover of nature. When 
 he claimed kindred with the stars and the flowers, with the 
 sun and the moon, he gave utterance to his strongest human 
 sympathies. In the merry days of his cavalier life he had 
 filled the starlit streets of Assisi with the gay ditties and soft 
 ballads of his native land; after his conversion he awoke the 
 echoes of the woods with the music of hymns and canticles. 
 In his most ascetic days this predilection for music was never 
 abandoned or condemned. At eventide the trilling of the 
 nightingale would move him to respond in an outburst of 
 melodious song, and the two would keep it up far into the 
 night, until Francis, exhausted in the duet, would praise his 
 conqueror for being so indefatigable in the praises of their 
 common Lord, and retire, leaving him master of the silence. 
 Once, when worn out with suffering in his last illness, he 
 longed for a little music to " wake up joy in his soul," but the 
 ascetic rule that he had adopted did not admit of this re- 
 laxation; the angels, however, heard his heart's desire, and 
 the same night, as he lay in meditation on his couch of pain, 
 a marvellous harmony, as of a flute of unearthly sweetness, 
 filled the air. No musician was visible, but the sounds floated 
 to and fro 2^s of some one passing beneath the window. 
 Francis, entranced by the music, thought for a moment that 
 he had passed into the heavenly spheres. 
 
 He encouraged the love of music and song amongst the 
 people, and taught them his own sweet poetry. His hymn to 
 " Our brother, my lord the Sun," became, in course of time, 
 the most popular in the land, and resounded far and wide, 
 from dawn to sundown, through the valleys of Umbria. 
 Children lisped it at their play, women sang it over their 
 household work, old men murmured it at their cottage-doors, 
 until the sweet strophes rose and fell through the sunny woods 
 and vineyards, unceasing and spontaneous like the chirpings 
 
214 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 of our brothers the Uttle birds \ " for," as Ozanam remarks, 
 " these ItaUans, who can go without clothes or food, cannot 
 do without song and poetry." Though the canticle is so well 
 known, we will give an imperfect translation of it here for the 
 few who may not be acquainted with it : 
 
 "Most high, most powerful and kind Lord, to whom belong all praise, 
 glory, and benediction ! They are due to Thee alone, because of all creatures, 
 and chiefly for our brother, my lord the sun, who giveth us the day and the 
 light ! He is beautiful, and shines with a great splendor, and bears testimony 
 unto Thee, O my God ! 
 
 " Praised be Thou, my Lord, for our sister the moon, and for the stars ! 
 Thou hast formed them in the heavens, bright and fair. 
 
 " Praised be Thou, my Lord, for my brother the wind, for the air and the 
 clouds, for the calm and for all weathers ! for it is by this that Thou dost up- 
 hold all creatures. 
 
 " Praised be Thou, my Lord, for our sister the water, which is very useful, 
 humble, precious, and chaste ! 
 
 " Praised be Thou, my Lord, for our brother the fire ! By him Thou 
 dost illumine the darkness ; he is beautiful and pleasant to see, dauntless and 
 strong. 
 
 " Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, which supports and 
 nourishes us, and brings forth fruits of divers sorts, the grass of the field and 
 the variegated flowers ! " 
 
 One day there arose a grievous dispute between the magis- 
 trates of Assisi and the bishops. St. Francis hearing of it was 
 sorely distressed, and seeing that no one stood forth as a 
 peacemaker, he added the following strophe to his canticle : 
 
 " Praised be Thou, my Lord, because of those who forgive for Thy sake, and 
 for love of Thee patiently bear infirmity and tribulation ! Happy they who 
 persevere in peace I for they shall be crowned by the Most High ! ' 
 
 He then desired his disciples to go boldly to the principal 
 notabilities of the town and beg of them to come at once to 
 the bishops, and when they should all be assembled there, to 
 sing in two choruses before the disputants the newly composed 
 verse. The disciples obeyed him, and immediately, when 
 they had ceased singing, the adversaries asked pardon one of 
 another, and embraced, with many tears. 
 
 Sweet St. Francis ! Gentle brother of the flowers and the 
 little birds ! He met a peasant one day driving two lambs 
 
Life a fid Works of Frederic Ozanam. 215 
 
 to the slaughter; it was mid-winter; ihe lover of poverty- 
 had only one cloak, but he took it off and offered it to 
 the peasant on condition that he would spare the life of the 
 lambs. 
 
 He cherished the wild doves in his breast, he tamed the 
 hungry wolf, he called the robins and the bullfinches to him, 
 and bade them sing away merrily the praises of God ; then he 
 would bid them be silent while he and his brethren sang in 
 their turn ; they obeyed, and when the monks had recited the 
 breviary the birds burst out into chirpings again. 
 
 But the time had come for Francis to leave this world and 
 join in the songs of the blessed. Shortly before his death he 
 fell into a gentle ecstasy, and, waking from it, composed a 
 last verse to his canticle; he expired while the brethren were 
 singing it: 
 
 " Praised be Thou, my Lord, because of our sister, the death of the body, 
 from which no man can escape ! Woe to those who die in mortal sin 1 Happy 
 they who at the hour of death are conformed to Thy holy will 1 For then the 
 second death cannot hurt them. 
 
 " Praise and bless my Lord, give Him thanks, and serve Hinn with greA 
 humihty." 
 
 The poetic mission of St. Francis, eclipsed during his life- 
 time by loftier and graver cares, only received its full recog- 
 nition in the century after his death. He chose for his grave 
 a hillside, east of Assisi ; it was the place where public 
 criminals were put to death, and was called the Hill of Hell. 
 Scarcely had his dust been laid in this unhallowed spot when 
 some mysterious attraction began to draw the minds and 
 hearts of men there, and moved, so to speak, the very earth 
 itself. Gregory IX. placed the name of Francis among the 
 saints, and decreed that the place of his sepulchre should be 
 called the Hill of Paradise. Henceforth no honors were 
 ereat enough for the beggar bridegroom of my Ladye Poverty. 
 The nations vied with each other in bringing tributes of re- 
 spect to his grave. He, who had left all things and become 
 an outcast for God*s sake, soon beheld a magnificent abode 
 
2i6 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 rising over his resting-place, grander than any palace he had 
 dreamed of in the cavaHer days of his youth. And, as if a 
 divine inspiration came from the resting-place of the artist 
 saint, those who drew near to adorn it were filled with a new 
 artistic sense \ they discarded the old Byzantine types, grand 
 enough in their day, but now worn out and rapidly lapsing 
 into decrepitude, after eight hundred years' service. They 
 conceived a new and purer ideal, and thus made the sepulchre 
 of Francis the cradle of a renaissance which was destined to 
 advance to the highest point of perfection. Here Guido of 
 Sienna and Giunta of Pisa broke loose from the trammels of 
 the old Greek masters, softening and vivifying their hard 
 immobility. Then came Cimabue, and after Cimabue, 
 Giotto. 
 
 "A whole cortige of artists follow after Giotto," says Ozanam, "and vie 
 with each other in creating masterpieces to commemorate the sanctity of 
 Francis and feed the piety of the simple population of the mountains, who 
 daily come to say their prayers near his tomb," 
 
 The inspiration which evoked this new school of painting 
 and architecture sustained its first flights. 
 
 •' If I have dwelt long on this renaissance of the arts, it is because I discern in 
 it the heralds of a great literary era. When I see a people carrying marble from 
 the quarry, piling it up in colonnades, in ogives, and in steeples, covering the 
 walls of its edifices with paintings and mosaics, not leavinga single corner with- 
 out its emblem or device— when I see this, I believe that a thought is germinat- 
 ing in that people, revealing itself in architectural symbolism, translating itself 
 more clearly in the outlines of drawing, and that it is on the eve of finding in 
 language a more exact and harmonious expression. In the train of these great 
 artists who have passed in procession before us we shall see a young genera- 
 tion of poets coming down from the hill of Assisi." 
 
 Ozanam passes the poets in review, beginning with Frere 
 Pacifique, a deserter from the ranks of profane literature, 
 where his triumphs had been crowned by the emperor himself, 
 who placed on his head the ancient Roman laurel crown that 
 was to encircle the brow of Dante and Petrarch. 
 
 After Brother Peaceful comes a poet of a far higher order, 
 St. Bopavemure, Avbom Ger^on styles *' t^e most excellent 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozatiam, 2 1 7 
 
 master who ever appearetl in the University of Paris." He 
 wrote that exquisite work which, Ozanam says, " only needs 
 the form of versification to be called a poem" — T/ie Le- 
 gend of St. hrajicis. The ascetic theologian here gives full 
 play to the fountains of natural tenderness and poetry that are 
 in his heart. In his description of the death-scene of the 
 saint, there is one of those touches whose delicate grace be- 
 trays the instinct of the true poet : " The swallows, those 
 little birds that love the light and hate the darkness, although 
 the night was falling just as the holy man breathed his last 
 sigh, came in a great multitude and perched upon the roof of 
 the house, and remained there a long time, whirling about 
 joyously, as if to render a signal and loving testimony to the 
 blessed one who had so often invited them to sing the divine 
 praises." 
 
 Passing on to Jacopone da Todi, Ozanam enters, not with- 
 out some hesitation, as he admits, on the history of this extra- 
 ordinary man, who passed from the cloister to the prison, and 
 from the prison to the altar, to be venerated as a saint. But 
 painful as it is to him to describe a period when we see the 
 Church on fire, and a great religious at war with the Pope, it 
 is impossible, in a notice of the poets of the age, to pass by 
 the author of the Stabat. 
 
 Jacques dei Benedetti was in the flower of his youth, the 
 son of one of the richest men of Todi, an old cathedral town, 
 suspended from the hill that overlooks the meeting of the 
 Tiber and the Naga at the entrance of Umbria. He had 
 squandered his father's almost boundless wealth, but being 
 now a doctor of law, which in those days meant a person of 
 importance and power, Jacques determined to set to work 
 and repair the breach he had made in the paternal coflfers. 
 He was more successful than scrupulous in the pursuit of his 
 object, and in a few years was richer than ever. To crown 
 his prosperity he married the loveliest maiden in his native 
 town, who brought him, in addition to her beauty, a splendid 
 dower. 
 
2i8 Life and Works of Fredtric Ozanam, 
 
 It fell out that in the year 1268 Todi was celebrating the 
 public games. The beautiful young wife of the rich juriscon- 
 sult was there, seated in a high place among the noblest 
 women of the town. Suddenly the gallery gave way ; the cries 
 of the unhappy women mingled with the crash of the faUing 
 wood and the music of lutes and viols. Jacques rushed for- 
 ward, and seeing his wife among the victims, lifted her in his 
 arms to a place of safety, and proceeded quickly to relieve 
 her by opening her bodice, but with a blush she signified to 
 him to wait until they were alone. He carried her to a dis- 
 tance, and there opening the golden tissue of her festive ap- 
 parel, he discovered a hair-shirt. Before he could express his 
 sorrow and surprise she expired in his arms. The last lesson 
 of his beloved one was not lost on him. He guessed too 
 truly whose sins and follies the rude instrument of penance 
 was intended to expiate. What was there in her spotless life 
 to need such expiation? Jacques sold all his goods and dis- 
 tributed them to the poor, and then, like one distraught, wan- 
 dered in and out of the churches dressed in rags. The people 
 nicknamed him Jacopone — mad Jacques ! — and pelted him as 
 he passed, and mocked him. But Jacques took no heed of 
 them. Like Jeremiah, who appeared in the public places of 
 Jerusalem with a yoke round his neck to typify her approaching 
 captivity, he showed himself at a public festival half-naked, 
 crawling on his hands and teet, with saddle and bridle, like a 
 beast of burden. The spectators grew pensive at the sight, 
 considering to what a miserable estate that once envied destiny 
 had fallen. 
 
 After ten years of this strangely heroic life, Jacopone knocked 
 at the door of the Franciscan monastery and asked to be ad- 
 mitted. The monks hesitated long, but at last recognizing 
 that his madness was akin to that of their own St. Francis, 
 they took him in. He entreated permission to retain his old 
 nickname as the one most suitable to him ; he refused the 
 honor of the priesthood, because of his unworthiness, and 
 entered as a lay brother, performing the most laborious and 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 219 
 
 servile offices of the monastery. At last he obtained such 
 complete mastery over his senses that it seemed as if he had 
 now reached the goal, and that the race was at an end. It 
 was iiere, on the contrary, that it in reality began. 
 
 When Pierre de Morrone was dragged from his Cenobite's 
 cell and crowned Pope under the title of Celestine V., Jaco- 
 pone addressed him an epistle in verse, in which he reminded 
 him of the terrible exchange he had made in leaving the pious 
 contemplations of his cell for the government of Christendom, 
 and bade him remember that if he failed in his duty the curse 
 of Christendom would be upon him. 
 
 *'I felt a great bitterness of pity for thee in my heart," he adds, " when there 
 came forth from thy mouth that word / zf///— that word which placed on thy 
 neck a yoke heavy enough to make one dread thy damnation. Beware of in- 
 cumbents. . . . Beware of those who embezzle the public money ; if thou 
 canst not defend thyself against them thou wilt sing a sorry song." 
 
 The Pope was so terrified by the picture Jacopone drew of 
 the perils of the Pontificate, the tempest of human passions 
 which he was called upon to control, that, overcome by 
 a sense of his own weakness and the magnitude of the task, 
 he fled back to his desert and could never be induced to re- 
 turn. 
 
 Benedict Gaetani was elected his successor, under the title 
 of Boniface VIII. Two cardinals, Giacomo and Pietro Co- 
 lonna, protested against the election, and drew up a deed 
 summoning him to appear at the bar of the approaching Uni- 
 versal Council. Jacopone had the evil fortune to figure in 
 this deed as a witness, and thus was included in the excom- 
 munication which fell upon the two rebeUious cardinals. A 
 period of struggle, humiliation, and misery now began for the 
 ardent friar of Assisi, and only closed on the succession of 
 Benedict XI. to the Papal throne, when the interdict was 
 raised, and Jacopone, set free from his dungeon, went to end 
 his days in peaceful captivity with his brethren at Collazone. 
 Here, not long before his death, he composed that wonderful 
 hymn to the Mother of Sorrows, the Stabat Maier^ which 
 
220 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 would alone have made his name immortal; but there are 
 many other fragments from the pen of the old athlete of pen- 
 ance which betray the quaint originaUty of his mind, as well 
 as his impetuous love of God and tender sympathy for his fei- 
 low-men. 
 
 Jacopone, who was greater than all his predecessors, was 
 to usher in the greatest of his successors. He was the herald 
 of Dante. The Divina Conmiedia is like one of those vast 
 Roman basilicas which, not satisfied with admiring it within 
 and without, we are curious to explore to its very foundations. 
 " You descend by torchlight to the sacred vaults," says Oza- 
 nam, *' and discover the entrance of a catacomb which dives 
 into the earth, dividing itself into many branches and spread- 
 ing over an immense area. If you go through it to the end 
 without losing your way or turning back, you come out at last 
 into the open country, a great way off from the place where 
 you entered." 
 
 All the lovers and commentators of Dante have indulged 
 in these explorations of the sources and antecedents of the 
 Divina Coinmedia, none more diligently, nor, we venture to 
 assert, more fruitfully, than Ozanam. He shows us the Fran- 
 ciscan poets, more especially Jacopone, as opening the way 
 to Dante by pointing out to him all that poetry might borrow 
 from theology, and how much sweetness and beauty, as well 
 as lofty wisdom, it might draw from the Divine metaphysics 
 of the faith — how inseparable, in fact, the highest kind of 
 beauty is from the highest truth. Jacopone proved also that 
 no mysteries of faith are too sublime, no speculations of phi- 
 losophy too subtle or too profound, to be adequately expressed 
 in the popular idiom. It was he who, more than any of his 
 brother poets, drew the attention of the world to the honeyed 
 tongue of his native land; and if the Divina Commedia^ 
 instead of being written in the classical Latin of Virgil, 
 was confided to the soft bastard Latin of the Italian people, 
 the world owes it in a great measure to the mad penitent of 
 Todi. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozatiam, 221 
 
 Perhaps it was some feeling of gratitude for this unconscious 
 lesson, as much as for others better understood, which induced 
 Dante to sing the praises of St. Francis in such jubilant ac- 
 cents, and to desire, after death, to be buried in the habit of 
 his order, and at the foot of his tomb; or was the Christian 
 poet prompted rather by the hope that he might find the 
 judgment of God more lenient if he presented himself at the 
 mercy-seat in the livery of the poor, and that " the thunder- 
 bolt, which would not spare the laurels of the poet, would 
 respect the badge of poverty " ? 
 
 It is said that the great Alighieri was personally acquainted 
 with Jacopone, and that when sent as ambassador to Philip le 
 Bel he recited to the king some of the Franciscan's verses, 
 where the latter stigmatizes the policy of Boniface — a bold- 
 ness which excited such fierce resentment against the daring 
 satirist, who was destined to expiate it in years of captivity. 
 " Whether this be true or not, it is certain," remarks Ozanam, 
 " that when Dante stood forth to address, not a king, but that 
 mighty audience which centuries have gathered to him, he 
 found the minds of men prepared by him who preceded him 
 as a theological poet, as a popular poet, and as a satirist. . . ." 
 
 Ozanam passes on from the poems of Jacopone to \\\& Little 
 Flowers of St. Francis, a collection of legends written in prose, 
 but breathing in every page the music of true poetry, and 
 fragrant from the minds of St. Francis and his early disciples. 
 They are anonymous, " it being the effort of mysticism to be 
 forgotten of men before God," remarks the gleaner who pre- 
 sents them to us ; and he adds, " Here I pass the pen to a 
 hand more delicate than mine." Whilst he was plunged in 
 the arid researches of the archives, this hand "more delicate 
 than his " was culling the fragrant little flowers that grew in 
 lowly spots along their road, and forming them into a bouquet 
 whose perfume refreshed him in many an hour of weariness 
 and pain. Perhaps the fact of their being translated by her 
 whom he styled his Beatrice may have added another charm 
 to those exquisite idyls in Ozanam's eyes, and account in a 
 
222 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 measure for the fascination which they possessed for him to 
 the last. Less partial critics are, however, agreed that the 
 Little Flowers are rendered in French with a freshness, a 
 ndivete\ and a dehcacy of touch scarcely surpassed in the 
 original. It would carry us beyond our limits to enter on an 
 analysis of the Fioretti, but we hope those of our readers who 
 have not already seen this gem-like work will lose no time in 
 making acquaintance with it; with the legend of the Wolf of 
 Gubbio, that beautiful symbol of the Church purifying and 
 disarming the bloody hand of the feudal power which weighed 
 so cruelly on the people of the middle ages; with the banquet 
 of St. Clare and Francis, and other scenes of their mystic and 
 tender intercourse; with the docile Httle fishes who swam up. 
 to the sea shore and listened, glistening on the silvery wave, 
 while St. Anthony preached to them the mercies and the 
 glories of God. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 1848. 
 
 In the autumn of 1847 Ozanam resumed his class at the 
 Sorbonne with renewed zest and health almost completely 
 restored. His holiday had not been a period of idleness, and 
 he was comparatively satisfied with the result as regarded 
 the work done. Writing to M. Foisset on this subject, he 
 says : 
 
 "My two essays on Dan ie a.nd Les Ger mains are for me like the two ex- 
 treme points of a work which has been carried on partly in my pubHc lec- 
 tures, and which I should be glad to resume in order to complete it. It would 
 include the literary history of the barbarous ages ; the history of letters, and 
 consequently of civilization, since the Latin decline and the first commence- 
 ments of Christian genius until the close of the thirteenth century. I should 
 make it the subject of my lectures during ten years, if necessary, and if God 
 leaves me life. These lectures would be taken down in shorthand, and would 
 compose the book in its first form, which I should publish and recast at the 
 end of every year. This method of proceeding would give to my written work 
 some of that glow which I possess sometimes in the tribune, but which for- 
 sakes me too often in my study. It would also have the advantage of hus- 
 banding my powers by not dividing them, and by gathering up to the same 
 end the little that I know and the little that I can do. 
 
 *' The subject is admirable, for it includes the exposition of that long and 
 laborious education which the Church gave to modern peoples. I should 
 open with a volume of introduction, in which I should endeavor to set forth 
 the intellectual state of the world at the advent of Christianity ; what the 
 Church could accept out of the inheritance of antiquity ; how much she did 
 accept ; consequently the origin of Christian art and Christian science from 
 the days of the catacombs and the early Fathers. All my journeys in Italy 
 last year tended to this end. 
 
 "After this would come the picture of the worid of the barbarians, pretty 
 much as I have drawn it in the volume which awaits your criticism;* then 
 
 • Lu Germains. 
 
 23} 
 
224 ^{f^ ^^^ Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 their entry into the society of Christendom, and the prodigious labors 
 of such men as Boetius, Isidore of Seville, Bede, Boniface, and others, who 
 did not allow the night to close in, but carried the light from one end of the 
 invaded empire to the other, making it penetrate into places and peoples that 
 had remained inaccessible, and passing on the torch from hand to hand until 
 it reached Charlemagne. I shall have to study the work of reparation accom- 
 plished by this great man, and to show that letters, which had not perished 
 before him, did not die out afterwards. 
 
 *' I would then show all the great things that were done in England in the 
 time of Alfred, in Germany under the Othos, and this would lead me up to 
 Gregory VII. and the Crusades. I should then have the three most glorious 
 centuries of the Middle Ages : theologians like St. Anselm, St. Bernard, Pierre 
 Lombard, Albert the Great, St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure ; the legislators of 
 the Church and State, Gregory VII., Alexander III., Innocent III., and Inno- 
 cent IV. ; Frederic II., St. Louis, Alphonsus X. ; the entire quarrel between 
 the priesthood and the empire ; the communes, the Italian republics, the 
 chroniclers and historians ; the universities and the renaissance of law. I 
 should have all that chivalrous poetry, the common patrimony of Latin 
 Europe, and, underlying this, all the epic traditions peculiar to each people, 
 and which are the germ and beginning of the national literature. I should 
 assist at the formation of modern languages ; and my work would end with 
 the Divine Comedy, the grandest monument of this period, its abridgment, as 
 it were, and its glory. 
 
 " This is the scheme and purpose of a man who was very near dying 
 eighteen months ago, whose health is far from being yet fully restored, still 
 compelling him to all sorts of precautions, and whom you know, into the bar- 
 gain, to be full of irresolution and weakness." 
 
 But this elaborate programme was about to be arrested by- 
 events composing a chapter of contemporary history in which 
 Ozanam was to be called upon to play his part. The Revo- 
 lution of February was at hand, bringing in its wake lessons 
 of deep import, many-sided and salutary warnings to such as 
 could profit by them in the midst of the terrified disarray of 
 the explosion. In France revolutions are like death : no mat- 
 ter how long they are watched for, when they come they are 
 sudden and unexpected. Ozanam's attention had been very 
 little directed towards poHtics ; the study of the past absorbed 
 so much of his time and thoughts that it left him small leisure 
 for occupying himself with the present, except in his personal 
 sphere of philanthropy and charity \ but his mind was too 
 philosophical, his mental vision too clear, too penetrating, not 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 225 
 
 to discern the premonitory symptoms which were manifesting 
 themselves around him. He repeated constantly that he was 
 no politician, that he was not, never could be, " U7i des hommes 
 de la situation'^' and in a sense this was correct. Neverthe- 
 less, he was a true politician, inasmuch that he judged politics 
 like a Christian philosopher who held a solid grasp of the great 
 moral principles on which governments and politics should be 
 conducted. In his opinion it was the social, not the political, 
 question which should engage — for we may still speak in the 
 present tense — the chief attention and utmost efforts of poli- 
 ticians in France, and he often regretted that such men as M. 
 de Montalembert, for instance, devoted themselves so much 
 to politics instead of working more exclusively at the solution 
 of the social problems which were, and still are, the root of all 
 revolutions in the country. His policy was to avert them, to 
 prevent them by charity, by the extension of Catholic ideas, 
 by the drawing together of the classes, by breaking down the 
 barriers that separate them, and which by separation breed 
 mutual mistrust, ignorance, envy, and resentment. This was 
 what he had in view from the beginning of the foundation of 
 the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. He meant its action to 
 go far deeper than the alleviation, the moral help and improve- 
 ment, of the individual poor. 
 
 "A struggle is preparing between the classes, and it threatens to be terri- 
 ble," he says, in a letter already quoted ; " let us precipitate ourselves between 
 these hostile ranks, so as to deaden the shock, if we cannot prevent it." 
 
 In 1836 he wrote to his friend LaUier: 
 
 " The question which agitates the world to-day is not a question oi political 
 forms, but a social o^w^sXAon ; if it be the struggle osf those who have nothing 
 with those who have too much, if it be the violent shock of opulence and 
 poverty which is making the ground tremble under our feet, our duty, as 
 Christians, is to throw ourselves between these irreconcilable enemies, and to 
 induce one side to give in order to fulfil the law, and the other to receive as 
 a benefit ; to make one side cease to exact, and the other to refuse ; to render 
 equality as general as it is possible amongst men ; to make voluntan' commu- 
 nity of possession replace taxation and forced loans ; to make charity accom- 
 plish what justice and law alone can never do," 
 
226 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 He adhered to this poUtical creed all his life. Twelve 
 years later, on the eve of the " violent shock " which his far- 
 seeing sagacity foretold, he repeats, as in his student days: 
 " It is a social question ; do away with misery, Christianize 
 the people, and you will make an end of revolutions." 
 
 Soon after his return from Italy he made a speech at the 
 Cercle Catholique, in which he described what he had wit- 
 nessed in the Eternal City, the attitude of the Pope, the effect, 
 so far, of his liberal policy on the Roman population, and the 
 hopes and fears it embodied for Rome and for all the world. 
 The speech, which was an enthusiastic eulogy of the pacific 
 revolution which the Papal policy was effecting, ended with 
 the words, " Passons aux barbares / Suivons Pie IX. /" The 
 Press caught up the expression with a hue and cry against 
 Ozanam, and a hot controversy ensued between his party and 
 the newspapers. He took no part in it, but contented him- 
 self with explaining privately to a few friends the real mean- 
 ing of the contested sentence, which was that he considered Pius 
 IX. was now accomplishing what the liberal party all over the 
 world had been working and waiting for for nearly a quarter 
 of a century, and that it behoved Catholics to join in the 
 movement, and follow the Pope, passing over with him to the 
 barbarians, that is to say, " leaving the narrow camp of 
 monarchs and statesmen and going forward to the people, in 
 order to draw them into the Church." The camp of the 
 monarchs was perhaps too completely identified in Ozanam's 
 mind with the Grand Mo7iarque^ who may be looked upon as 
 the last of the monarchs of France — the one in whose person 
 their prestige culminated to its' apogee, who treated the people 
 as his property, and reduced society to a community of valets. 
 Louis Quatorze, after deifying monarchy through half a cen- 
 tury, gave the signal for its downfall and struck the funeral 
 knell of the national freedom which was to find its grave under 
 the ruins of the throne, plunging the nation headlong from the 
 absolutism of kings to the absolutism of democrats, replacing 
 the throne by the guillotine. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozatiam, 227 
 
 There may be some exaggeration in the extreme severity 
 of historians of Ozanam's school in their judgment of the 
 Grand Monarque's policy diiiLX character; there can be none 
 in their opinion of its consequences, in their scorn for the 
 slavish degradation of the human mind which the demi-god 
 exacted from all around him, and to which may be traced one 
 of the remote but certain causes of the subsequent national de- 
 cline, the corruption of society, the absorption of manly in- 
 dependence, patriotism, and energy in France. He it is who 
 is mainly responsible for the contempt of the great for the 
 people, the cruel oppression of the poor by the ruHng classes, 
 and all that series of corrupt grievances which ended in the 
 mad license of 1793, driving back the nation, as by a law of 
 nature in France, under the yoke of despotism, until it again 
 broke out in anarchy, and again fell back under the rule of 
 armed force. 
 
 Ozanam, who persistently viewed the present in the light 
 of the past, saw no remedy for this delirious see-saw game 
 between despotism and communism but to Christianize the 
 people, so that they should be capable of governing them- 
 selves, and thus pass efifectually and lor ever from under the 
 unstable rule of kings. 
 
 The people had invaded the monarchy as the barbarians of 
 old invaded the empire, making much havoc and desolation, 
 laying waste fields and cities in their progress; but now the 
 time had come for them to prove themselves the saviours of 
 the society they had overturned, and to build the peace of the 
 world upon their conquest. It was necessary, in order to 
 hasten this event, that those who governed the people should 
 espouse their interests and their cause. 
 
 "When I say Passons aux barbares,'' explains Ozanam, "I mean that we 
 Hiould do as he (Pius IX.) hrs done ; that we should occupy ourselves with 
 the people, whose wants are too many and whose rights are too few ; who are 
 crying out, and fairly, for a share in public affairs, for guarantees for work, 
 and against distress ; who follow bad leaders, because they have no good 
 ones, and whom we have no right to hold responsible for the History of the 
 Girondins^ which they don't read, nor fur the banquets, where they don't feast. 
 
228 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 We may not succeed in converting Attila and Genseric, but, with God's help, 
 we may make something of the Huns and the Vandals. 
 
 " Read the opening of the City of Goa, Salvian, Gildas, and you will find 
 that even in the fifth century many saints had more sympathy with the Goths, 
 the Vandals, the Arian and idolatrous Franks, than with the degenerate 
 Cathodes of the Roman cities. Honestly, did it not require some indulgence 
 not to despair of the salvation of Clovis ? . . . Don't believe those who find 
 it easier to condemn a party, a people en niasse^ than to study the differences 
 that divide them. ... It grieves me, too, to hear people repeating the com- 
 parison between Pius IX. and Louis XVI., which is the pet thesis of the retro- 
 grade party, of the French and Austrian embassies in Rome, the thesis of all 
 those who love neither the Pope nor liberty. How can he be compared even 
 to St. Celestin ? Have we seen him bending under the burden ? He is 
 taunted with having had two secretaries killed under him ! Do we not all 
 know that the chief difficulty of a new era is to find new men ; that the most 
 terrible part of Pius IX. 's task is the political education of his ministers and 
 his people ? He has not inherited from Sixtus V. ; I know this quite well, 
 and I rejoice at it. We must remount perhaps to Alexander III. to find a 
 soul of the same metal as his." 
 
 But turning quickly from these incidental remarks on poli- 
 tics, Ozanam replunges, with a sense of pleasure and fitness, 
 into the calm studies of the past. 
 
 " Don't fear that I shall take to politics," he says to M. Foisset. " I find 
 the time long until my strength shall enable me to take up the plan I have 
 confided to you. I shall bless God if He allows me to bury my life in these 
 dear studies, I must bless all the same if He condemns me to go on working 
 as at present, only at intervals, and with wearisome precautions." 
 
 These lines were written on the 2 2d of February. On the 
 24th the Revolution broke out. 
 
 The general excitement, the upbreaking of terribly destruc- 
 tive forces through the calm surface, the uproar and universal 
 confusion of these periodically recurring crises, are apt to dis- 
 turb the presence of mind of the calmest. The most phleg- 
 matic politicians fly before the storm ; reformers lose faith in 
 their life-long cherished theories, and let them go. Ozanam 
 did not lose faith in his. When the tempest was let loose he 
 clung to them more firmly than ever, trying to make his voice 
 heard above the storm, that he might save the vessel and pre- 
 vent her from riding to utter and irreparable destruction. He 
 at once put on the uniform of a national guard and took his 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 229 
 
 turn of duty at the post of peril with all good citizens. But 
 this was not his proper place. He knew it, and repeated it 
 to those who, considering only his gifts and personal influence, 
 built hopes on him as a political leader in the new order of 
 things. 
 
 ♦'You are wrong, my dear friend," he answers to M. Foisset's urgent en- 
 treaties in this direction ; " you are mistaken in fancying that I am one of the 
 men for this emergency. I am less up than any one in the questions that are 
 about to occupy the public mind. I mean the questions of labor, wages, in- 
 dustry, economy, more important than all the controversies of the politicians. 
 The history even of modem revolutions is almost unknown to me. I shut 
 myself up in the Middle Ages, which I studied with a kind of passion, and 1 
 believe it is there I found whatever little light is left me in the darkness of the 
 present circumstances. I am not a man of action ; I was bom neither lor the 
 tribune nor the public squares. If I can do anything, however little, it is in 
 my chair ; or perhaps in the quiet of a library, where I may extract from 
 Christian philosophy, trom the history of Christian times, a series of ideas 
 which I unfold to young men, to troubled and uncertain minds, in order to 
 reassure, to reanimate, to rally them m the midst of the confusion ol the 
 present and the terrible uncertainties of the future. 
 
 ♦* I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that the design of God is unfolding 
 itself to us more rapidly than we thought; tnat the events of Vienna are the 
 final explanation of those of Paris and Rome ; and that we already hear a 
 voice crying : ' Ecce facio coelos novos et terram novam ! ' Since the fall of 
 the Roman empire the world has seen no such revolution as this. I believe 
 still in the invasion of the barbarians, but up to the present I see more Franks 
 and Goths than Huns and Vandals. I believe, in fact, in the emancipation 
 of oppressed nationalities, and I admire more than ever the mission of Pius 
 IX , raised up so opportunely for Italy and for tne world. In a word, I don't 
 disguise from myself either the perils of the times or the hardness of hearts. 
 I expect to see a great amount of distress, of disorder and perhaps pillage, and 
 a long eclipse oi literature, to which I had devoted my life. I believe that we 
 may b^ ground to powder, but that it will be under the triumphal car of Chris- 
 tianity." 
 
 He philosophized thus calmly on events and their final is- 
 sue on the 15th of March — that is to say, when the Revolu- 
 tion was in full swing, three weeks after its outbreak. 
 
 His name had been immediately proposed on several lists 
 as candidate for the forthcoming elections, but Ozanam de- 
 clined the honor. A share, even passive, in the government 
 was a solemn responsibility for which he did not believe him- 
 self qualified. He might have allowed himself to be overruled 
 
230 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 as regarded his personal disability, but being better acquaint- 
 ed than most with the forces which the CathoUcs had at their 
 disposal, he remained convinced that they were not strong 
 enough to stand and conquer alone. 
 
 " The best thing for us to do is to give our votes to the Republican candi- 
 dates who share our faith, and who offer serious guarantees for our liberty," 
 he says ; but at the close of the same letter he adds: "Just as I had finished 
 this there comes a letter from Lyons full of urgent entreaties to let my name 
 appear amongst the candidates. They assure me that the division of parties 
 and votes is so great that I run a very good chance of securing a majority. On 
 the otlier hand, I have not very robust health to think of braving the storms 
 of the Assemblee Nationale, and, moreover, my habit of public speaking is 
 not at all of that kind which I should require in the Chamber. My friends 
 here are divided. Some advise me to wait until the following Assembly. 
 What do you think ? I will wait till Saturday before writing to Lyons, so 
 that your letter may reach roe in time. Write by return of post." 
 
 We can only conjecture what M. Foisset's answer was from 
 the result. Ozanam declined this offer, as he had done all 
 previous ones. He did not, however, consider himself eman- 
 cipated from that indirect share in the legislation of the 
 country which is the inalienable duty of every intelligent and 
 patriotic citizen. He refrained from taking part in the war that 
 was being carried on in the Chamber, but he entered the lists 
 of another arena, where the voice of those who defend truth 
 and all noble causes finds a powerful and far-reaching echo. 
 
 *' My share in public life, from which no man should shrink to-day, is con- 
 fined to the little 1 shall do in the Ere Nouvelle^ which it is decided will appear 
 on the 15th of April. If you come here (to Paris), as I hope, within a few 
 weeks, you will soon understand why the Univers could not remain the sole 
 organ of the Catholics. We must found a new work for these new times, one 
 which will not provoke the same angry feelings and the same mistrust. More- 
 over, as there are various opinions amongst Catholics, it is better that they 
 should be faithfully represented by various journals, and that, because of their 
 very diversity, the Church of France should cease to be responsible for what 
 passes through the brain of a journalist." 
 
 This may be the place to say a few words about the part 
 Ozanam himself played as a journalist. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 1848-49. 
 
 His first experience in journalism dates, as we have related, 
 from the year 1832, when in his student days he wrote for 
 the Tributie Catholique^ and applied the proceeds to the week- 
 ly quete of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. 
 
 Simultaneously with that brave little paper M. Bailly 
 started a monthly magazine, called the Revue Europeenne^ 
 which, like the Tribune^ was kept going entirely by his own 
 energy and the talent of his juvenile staff of contributors. 
 Both publications did their work in their day, but it was re- 
 stricted in many ways : funds were wanting, in the first place; 
 in the. next place, the apathy of the Catholics was in those 
 days, as it still is, disastrous to every enterprise of the kind ; 
 the help that might have been easily given by a great num- 
 ber was withheld, from indifference, from want of apprehend- 
 ing the importance of the Press as a power within reach of 
 their party. Then, again, the recent catastrophe of the Ave- 
 nir was fresh in men's minds, and went far to paralyze what- 
 ever vitality and spirit of enterprise yet lingered amongst the 
 Catholics. The Avenir had opened the lists of Catholic con- 
 troversy, and for a moment fixed the attention of France, we 
 might say of Christendom, on the interests of the cause ; but 
 the meteor which flashed so suddenly into fame had died out, 
 leaving only a dark track upon the waters which its fiery bril- 
 liance had for a moment lighted up so vividly. M. de La- 
 mennais' genius had planted the Catholic flag on a pedestal, 
 and, together with the eloquence of Lacordaire and Montalem- 
 bert, compelled the attention of the country to its claims. Men 
 
 a3» 
 
232 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 looked on as at a magnificent display of arms in a knightly 
 tournament; they were dazzled and delighted, even when 
 their sympathies were not with the combatants. But that 
 was over now. The knights had carried their prowess too 
 far, and were bidden to lay down their arms. A reaction of 
 shyness and mertia had ensued ; no one cared to reopen the 
 lists which had been closed in such signal humihation. M. 
 de Lamennais, moreover, had towards the end infringed the 
 laws of Catholic chivalry by the use of forbidden weapons. 
 Hitherto reHgious controversy had, in all ages, been carried 
 on with a strict regard to the claims of charity ; even Bossuet, 
 wielding his giant sword against the " reformers," never for- 
 got this, but preserved in the heat of the fight that courtesy 
 of form which is the safeguard of dignity and mutual respect. 
 M. de Lamennais adhered to this precedent up to a certain 
 point, up to the period of the reaction which followed on the 
 second issue of his Essai sur V J?idifference j then wounded 
 pride embittered his mind and warped his judgment ; he was 
 stung to fury by the just disapproval of the Catholics, and in 
 his fierce self-defence began first to dip his pen into the vit- 
 riol with which he was soon to bespatter the Church he be- 
 trayed. Lamennais was the first to inaugurate in Catholic 
 controversy that envenomed, violent, and aggressive style 
 which has since become an institution in France, and done 
 so much harm to charity, even when accompanied by well- 
 meaning zeal and undeniable talent. 
 
 The Avenir fell, and the country was still reeling under 
 the shock of the tremendous incident when Ozanam drew 
 his maiden sword as a journalist in the modest little field of 
 the Tribune Catholique. But he could not remain satisfied 
 with the scope he found here. Inexperienced as he was, he 
 understood the immense importance for the Catholics of hav- 
 ing an able organ of their own ; he was continually deplor- 
 ing their mistaken policy in keeping their religion out of sight, 
 as if it were strictly a private concern, whereas by making 
 common cause in public they could create a party powerful 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 233 
 
 enough to be a weight in the State, and thus force the Gov- 
 ernment to reckon with them. 
 
 From 1832 to 1833 the Tribune Catholique^ on every 
 available occasion, put forward this idea of the necessity of 
 constituting the Catholics into a public body. They, how- 
 ever, listened with indifference, and gave no practical re- 
 sponse. The urgent need of a daily Catholic paper was also 
 brought before them, but with the same result. The latter 
 design was nevertheless on its way to fulfilment from an un- 
 expected quarter. 
 
 In the autumn of 1833 a priest named the Abb^ Migne 
 came to Paris with the idea of founding a Catholic journal. 
 He had neither funds nor talent, but these slight disabilities 
 did not daunt him. He was one of those men who have 
 an indomitable faith in the success of his own ideas, and an 
 energy which supplements all other wants. A friend of his, 
 M. de la Tuilerie, who had accompanied him to Pans, in- 
 herited just at this moment a sum of ;£^i,4oo from a devout 
 relative, and it occurred to him that he could make no more 
 appropriate use of the legacy than to devote it to found a 
 daily Catholic paper under the Abb6 Migne's management. 
 He accordingly handed over the money for this purpose. 
 The Abbe went to M. Bailly and consulted him as to how he 
 should set to work. M. Bailly at once proposed that he 
 should take the Tribune Cathohque^ and enlarge and improve 
 it, instead of creating an entirely new journal. " Prenez mon 
 ours," he said, pointing his argument with a familiar saying, 
 ** take the Tribune Caiholique^ with its little knot of five hun- 
 dred subscribers, and its zealous contributors, and let it ap- 
 pear daily and under a new name. This will be better than 
 breaking new ground, building on nothing, and dividing the 
 forces." The Abb6 Migne closed with the offer, and the 
 Tribune Catholique disappeared one day to come forth the 
 next under the title of the Univers. 
 
 M. Bailly had undertaken to find writers, and he kept his 
 word. The Abb6 Gerbet had retired into complete obscurity 
 
234 -^i/^ ^^^(i ll'orks of Frederic Ozafiam. 
 
 since the suppression of the Avenir. He was living as he 
 could, picking up a few francs here and there by teaching, 
 very rarely by writing, and then anonymously. He was now 
 in Paris casting about for work that would bring him a crust 
 of bread. M. Bailly proposed to him to write a series of 
 articles for the Univers^ which the Abbe Migne should sign, 
 it being necessary to conceal the real writer's name, lest it 
 should give a color to the new journal which it did not mean 
 to adopt. M. Gerbet assented joyfully, and on the ist of 
 November, 1833, the first number of the Univers appeared 
 with a leader on La Toussaint^ whose lyrical beauty took all 
 Paris by storm. It was signed Migne, fondateur^ administra- 
 tetir, directeiit, and at once made a name for *' this provincial 
 Abbe who wrote like Fenelon," and attracted general curiosi- 
 ty to his paper. M. Gerbet continued for some time to write 
 under the pompous editorial signature, and sustained the 
 popularity which the first sensation had produced. 
 
 Ozanam, meantime, contributed his able and attractive 
 articles with unflagging zeal, and a talent that was rapidly 
 maturing by practice. Philosophy and history were his 
 special subjects, and he made them the medium of that sus- 
 tained defence of Catholic doctrine and calm logical contro- 
 versy on Catholic principles and opinions which was so much 
 needed, and which up to this time was unknown in French 
 journalism. A contemporary and fellow- worker of Ozanam 's, 
 who stands high amongst French men of letters of the present 
 day, observed to the writer, speaking of the state of the press 
 at this period, '^ Ozanam was the Providence of the Catholic 
 press in France from 1833 to 1840; without his talent, and 
 M. Bailly's energy, it would have utterly disappeared." 
 
 Ozanam all his life set immense store by the power of the 
 press as an engine in the Catholic service, above all in his 
 own country, where the nervous, impressionable nature of the 
 people renders them so peculiarly sensitive to its action. 
 
 When the Revolution of February broke out, he saw no 
 more efficacious barrier against the invading flood of revolu- 
 
Life arid Works of Ftederk Ozanam, 235 
 
 tionary socialism than the influence of an enlightened press ; 
 and this belief induced him to start, with the co-operation of 
 the P^re Lacordaire, a new paper called the Ere Nouvelle, a ^ 
 democTatic Catholic organ, whose mission it was to reconcile 
 Catholics with the Republic. 
 
 The P^re Lacordaire and he diverged widely in their poli- 
 tical sentiments : Ozanam hailed the Republic as the pro- 
 bable and only possible salvation of the country ; Lacordaire, 
 like the great bulk of the Catholics, accepted it as a plank in 
 the siiip wreck of constitutional monarchy. What else was 
 there to turn to ? The elder branch of the Bourbons was 
 not forthcoming, and the younger had snapped in their fingers 
 like a rotten reed. Lacordaire, who passed, and still passes 
 with many, for being an enthusiastic democrat, w^as not even 
 a convinced republjcaa— He declared publicly at the Union 
 "Ciub, on the 23d of February, the very eve of the Revolu- 
 tion, that he "had not an iota of republicanism in him." 
 And not long after this he says again, " I did not agree with 
 Ozanam's views. I did not wish to treat the question of 
 democracy theoretically, but confined myself to accepting the 
 fait accompli, and drawing from it as much advantage as 
 possible for religion and society. ... I accepted the re- 
 public, which gave us the freedom of the schools and the 
 freedom of rehgious bodies." * 
 
 The latter was indeed complete to a triumph, and calculat- 
 ed to plead loudly in favor of the new Government with the 
 founder of the Dominican order in France. When, on the 
 4th of May, the National Assembly appeared on the peristyle 
 of tiie Palais Bourbon to proclaim the Republic, the tonsur- 
 ed monk who stood in the midst of them, conspicuous by his 
 whiFe cowl, was cheered enthusiastically as he descended the 
 step's, and conducted by the populace, in a sort of triumphal 
 march, to the gates of the Corps L6gislatif. 
 
 This election was a source of immense satisfaction to 
 Ozanam, who had been active in preparing it by his writings 
 
 •Vide Montalembert, CEuvres CompiiUs, vol. ix. p. 520, "Lc Pcre LacordaTc." 
 
236 Life atid Works of Frederic Ozafiam. 
 
 and his personal influence with the democratic Catholics. 
 The event, however, when it did occur, was the spontaneous 
 act of the Marseillais, without any intervention whatever, and 
 caused great surprise to the Pere Lacordaire himself, who 
 was not even aware that his name had been proposed as 
 candidate there. 
 
 Ozanam, meantime, carried on the good fight with his pen 
 both in public and private. The Christianizing of the people 
 was now, as ever, his chief pre-occupation. 
 
 " If a greater number of Christians, and above all of priests, had but occu- 
 pied themselves with the working class these last ten years, we should be more 
 secure of the future, and all our hopes rest on the little that has been done in 
 this direction up to the present," he writes to his brother the Abbe ; *' I quite 
 enter into your idea about the observance of Sunday. I will draw up a short 
 notice on the subject myself, and have it distributed and pasted up, and per- 
 haps we may by this means stir up the workingmen to send in a petition about 
 it themselves. 
 
 " On the other hand, I am going to have a meeting of Professors at my own 
 house this afternoon, where we shall discuss the feasibility of founding public 
 classes and a sort of night-school for these good fellows. The Carmelite 
 priests will give us what help they can, and Monseigneur * gives us the pre- 
 mises. 
 
 " Keep me informed of what is being done in this line at Lille, and also what 
 deputies the Catholics of the Nord are anxious to get into the Assembly. 
 
 " The first duty of Christians now is not to be frightened, and the second is 
 not to frighten others, but, on the contrary, to reassure the timorous, and to 
 make them understand that the present crisis is like a storm that cannot last. 
 Providence is still here, and we never see it allow these financial shocks, which 
 shake the material order of societies, to last more than a few months. Let us 
 not then be over-anxious about the morrow, saying. What shall we eat, and 
 how shall we clothe ourselves ? ' Let us only have courage, and seek first the 
 justice of God and the welfare of the country, and everything else will be given 
 to us over and above." 
 
 It required a courage as firmly rooted in supernatural trust 
 as Ozanam's to remain serene and undisturbed, meantime, 
 until the shock had passed away. A rising at Lille caused 
 him some alarm for the safety of his brother; but this personal 
 anxiety did not disturb his judgment of events or cast his 
 patriotic pre-occupations into the shade. " If the workmen 
 
 ♦AiTrc. 
 
Life atid Works of Frederic Ozanatn. 237 
 
 of Lille would but imitate the moderation and wisdom of their 
 brothers of Paris and Lyons ! " he exclaims. 
 
 " Here we are in this great and opulent metropolis for the last seven weeks 
 without a government or a regular police force, and yet we hear of no more 
 murders, robberies, or other misdemeanors than before. Don't believe those 
 evil-minded persons who go about spreading absurd stories ; there is not a 
 word of truth in them, and nothing is more contrary to the dispositions of the 
 population of Paris, who on every occasion seek to show respect to religion 
 and sympathy to the clergy. My friend, the Abbe Cherruel, who has blessed 
 thirteen trees of liberty, has been quite affected by the proofs of faith which he 
 found amidst this people, where, since 1815, the priest has been taught to see 
 only enemies of God and of the Church. 
 
 " Occupy yourself as much with servants as with masters, with workmen as 
 much as with employers. This is henceforth the only means of salvation for 
 the Church of France, The cures must set aside their pious parish congrega- 
 tions, little flocks of good sheep in the midst of an enormous population to whom 
 the parish priest is a stranger. He must henceforth occupy himself, not only 
 with the indigent, but with that immense class of poor who do not ask for alms, 
 but who are, nevertheless, attracted by special preaching, by charitable asso- 
 ciations, by the affection that is shown to them, and which touches them more 
 than we think. Now, more than ever, we ought to meditate on a beautiful 
 passage in the second chapter of the Epistle of St. James, which seems as if it 
 had been written expressly for these times." 
 
 Ozanam addressed the same exhortations, with the same 
 unflinching boldness, to the clergy generally that he used 
 towards his brother. The En Nouvelle had gained the popu- 
 lar ear, and was to him the medium of the propagation of 
 Christian democratic principles. 
 
 " Priests of France, do not be offended at the freedom of speech which a lay- 
 man uses in appealing to your zeal as citizens!" he exclaims. "Mistrust 
 yourselves, mistrust the habits and customs of a more peaceful period, and 
 have less doubt of the power of your ministry and its popularity. It is true, 
 and we recognize it proudly, that you love the poor of your parishes, that you 
 welcome with charity the beggar who knocks at your door, and that you never 
 keep him waiting when he calls you to his bedside. But the time is come for 
 you to occupy yourselves with those other poor who do not beg, who live by 
 their labor, and to whom the right of labor and the right of assistance will 
 never be secured in such a manner as to guarantee them from the want of 
 help, of advice, of consolation. The time is come when you must go and 
 seek those who do not send for you, who, hid away in the most disreputable 
 neighborhoods, have perhaps never known the Church or the priest, or even 
 the sweet name of Christ. Do not ask how they will receive you, or rather ask 
 those who have visited them, who have ventured to speak to them of God, and 
 
23^ Life and Works of Frederic OzanatH. 
 
 who have not found them more insensible to a kind word and a kind action 
 than the rest of mankind. If you fear your inexperience, your timidity, the 
 insufficiency of your resources, unite in associations. Take the benefit of the 
 new laws to form yourselves into charitable confraternities of priests. Use 
 all the influence you have with Christian families, and urge them to give ; 
 press them in season and out of season, and believe that in compelling them 
 voluntarily to despoil themselves you are sparing them the unpleasant process 
 of being despoiled by ruder hands. Do not be frightened when the wicked 
 rich, irritated by your pleadine, treat you as communists. They treated St. 
 Bernard as a fanatic and a fool. Remember that your fathers, the French 
 priests of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, saved Europe by the Crusades ; 
 save her once more by the crusade of Charity, and, as it involves no bloodshed, 
 be you its first soldiers." * 
 
 Then turning to the wealthy classes, he says : 
 
 " Rich men — for if your numbers be diminished, we still know whole pro- 
 vinces which the general distress has scarcely touched. . . . You were justi- 
 fied, during the first days of a revolution whose limits no one could foretell, in 
 thinking of your children and husbanding carefully the provision that the 
 chances of exile and spoliation rendered necessary. But foresight has its 
 limits, and He who taught us to pray for our daily bread nowhere advises us 
 to secure to ourselves ten years of luxury. . . . Spend ; do not deny yourselves 
 legitimate amusements at a moment when they may be meritorious; perform 
 almsdeeds by furnishing work as well as help ; do not be afraid that you will 
 injure small trade by clothing out of your coffers those thousands of poor who 
 assuredly will buy neither clothes nor shoes for the next six months ; give to 
 the asylums and the schools, and do not forget those houses of refuge, con- 
 vents of the Good Shepherd, compelled by poverty to reduce their penitents 
 to a fourth and a tenth of the usual number, and thus close the door to re- 
 pentance when God is opening to it the gates of Heaven. + . . ." 
 
 " Representatives of the people, we respect the magnitude and the difficulty 
 of your task, . . . but do not plead want of time. Under the fire of the in- 
 surrection the National Assembly borrowed from the night the time the day 
 denied it. We saw you on the barricades haranguing the insurgents, encour- 
 aging the defenders of order. . . . How comes it, then, that we do not see 
 you at the post of peril now ? Why do you not rescue your mornings from 
 the crowd of petitioners who besiege you, and go and visit those wretched dis- 
 tricts, and climb those dark staircases, and penetrate into those naked rooms, 
 and see with your own eyes what your brothers are suffering ? You would in 
 this way become acquainted with the utter destitution that reigns amongst 
 them ; you would leave behind you to these poor creatures the memory of a 
 visit that had honored and at the same time consoled their wretchedness, and 
 you would come away penetrated with an emotion which brooks no delay. . . . 
 And do not plead want of money. If the ordinary resources should come to fail 
 
 * Vide Extraits de V Ere Nouvelle, vol. vii. p. 272. 
 t Extraits de VEre Nouvelle, vol. vii. p. 274. 
 
Life ami Works of Frederic Ozanam, 2;^>j 
 
 you, if there should be nothing more to hope for from credit and reserve funds, 
 hope everything still from the generosity of France. Open a national subscrip- 
 tion for the workmen out of work — not only those of Paris, but of the whole 
 country ; let your nine hundred names figure first on the list of its patrons and 
 promoters ; let the bishops who sit in the Assembly invite their colleagues and 
 the thirty thousand cures of France to proclaim the subscription in all the pul- 
 pits; let the Minister of the Interior order the forty thousand mayors to pla- 
 card it and popularize it in all the communes ; let it be made a question of 
 security for the timorous, of patriotism and charity for all. Take in kind as 
 well as money, and I promise you there is not a banker who will refuse you 
 a bank-note, not a peasant but will bring you his handful of wheat." * 
 
 The extraordinary confidence which Ozanam displayed in 
 an emergency like the present is the more striking from the 
 contrast it presents with the almost morbid nervous anxiety 
 that was habitual to him ; but in a national crisis his personal 
 individuality in some sort disappeared. He did not think of 
 himself, or measure chances by his individual power and re- 
 sources. He looked at himself only as a unit bound up in 
 the grand whole of France, and his trust in her, in her elastic 
 vitality, her moral soundness at the core, her energy, intelli- 
 gence, and e/an was only second to his trust in God. 
 
 Personally he did not know what fear was. This courage 
 was shared by his wife. " Thank God ! Amelie is courage- 
 ous," he says to more than one friend whom he keeps informed 
 of their position during the outbreak ; and he constantly con- 
 gratulates himself on finding a support instead of a hindrance 
 in her presence throughout. 
 
 " Amelie will have set your mind at rest about us," he writes to the Abbe 
 Ozanam. " She will have told you that we were safe and sound, although we 
 were in terror for Charles Soulacroix, who has been three times under fire. 
 As for me, my detachment was stationed nearly all the time at the corner of 
 the Rue Garanciere and the Rue Palatine, then at the corner of the Rue 
 Madame and the Rue Fleurus. We had a good many false alarms ; shots 
 were fired in the neighboring streets, and we had to patrol the Boulevards at 
 some risk, but, thank God, we did not pull a trigger. My conscience was in 
 order, so I should not have shrunk before the danger. I confess, nevertheless, 
 that it is a terrible moment when a man embraces his wife and child with the 
 feeling that it is perhaps for the last time." 
 
 • ExtraiU de I Ere XouvelU, p. 277. 
 
240 Life and Works of Frederic Oza7iam. 
 
 Ozanara once experienced this " terrible moment " under 
 circumstances of peculiar interest. One Sunday morning, on 
 the 25th of June, he was on duty as a national guard with M. 
 Bailly and M. Cornudet at a post in the Rue Madame. The 
 three friends were conversing on the sinister prospects which 
 the prolongation of the struggle brought nearer every day ; 
 suddenly it occurred to them that the mediation of the Arch- 
 bishop of Paris might avail, if he could be induced to exert 
 it, and become the peace-maker in this disastrous civil war. 
 They started immediately to communicate the idea to the 
 Abbe Buquet, his Grace's Vicar-General, who was just then 
 attending his mother's death-bed close by Ozanam's house. 
 He warmly approved of it, and gave them a letter in a large 
 official-looking envelope, which might, in case of need, serve 
 as a pass through the barricades to the Archbishop's abode. 
 It was mid-day when Ozanam came home, and told his wife 
 the mission he was bound for. Her first impulse was one of 
 natural wifelike terror— '• You are going straight to your 
 death ! You must not do it. I implore you not to go !" she 
 cried ; but Ozanam calmly proceeded to explain to her the 
 considerations which made it impossible for him to do other- 
 wise. The insurrection was now overcome everywhere except 
 in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where the strife continued as 
 fierce as ever; this was the manufacturing quarter, the centre 
 ot the workmen and artisans, and while it held out there was 
 no chance of security being restored to the city. Now, if the 
 Archbishop of Paris went forth bearing the olive-branch, and 
 the rebels accepted it, it would be, not only an immense 
 mercy to all, but a glorious triumph for the Church. Madame 
 Ozanam yielded without further opposition to these arguments, 
 though not, we may presume, without one of those inner 
 struggles and bloodless victories which brave souls only know. 
 
 The three friends set off to the Archbishop. After hearing 
 the motive of their visit, he said with simplicity. *' I have been 
 pursued by the same idea since yesterday, but how can it be 
 done? How could we manage to reach the insurgents? 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 241 
 
 Would General Cavaignac approve of the step ? And where 
 is he to be found ?" 
 
 The three gentlemen answered all these objections, and 
 assured his Grace that he would be received all along the road 
 with respect by the population. 
 
 " Very well," he replied. ''Then I will just sHp on my 
 short cassock, so as not to be noticed, and you will show me 
 the way." 
 
 As he was leaving the room a priest came in in great ex- 
 citement, full of the fearful details of the insurrection, to which 
 he had just been a witness. Monseigneur Affre listened with 
 some emotion, but without flinching in his resolution. In a 
 few minutes he was ready; but the three laymen, as if prompt- 
 ed by some presentiment of the triumph that awaited him, 
 ventured to suggest that he should wear his violet soutane 
 and let his archiepiscopal cross be visible on his breast. He 
 replied with the same simplicity as before, " You think that 
 would be better ? Well, then, I will put on my violet sou- 
 tane." 
 
 The populace did not belie the promise of Ozanam and his 
 companions. Nothing could exceed the veneration, the en- 
 thusiasm with which the Archbishop was greeted on his way 
 through the streets ; it was a triumphal march from the He 
 St. Louis to the Assembl^e Nationale. The troops, the na- 
 tional guard, the garde mobile flew to arms and sounded the 
 call; the men stood bareheaded, the women and children 
 knelt down. It was a soul-stirring sight, for the homage was 
 unanimous and spontaneous, as if every one guessed instinc- 
 tively that the Prelate appeared in the midst of that vast arm- 
 ed multitude for some mighty purpose. 
 
 General Cavaignac received him with every mark of admira- 
 tion and respect, gave him a proclamation to the insurgents, 
 and a final ofler of mercy if they laid down their arms. At 
 the same time he warned him of the danger he was going to 
 run. He told him that General Brea, who had been sent with 
 a flag of truce, had just been taken by the insurgents. The 
 
242 Life and Wo} ks of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 Archbishop listened without showing the least emotion, and 
 the General and those present were deeply affected by the 
 simplicity with which he replied, " I am going " i^Je pars), 
 
 Ozanam, in referring to this, to him, most painful episodcj 
 always spoke with admiration of the extraordinary placidity, 
 the coolness, amounting almost to indifference, which Mon- 
 seigneur Affre displayed from first to last. There was no 
 enthusiasm ; he was not carried away and uplifted by any feel- 
 ing of " exaltation "; he was going simply to fulfil what he 
 believed a duty, and he went forth to the mission with a per- 
 fectly clear perception of its danger. On leaving the resi- 
 dence of General Cavaignac he requested Ozanam and his 
 two friends to allow him to return home alone. They pro- 
 tested, but seeing him determined they feigned to accept the 
 dismissal, and said good-by, but continued to follow him at a 
 little distance. He guessed how it was, and turning round 
 instinctively when they came to the Pont des Saints Peres, he 
 waited for them to come up, and then entreated them to go 
 away, as their uniform of national guards gave them the ap- 
 pearance of an escort, which, under the peculiar circum- 
 stances, might prove a hindrance to his mission. They yield- 
 ed to this argument, and took leave of him with sorrow and 
 anxiety. It was not that they had any presentiment of the 
 terrible risk that he was running, but they thought their 
 presence would be a moral support, and they could not bear 
 to let him go on quite alone. 
 
 The Archbishop returned to his palace amidst the same de- 
 monstrations of sympathy wherever he was recognized. On 
 reaching home he was exhausted by the long walk, and, 
 after taking some refreshment, was persuaded to lie down and 
 rest. After this he went to confession, like a man about to 
 meet death. He left some few written directions, and then 
 set out to the Faubourg St. Antoine, accompanied by his 
 Vicars-General, the Abbe Jacquemet and the Abbe Ravinet. 
 As they went along he commented on the text, " The good 
 shepherd giveth his life for his flock." He continued still in 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 243 
 
 the same state of placid calm, as if taking a walk for ordinary 
 purposes. We know how it ended — how the olive-branch 
 was changed into the palm, and how the mission terminated 
 in martyrdom for the good shepherd. As they approached 
 the Place de la Bastille, a young man named Brechemin, who 
 had been following them for some time, tied his handkerchief 
 to tlie branch of a tree, and went before them, holding it aloft, 
 to the nearest barricade. The Archbishop climbed up, holding 
 the promise of pardon in his hand, when a shot was fired from 
 a window just above him, and he staggered back wounded to 
 death, exclaiming as he fell, " May ray blood be the last 
 shed !" 
 
 It was about seven in the evening, but, owing to the dis- 
 order and excitement which ensued, the event was not known 
 in the city until the next day, when the news was received 
 with a universal cry of dismay, horror, and grief. It fell, as 
 may be imagined, with indescribable distress, amounting in 
 the first moments to an agony of remorse, on Ozanam and his 
 two companions; nor was it until the storm had passed away, 
 and they were enabled to look at events in their true propor- 
 tions, that they were consoled for their involuntary share in 
 the catastrophe. It is more than probable that, even if they 
 had not gone to the Archbishop, he would have acted on the 
 impulse which, as he told them, had been pursuing him since 
 the previous day, and gained his crown through some other 
 instrumentahty. His dying prayer was heard: his death 
 seemed to deal the last blow at the insurrection, and his blood 
 was, as far as we know, the last shed in this fratricidal war ; 
 for it was not a revolutionary riot, an imeute^ but, as Ozanam 
 said, " a civil war — that is to say, the most implacable of all 
 wars, and which only waits for an opportunity to break out 
 afresh." 
 
 Ozanam was disappointed but not crushed by the results of 
 the Revolution. 
 
 "You know," he writes to M. Foisset, "that I have always belonged to 
 what M, Lenormant calls (he party 0/ hope. I believed, I still believe, in the 
 
244 L\f<^ ^^^ Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 possibility of Christian democracy ; in fact, I believe in nothing else as far as 
 politics are concerned. I have poured out the overflow of my heart in an article 
 aux gens de bien, which you have perhaps read." 
 
 This article, from which we have already quoted, ends 
 with the following appeal : 
 
 " Beware — for this is the peril of loyal souls and noble hearts— beware of 
 despairing of your age ; beware of that faintheartedness which leads so many 
 to give up all effort when witnessing, as they say, the decline of France and of 
 civilization, and who, by dint of announcing the approach of the country's 
 ruin, end by precipitating it." 
 
 It was not indeed a moment to give up effort, but, on the 
 contrary, one which called peremptorily for strenuous ex- 
 ertion. Chomage,^ that untranslatable word so full of terrors 
 to the Government, was abroad all through the country, 
 reigning like a ghastly potentate among the populations of 
 the large manufacturing towns and in the rural districts, defy- 
 ing all efforts to cope with it, and accumulating distress to a 
 degree which justified the worst fears of the Pessimists, and 
 explained that touching exclamation of a Sister of Charity to 
 Ozanam, " Oh yes, I fear death, but not near so much as the 
 coming winter ! " 
 
 He was indefatigable in his endeavors to communicate this 
 fear to those who might yet help to avert its worst realization, 
 and trumpeted forth warnings, appeals, schemes, and denuncia- 
 tions day after day in the columns of the Ere Nouvelle, 
 
 ** This newspaper takes up every moment of time that I can snatch from the 
 examinations just now," he writes to his brother on the 3d of July. " I have 
 written five long articles this week. It is true, that in the midst of the ex- 
 citement of recent events I am incapable of any other work. We have, more- 
 over, the consolation of feeling that we are doing some good, for they have 
 been selling eight thousand copies a day in the streets of Paris." 
 
 It was not quite true to say that he found time for nothing 
 else than the duties of professor and journalist. He never let 
 a day pass without going to visit the poor, and that immense 
 population of workmen whom the Chomage had reduced to 
 
 • The standing still for want of work. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 245 
 
 misery and starvation in the great metropolis. This was the 
 enemy whom \\\Qge?is de bien had now to fight against and 
 conquer under penalty of seeing it rise up presently more fierce 
 and exasperated than before. 
 
 '• Now is the time for you to begin your war," says Ozanam ;**... now 
 that the troops are no longer bivouacking on the Boulevards, and that peace 
 has succeeded to the storm, it is right we should make our voice heard, and 
 proclaim those truths which have ceased to be dangerous, and to address to 
 good citizens a page which there is no longer any fear of the evil ones picking 
 up and turning into cartridges for the guns on the barricades. It is said that 
 the gens de bien have saved France, and it may be true, for they comprise 
 France herself, minus the egotists and the tactions. . . . But it is not enough 
 to save France once or several times ; a great country wants to be saved every 
 day. You go and come from one end of the city to the other now in peace 
 and security, but the danger which you flatter yourselves has disappeared from 
 the streets is hid away in the garrets of the houses on either side. You have 
 crushed the insurrection ; you have now to deal with an enemy with which 
 you are not acquainted, which you dislike hearing spoken of, and about which 
 we are determined to speak to you to-day— wwr^ / . . . Two months have 
 now elapsed since trade has been in enjoyment of that peace which was to re- 
 store it to life, and yet in Paris alone the number of individuals out ot work 
 amounts to two hundred and sixty-seven t/iousand. They get assistance, it is 
 true, and this fact lulls your conscience and your alarms to sleep ; but those 
 who have the privilege of distributing the public help are less reassured. They 
 go, for instance, to the twelfth arrondisseraent, one of the strongholds ol the 
 insurrection, and out of about ninety thousand inhabitants they find eight 
 thousand families inscribed on the list of the benevolent fund, twenty-one 
 thousand nine hundred and ninety-two who receive extra help, making a total 
 of some seventy thousand individuals who are living on the precariou? bread 
 of alms. Half of this district, all the Montagne Ste. Genevieve, and all the 
 neighborhood of the Gobelins, is composed of narrow, crooked streets, where 
 the sun never penetrates, where a carriage could not venture without risk, and 
 where a man in a coat never passes without making a sensation, and attract- 
 ing to the doorsteps groups of naked children and women in rags. On either 
 side of a filthy sewer rise houses five stories high, many of which shelter fifty 
 families. Low, damp, and noxious rooms are let out at one franc and a half 
 a week when they have a fireplace, and one franc and a quarter when they 
 have not. No paper, often not a single piece of furniture, hides the naked- 
 ness of the wretched walls. In a house of the Rue des Lyonnais we ourselves 
 saw ten married couples without even a bed. One family lived in the depths 
 of a cellar, with nothing but a handful of straw on the earthen floor, and a 
 rope fastened from wall to wall, from which the poor creatures hung their 
 bread in a rag to keep it out of the reach of the rats. In the next room a 
 woman had lost three children from consumption, and she pointed in despair 
 to three others who awaited the same fate. The upper stories presented th* 
 
246 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanani. 
 
 same consoling aspect. Right under the roof a garret without windows, only 
 pierced with two holes, each closed by a pane of glass, afforded shelter to a 
 tailor, his wife and eight children. Every night they crawled on their hands 
 and feet to the straw that was spread by way of a couch at the extremity of 
 the garret, close under the slanting roof. We need not dwell on those 
 amongst them who are better off ; those who, for six persons, can supply two 
 beds, into which are huddled pele-mele the sick and the healthy, boys of eigh- 
 teen with girls of sixteen. The most fortunate of these wretched beings want 
 food of some sort, and if they die of consumption let it not be said that they 
 perish from hunger in the most civilized city in the world. . . . And here at 
 least there is no room for that ready excuse of the hardhearted, that the poof 
 are wretched by their own fault, as if the want of light and of rhorality were 
 not the most deplorable and crying of miseries for every society that wishes to 
 live ! Here, when the visitor accompanies the official help by a kind word 
 that pleads for its humiliating insufficiency, he finds, the more he penetrates 
 into the intimacy ot the poor, that they have more blame than sympathy for 
 the insurrection, and that they regret the workshops far more than the clubs. 
 Even the small number of diseased minds that still cherish dreams of in- 
 cendiarism generally yield to a friendly and sensible conversation, and end by 
 believing in those virtues the very names of which they had been taught to 
 execrate — charity, resignation, patience. Amongst these inhabitants of the 
 Faubourgs, whom it is the custom to represent as a people devoid of all faith, 
 there are very few who have not a cross at the head of their bed, a picture, or 
 a bit of blessed palm—very few who died at the hospital of their wounds of 
 June without having opened their arms to the priest and their hearts to for- 
 giveness. In these foul cellars and garrets, sometimes next door to sloth and 
 vice, we have often come upon the loveliest domestic virtues, on a refinement 
 and'intelligence that one does not always meet with under gilded ceilings ; a 
 poor cooper, of past seventy years of age, tiring his infirm arms to get bread 
 for the child of a son who had died in the flower of his age ; a deaf and dumb 
 boy of twelve, whose education has been carried on by the self-devotion of his 
 poor relatives with such success that he begins to read, and knows God and 
 prays. We shall never forget one poor room, of irreproachable cleanhness, 
 where a mother, clothed in the threadbare costume of her native place Auver- 
 gne, was working away with her four daughters, modest young giris, ^Vho 
 only raised their eyes from their work to answer the stranger's questions. 
 The father was nothing but a hodman, working by the day at a mason s ; but 
 the faith which these honest people had brought with them from their native 
 mountains illuminated their lives, just as the sunbeam that stole m through 
 their tiny window lighted up the pious pictures pasted on the walls.' 
 
 This description of the pariahs of the Faubourgs was no 
 highly-colored picture drawn to excite interest in their 
 misery ; it was the truth, free from the least conscious exag- 
 
 « Bxtraits de VEre Xouvtlle, p. 265, 
 
I 
 
 Life and Works of Frederic Ozatiam. 247 
 
 geratidn. We find many passages of Ozanara's private cor- 
 respondence which fully corroborate the public statement 
 both as regards the fearful sufferings of the poor and the ad- 
 miration which their virtues frequently excite in the writer's 
 mind. 
 
 " . . . If I turn wearily from the controversies that are agitating Paris, I am 
 torn to pieces by the sight of the misery that is devouring it," he says to M. Fois- 
 set. '* The Society of St. Vincent de Paul finds grave duties here, and it may 
 be that God has permitted its rapid development only that it might be ready 
 for the task He was preparing for it. Besides, it is well to see on their own 
 hearth, disarmed, and surrounded by their wives and children, these poor fel- 
 lows whom one has seen at the clubs and on the barricades. One is astound- 
 ed to find how much Christianity there still is amongst this people, conse- 
 quently how much there is to work upon. Ah, if we only had some saints I 
 But can we doubt that God has a few in reserve for a century to- which He 
 has given Pius IX. and the Archbishop of Paris ? 
 
 " Let us pray, and let us not fancy that the end of France has come ; for at 
 the present moment the end of France would be the end of the world. When 
 we look around us, where is there a sound spot on the face of the earth ? 
 where do we see a people that are not as grievously diseased as ourselves ? 
 And yet can we suppose for a moment that the temporal destinies of Chris- 
 tianity have reached their final issue, and that God has nothing more to do 
 with the world except to judge it ? This is what the Legitimists said in 1830, 
 this is what you and your party strove so hard to prevent us all saying, this is 
 what I trust and hope I shall never say, not if I saw the whole of modern so- 
 ciety perish, assured, as I am, that it would cost God less to raise, up a new 
 race, a new society, than to limit the work of His Son's blood to the little 
 that these eighteen centuries have seen accomplished ! " 
 
 O^anam had started a sort of crusade against this gospel 
 of despair, and the popularity which the Ere NovvelU met 
 with in all ranks and parties showed that the deepest pitblic 
 sympathies were with him, and that the people responded at 
 heart to his propaganda of hope. He did not confine him- 
 self to pointing out the evil ; his chief aim was to discover its 
 radical causes, and by this means to suggest and compel the 
 remedy. He believed that great things might be done for 
 society by improving its existing conditions, but not by vio- 
 lently overturning them. " It is within, not without, that we 
 must seek for the sources of men's happiness and its princi- 
 pal enemies," he declares; ** and we shall have done nothing, 
 
248 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 absolutely nothing, so long as we have not carried light and 
 reform into those internal disorders which time does not right, 
 which are more incurable than diseases, which last longer 
 than the chomage, and go on multiplying pauperism long after 
 the grass of the graveyard has effaced the last traces of civil 
 war. 
 
 " God did not make the poor ; He sends no human creatures into the chances 
 of this world without providing' them with those two sources of riches which 
 are the fountain of all others — intelligence and will. . . . Why should we hide 
 from the people what they know, and flatter them like bad kings ? It is human 
 liberty that makes the poor ; it is it that dries up those two primitive fountains 
 of wealth, by allowing intelligence to be quenched in ignorance, and will to be 
 weakened by misconduct. The working-men know it better than we do. 
 . . . God forbid that we should calumniate the poor whom the Gospel 
 blesses, or render the suffering classes responsible for their misery, thus pan- 
 dering to the hardness of those bad hearts that fancy themselves exonerated 
 from helping the poor man when they have proved his wrong-doing. . . . 
 Of the three passions which are the ruin of popular morals, gambling, wine, 
 and women, France, to her eternal honor be it said, has banished the first, 
 and opened the Caisses d''Epargne,* with the same hand that closed the door 
 upon lottery-offices and gaming-houses. . . . But while we have put crushing 
 taxes on salt, meat, and all necessaries of life, we have not yet discovered in 
 the arsenal of our fiscal laws the secret of arresting the multiplication of dis- 
 tilleries, of raising the price of alcoholic liquors, of restricting the sale of those 
 detestable, adulterated, poisonous drinks that cause more sickness than all the 
 rigors of the seasons, and make more criminals than all the injustice of men 
 combined. What reforms have you introduced into the public amusements 
 of this Parisian population, so infatuated about pleasure, so ready to let itself 
 be led to the ends of the earth, not with bread, as it has been said, but with 
 amusement ? Last winter the Prefecture of Police delivered /our thousand 
 licenses/or night balls. The State puts no limit to those unhealthy diver- 
 sions, which the good sense of our fathers contracted within the six weeks of 
 the carnival. Every year it authorizes the opening of a new theatre in some 
 wretched haunt of the Faubourgs, where the sons and daughters of the people 
 are fed nightly upon the scum of a literature whose cynicism would revolt the 
 chastity of the opera pit. And when, for six months oi the year, the youth of 
 the working classes have spent their evenings and their nights in these horri- 
 ble dens, where their health runs as much danger as their morals, you are 
 surprised to see them turn out miserable puny creatures, incapable of supply- 
 ing the military contingent, but supplying innumerable recruits every year to 
 the prisons and the hospitals ! Let us not imagine we have done our duty by 
 the people when we have taught them to read and write and count. . . . 
 When it was a question of crushing out the last embers of the insurrection 
 
 • Savings-banks for the poorer classes, protected and managed by the State, 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 249 
 
 there was no need of delays and formalities to pitch twenty camps on the 
 Boulevards of Paris, and up to the very doors of the H6tel de Ville ; and here 
 we are, after four months, when in the twelfth arrondissement alone there are 
 four thousand children without shelter, — here we are still struggling amidst 
 adjournments, motions and debates, fighting to overcome I know not what 
 scruples of committees, boards, administrations, and the rest of it, who are 
 terrified that the State will be ruined and overturned if the education of the 
 yoMu^ouvriers is confided to Sisters and Brothers, to teachers capable, that is, 
 of teaching them something more than how to spell out the syllables of the 
 newspaper, and to scrawl the ordre du jour of the barricades on the wall with a 
 piece of coal ! " * 
 
 In spite of Ozanam's protests that he was no politician, we 
 cannot read these social articles without feeling that he pos- 
 sessed the truest instinct of a politician, if politics mean the 
 science of governing wisely and well; they are, in fact, an 
 exposition of those principles of Christian democracy which, 
 however Utopian they may sound, he considered the best 
 practical solution to the difficulties of civilized states. 
 
 The newspaper in which these articles appeared was short- 
 lived. There is something almost pathetic in the story of the 
 enterprise, born, as it was, of an impulse of hope and patriot- 
 ism, in an hour of national shipwreck, and killed, not by the 
 Revolution or the Government, but by the apathy and dis- 
 cord of the very party whom its mission was to serve and to 
 enlighten. The Ere Nouvelle gave a voice to the party of 
 hope, and held out a beacon to those Catholics who, instead 
 of despairing amidst the perils that surrounded them, en- 
 deavored to secure the triumph of the Church in the triumph 
 of democracy. But it was misunderstood by some, attacked 
 by the other Journals of the party, until at last, seeing that 
 its mission had become impossible, and that it could only 
 exist by fighting, not for or with, but against its own, it with- 
 drew from the lists, leaving behind it, in a few intelligent and 
 grateful minds, the memory of a brave career and the echo of 
 a voice that had faithfully spoken the truth, irrespective of 
 parties. 
 
 The P^re Lacordaire and Ozanam received many touching 
 
 * Extraits dt VEre NouvtlU, p. 287. 
 
250 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 testimonies when it was announced that the journal was about 
 to be suspended. One was characteristic enough to be 
 worth mentioning. A freethinker of Ozanam's acquaintance 
 wrote to him, condoHng with him on the vexations to which 
 he had been subjected from many quarters, and expressing, in 
 terms as sincere as they were glowing, his admiration for the 
 talent and noble sentiments with which the Ere Nouvelle had 
 been conducted. Ozanam was surprised by this unexpected 
 proof of sympathy, and made the following answer : 
 
 •* . . . Permit me to say, ray dear colleague, that if, instead of re- 
 maining outside, on the threshold of Christianity, you had, hke me, the 
 happiness to live within it, and to have studied it for eighteen years ; if you 
 had gone beyond Bossuet, who undoubtedly represents a portion and an 
 epoch of the Church, but with the errors of his time ; if you had fed on those 
 great doctors of the Middle Ages, those Fathers whose works would be a 
 study so worthy of your noble intellect, you would not trace to the Revolution 
 either liberty, or tolerance, or fraternity, or any of those grand political 
 dogmas which have been claimed by the Revolution, but which descend from 
 Calvary. You would find, for instance, that my opinion concerning the 
 intervention of the secular arm agreed with St. Bernard's, St. Martin's, and 
 St. Ambrose's ; that the Inquisition of Spain, sustained by the Spanish kings, 
 was blamed and disowned by the Popes, and that the greater number of 
 heresies unsheathed the sword before it was raised against them. And since 
 you speak so kindly of the Ere Nouvelle, I may add, that if you knew more 
 about it ; if you knew the encouragement we have received from Pius IX., 
 from the Archbishop of Paris, and the most estimable members of the clergy 
 of France, you would not represent to yourself the few intelligent Catholics 
 you imagine us to be as a little school of theosophists, founded on the ruins of 
 the old creed, and trying to build up out of its fragments a religion after their 
 own fashion and on their own level. 
 
 '* No, you must not attribute to me an honor that I repudiate, that of being 
 better than my Church, which is yours also. For it is to your Catholic 
 mother and your forefathers that you owe the traditions of Christian educa- 
 tion, that you owe that nobility of soul, that delicate straightforwardness, 
 that stanch honesty, that have always drawn me to you. 
 
 "You rate me too high, and you know me imperfectly, when you assume 
 that I am alone, or nearly so, in an order of ideas which inspire you with 
 esteem. I am of the number of those who feel the want of being surrounded 
 and sustained, and God has not let me want for these supports. You single 
 me out, and I am but a weak Christian. You deserve to know better ones, 
 and so you will some day. You will see that this Church, which was never 
 without her troubles, which the Pagans of St. Augustine's day fancied had 
 come to an end, just as did the Albigenses of the thirteenth century and the 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 351 
 
 Protestants of the sixteenth, has always had her lights, her virtues, and, above 
 all — may you experience it ! — her consolations, which alone are equal to the 
 trials of life and the pangs of a suffering age." 
 
 It was in these consolations chiefly that Ozanam found 
 strength to endure and combat one of those trials which was 
 severely felt by the Catholics of this particular age, namely, 
 the warfare of miserable bickerings and violent reprisals car- 
 ried on by a certain portion of the Catholic press. 
 
 In the autumn of the year 1849, about a year after the 
 death of the Ere Nouvelle^ a new paper, intended to replace 
 that journal, was started, and Ozanam was invited to become 
 a regular contributor. His health, however, made it impos- 
 sible for him to comply, even if he had been tempted to 
 throw in his lot once more with the journalists. "The 
 Faculty of Medicine have decided that politics form no part 
 of my regime for the present," he replies to a friend who 
 wanted to draw out his opinion on some political question ; 
 and he obediently restricts himself to the laborious duties of 
 his professorship. 
 
 " Don't believe those ^ho tell you 1 am going to re-enter the lists of 
 journalism," he says to M. Dufieux ; " I am too thankful that the present 
 moment presents no urgent reason for compelling me to quit my barbarians 
 and my Fathers of the Church. The truth is that the Archbishop lends his 
 patronage to a new paper, called the Moniteur Religieux^ which the Abb6 
 Gerbet is to edit, and to which I shall probably contribute an article now and 
 then. I am sorry not to be able to do more for an enterprise which will be so 
 useful if it only serves to relieve us from the responsibility which the Univers 
 and the Ami de ta Religion cast upon us. My dear friend, with the exception 
 of the Archbishop and a handful of men around him, you only meet people 
 who dream of the alliance of the throne and the Jiltar ; nobody seems to re- 
 member the fearful state of irreligion to which this doctrine led us, and there 
 is not a Voltairian encumbered with an income of a few hundreds who is not 
 wild to send everybody to Mass, on condition that he does not go himself. 
 Still I see the slackening of that blessed impulse of return and conversion 
 which made the joy of my youth and the hope of my manhood, and I ask my- 
 self if, when our hair has grown grey, we shall still be able to kneel before 
 the altar without hearing on every side those hisses which, twenty years ago, 
 pursued the Christian to the door of the church. Let us watch and pray." 
 
 It was natural enough that a democrat, so ardent in his 
 convictions, should feel some alarm on beholding the country 
 
252 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 lapsing into the same road which had led the men of the 
 Restoration to ruin. 
 
 *' If you knew their illusions, if you could hear them talk !" he cries in de- 
 spair. " And, mind, I don't speak of the elders, who, on the contrary, are 
 the most experienced and the most tractable ; I mean the young men, states- 
 men of from five-and-twenty to thirty, who, in the fire of their enthusiasm, 
 who won't hear of such things as a constitution, a national representation, a 
 press ! The worst of it is, that religion is compromised by these madmen, 
 who pique themselves on defending it from the Tribune, and who fill the 
 green-room of the opera with the noise of their adventures. 
 
 " The Univers is working hard at making the Church unpopular, picking 
 holes in everything that is most popular about her, attacking the Pere Lacor- 
 daire, for instance, in order to rehabilitate the Inquisition. Confess that the 
 moment is well chosen ! There are two schools that have striven to serve 
 God by the pen. One sets up, as its head, M, de Maistre, whom it exaggerates 
 and garbles. It presents truth to mankind, not by its attractive but its 
 most repulsive side. It aims, not at conciliating the unbelieving, but at stir- 
 ring up the passions of believers. The other school was that of Chateaubri- 
 and and Ballanche, and is still that of the Pere Lacordaire and the Abbe 
 Gerbet. Its aim is to search out all the secret fibres of the human heart that 
 can attach it to Christianity, awakening in it the love of the true, the good, 
 and the beautiful, and then showing it in revealed faith, the ideal of those 
 three things to which every soul aspires. Its mission is to bring back those 
 who have gone astray, and to increase the number of Christians. 
 
 " I confess that I prefer to belong to this latter school, and I never will for- 
 get that saying of St. Francis de Sales, ' that we catch more flies with a spoon- 
 ful of honey than with a barrel of vinegar.' " 
 
 Unfortunately, the sweet wisdom of the saying was not 
 adopted by the school which Ozanam repudiates, and whose 
 leaders fully vindicated his judgment by their unwarrantable 
 aggressiveness. He was himself the least aggressive of men ; 
 he was never given to sitting in judgment on others, and there 
 is no instance on record of his ever having taken the initiative 
 in an attack. But this doctrine of reserve and gentleness, 
 which be practised as faithfully as he taught it, made him sus- 
 pected in the eyes of those who considered it their duty to 
 hold the lash perpetually uplifted. A man who was so slow 
 to foredoom any one, however wicked, to eternal punishment, 
 was likely to hold loose opinions on the dogma, and, accord- 
 ingly, on the strength of this assumption, he was denounced 
 as a deserter, a Catholic who had ceased to beheve in hell. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 253 
 
 Ozanam was philosophically scornful of such attacks in 
 general, but he was stung to the quick by this one. It was 
 not, however, until he found that the calumny was gaining 
 ground, and called for a direct denial, that he condescended 
 to clear himself. He did this in a letter to a friend who had 
 momentarily wronged him by believing the charge. 
 
 *'. . .1 wished," he says, " to devote my life to the service of the faith. 
 It seemed to me that my days would have been well spent if, in spite of my 
 own insufficiency, I succeeded in gathering and keeping round my chair a 
 number of young spirits, in reinstating the principles of Christian science, and 
 forcing my audience to respect what they had hitherto despised — the Church, 
 the Papacy, and the Monastic life. I should like to have collected these same 
 thoughts into books more durable than my lectures, and all my desires would 
 have been accomplished if a few wandering souls found there a reason for abjur- 
 ing their prejudices and coming back, with God's help, to the truth of Catholicism. 
 
 " This is what I have been striving for these ten years, withoutany ambi- 
 tion for a higher destiny, but also without having ever had the misfortune to 
 desert the field. And yet you, who know me so well — you who have received 
 the overflowing of my soul from its verj- depth — you who have followed ray 
 career step by step, after opening the doors of it to me — you are ready, at the 
 bidding of a newspaper, to doubt my faith I A layman without authority, 
 without any sort of mission, who does not even sign his name, accuses me of 
 having, through cowardice, through self-interest, betrayed the common cause, 
 and taunts me with what he calls my denials, whereupon you take the alarm, 
 and begin to fear that I don't believe in hell ! You put me in the painful 
 necessity of having to bear testimony to myself. Well, St. Paul, when he Weis 
 unjustly accused, had to bear witness to himself. Dear friend, should I be, as 
 I now am, in my thirty-seventh year, worn out prematurely with cruel infir- 
 mities, if I had not been actuated by the desire, by the hope, by the delusion, 
 if you will, of serving Christianity ? Was there really no peril in bringing 
 forward the reli;jious question, in reinstating, one by one, the institutions of 
 Catholicism, when, a mere assistant professor, I had to consider the philoso- 
 phical opinions of those who held my future at their disposal — when alone I 
 stood by M. Lenormant, assisted at his cours, and supported him by my pre- 
 sence and my voice, when later, in 1848, the Revolution passed daily under the 
 very windows of the Sorbonne ? If I have had some success as a professor 
 and a lecturer, it is to courage, to work, and not to base concessions that I owe 
 it. It is true I am nothing but a poor sinner before God, but He has not yet 
 let me cease to believe in eternal punishment. It is false that I have ceased 
 to believe in it ; that I have denied, dissembled, or attenuated that or any 
 other article of faith. And permit me to add that if my friends at Lyons had 
 seen the last work I published, La Civilisation Chritienne chez les Francs^ 
 they would perceive that I there attacked the most important historians of the 
 present time on every point where they stand opposed to Catholic truth, to th« 
 honor of the Church eind the Papacy. 
 
254 ^V^ ^^'^ Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 " It is equally false that I took the initiative in this controversy, and gave 
 the bad example of polemics amongst Christians. I should not have said one 
 word if the Univers had not challenged me in its disastrous discussion about 
 the Inquisition. I abhorred its opinions ; I knew the mischief it was doing, 
 and how strongly the Archbishop disapproved of it. It summoned me by 
 name to declare whether or not I agreed with it. I seized the first opportunity 
 to assert that I did not, but without picking a quarrel, without even naming 
 the Univers^ much less any of its writers ; without doing the least thing to 
 give them a right to be abusive or personal. I am so far from sharing this 
 fighting propensity that I thought it more Christianlike not to answer at all. 
 I had a right to remain silent if I chose, and many advised me to do so. For 
 the sake of peace, however, I decided otherwise, though I was amply compen- 
 sated by the great number of estimable persons who loudly expressed their 
 indignation at the attack. I felt that it behoved me, nevertheless, to justify 
 myself to you first, because of your friendship, and, in the next place, for the 
 sake of those amongst our friends who may have shared your alarm, and to 
 whom I beg you will communicate this letter." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 1850- 
 
 In the autumn of 1850 Ozanam made a tour in Brittany 
 with his wife and child. His heahh was again a cause of 
 serious alarm, and he was forbidden to touch a pen during 
 the holidays. But no prohibition could reduce him to com- 
 plete idleness. He declared, and with truth, as regarded the 
 severe finish he exacted in his work, that writing was laborious 
 to him as a birth, yet in another sense it was as easy and 
 spontaneous as thought ; he could never come upon a place 
 or an event of striking interest without being irresistibly 
 moved to write off an account of it to some absent friend. 
 Thanks to this habit of photographing his impressions, a full 
 and graphic narrative of his various journeys has been pre- 
 ser\'ed to us. So it was on this Breton tour; every incident 
 of the road is related in a series of spirited letters to his 
 brothers. When his brother Charles scolded him for this 
 disobedience to the Faculty, Frederic disarms him by the 
 touching argument, " I cannot see a beautiful landscape with- 
 out longing to pass on my enjoyment to those I love." And 
 again he urges as his excuse, " I feel a pang when I lie down 
 at night and think that I have done nothing all day ; a scrap 
 of letter looks like something, and keeps up the delusion that 
 I am still capable of stringing a few words together." 
 
 The manners and customs of Brittany, which have proved 
 such a rich storehouse to poets and legend-mongers, have 
 seldom been more faithfully and delicately depicted than by 
 Ozanam in these rapid wayside notes. The memory of Italy 
 guards him, however, from undue enthusiasm, and compels 
 him to look at Brittany with an eye which grander and love- 
 
 2SS 
 
256 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 lier scenes have rendered critical. He is far, nevertheless, 
 from spurning the beauties of the fair Bretagne; he admires 
 the stern shore of St. Gildas, the glorious bay of Douarnenez, 
 the fresh valleys of Finistere, and the gay gardens that flower 
 along the banks of the stream of Quimper. But his warmest 
 sympathies are for the Bretons themselves. 
 
 " Italy has fine landscapes, but its peoples are less strongly marked ; one 
 must go to Greece to find such picturesque customs, and make the tour of the 
 world to find a faith so firm, men so brave, and women so pure. . . . We 
 have been very fortunate in our sight-seeing. We have fallen in with village 
 fetes {pardofis), wrestling-matches, weddings, and, to crown our good luck, 
 last Friday, in crossing the little village of Ploneven, we fell in with a nume- 
 rous company coming out from a funeral. Thirty or forty splendid men, all 
 dressed alike in blue doublet and white trousers, with long hair falling ; they 
 passed from the church to the tavern close by, to commemorate worthily the 
 virtues of the deceased." 
 
 The pardon of St. Anne d'Auray, the national shrine of 
 Brittany, which is frequented by thousands of pilgrims annu- 
 ally on the 28th of July, was one of the most delightful inci- 
 dents of his tour : 
 
 " The procession — that is, the finest part of the fete — came after vespers. 
 Picture to yourself a green plain, sloping down to the sea, just then glittering 
 with the parting beams of sunset. It was here the cortege formed itself, 
 opened as usual by little maidens dressed in white, with our five children * 
 bringing up the rear, and forming as pretty a group as you can fancy ; after 
 this came the boys, the women, the sailors, preceded by a large flag of the 
 republic, and bearing on their shoulders a little ship with a Madonna on the 
 quarter-deck ; then came the priests, the statue of our Lady on a litter, the 
 mayor, with a numerous group of men, and the crowd following on behind, 
 or dispersing so as to get a view of the procession as it wound through the 
 striking landscape. The most touching thing of all was a young man of 
 three-and-twenty, destined to the priesthood, but struck with a disease from 
 which he will never recover. He had dragged himself to the threshold of his 
 door, and stood there, all in black, happy to contemplate for the last time the 
 procession of his native place. The banners fluttered gaily, to the pride of 
 those bearers who were strong enough to make head against the wind. The 
 statue of our Lady shone out from afar in the blaze of the setting sun, which 
 delineated brightly the rigging of the votive ship. Above it all soared the 
 chanting of the litanies, and the faith of a people to whom doubt is unknown, 
 and the prayer of the young deacon who was offering up the sacrifice of his 
 
 * His little Marie and the four children of his host, M. de Francheville. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Czanam. 257 
 
 life : how could God not be touched by the spectacle ? How could those who 
 beheld it remain unmoved ? 
 
 ''When the hour for returning came, we saw the litttle barks rowing out 
 from every side, bearing away the good folks who had come from the neigh- 
 boring shores to Jissist at the fete. We did the same ; and I shall not try to 
 describe to you the serenity of that evening hour, the beauty of that sheet of 
 water, blue as the lake of Geneva, the flocks of sea-gulls that seemed to rise 
 up from the crest of the waves to fly before us. We, meanwhile, were seated 
 at the foot of our mast, sheltered by our picturesque sail, with our little ones 
 playing safely between our knees ; and thus softly we were borne to the beach 
 of the castle. . . ." 
 
 He culls a legend here and there, and sends it, like a 
 flower, in his letters home: 
 
 "In the fourteenth century there dwelt in these woods a poor idiot, who 
 went on his way morning and evening, singing the Ave Maria and begging 
 his bread. He died, and was buried like a dog outside the cemetery ; but 
 after a few weeks there blossomed forth on his grave a beautiful lily, whose 
 leaves bore, in letters of gold, Ave Maria. The news went quickly round 
 and stirred the inhabitants ; pilgrims and offerings poured in, and soon there 
 arose, like another flower, on the tomb of the poor idiot that pretty church of 
 Notre Dame du Fol-Goat, laden with the most exquisite chiselling of Gothic 
 art." 
 
 The interests of the poor held their place in Ozanam's 
 thoughts here as ever, and he relates, with grateful delight, 
 how at Morlaix he and Madame Ozanam were affectionately- 
 entertained for three days by a family to whom they were 
 complete strangers, their only link being the brotherhood of 
 St. Vincent de Paul. 
 
 " I visited here a conference just established, but already working actively," 
 he informs his brother; ''then they insisted on my holding forth at the Con- 
 gress, where the savants of Britanny had assembled to discuss the improvement 
 of the equine race and druidical stones ; to sink the question of the bards and 
 of manure. So you see it is no use my flying from work to the depths of the 
 provinces ; it seizes me on the way : and I had at Morlaix not a little Sor- 
 bonne, but a downright College de France, with the fairer half of mankind 
 amongst my audience. I did not pay, however, for this disobedience to my 
 Hippocrates, and I was brisk enough to set out on Saturday in the most re- 
 markable vehicle that we have yet seen. A passer-by exclaimed, on beholding 
 our venerable equipage : ' The inventor of that chariot ought to have taken 
 out a patent ! ' " 
 
 He bears testimony to the patriarchal hospitality which 
 
258 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 greeted him everywhere in the old manors and keeps of Brit- 
 tany, where he witnessed " domestic virtues and traditions of 
 honor, too rare in France nowadays, unfortunately." But 
 he is less satisfied with the state of political feeling amongst 
 his hosts. 
 
 " I have come across the strangest opinions, Legitimist passions excited by 
 the accounts from Wiesbaden, and the programme of M. de Barthelemy 
 everywhere received with transports of joy by people who desire absolute 
 royalty. And yet outside the castles I see few signs to confirm these hopes. 
 The peasantry would fight again for their altars ; they would not give a drop 
 of their blood to the parties that are fighting for power. In the bottom of 
 their hearts they incline towards royalty, but with a singular indifference, and 
 a perfect disposition to let any government have its way so long as it does not 
 close their churches. I have seen in Morbihan, the classic land of Chouan- 
 nerie,* the Republican flag carried before the statue of the Blessed Virgin, 
 and the villagers decked in tricolor ribbons at their weddings, while the gen- 
 tlemen wore green and white ones. I saw them dancing in rounds to the 
 tune of a song whose burden was Vive Napoleon ! and I heard grandes dames 
 bewail the apathy of those louts who actually have the bad taste not to go and 
 get themselves shot in order to restore to these ladies their tabourets at Court. 
 M. de Carne, whom I met at Quimper, assures me that the clergy in these 
 parts tend toward democracy." 
 
 We should form a very incorrect idea of Ozanam if we re- 
 presented him as always absorbed in wise thoughts or philo- 
 sophical observations. " No one enjoyed les bonnes be'tises 
 more than he did," says a friend who knew him all his life. 
 He never grew too wise for so " great a happiness in life as 
 laughter," but retained to the last that frank, almost boyish 
 gayety which rendered his society so attractive to the young. 
 Even when physical suffering and languor checked the spark- 
 ling flow of his animal spirits, it only required the lightest 
 touch to set them in motion, and make him break out into 
 some ebullition of fun or espieglerie. 
 
 " Few knew better how to clothe a rebuke in a witty report le, as once, for 
 instance, during this very tour in Brittany. He happened to be travelling in 
 the diligence with a young soldier, who was annoying a modest-looking girl 
 by his forward attentions ; Ozanam said something about chivalry being the 
 first duty of a soldier, upon which the aggressor bade him mind his own con- 
 cerns, adding that it was no business of his to lecture people. ' You are mis- 
 
 * Sobriquet given during the Revolution to the cause of the royalists of La Vendee, 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 259 
 
 taken, my friend ; that is precisely my business,' retorted Ozanam : * I am 
 paid by the State for lecturing you.' " 
 
 This Breton journey would seem to have furnished innu- 
 merable opportunities for fun of one kind or another. The 
 memory of one of them survives in the shape of a burlesque 
 poem addressed to M. Ampere, who was to have joined the 
 tourists, but played false to the rendezvous, and went off on 
 a scientific mission instead. The verses are bright and clever 
 in themselves, but they sounded inimitable when Ozanam 
 suddenly burst out with them, as if to relieve the vehemence 
 of his indignation, while the party were driving through the 
 lovely landscape round their host's the Vicomte de la Ville- 
 marque's property. It still provokes the laughter of those 
 who remember the force and manner of the improvisatore as 
 he uttered the opening lines, furiously emphasizing the last 
 word: 
 
 ** Tandis qu'enfourchant rhippogriffe, 
 Vous courez apres I'hieroglyphe, 
 Qu'un diable ecrivit de sa grifle 
 Sur quelque obelisque apociyphe, 
 Notre amitie s'en ebouriffe, 
 Et demande que Ton vous biflFe 
 Du livre des preux chevaliers." * 
 
 His fury, however, quickly subsided into a milder tone, and 
 he informs the truant that " litde Marie is in excellent health, 
 growing like a Httle flower"; that she is beginning to read, 
 and, if the absentee delays much longer, *' she will write to 
 him." The threat apparently did not terrify the traveller to the 
 desired effect, for, in the February of the next year (1851), we 
 hear Ozanam still sending forth appeals to him to come home 
 and leave the Neapolitans to the enjoyment of their " cloud- 
 less sky, and their blue sea, and their volcano, so admirably 
 placed with a view to the picturesque. . . . Don't allow your- 
 self to be kept away by the accounts that reach you of our 
 agitations and dangers," he says ; " there are riots in the As- 
 sembly and excitement in the salons, but the streets are perfect 
 
 • See p. 300, Letters, vol. ii. 
 
f6o Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 ly quiet. Affairs are quietly drifting into the road of proroga. 
 tion. It is not heroic, but it is convenient; it is provisional ^ 
 it enables one to postpone the evil day — Vheure des coiips dt 
 fusil. Honest republicans see in it a means of accustoming 
 the country to the name of republic, and of preserving at least 
 a slender remnant of universal suffrage. 
 
 *• The Orleanists think it gives the Comte de Paris time to attain his ma- 
 jority. 
 
 " I say nothing of the Bonapartists, who have the upper hand. There re- 
 main, therefore, only the Legitimists and the Sociahsts, two parties out of 
 five, to oppose the prorogation, and I don't believe they are powerful enough. 
 You see that I am not alarmed, and that I keep to your school, which is no 
 small merit in the pupil when the master is no longer there. Amongst the 
 benefits you have conferred on me since I have had the joy of knowing you, I 
 reckon that of having reassured me in 1848, when everybody was terrified, and 
 having taught me never to despair." 
 
 And yet there were moments v^rhen the temptation to de- 
 spair was strong, when Ozanam was obliged to gather up all 
 the promises of faith and grasp them passionately, in order 
 that hope might not fail him. 
 
 " See ! " he exclaims to M. Tomaseo, "see how far the great lesson of 1848 
 is from having taught men anything. There they are, one after another, 
 making it a point of honor to declare before heaven and earth that they were 
 never mistaksn, and that these momentous events have taught them nothing, 
 and upbraided them with nothing. There they are at their old hatreds again, 
 busy with their petty every-day passions, and fallen back into the old laziness 
 that makes them fly from everything like a novelty, doing their utmost, in 
 fact, to force Divine Providence to strike a second and a heavier blow. I have 
 only one hope, but it is a grand one. It is that, in the midst of the political 
 decomposition of society, Christianity is being more firmly rooted, and that 
 the faith has never manifested itself more vigorously than during this year. 
 The multitude, not knowing to whom to go, has turned to the onlv Master 
 who has the words of eternal life. Ah ! France is truly the Samaritan woman 
 of the Gospel ; she has gone many times to drink at fountains tliat could not 
 quench her thirst ; she will at last attach herself to Him who promises her the 
 living water, so that she may never more thirst. 
 
 "I know not how Europe is to be reconstituted. It is evident that the 
 dreams of parties have vanished, but what one cannot fail to recognize is that 
 the idea which civilized the barbarians is still moving the chaos of our own 
 days. Opinions stand armed, and are on the eve of a stmgq:le. but there are 
 Christians in every camp. God scatters us under hostile flags, so that ther« 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 261 
 
 may not be in tliis society, all broken up into parties, a single faction where a 
 few at least shall not invoke and bless God the Saviour 1" 
 
 There never was a time, or at least there never had been 
 then, when this division was more complete, when parties 
 were more numerous, more violent and implacable. Ozanam 
 looked out over the scene with the anxious, pondering gaze 
 of a man too earnest in his patriotism to shake off his own 
 share of responsibility in the general account. While God 
 was teaching the nation this tremendous lesson, it behoved 
 every man to listen and learn. 
 
 " Let us learn, above all, to defend our convictions," he says, "but without 
 hating our adversaries; let us learn to love those who think difTerenUy from 
 us, to admit that there are Christians in every camp, and that God can be 
 served to-day as ever. Let us complain less of the times, and more of our- 
 selves ; let us be less faint-hearted, let us be worthier." 
 
 He refrained as much as possible from discussing politics, 
 because it was such misery to him to see the low level on 
 which they were placed; to see them so misunderstood by 
 those who, unlike him, believed it their mission to lead and 
 direct them. 
 
 "When I see," he says, "the monarchical parties, whose fusion was, by the 
 way, to restore French society, let loose so cruelly, and the Orleanists them- 
 selves so divided that their recriminations have been filling the columns of 
 twenty newspapers this fortnight past — when I see all this I should like to be- 
 lieve in the duration of the Republic, above all, for the good of religion and 
 the salvation of the Church of France, which would be so terribly compromised 
 if events threw into power a party ready to recommence all the errors of Re- 
 storation. . . . We have not faith enough ; we are always looking for 
 the re-establishment of religion by political means ; we dream of a Constan- 
 tine who, with one blow and one effort, would bring back the nations to the 
 fold. The fact is, we don't really know the history of Constantine — how he 
 became Christian precisely because half the world was already Christian — how 
 the crowd of sceptics, scoffers, and courtiers who thronged after him into the 
 Church only brought with them hypocrisy, scandal, and relaxation. No ; it is 
 not laws, but morals, that make conversions consciences must be laid siege 
 to one by one. Look at those two great examples, Paris and Geneva, two 
 cities where, from 1830 to 1848. not a single law was enacted in favor of Ca- 
 tholicism, and where the conversion of souls has been accomplished with a 
 strength and perseverance that have astonished every one. Look at the United 
 States, look at England, Faith only flourishes where it finds a hostile or a 
 
262 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 foreign government. We must not ask God to send us bad governments, but 
 we must not try to give ourselves a government that will relieve us of our 
 duties by taking on itself a mission for the souls of our brothers which God 
 has not confided to it. Unicuique mandavit Deus de proximo mo. Let us 
 continue and extend personal proselytism, but let us abjure and abhor the 
 eloth and cowardliness that would prompt us to call to our aid the proselytism 
 of the State." 
 
 The nobler kind of proselytism was being carried on gene- 
 rously, and with fruitful results, in many quarters. Pere La- 
 cordaire was drawing the best intellect of Paris to his feet 
 during the Lenten Conferences, which he had resumed at 
 Notre Dame. Ozanam alludes to the closing one as " an 
 event in the ecclesiastical history of our times." The subject 
 was the number of the elect. To the Gallican opinion on this 
 subject, Lacordaire opposed the more consoling doctrine of 
 the older divines as to the probable salvation of the greater 
 number, and, says Ozanam, 
 
 •* He protested warmly against those men of despair who see around them 
 nothing but evil and damnation. In language more eloquent than any I ever 
 beard, even from him, he proclaimed the mercies of God in favor of those who 
 work and suffer ; that is to say, in favor of far the greater number. And when 
 he commented on the text, * Blessed are the poor !' the charity that overflowed 
 on his lips and beamed in his whole person threw him into one of those trans- 
 ports that one reads of in the lives of the saints. The thousands who thrilled 
 to his voice under the va ulted roof of Notre Dame asked themselves whether 
 they were listening to an angel or to a man." 
 
 This year was a peaceful and happy one to Ozanam, 
 although his health was still a source of suffering and anxiety, 
 and rendered his professional duties oftentimes a burden be- 
 yond his strength. " Providence is treating us this year 
 with great tenderness, like weak Christians who require indul- 
 gence," he says ; and later on he declares that, in spite of 
 grave cares in the future, and much suffering in the present, he 
 is " as happy as it is possible to be here below." 
 
 He had hired a country house at Sceaux, near Paris, where 
 his friend Ampere came to spend some days in every week 
 with him. The latter recalls these peaceful visits in a few 
 touching lines : 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 263 
 
 ** It was during the summer of 185 1, seated on a bench, which I can set. now 
 in his little garden at Sceaux, where he had gone to seek a little rest with his 
 wife and child, that Ozanam, already worn out, read to me his description of 
 paganism. They were the last serene days of our friendship, the last whose 
 sweetness was not poisoned by the anxiety we were obliged to hide from 
 him." 
 
 Perhaps the shadow of the parting was already upon them, 
 though they knew it not, and made these days of intercourse 
 seem doubly sweet. Ozanam relished them with a fulness ol 
 enjoyment tliat he had seldom before experienced- 
 
 'J'he two friends worked diligently all the morning, then in 
 the afternoon followed endless walks and conversations, and 
 in the evening M. Ampere would charm his hosts by some 
 pages from the MS. of his historical novel Hilday which had 
 already had the triumph of Mme. R^camier's and Chateau- 
 briand's applause at the soirees of the Abbaye-aux-Bois. The 
 two mvants presented as perfect a type of manly friendship as 
 any we can recall ^ it had kept all the promises of early 
 youth, and now, in its maturity, preserved the bloom and 
 enthusiasm of its dawn. They had no secrets from one 
 another; there was only one point in whicli their union was 
 not perfect ; but it was the essential one, and Ozanam could 
 never refer to it without a pang. The fire of doubt, as he 
 had called it, which had passed over his own soul, leaving it 
 purified and strengthened, had wrought differently in the 
 noble soul of Ampere ; he had lost the faith he had inherited 
 from his father, and which that illustrious man had practised 
 with the docility of a litde child all his life. But the son was 
 ill at ease in his unbelief; his heart yearned after the lost 
 treasure; nothing filled up the void, neither the aduladon ot 
 society, nor fame, nor science, nor the prodigious resources ot 
 his rich, fantastic imagination ; his cup of life was seemingly 
 full to overflowing, but it wanted the one thing which can 
 satisfy the infinite capacity of the human soul — the knowledge 
 of God, the certainty of an immortal destiny. It was not 
 likely that Ozanam could come into close contact with this 
 want and not do his utmost to supply it. A quotation froni 
 
264 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 one of his letters to Ampere will suffice to show how taith 
 fully and tenderly he strove to render this service to his 
 friend ; it was written immediately after the latter had parted 
 from him to embark on a long and perilous voyage. 
 
 " . i . How can you wonder at my sadness in taking leave of you ? 
 ... 1 could not tell you the cause of this sadness : I could not speak of 
 it, because I did not wish to compel you to answer me, and if I write about it 
 now it is because it is too late for you to reply. If what I am going to say is 
 indiscreet, the waves that are bearing you to America will carry away the 
 memory of it, new impressions will efface it, and when we meet six months 
 hence you wili have had time to forget what may have pained you in ray 
 letter. 
 
 " Dear friend, you are continually starting on long and fatiguing journeys 
 that, are not without danger to your health, already so severely tried. Bear, 
 then, with my anxiety. You say you are seeking to create new sources of in 
 terest for yourself, and, with that great intellect that God "has given you, you 
 dive into every science, and now you are making the tour of half the world to 
 find some novelty that may furnish a fresh interest. And yet there is a su- 
 preme interest^ a good capable above all others of attaching and satisfying 
 your noble heart • and I fear — forgive me my friend, if 1 wrong you — I fear 
 that you do not think of it sufficiently You are a Christian by birth, by the 
 blood of your incomparable father ; you fulfil all the duties of Christianity 
 towards men ; but are there not others to be fulfilled towards God ? Must we 
 not serve Him, and live in close intercourse with Him ? Would you not find 
 this intercourse a source of infinite consolation r Would you not find there 
 security for eternity ? 
 
 '* You have more than once allowed me to surmise that these thoughts 
 were not foreign to your heart. Your studies have brought you into com- 
 munication with many great Christians ; you have seen many eminent men 
 around you end their lives in the Christian religion ; these examples invite 
 you, but you are arrested by the difficulties of the laith. Dear and excellent 
 friend, I have never discussed these difficulties with you, because you have in- 
 finitely more knowledge and intellect than I have. But let me tell you, never- 
 theless, there are but two things, Religion and Philosophy. Philosophy has 
 lights ; it has known God, but it does not love Him ; it has never called forth 
 one of those tears of love that a Catholic sheds at the moment of Communion, 
 and whose incomparable sweetness is worth, in itself alone, the sacrifice of an 
 entire life. If I, who am so weak and bad, have experienced this sweetness 
 what would it not be with you, whose nature is so elevated and whose heart 
 is so good ! You would find there that internal evidence before which every 
 doubt vanishes. Faith is an act of virtue, consequently an act of the will. 
 We must, once for all, will^ we must give our soul to God, and then He gives 
 us the fulness of light. 
 
 *' Ah 1 if some day you fell ill in a distant city of America, without a friend 
 by your bedside, remember tliat there 13 not a town of any importance id 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozatiam. 265 
 
 the United States where the love of Jesus Christ has not guided a priest to 
 console the Catholic traveller. ..." 
 
 This appeal met with a frank response. Ampere promised 
 that he would pray for this fulness of Hght, and seek it perse- 
 veringly. Fifteen years after the date of the above letter he 
 wrote to one who had his confidence and Ozanam's : " I will 
 persevere honestly in seeking for the truth ; no one longs for 
 it more sincerely than I do, and every night of my life I send 
 up to God the prayer, Give me light/'' The prayer was 
 heard, but only when death came and drew aside the veil 
 which had hung between the soul of Ampere and the hght of 
 eternal truth and mercy. 
 
 The famous Exhibition of the Crystal Palace was drawing 
 all the nations of the earth to London in the summer of 1851, 
 and Ozanam allowed himself to be persuaded by Ampere into 
 falling in with the stream of visitors. He and Madame 
 Ozanam set off, with this indefatigable traveller for cicerone, 
 in the first week of August. The wonders of the great com- 
 mercial city, with its wealth and solid prosperity, were not 
 much calculated to awaken the enthusiasm of the poet-mind 
 which had been inspired by the legends of St. Francis and the 
 wild beauties of his native hills. Ozanam was astounded and 
 overpowered by London rather than charmed. He describes 
 it as 
 
 " The most imposing city in the world, when, through the mist which en- 
 velops ard magnifies it, you first catch sight of the semicircle on the banks of 
 the Thames, with its forest of steeples, columns, porticos, and, towering above 
 them all, the dome of St. Paul's. But when you come nearer and examine 
 these monuments, all black and disproportioned, you find they are nothing 
 but a failure— the failure of riches to procure what gold cannot buy, to trans- 
 plant to an ungrateful soil the inspirations of Italy and France. In the midst 
 of these wretched imitations there are, however, two striking exceptions, 
 Westminster Abbey and the new Houses of Pariiament. . . . As to the 
 Exhibition, nothing can be finer than the order in which the infinite variety of 
 human riches has been collected together in one edifice. Savants are delighted 
 with the marvels already wrought by machinery, and those still greater that 
 it promises ; but if we except the Chinese and Indian departments, I am quite 
 disenchanted by the monotonous uniformity in which material civilization 
 threatens to envelop the whole world. . . . This Exhibition include* 
 
266 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 nothing but articles of luxury, things which the wealthy classes alone want 
 and pay for. The fictitious wants of this class are the same all over the 
 world ; a set of diamonds destined for the Queen of Spain is the exact twin of 
 one that is to deck the Empress of Russia. God made the earth with an end- 
 less variety that was pleasant to the eyes ; industry threatens to cover it with 
 a uniformity that will engender disgust and weariness. For my part, after 
 beholding this epitome of human power at the end of nearly sixty centuries, 
 I said to myself, ' What ! can man do no more than this ? The supreme 
 effort of his genius is to cross silk with gold, to mix emerald leaves with 
 diamond flowers ! ' And I went out and was glad to see the greensward of 
 the Park, the groups of noble trees with the sheep grazing under their shade, 
 and all those things that industry had not made." 
 
 The true exhibition, the one which, in his opinion, gave 
 the most accurate impression of England's power and wealth, 
 was not the industrial collection of the fairy edifice on the 
 Serpentine, but the Docks, where her commerce keeps its 
 treasury. 
 
 "Above the bridges there is a city of luxury, a great capital, where foreign- 
 ers throng in delight ; but below the bridges, going down the Thames, there 
 exists a second city of London, which is the life of the first. This one has no 
 monuments but her vessels, whose masts, closer and more stately than all the 
 colonnades above, carry the British flag to the most distant latitudes. This 
 one has a tunnel where you walk under the river without hearing even the 
 murmur of its waters. This one has docks, those huge basins where twenty- 
 five thousand ships find shelter. All round rise countless warehouses. We 
 wandered through them for hours, through streets composed entirely of boxes 
 of tea, of sugar, of bales of Australian wool. Below, lamp in hand, we ex- 
 plored those gigantic cellars where the vintages of Spain and Portugal lie 
 buried — regular catacombs, but catacombs of Mammon, flanked not with 
 tombs, but with barrels worth their weight in gold. This is the real exhibi- 
 tion, and one morning spent in these opulent gloomy regions struck and im- 
 pressed us far more than the elegant galleries of the Crystal Palace." 
 
 There was something almost terrifying to Ozanam in this 
 tremendous accumulation of wealth. While admitting the 
 necessity for its pursuit in legitimate trade, and the advanta- 
 ges accruing from the progress of industry, he could not di- 
 vest himself of the feeling that, carried beyond a certain 
 point, the result had in it "something dangerous, something 
 of the tempter, something Satanic," and that it was impossi- 
 ble to display those dazzling treasures before the eyes of men, 
 
Life a?id Works of Frederic Ozanam. 26^ 
 
 already too enamored of the goods of this world, without 
 detriment to their desires of a nobler gain. 
 
 " I always seemed to see standing on the threshold of the Exhibition," he 
 says, " the same demon who transported our Saviour to the top of the moun- 
 tain, and to hear him saying again, ' All this will I give thee if thou wilt fall 
 down and worship me.' It looks to me like a seal of reprobation on these 
 riches that they do not serve to ameliorate the lot of humanity, the lot, that is, 
 of the greater number, and that the most opulent city in the world is also that 
 which treats its poor most harshly." 
 
 The extent of that national and crying disgrace of Eng- 
 land, Pauperism, presented indeed a painful contrast with tliis 
 colossal wealth. Ozanam had seen poverty, /a misere, both in 
 Paris and at Lyons, but it was during a period of coma follow- 
 ing upon revolution, and was explained, at least in its extreme 
 state, by the convulsion which had brought labor of every 
 description to a standstill. Here, however, there was no 
 such fact to justify the horrible excess of pauperism which 
 disfigured the rich metropolis. What vice was there in the 
 system to account for it ? 
 
 " Why is London overrun with b^:gars, half-naked, who pursue the stran- 
 ger, rushing under the very wheels of the carriages, and bearing on their 
 countenances the traces of an inexorable despair ? The poor-law and the 
 workhouse cannot deal with the evil. The English cannot prevent mendid-. 
 ty from penetrating into London ; they tolerate it, and I give them credit for 
 doing so. But why then do they insult so derisively the mendicity of Catho- 
 lic countries ? Never in the streets of Rome did I see anything approaching 
 to those women in rags who hold out their hand to you along the Strand ; to 
 those little girls that one sees in a frock tattered up to their waist, with their 
 naked feet in the cold black mud. And let it not be alleged that this is a dis- 
 play of misery got up to move the passers-by. Penetrate, I don't say even into 
 the poor districts of Whitechapel or Soulhwark, but to the back of those sump- 
 tuous thoroughfares, Regent Street and Oxford Street, and you will find nar- 
 row little alleys, dark and foul, which lead into courts still narrower, hedged 
 in with high houses. Here the beggars congregate ; they are lodged by the 
 week ; a room costs, on an average, from three to four shillings a week — that 
 is to say, from two hundred to two hundred and fifty francs a year. Many 
 families are too poor to bear alone the burden of such a rent, so they unite to 
 share and lighten it, and thus lose the satisfaction which the most wretched 
 m/na^es enjoy with us, that of being all to themselves {cAez sot). I saw one 
 room and a narrow closet that was inhabited by fourteen persons. For some 
 time past the police regulations have forbidden them to lodge in cellars ; but 
 
268 Life a?id Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 distress, which is stronger than all other authorities, drives many workmen to 
 seek this last refuge. ..." 
 
 These wretched haunts had a stronger attraction for Oza- 
 nam than any other sight in London. 
 
 " Better than I," says M. Ampere, "he would leave me to return alone to 
 the Crystal Palace, that he might have more time to visit the cellars and gar- 
 rets inhabited by the poor of Catholic Ireland ; he would come away from 
 them with his heart full, and always, I suspect, a little poorer than he went." 
 
 Few of the monuments of London found favor with Oza- 
 nam. St. Paul's he speaks of as an 
 
 *' Icy edifice which even Catholicism would have something to do to warm 
 up," supposing M. de Maistre's prophecy were realized, and that tlie nine- 
 teenth century saw Mass celebrated there. " The true basilica of London, the 
 St. Denis of the English monarchy, is Westminster," he says. "There a 
 stately nave rises up to rival our noblest naves of St. Ouen and Amiens. . . . 
 The Christian architects who erected this church made it long and wide to 
 contain the multitude of a faithful people, high and aerial to waft the ho- 
 mage of earth nearer to God. Behind the choir and the high altar only, a 
 partition contained a narrow space where the shrine of St. Edward was 
 placed. A tomb of stone, adorned with mosaics, was the resting-place of the 
 holy king's remains, the popular king who represented the historical souve- 
 nirs of the Anglo-Saxon nationality. The Norman princes never dreamed of 
 disturbing the peace of this sanctuary ; all their ambition was to rest near St. 
 Edward. All round the shrine you see the sepulchres of Henry III., Ed- 
 ward III., Richard II., and behind these Henry VII. built a chapel which is 
 the pearl of England. But Protestantism having banished God from this 
 church, and being no longer able to fill it with a living people, imagined the 
 device of encumbering it with the dead. . . . There is what is called the 
 Poets' Corner and the Statesmen's Corner ; but the Dean and Chapter 
 of Westminster, in virtue of some arbitrary power, can, itseems, cede to 
 those who were only rich the right to figure amongst the great. Hence the 
 prodigious collection of mausoleums devoid of historical interest or monu- 
 mental merit. . . . Not satisfied with decorating the walls, they have closed 
 up entire arcades by piling up these monuments of vanity and bad taste." 
 
 P^re Lacordaire, in his notice of Ozanam, relates a char- 
 acteristic incident connected with his first visit to the Abbey. 
 
 " He went in with the crowd of strangers and foreigners, and found him- 
 self presently behind the choir, in front of the tomb of St. Edward. The 
 sight of this monument, mutilated by Protestantism, filled him with anguish, 
 and falling on his knees before the relics, such as they are, of the St. Louis of 
 England, he prayed there alone in expiation for that people that no longer 
 knows its saints, to the great contempt doubtless of the lookers-on, who took 
 him for an idolater, if not for a madman," 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 269 
 
 We are not surprised to learn that the indignant beadle 
 hunted liim out of the church. Ozanam beheld with grati- 
 tude and hope the progress of the faith in the midst of this 
 people where it had once been so flourishing, 
 
 •'Everyday numbers new conversions," he says; "and the example of 
 those two grand souls, Newman and Manning, continues to move the hearts 
 of the most religious of the Anglican clergy. Nothing is more touching than 
 to see that fine church, St. George's Cathedral, just now threatened, but so 
 full of hope, a glorious witness to the increase of Catholics, grown too nume- 
 rous to be contained in the obscure chapels to which persecution had so long 
 consigned them. Nothing can exceed the recollection and fervor of the faith- 
 ful there at the divine offices ; the communions are very numerous ; that most 
 eloquent prelate, Cardinal Wiseman, here addresses English Catholics in the 
 long-forgotten language of St. Anselm and St. Thomas of Canterbury, while 
 round him are gathered a group of zealous priests and laymen, who reminded 
 me of your church at Geneva,* less considerable but not less flourishing. 
 Both prove in an admirable manner that Catholicism has no need of the secu- 
 lar arm to achieve the conquest of consciences. And this reminds me, my 
 dear friend, just now, that it is so all-important to the oppressed churches of 
 England, Switzerland, Germany, and Poland to vindicate the principle of 
 civil liberty. I entreat you to prevent your excellent journal from constituting 
 itself the ally of those who combat this principle in France and Italy. We 
 have to choose between liberty for our opponents and chains for our brothers." 
 
 Though Ozanam was in antagonism with English institu- 
 tions in their religious bearing, he found much to admire in 
 the national character and customs. 
 
 " There is no denying the fine qualities of the people," he says : •' they are 
 full of respect for the law and of love of their country ; they are indefatigable 
 in their industry, and they are religious too, if we may judge from the im- 
 mense number of church-steeples that soar above London, and still more 
 from the rest on Sunday, which is so strictly observed from one end of the 
 country to the other by the most work loving people in the universe." 
 
 He is surprised and pained by the spirit of pride that 
 separates the classes, but rather amused by certain manifesta- 
 tions of it. 
 
 •* I visited some poor districts in company with a member of the Society of 
 St. Vincent de Paul," he remarks, *' and I was able to see what an amount of 
 virtue and courage an Englishman requires in order to come personally to the 
 assistance of this fearful misery ; not that they are grudging of their money, 
 
 • Letter to M. Dufresnc, ii, p. 378. 
 
270 Life and JVorks of Frederic Ozatiam. 
 
 but in this aristocratic land the contact of indigence defiles and compromises. 
 Why, a shopman does not give you your change without folding it in a bit of 
 paper ! How then could a gentleman bring himself to press the hand of an 
 Irish beggar ? Our confreres of St. Vincent de Paul have, nevertheless, been 
 enabled to overcome the prejudices of their birth ; they do a great deal of 
 good, and it was a joy to me to pass an evening in the midst of them." 
 
 Ozanam was not sorry to escape for a day from the " sad- 
 ness of the great city of fogs and smoke, with its ill-lighted 
 monuments," to the serener atmosphere of Oxford. There 
 all seemed to him " steeped in peace " ; and he was enchanted 
 with the old city of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 
 
 "With its noble colleges of Gothic architecture or in the style of the 
 Renaissance. One wanders through their vast cloisters, their fine gardens, 
 where there is nothing to remind you of the difference of centuries. The col- 
 leges of Christ's Church and St. Magdalen charmed us above all, and we were 
 seriously tempted to take up our abode there ; for though celibacy is the rule 
 in these communities, there is an exception in favor of the canons of Christ's 
 Church. I was much interested also in the Bodleian library. Mind and tell 
 Daremberg that his friend Mr. Coxe gave us a most gracious welcome. He 
 showed us the celebrated Arundel marbles, and took us over the University ; 
 he charmed us by that mixture of science, urbanity, and ttatvete which, renders 
 him the worthy inhabitant of this venerable place." 
 
 The journey to England did not, on the whole, produce 
 any decided improvement in the traveller's health. It rested 
 and amused him, but he returned to his little country house 
 at Sceaux no better, radically, than when he had left it. At 
 the end of October he writes to M. Ampere, still absent in 
 America : " I work a little, but with difficulty ; I cover a page 
 while you are flying over fifty leagues. I find, nevertheless, 
 a certain benefit in the mere repose of the country, in this 
 sojourn at Sceaux, where the leaves are departing, but whence 
 peace departs not. From the window where I write I hear 
 the merry voice of my little Marie, playing in the garden ; 
 and Amelie, seated close by, rejoices me by her look of 
 health. . . ." The belief that his own health was vitally im- 
 paired was now close upon him, but he met it with courage 
 and resignation ; his only regret, as far as he considered him- 
 self personally, was that he had achieved so little, and was 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 271 
 
 likely to be called away at the moment when the labors of his 
 life might have been rendered useful in some worthier and 
 more permanent form. But even in his most intimate corre- 
 spondence he avoided dweUing on this subject; he would say 
 just enough to satisfy the claims of friendly anxiety, and then 
 turn to more cheerful topics. This did not cost him any 
 extraordinary effort; he retained to the last the charming 
 faculty of being interested in everything, great and small, that 
 came within his observation. M. Ampere's tour in the United 
 States was just now a source of the liveliest interest to him, 
 although he had been so averse to his friend's embarking on 
 the expedition. 
 
 " When I so strenuously opposed your Transatlantic voyage," he says, ** I 
 was only actuated by the egotism of friendship ; don't fancy that I am an 
 enemy to the Yankees, and don't, I implore of you, get me into any sort of 
 trouble with that great people. They will probably realize the political ideal 
 to which, in my opinion, modern society is tending. All that you tell me of 
 Quebec and Montreal touches me deeply ; above all, the joy you had in find- 
 ing the name of your illustrious father still living there. I am delighted to 
 see you seated at the family banquet of our brothers beyond the ocean. But 
 don't suppose me indifferent to the good luck you had in coming in time for 
 the festivities of Boston. I am far from making small account of the speeches 
 of the President of the United States, and very far from despising those pro- 
 cessions of workingmen of which the calm and well- disciplined democracy of 
 America gives us the spectacle. They are better than our armed bands of 
 Cher and Nievre. Keep your eyes wide open, observe everything, and you 
 will come back very opportunely in 1852 ; for, to speak out quite plainly, 1852 
 has begun this last fortnight, and affairs begin to be nicely complicated. Even 
 if you wait till the month of April, I don't guarantee that you will find your 
 fauteuil at the Academy ; it may have gone to boil the soup of the insur- 
 gents ! Happy mortal ! you will not see the smoke of our conflagrations ; you 
 will be yonder, on those peaceful shores, ready to receive your fugitive 
 friends ; you will patronize Madame Ozanam, and help her to set up a flower- 
 stall in Broadway. As to me, my stock of English would not enable me to 
 exercise my small talents of barrister and professor, so I see no career open to 
 me but to beat the big drum behind my brother's carriage when he goes driv- 
 ing about to pull out teeth. And this is to be the finale of the Ozanam family, 
 that had seemed to promise such great things ! . . . 
 
 '♦ Adieu, my friend ; may the winds fill your sails in the right direction ; let 
 them blow you whither they will, they will never carry you to a corner of the 
 earth where our thoughts do not follow you. Even our little Marie is au 
 courant of your f>eregrinations ; you are teaching her geography, and she now 
 knows about America as the country where M. Ampere is travelling." 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 1852. 
 
 Before the advent of the month of April, which was to see 
 Ampere's academical arm-chair kindling the pot-fires of the 
 Revolution, Ozanam was once more dangerously ill. He had 
 carried on his cours through the winter witliout interruption, 
 and with the usual success, but towards Easter his strength 
 broke down. He was seized with a pleurisy which placed his 
 life in immediate danger. During the course of this illness, 
 and while he was a prey to a burning fever, he found strength, 
 nevertheless, inspired by his ardent faith, which might truly 
 now be called the ruling passion strong in death, to write the 
 following letter to a friend whose faith had been shipwrecked 
 in the study of profane science. The ostensible pretext for 
 the letter was the misfortune of an old schoolfellow of theirs 
 who had been recently struck with blindness. Ozanam in- 
 forms M. H. that their poor friend has no alternative but to 
 get admittance to the Hospital of Incurables, and that he 
 accepts his fate with the most heroic resignation : 
 
 "You have been kind and generous to our old comrade," adds the writer, 
 "and he is grateful and will pray for you. And I, too, unworthy as I am, I 
 will pray for you, since you wish it. Oh ! what touching memories that word 
 brings back to me. The sweetness of that Christmas night, those conversa- 
 tions with you and Lallier when, young and in love with nothing but truth, 
 we conversed together on eternal things. Let me speak out, my friend . . . . 
 Who knows ? Perhaps the moment is come to do so. You have sought, in 
 the sincerity of your heart, to solve your difficulties, and you have not suc- 
 ceeded ; but, my dear friend, the difficulties of religion are like those of science 
 — there are always some that remain. It is a great thing to settle a few of 
 them ; no single life would suffice to exhaust them all. To decide all the 
 questions that may arise about the Scriptures, one should know thoroughly all 
 the Oriental languatres. To answer all the objections of Prot'^stants, one 
 would require to study the history of the Church in its minutest details, or 
 
 273 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 273 
 
 rather the universal history of modern limes. You never could, therefore, 
 occupied as you are in other ways, answer all the doubts that your active and 
 mgenious imagination is for ever evoking: for the g^reater torment of your 
 heart and mind. Fortunately God has not put certainty at such a price. 
 What, then, are we to do ? We are to do in relig;ion as we do in science — 
 satisfy ourselves of the proofs of a g^iven number of truths, and then abandon 
 the rest to the investigation of the learned. I believe irmly that the earth 
 goes round. I know, nevertheless, that this doctrine has its difficulties, but 
 astronomers explain them, and, if they don't explain them all, the future will 
 do the rest. So it is with the Bible ; it is beset with difficult questions. Some 
 have been solved long; ago ; others, hitherto considered insoluble, have been 
 answered in our own day ; there remain still many to be solved, but God per- 
 mits tliis to keep the human mind on the alert, and to exercise the activity of 
 future ages. 
 
 " No 1 God cannot exact that religious truth, that is to say, the essential 
 food of every soul, should be the fruit of a long research, impossible to the 
 great number of the ignorant, and difficult to the most learned. Truth must 
 be within reach of the lowliest, and religion must rest upon evidence accessible 
 to the most insignificant. 
 
 '* For my own part, after experiencing many doubts, after having drenched 
 my pillow many and many a night with tears of despair, I rested my faith 
 upon an argument which any mason or coal-heaver may take hold of. I said 
 to myself that since every people have a religion, good or bad, it is clear that 
 religion is a universal, perpetual, and, consequently, legitimate want of hu- 
 manity. God, who created this want, has consequently pledged Himself to 
 satisfy it ; there must, therefore, be a true reUgion. Now, amongst the 
 multitude of creeds that divide the world, without going into the study or 
 discussion of facts, who can doubt but that Christianity is supremely prefera- 
 ble, and the only one that leads man to his moral destiny ? But again, in 
 Christianity there are three Churches— the Protestant, the Greek, and the 
 Catholic — that is to say, anarchy, despotism, and order. The choice is not 
 difficult, and the truth of Catholicism requires no other demonstration. 
 
 " This, my dear friend, is the brief chain of reasoning which opened to me 
 the doors of the faith. But once entered in, I was suddenly illuminated with 
 a new flood of light, and much more deeply convinced of the internal evi- 
 dences of Christianity. By this I mean the daily experience which enables 
 me to find in the faith of my childhood all the strength and light of my ma- 
 ture manhood, the sanctification of my domestic joys, the solace of all my 
 troubles. If the whole earth were to abjure Christ, there is in the unuttera- 
 ble sweetness of one communion, in the sweet tears that it gives rise to, a 
 force of conviction that would suffice to make me cling to the Cross and defy 
 the unbelief of the whole world. But I am far from such a trial, and, on the 
 contrary, how powerful amongst men is the action of this faith in Christ, 
 which is represented as dead ! You do not know, perhaps, to what an ex- 
 tent the Saviour of the world is still loved, the virtues that He still evokes, the 
 self-sacrifices, equal to the early ages of the Church, that He still inspires 1 I 
 need only point to the j'oung; priests that I see starting from the Seminary of 
 
274 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 Foreign Missions to go and die at Tonquin, as St. Cyprian and St. Irene did ; 
 to those converted Anglican ministers who give up splendid incomes to come 
 to Paris to try and get bread for their wives and children by giving lessons. 
 No ! Catholicism is not bereft of heroism in the days of Monseigneur Affre, 
 nor of eloquence in the days of Lacordaire, nor of any kind of glory or 
 authority in an age which has seen Napoleon, Royer CoUard, and Chateau- 
 briand die Christians ! 
 
 " Independently of this internal evidence, I have been for the last ten years 
 studying the history of Christianity, and every step I take in this direction 
 strengthens my convictions. I read the Fathers, and I am filled with delight 
 by the moral beauties they unfold to me, the philosophical lights with which 
 they dazzle me. I plunge into the barbarous ages, and I see the wisdom of 
 the Church and her magnanimity, I do not deny the disorders of the 
 Middle Ages, but I have convinced myself that Catholic truth struggled single- 
 handed against the evil, and evolved out of this chaos those prodigies of virtue 
 and genius which we admire. I am passionately enamored of the legitimate 
 conquests of the modern mind ; I love liberty, and I have served it, and I 
 believe that it is to the Gospel that we owe liberty, equality, and fraternity. 
 I have had leisure and opportunity to study all these problems, and so they 
 were made clear to me. But I did not want this ; and if other duties had 
 hindered me from those historical researches in which I found such intense 
 interest, I should have reasoned about them as I do about exegetical studies, 
 whose access is closed to me. I believe in the truth of Christianity ; conse- 
 quently, if there be any objections, I believe that sooner or later they will be 
 explained. I believe even that some may never be explained, because Christi- 
 anity treats of the relations of the finite with the infinite, and that we shall never 
 understand the infinite. All that my reason has a right tp exact is that I should 
 not compel it to believe in the absurd. Now, there can be no philosophical 
 absurdity in a religion which satisfied the intelligence of Descartes and 
 Bossuet, nor any moral absurdity in a creed which sanctified St. Vincent de 
 Paul, nor any philological absurdity in an interpretation of Scriptures which 
 satisfied the vigorous mind of Sylvestre de Sacy. Certain men of modem 
 times cannot bear the dogma of eternal punishment ; they consider it in- 
 human. Do they fancy they love humanity more, and that they have a finer 
 perception of the just and the unjust, than St. Augustine, St. Thomas 
 Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Francis of Sales ? It is not because 
 they love humanity more ; it is because they have a less lively sense of the 
 horror of sin and the justice of God ! Oh ! my dear friend, let us not waste 
 our time in endless discussions. We have not two lives, one to search out 
 the truth, and the other to practise it. This is why God does not need to be 
 searched after. He reveals Himself in this living Christian society which sur- 
 rounds you ; He is before your eyes ; He urges you. . . . You will soon be 
 forty years of age ; it is time you decided. Yield to the Saviour, who is en- 
 treating you ; give yourself up to Him as your friends have done ; you will 
 then find peace. Your doubts will vanish as mine vanished. You want so 
 little to be an excellent Christian ! you want nothing but one act of the will ; 
 to believe is to will. Will once for all ; will at the feet of a priest, who will 
 
Life and Woiks of Frederic Ozanam. 275 
 
 call down the sanction of Heaven on your trembling act. Have but this 
 courage, my friend, and the faith that you so admire in poor L., and which 
 supports him under so great a misfortune, will add its untold sweetness to 
 your prosperity." 
 
 The courage which enabled Ozanam to write this long 
 appeal from his sick-bed was soon after rewarded ; before he 
 died he had the happiness of knowing that his friend had re- 
 turned to the faith. 
 
 The most grievous trial of illness to Ozanam was the inac- 
 tivity which it enforced. He had continued to lecture regu- 
 larly at the Sorbonne long after he should have ceased in 
 sheer mercy to himself; but to the medical men and friends 
 who entreated him to give it up, he would reply, " I must do 
 my day's work " : " // faut (aire ma jourtider He continued 
 to do it as long as he coaUl gather up a remnant of strength 
 to drag himself to his chair. But the day was spent now, 
 and the faithful laborer was soon to receive his reward. 
 
 He was still confined to his bed, suffering great pain, and 
 consumed with fever, when one day he heard that the public 
 were clamoring for him at the Sorbonne, accusing him of 
 self-indulgence and neglect of duty in being so long absent 
 from his courSy when he was paid by the State for giving it. 
 The news stung him to the quick. " I will show them it is 
 not true. I will do honor to my profession ! " he cried. And, 
 in spite of the tears of his wife and the entreaties of his 
 brother and another medical attendant, he had himself 
 dressed and drove straight to the Sorbonne, where he found 
 the crowd still collected outside his class. When the Professor, 
 leaning on the arm of a friend, pale, worn, more Jike a spectre 
 than a living man, advanced through their midst, the rioters 
 were smitten with horror and remorse; as he ascended the 
 chair that had witnessed so many of his triumphs, and that he 
 was never to ascend again, their applause broke forth, rising 
 and falling like waves around him. He stood for some 
 minutes gazing in silence on the thoughtless, cruel young 
 crowd, his black, dazzling eyes shining with the terrible light 
 
276 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 of fever, his long hair hanging, his whole appearance that of 
 a man who was nearer to death than to Xi^q. When at last 
 the tumult subsided, he spoke. His voice rang out as clear 
 as silver, more piercing from its very weakness, like a spirit 
 imprisoned in a body too frail to bear the shock of its inspira- 
 tion. 
 
 "Gentlemen," he said, "our age is accused of being an age of egotism; 
 we professors, it is said, are tainted with the general epidemic ; and yet it is 
 here that we use up our health ; it is here that we wear ourselves out. I do 
 not complain of it ; our life belongs to you ; we owe it to you to our last 
 breath, and you shall have it. For my part, if I die it will be in your ser- 
 vice !" 
 
 He said truly ; this last effort killed him. He gave the 
 lecture, speaking with an eloquence and power that startled 
 those who had heard him in his palmiest days. The enthu- 
 siasm of the audience rose at last to frenzy. Perhaps they felt 
 instinctively that human speech could go no higher, and that, 
 having now reached its apogee in Ozanam, they would never 
 hear his voice again. As he left the lecture-hall friends gath- 
 ered round him in delighted congratulation, and one pressing 
 his hand, exclaimed, " You were wonderful to-day !" 
 
 " Yes," replied Ozanam, with a smile, " but now the ques- 
 tion is, how to get some sleep to-night." And he got none. 
 
 The next day his brother came, and, sitting by the sick 
 man's bed, discovered, to his horror, that there was a princi- 
 ple of decomposition in the blood. *' He may be dead in 
 ten days!" he said in a whisper to his eldest brother. 
 
 As soon as it was possible for him to be moved he was 
 taken to Eaux-Bonnes, in hopes that the waters might arrest, 
 at least for a time, the fatal progress of the disease. But the 
 hope was vain. He gained sufficient strength, however, to 
 enjoy the wild beauties of the scenery, to walk out every day, 
 and even " to climb up the rocks after the goats by way of 
 digesting these tumblerfuls of sulphurous water which I am 
 condemned to swallow between two mountains," he says to 
 M. de la ViUemarqu6; and adds, "I have all my clan with 
 
Ufe and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 277 
 
 me, and when we shall have decamped from these altitudes, 
 we go on to Biarritz for sea-bathing ; and after that I am 
 condemned to exile in the south for the winter." 
 
 He derived so much benefit from the waters after a short 
 time, that it at once struck him what a boon it would be to 
 the poor, attacked with his own malady, if they could come 
 to Eaux-Bonnes ; and he forthwith set to work on a scheme 
 of building or hiring a hospital, and creating a fund, through 
 the generosity and exertions of the Society of St. Vincent de 
 Paul, which should serve to defray the travelling expenses of 
 the invalids. He was not spared to carry out the plan, but 
 we understand that it has been revived of late, and is likely 
 to be realized. Meantime Ozanam took advantage of his 
 sojourn at Eaux-Bonnes to found a Conference. Another 
 consolation was granted him in the society of that beautiful 
 kindred soul, the Abb6 Perreyve, who, like him whom he 
 called his " Master," was stricken by the hand of death, and 
 had come to seek relief in the salutary waters. P^re Lacor- 
 daire has quoted the pages, full of pathetic beauty, where the 
 young priest recalls these days of sweet and tender intercourse, 
 when the two friends wandered over the hills together, some- 
 times in silent soul-communion, listening to the song of birds 
 and the music of falling waters, sometimes conversing on 
 things human and Divine — on God, on Nature, on the life 
 beyond, to which they were approaching. 
 
 " When the sky was clear," says the Abbe Perreyve, •* we would start early, 
 making our way to one of those pleasant walks round Eaux-Bonnes, and the 
 remembrance of which is beautified to nie now by that of his dear presence. 
 We often chose the Horizontal Promenade. There we enjoyed the evening 
 calm, and we came away when the sun, forsaking the purple heights of the 
 Pic du Gers, sent the fresh vapors of the valley of Laruns floating up to us. 
 When at the end of our walk we caught sight of the house-tops of Eaux- 
 Bonnes it was nightfall ; the hills stood out in sharp and sombre lines against 
 the still luminous sky ; the moon, emerging from the firs of the highest rocks, 
 rose silently, and breathings, regular as the slumbers of a child, lulled the 
 woods softly. At this hour, in this lovely spot, our souls ascended naturally 
 to God. We still conversed, but long intervals of silence seemed to warn us 
 that it was the hour rather for prayer — that deep, unspoken prayer that words 
 
27 S Life aftd Works oj Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 cannot articulate, and which consists only in being silent before God. O my 
 Lord ! O my Master ! I thank Thee for having granted me those hours." 
 
 Ozanam too gave thanks for them. Indeed, it may be 
 said with truth that few men were ever more diHgent in 
 thanksgiving than he was. " God evidently saw fit to give 
 me a few days longer, in order that I might become better : 
 may He be blessed for it !" he exclaims; " but is it His pur- 
 pose to restore my health, or to make me expiate my sins by 
 long sufferings ? I know nothing, except that I bless Him ! 
 May He only grant me courage; let Him send me the suf- 
 fering that purifies ; and if I must carry a cross, may it be 
 that of the penitent thief!" Yet he was far from being with- 
 out hope of his recovery, although his chief aim was to ob- 
 tain perfect resignation to renounce it. He left Eaux-Bonnes 
 in September, and writes from Biarritz soon after his arrival 
 there : 
 
 "It would be great ingratitude towards Divine Providence not to hope. If 
 my convalescence does not advance as rapidly as I might wish, it has allowed 
 me to make a pretty little tour in the Pyrenees with my wife. We visited, 
 with great enjoyment, these mountains, which, if they have not the stern 
 ;T-andeur of the Alps, are not wanting in a majesty of their own, tempered by 
 a peculiar grace. We must not look for many glaciers, and the eternal snows 
 only cover a few peaks ; but one is never tired admiring the beauty of the 
 lights upon the rocks, the graceful curve of the crests ; above all, the limpid, 
 noisy waters that bound along on every side. Even the Alps themselves have 
 nothing to compare with the circus of Savernia. Picture to yourself, not a 
 circus, but rather the vault of a cathedral, eighteen hundred feet high, covered 
 with snow, furrowed with cascades, whose white foam boils over rocks of the 
 most glowing colors ; the walls are, as it were, hewn perpendicularly ; when 
 the clouds float above them, they look like the draperies of the sanctuary ; and 
 "if the sun shines, the radiant torch is not too brilliant to illuminate an edifice 
 that one would fancy had been commenced by the angels, and interrupted by 
 some fault of man's." 
 
 He was delighted with the population of the mountains, 
 with their antique faith and traditions, and their picturesque 
 costumes that seem a guarantee for the primitive simplicity 
 of their manners. " How," he asks, " can we impute our 
 modern corruption to these peasants who have preserved the 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 279 
 
 little Basque cap of their faiiiers, wiih hair falling to their 
 shoulders, and a scarlet vest set off by a beautiful white waist- 
 coat, a belt, short breeches, and gaiters ? " 
 
 They made a pilgrimage to Betharram, a shrine of the fif- 
 teenth century, still much frequented, and where Our Lady is 
 venerated under the tide of Notre Dame au Rameau d'or. A 
 golden branch was offered as an ex veto by a young girl who, 
 having fallen into the neighboring torrent, made a vow to 
 Our Lady, and at the same moment found under her hand a 
 branch, to which she clung. " I too," exclaims Ozanam, 
 " am clinging with all my might to the saving branch, to her 
 whom we call the comfort of the afflicted and the refuge of 
 sinners." 
 
 The Abb6 Perreyve had gone on with Ozanam to Biarritz 
 after the usual season at Eaux- Bonnes; but his cure being 
 considered sufficiently complete, he was allowed to return to 
 Paris, after some weeks of sea-air. Tlie parting was a solemn 
 one. Ozanam insisted on accompanying his friend as far as 
 Bayonne, where the stage-coach awaited the traveller. 
 
 *♦ It is an hour's drive from Biarritz to Bayonne," says the Abbe Perreyve, 
 continuing his short narrative ; •' this hour was the last I was ever to spend with 
 him on earth. God permitted him to have the presentiment of it. He con- 
 versed on the way upon grave subjects concerning himself and me, and rela- 
 tive to general affairs, the state of the Church, the conduct we should observe 
 in the present circumstances, and the hopes which the future held out. He 
 spoke as if it were for the last time, and I listened religiously. 
 
 " When we reached the high-road of Spain, that point where the towers of 
 the cathedral of Bayonne became visible in the distance, he changed his tone ; 
 he told me he knew the hand of death was upon him, and that we should 
 doubtless never meet again. 
 
 " I sliared all these fears, only with more hopefulness — that is to say, with 
 more illusions — and I honestly tried to combat his sad forebodings. But he was 
 not to be shaken ; he spoke to me of his approaching death with an assurance 
 that bore down all my motives of hope ; and when our carriage drew up before 
 the coach that was to take me on to Paris, he grasped my hand in a long 
 pressure. We alighted. I h.ad barely time to get my little luggage secured 
 in its place, and to settle about the fare, when it was time to part. He em- 
 braced me fervently, and said, * Henri, bid me a good farewell.' I felt my 
 heart breaking, but not a tear came. I followed him with my eyes as long as 
 that consolation was possible ; at last a turn in the road suddenly hid him 
 from me, and I never saw him again. 
 
28o Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 " It was towards evening. When we reached the top of the hill that over- 
 looks Bayonne, the sun was sinking into the shining waves of the sea, a 
 mantle of purple and gold encircled all the landscape, the sands of Biarritz 
 sparkled in the distance through a mist of fire, an artificial flame marked 
 where the lighthouse stood, and our eyes were riveted on this signal, lost in an 
 ocean of light. The spectacle, far from dispelling my sadness, expanded it, as 
 it were, to the infinite. Through this glorious revelation of light, of love, of 
 beauty, I saw, at one glance, all the happy days of which this evening was the 
 decline, and, regret bringing me back to him to whom I owed its charm, I be- 
 held him as a friend lost to me for ever. I was grieved not to have shown him 
 more affection ; I spoke to him ; I greeted him from afar ; I swore to be eter- 
 nally faithful to him ; but the future held out no promise of consolation to 
 me. I heard his voice still bidding me ' Farewell ! ' I fell into a sadness so 
 deep that my soul was for a time submerged in it." 
 
 Yet even after this supreme farewell Ozanam was not with- 
 out his intervals of hope. He spoke cheerfully of the benefit 
 his health had derived from the sea-bathing and lovely 
 climate of Biarritz, and alluded to his recovery "being pro- 
 bably postponed till next summer," always adding the pro- 
 viso, " that is, if God wills that I should recover at all." 
 
 Idleness, inaction, and the separation from his friends were 
 still his heaviest trial ; but when a word of complaint escapes 
 him he quickly retracts it, and enumerates his many reasons 
 for thankfulness. " I am ungrateful," he says to Lallier ; " I 
 have the great happiness of seeing my wife and child in 
 blooming health, of being able to enjoy their society. I am 
 able to devote myself to the education of my little Marie with 
 a leisure that I never knew formerly. I ought to be happy 
 and bless the great mercy of Providence; and yet I am de- 
 pressed; I need your prayers more than ever." The arrival 
 of his brother Charles, who had broken away from his practice 
 in Paris to come and take care of him, was a new and great 
 cause of thankfulness to the invalid. " He arrived the other 
 day in a torrent of rain, this dear brother, like a rainbow — a 
 symbol of the hope he has brought to us. After examining, 
 thumping, feeling, and sounding me, he declares that Eaux- 
 Bonnes has done wonders, and that I am well ! How can I, 
 in the face of this verdict, permit myself to catch the shadow 
 of cold or fever ? " 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 281 
 
 The important question now was, where he was to pass the 
 winter. His name had been proposed as a member for the 
 Institute and he had been extremely anxious to return to Paris 
 in November, if it were possible, in order to take personal 
 steps for the success of his candidature, but before November 
 had come the impossibility of this plan was made palpable. It 
 was now a choice between remaining on at Bayonne or pass- 
 ing into Spain, where the climate was warmer and drier. This 
 latter alternative attracted Ozanam, as it held out the prospect 
 of a new country in which he was much interested, and with 
 whose language he was already tolerably familiar. Against 
 this had to be balanced the fatigue of travelling in his present 
 exhausted state. " But the worst of all fatigues is doing 
 nothing," he declares. " It is true, I am too well surrounded 
 for my heart to be in want of occupation, but my mind needs it 
 sadly. When I come to the end of my day without having 
 done anything, this idleness weighs on me like a remorse, and 
 it seems to me that I deserve neither the bread that I eat nor 
 the bed I he down on." 
 
 Travelling had been his passion all his life, and he longed 
 to seize the present opportunity, persuaded that the moral 
 and intellectual enjoyment must compensate for whatever 
 bodily fatigue the journey would involve. 
 
 "Alas ! in the presumptuous days of my youth," he says, *' I spurned the 
 sacred isle of Ceres. My desires extended on one side to the Columns of Her- 
 cules, and on the other to the shores of Palestine. How often have I embarked 
 for the Holy Land, seated by the fireside with Madame Ozanam, tongas in 
 hand, and turning over a half-burned log! And here I am now at Bayonne, 
 a town half-Spanish, where most of the signboards over the shops speak the 
 purest Castilian, and I am hesitating about pushing on to Seville ! " 
 
 He broke loose one day and set off with his wife on a little 
 excursion into Spain, which he enjoyed immensely, but paid 
 for by some weeks of more enforced and absolute repose than 
 ever. He contended, however, that the pleasure had not 
 been too dearly bought ; that he had garnered a stock of 
 poetry, beauty, and delight, to feed his imagination for a 
 month. 
 
282 Life and Works oj Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 " In former journeys my mind was distracted by the works of man. In this 
 land, where man has done little, I see only the works of God, and I now say, 
 with all the mi^jht of my faith, God is not only the great Geometer, the great 
 Legislator, He is also the great, the supreme Artist. He is the Author of all 
 poetry ; He has poured it over creation in floods ; and if He wished the world 
 to be good, He also meant it to be beautiful. . . . Yes, one is possessed by a 
 sense of moral purity on those heights which the foot of man rarely sullies, by 
 the brink of those cascades where none but the chamois comes to quench his 
 thirst, in the midst of those wildernesses where the flowers open their cups 
 only to perfume the soUtude of the Most High. David had stood upon the 
 heights of Lebanon when he cried out, Mirabilis m altis Dominus! He had 
 beheld the ocean when he exclaimed, Mirabiles elationes maris! 
 
 *' We, too, we have stood here by the seashore, and we are never wearied 
 of the grand spectacle it displays to us daily. We all know that the ocean is 
 full of grandeur and majesty, but it is only when we come near to it that we 
 learn how full of grace it is. We are just come back, my wife and I, from 
 witnessing a sunset. The great star was about to disappear behind the hills 
 of Spain, whose bold outlines we can see from hence standing out against a 
 perfectly beautiful sky. The mountains dipped their feet into a luminous 
 golden mist that floats above the sea ; the rays followed one another in chang- 
 ing colors, now green, now azure, sometimes tinted with pink and lilac ; then 
 they fainted away upon the sandy beach, or else broke against the rocks that are 
 white with foam. The wave, travelling in from afar, rose against the cliffs 
 and danced over them in sheafs of spray with all the fantastic grace of those 
 artificial waters that play in the gardens of kings. But here, in the domain of 
 God, the play is eternal. Every day it recommences, and every day it varies 
 according to the power of the wind and the fulness of the tide." 
 
 It was finally decided that they should venture into Spain, 
 and, if the first essay proved favorable, pass the winter there. 
 Ozanam had a great desire to visit the tomb of St. James at 
 Compostella, but the cold was so severe that he was obliged 
 to renounce this plan, and, after sojourning a few days at 
 Burgos, retraced his steps to Bayonne. 
 
 The disappointment was the greater, from the beginning 
 having promised so well. On the evening of his arrival at 
 Burgos he writes to his brother Charles, who had left him and 
 returned to Paris : 
 
 " It would seem up to this that I have done well in coming, and that God 
 has blessed our good intentions. We have had, nevertheless, thirty-three 
 hours' journey, mountains to traverse, second-rate inns, and the rain into the 
 bargain, which caught us on the way. With all this I have not taken cold, 
 and I am not suffering. At three o'clock this afternoon we made our entry 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 283 
 
 into this ancient capital, which calls itself the mother of king;s and restorer of 
 kingdoms — madre de reyes^ y restauradura de regnos."^ 
 
 The next day he set out to explore the old town, his first 
 visit being for the cathedral, where he spent three delightful 
 hours. " But on coming out," he says, at the close of an en- 
 thusiastic description of the magnificent edifice — "a work not 
 of giants but of angels " — " we found such torrents of rain, 
 such a furious wind, and streets rendered so impracticable by 
 both, that we had to give up all idea of further sight-seeing 
 that day." 
 
 He contrived, however, when it cleared off for a short 
 interval, " to salute the place where the house of the Cid had 
 stood, the ark of Fernan Gonzalez, the famous Count of 
 Castile," and to pay a visit to the house of a lady, where they 
 met one of the founders of a Conference of St. Vincent de 
 Paul at Burgos. 
 
 In spite of " the abominable weather, which lasted three 
 whole days, and of the inclement cold, and the stupidity of 
 the inhabitants, who have not the faintest notion of warming 
 their houses," the invalid escaped all unpleasant consequen- 
 ces, and was in high spirits with his expedition. 
 
 ♦' I am very glad to have made this pilgrimage," he assures his brother ; *• it 
 has perfonned more even than it promised, and will throw a flood of light on 
 my studies, if God permits me to resume them. In this way my year of idle- 
 ness will not have been quite lost. I employed my autumn as much as I could 
 in studying Spain in the middle ages ; but it was hard to form an accurate idea 
 of a country I had not seen. The chief theatre of Spain in the middle ages is 
 Burgos, the scene of the greater number of those heroic exploits celebrated in 
 the popular ballads. Elsewhere I should have seen episodes ; here I had the 
 poem itself. It is, no doubt, after all, only tradition and memories, and the 
 pleasure of saying to one's self, / have seen tlie spot. But then there are the 
 monuments ; the admirable basilica I have described, . . . and finally, two 
 gjand monasteries that we were going off to see when I interrupted my letter. 
 The first is that of Las Huelgas, a convent of noble gentlewomen, founded by 
 Alphonsus VIII. in 1185, . . . The second is the monastery of Trappists 
 (Chartreux), erected by Isabella the Great, in memory of her father, King John 
 II. . . . Here I found the apogee of Castilian art, when Spain still lived on 
 her native genius, before she was aggrandized and saddened, and soon after 
 oppressed by the Austrian dynasty. In a sojourn of three days I passed in re- 
 view three centuries of history. How grateful I should be to God for giving 
 
284 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 me strength to undertake this journey, and to you, my dear brother, whose 
 care prepared me for it, and to my Amehe, who has had all the anxiety of it." 
 
 Tlie souvenir of this rapid excursion remains to us in that 
 lovely piece of picturesque writing entitled " A Pilgrimage to 
 the Land of the Cid," The grace and freshness of the open- 
 ing pagCj where the pilgrim bewails his inability to accom- 
 plish his journey to the desired goal, have seldom been sur- 
 passed : 
 
 *' It used to be a favorite devotion of our fathers to go in pilgrimage to St. 
 James of Compostella. . . . Before returning to their own country, these 
 pious pilgrims would visit the beach where, as the legend says, the body of the 
 apostle was cast by the waves ; here they would gather quantities of shells, 
 with which they ornamented their head-gear and their mantles ; some they 
 took home to their children, and in the long winter's evenings these were 
 handed round by neighbors and friends sitting by the hearth. I, too, dreamed 
 of a pilgrimage to St. James, . . . but a will which overrules ours anested me 
 at the first stage, and brought my pilgrimage to an end, not at the tomb of the 
 apostle, but in the land of the Cid, And so I have come home with my hands 
 void of shells, but full of those fluttering leaves on which the traveller notes 
 down his impressions by the way, intending to complete them later. This is 
 all I have to offer to my friends, to my neighbors— those who share with me 
 that neighborhood of the mind and heart which unites so many Christians in 
 our day, and induces them to prolong the vigil, watching in hope together, 
 notwithstanding the badness of the nights." 
 
 After glancing rapidly at the country and the populations 
 through which he hurries, Ozanam stops to consider Burgos 
 under three separate aspects — as a city of heroes, of kings, 
 and as the city of the Virgin Mother. The shadow of the 
 mighty Cid hovers over him at every step through the city of 
 heroes, in the castle where his marriage with Chim^ne was 
 celebrated, in the church where he challenged Alphonsus IV., 
 and compelled him to deny on his oath that he had any 
 share in the murder of his brother ; he shows us suspended 
 from the roof of this church the famous box which the bril- 
 liant Cid filled with sand, and then pledged to two Jews for a 
 huge sum of gold, alleging that it was filled with precious 
 gems. He leads us to the warrior's tomb, where, laid side 
 by side in one coffin, he and his Chim^ne rest, " not parted 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 285 
 
 in death." For two reals a valet draws aside the pall, and 
 opens the coffin for the inspection of the curious traveller. 
 
 Ozanam shuddered as he offered the coin which paid for 
 this irreverence. " There is always something horrible in the 
 violation of the secret of the grave ; I cannot bear the sight 
 of those withered bones, unless sanctity has clothed them 
 with an imperishable garment." 
 
 But the narrator does not dwell exclusively on heroic or 
 sacred subjects. He is alive to every humorous character- 
 istic and incident of the places and the people through which 
 he passes. 
 
 *' Let not my friends imagine," he says, " that I found no better lodg:ing and 
 fare in the land of the Cid than he and his companions when they encamped 
 on the dreary shore of Arlanzon. I must avenge this fair and much maligned 
 country. ... If the lodging is at best but mediocre, the kitchens are still 
 heroic. Never did I behold suspended from a ceiling such an imposing array 
 of dripping-pans, sauce-pans, and kettles. I gazed above all on those long 
 files of pots, which reminded me — forgive the Homeric reminiscence — of the 
 long file of Penelope's servants whom Telemachus hung up on the same rope 
 in chastisement of their perfidy. The huge patriarchal chimney-piece projects 
 into the middle of the room, and beneath its shelter the traveller finds a warm 
 comer, without fear of scandalizing the beehive of cooks, accustomed to the 
 blessed familiarity of Spanish manners. Here his eye may rest lovingly on the 
 tempting fried eggs, the partridges gilding themselves before the fire, and the 
 brown chocolate foaming in the bowl. If your abstemiousness is satisfied with 
 this, if you don't recoil from the smell of the leathern flask which testifies to 
 the authenticity of that bottle of Malaga, if you have not the dangerous 
 curiosity to taste those suspicious-looking pease, swimming in tlie neighboring 
 pot, or those meats basted with rancid oil — rest assured ; we shall live. W'e 
 shall live, and you will bear me no malice for having come down from my 
 p>oetic heights to these prosaic realities. They have not, in truth, turned us 
 aside from Spanish literature ; for if the poem of the Cid had its birth on the 
 battle-field, it was from the kitchen of an inn that Don Quixote sallied forth 
 as a knight to fight the giants and avenge all wrongs.; 
 
 The traveller introduces us to another sprightly scene, a 
 tennis-court in the Basque country, where we see the elders 
 seated on the bench of judges solemnly watching the game, 
 while, close at hand, that faithful counsellor of contested 
 causes, the bottle, stands cool and convenient in a hole in 
 the wall. The spectacle cf a bull-fight would of course 
 
286 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 have been an inevitable duty for the stranger passing through 
 the city of kings, but Ozanam confesses that he was thankful 
 to escape it, the season for that national entertainment being 
 over. The Fkiza Mayor of Burgos, with its graceful porticos 
 and symmetrical rows of windows, was not now a sanguinary 
 amphitheatre, but a beautiful square, whose lists were only 
 crossed by dark-eyed women going to draw water from the 
 fountain, bearing their vessels erect on their head and singing 
 joyous snatches as they went. He takes leave of the city by 
 a poetic invocation to Notre Dame de Burgos : 
 
 "The moment is come to take leave of these lovely scenes, which I shall 
 never behold again, and to whom I leave a portion of my affections and 
 regrets, as to so many other ancient towns, mountains, and shores. There is 
 somewhere in Sicily a group of broken columns overshadowed by an olive- 
 grove ; in Rome there is a chapel in the catacombs ; in the Pyrenees there is a 
 shrine beside which the limpid waters run beneath an ivy-mantled bridge ; 
 there is in Brittany a melancholy beech, to which my thoughts return with an 
 indescribable charm, above all when the present hour is gloomy and the future 
 uncertain, I will add Burgos to these pilgrimages of memory, which console 
 me sometimes in the painful pilgrimage of life. Suffer me then to cast one 
 long farewell glance on the grand Cathedral ; let me kneel once more within 
 the radiant sanctuary, before the Virgin of the altar-piece, and if the prayer of 
 a Catholic scandalizes you, hearken not to it : O Our Lady of Burgos, . . . 
 Queen of all Catholic cities ; yes, truly, thou art 'all beautiful and gracious,' 
 pulchra es et decora^ since the sole thought of thee drew down grace and 
 beauty into these works of man. Barbarians rushed forth from their forests, 
 and seemed like incendiaries made only to destroy. But thou didst render 
 them so gentle that they bowed their heads, and yoked themselves to chariots 
 heavily laden, and became obedient to masters to erect churches to thy name. 
 Thou didst render them so patient that they did not count the centuries 
 spent in chiselling superb porticos, galleries, and spires for thee. Thou didst 
 render them so bold that their basilicas soared in height far beyond the loftiest 
 monuments of the Romans, and at the same time so chaste that these mighty 
 creations, peopled with statues, breathe naught but the purity of immaterial 
 love. Thou didst conquer even the pride of those haughty Castilians, who 
 abhorred labor as a symbol of serfdom ; thou didst disarm many hands that 
 knew no glory except in shedding blood ; instead of a sword thou didst give 
 them a trowel and a chisel, and thou didst sustain them for three hundred 
 years in thy fields of peaceful labor. O Notre Dame ! how nobly has God 
 rewarded the humility of his handmaid ! In return for the poor house of 
 Nazareth, where thou didst lodge his Son, what magnificent abodes he has 
 given thee ! " 
 
 On his way home from Spain Ozanam made a pilgrimage 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Czanam. 287 
 
 to Notre Dame de Buglosse, a sanctuary close to the native 
 village of St. Vincent de Paul, to which, needless to say, he 
 paid a loving visit. 
 
 "I owed it," he explains half-deprecatingly, "to the beloved patron who 
 protected my youth amidst so many dangers, and who shed such unlooked-for 
 blessings on our humble Conferences. It is only a short day's journey from 
 Bayonne. We arrived first at the little village of Pouy, now called St. Vin- 
 cent de Paul, after its glorious son. We saw the old oak under which St. Vin- 
 cent, when he was a little shepherd boy, used to take shelter while keeping his 
 flock. The fine old tree only holds to the ground by the bark of a trunk eaten 
 away by the yeaf;, but its branches are magnificent, and even in this advanced 
 season still retain their green foliage. They seemed to me a true symbol of 
 the foundations of St. Vincent, which look as if they were upheld by nothing 
 human, and which nevertheless triumph over lime, and grow in the midst of 
 revolutions. I send you a leaf from the blessed tree ; it will dry in the book 
 where you place it ; but charity will never grow dry in your heart." 
 
 Ozanam had felt so much better when starting on this little 
 pilgrimage that he made it rather in thanksgiving than in sup- 
 plication. He was therefore somewhat startled when, on en- 
 tering the confessional in the little church, the priest, who had 
 never seen him, and knew nothing about him, began at once 
 to exhort him to patience and courage in suffering. This 
 spontaneous advice struck him all the more, he confessed to 
 Lallier, because there was something in the childlike simpli- 
 city of the old priest that reminded him of St. Vincent de 
 Paul. " He spoke of nothing but patient acceptance of pain, 
 of submission to the will of God in sorrow," the penitent says, 
 relating the incident; "and this language surprised me, feel- 
 ing, as I did, so strong and well." A few days after his re- 
 turn from Buglosse the warning began to prove itself pro- 
 phetic. The intense fatigue came on again, and with it other 
 symptoms, the certain forerunners of the end. But he did 
 not or would not despond. " I am dwelling in a land of de- 
 lights," he says, alluding to the beauty of the surrounding 
 scenery; " my wife and child are in perfect health; and I, the 
 official invalid of the family, am indulging in pranks of every 
 sort, which, if they reached the ears of the Minister of Public 
 Instruction, would very probably cut short my conge" 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 While Ozanam, lingering beneath the shadow of the Py- 
 renees, addresses his adieu to the land of the Cid, before set- 
 ting forth on the journey which was to be his last in this 
 world, we will pass rapidly in review those of his works which 
 have not been already mentioned. 
 
 Every separable book, lecture, and essay that he produced 
 formed part of the vast primary plan which he had sketched 
 out for himself as a boy, and which he never lost sight of in 
 his literary and professional career. The ascendency of this 
 one idea in his mind has given to that portion of the work 
 which he accomplished a character of unity and completeness, 
 which is the more striking when we consider the fragmentary 
 and sometimes inverted method which he pursued. He began 
 with the study of Dante, and he announces later on that his 
 purpose is to give a complete history of the Barbarous Ages, 
 and then go on through that of the Middle Ages, up to the 
 thirteenth century, where he will stop at Dante, as the culmi- 
 nation of that epoch, its epitome, and its glory. 
 
 The mere outline of the unfinished monument sufficiently 
 indicates the mental grasp required for so gigantic a scheme, 
 while the energy of purpose and unswerving fidelity which the 
 historian displays in its execution testify to a greatness of soul 
 and true love of science still more admirable. For Ozanam's 
 peculiar circumstances laid him especially open to the tempta- 
 tion which besets most men of letters in those days of eager- 
 ness for ready returns and easy popularity. But he spurned 
 the lower service, and steadily turned his back on that liberal 
 paymaster, especially in France, called "actuality," and faith- 
 fully toiled on in the nobler path he had chosen out from the 
 beginning. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 289 
 
 He had been frequently advised to let his lectures be 
 taken down in sliorthand, but he could never bring himself 
 to consent, owing to the extreme severity which he exercised 
 towards his work and the high finish he exacted in it. In 
 the years 1849 and 1850, however, his i*eluctance was over- 
 come, and the reporters of the Sorbonne took down his cours 
 on the Fifth Century. He himself was surprised at the suc- 
 cess of the experiment, and regretted not having tried it 
 sooner. This regret must be shared by all who have read 
 those two beautiful volumes, which only appeared after his 
 death, under the title of Civilisation au Cinquieme SiecU. 
 " The first five of these lectures," says M. Ampere, in his 
 Preface to Ozanam's works, " revised by the author, came 
 out in the Correspondant. . . . They are preceded by a pre- 
 face, which is, as it were, his literary testament. These five 
 lectures form, in my opinion, one of the finest and most fin- 
 ished pieces that have issued from Ozanam's pen." 
 
 The author's own introduction to the work forms the best 
 commentary that could be written on it, and unfolds its de- 
 sign more clearly than a volume of reviews. This preface 
 was written in the afternoon of Good Friday, 185 1, on his re- 
 turn from those sublime offices in which the Church com- 
 memorates the most sacred mystery of our faith. It opens 
 thus: 
 
 " I purpose writing the literary history of the Middle Ages, from the fifth 
 century to the close of the thirteenth, up to Dante, where I shall stop, as at the 
 point most worthy of representing that grand ep>och. But in the history of 
 letters I shall make civilization, of which they are the flower, my chief study, 
 and in civilization I recognize the chief work of Christianity. ... As a lay- 
 man, I have no mission to deal with theological subjects, and God, moreover, 
 who loves to be served by the eloquence of man, finds plenty in our day to 
 vindicate our dogmas. But while Catholics were absorbed with the defence 
 of doctrine, the unbelieving seized upon history. They laid hands upon the 
 Middle Ages, they sat in judgment upon the Church, judging her sometimes 
 with enmity, sometimes with the respect due to a fine ruin, often with a levity 
 ihey would noL have used in treating profane subjects. We must reconquer 
 this territory, \vl5ich belongs to us, since we find it cleared by the hands of our 
 monks, our Benedictines, and our Bollandists — those men who did not think 
 their life ill spent in growing pale over parchments and legends, . , . Gib- 
 
290 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 bon the historian went to visit Rome in his youth. One day, while wander- 
 ing through the Capitol, the sound of hymns broke suddenly on his ear ; he 
 saw the doors of the basilica of the Ara Coeli open, and a long procession of 
 Franciscan monks come forth, brushing with their sandals the pavement tra- 
 versed by so many triumphs. It was then that indignation inspired him ; he 
 formed the design of avenging antiquity, outraged by Christian barbarism ; 
 he conceived the plan of the Decline of the Roman Empire. And I too have 
 beheld the monks of Ara Coeli treading on the venerable pavement of Jupiter 
 Capitolinus ; I saw it, and I rejoiced as at the victory of love 'over strength, 
 and I resolved to write the history of the progress of that period where the 
 English philosopher saw nothing but decay, the history of civilization in the 
 barbarous ages, the history of the human mind escaping from the shipwreck 
 of the empire of letters, and traversing the flood of the invasions, as the He- 
 brews crossed the Red Sea, and under the same guidance : forti tegente bra- 
 chio. I know nothing more supernatural, nothing that proves more clearly 
 the divinity of Christianity, than to have saved the human mind." 
 
 He foresees that many will tax him with inopportune zeal, 
 alleging that the accusations of the eighteenth century have 
 fallen into oblivion or discredit, that a reaction, almost exces- 
 sive, has set in concerning the decried Middle Ages; but this 
 argument has no weight with him. Experience and iiistory 
 go to prove how little these sudden revulsions in publ-x feel- 
 ing are to be trusted ; they come and go, " like the wave 
 falling back from the shore it caresses." A tendency tu keep 
 aloof from these stern Christian epochs was already manifest- 
 ing itself; many who were ready to admire the grand charac- 
 ter of their genius could not brook their austerity. 
 
 " There is at the bottom of human nature an imperishable paganism which 
 wakes up in every century, which is not dead in ours, and which is always 
 ready to fall back into pagan philosophies, into pagan laws and pagan arts, be- 
 cause men find there the realization of their dreams, and the satisfaction of their 
 instincts. Gibbon's thesis is still that of half Germany ; it is the thesis of all 
 the sensual schools, who accuse Christianity of stifling the legitimate develop- 
 ment of human nature by denying the flesh, by adjourning to a future state the 
 happiness that ought to be found here below, by destroying that enchanted 
 world where Greece had deified strength, riches, and pleasure, and supplant- 
 ing it by a sorrowful world where humility, poverty, and chastity keep guard 
 at the foot of the cross." 
 
 Ozanam is careful, on the other hand, to avoid falling into 
 the opposite snare of excessive admiration for the Middle 
 Ages, an extreme which leads its enthusiasts to ignore their 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozariain. 291 
 
 dangers, and even to justify their errors, thus apparently mak- 
 ing Christianity responsible for the disorders of an age in 
 which it is represented as reigning supreme over the hearts 
 and minds of men. 
 
 *' We must know how to praise the majesty of the cathedrals and the hero- 
 ism of the Crusades without condoning the horrors of eternal warfare, the 
 harshness of feudal institutions, the scandal of princes perpetually at war with 
 the Holy See on account of their divorces and their simonies. We must see 
 the evil as it is, that is to say, formidable, precisely in order the better to ap- 
 preciate the services of the Church, whose glory it is, during these misunder- 
 stood centuries, not to have reigned, but to have fought. I approach my sub- 
 ject, consequently, full of horror of barbarism, and of respect for all that was 
 praiseworthy in the inheritance of antique civilization. ... I write . . . 
 because, God not having given me strength enough to guide the plough, I 
 must, nevertheless, obey the common law of labor, and do my day's work. I 
 write, like those workmen of the first centuries, who turned vases of clay or 
 glass to serve for the daily uses of the Church, and in whose rude designs the 
 Good Shepherd, the Virgin, and the Saints were represented. These poor work- 
 men never dreamed of the future, and yet some fragments of their vases, dis- 
 covered in cemeteries fifteen hundred years afterwards, come forth to bear wit- 
 ness and prove the antiquity of a contested dogma. 
 
 " We are all unprofitable servants, but we serve a Master who is absolutely 
 economical, who lets nothing go to waste, not a drop of the sweat of our brow 
 any more than a drop of His heavenly dew. I know not what fate awaits this 
 book, whether I shall finish it, or whether I shall reach even the end of the 
 page that flies beneath my i)en. But I know enough to throw into it the 
 remnant, be it great or small, of my strength and of my days." 
 
 It was the year of the Jubilee, the annie sainte^ when these 
 pages were written, and Ozanam thus touchingly alludes to the 
 coincidence : 
 
 " It was on Good Friday, in 1300, the year of the Great Jubilee, when 
 Dante, arrived, as he said, midway on the road of life, disabused alike of 
 passions and of errors, began his pilgrimage in hell, in purgatory, and in 
 paradise. On the threshold of his journey his heart failed him for one 
 moment ; but from the courts of heaven three blessed women were watching 
 over him, the Virgin Mary, St. Lucia, and Beatrice. Virgil guided his foot- 
 steps, and, on the faith of this guide, the poet plunged courageously into the 
 gloomy pathway. Alas ! I have not his grand soul, but I have his faith. Like 
 him, in the middle of my life, I have seen the holy year, the year which divides 
 the stormy and the fertile century, the year that renews Catholic con- 
 sciences. . . . 
 
 " But whereas Virgil forsakes his disciple before the end of his career, for it 
 was not permitted him to cross the threshold of paradise, Dante, on the con- 
 
292 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanain. 
 
 trary, will accompany me to the utmost heights of the Middle Ages, where his 
 own place is marked out. Three blessed women will also look down upon 
 me — the Virgin Mary, my mother, and my sister, while she who is my Beatrice 
 is still left to me on earth to sustain me by a look and a smile, to lift me from 
 despondency, to reveal to me, under its most touching image, that power of 
 Christian love whose works I am about to relate." 
 
 The plan unfolded in these pages is magnificently executed; 
 and yet these two volumes are but the introduction, the atrium, 
 as it were, of the temple Ozanam proposed to build. The 
 magnitude and variety of subjects which even this fraction of 
 the work embraces render anything like an adequate analysis 
 of it impossible in one chapter of a biography. We can 
 merely glance over it, and point to the parts that strike us 
 most by their power and interest. 
 
 Ozanam first explains the nature and essence of Paganism, 
 its action and effect on humanity in the barbarous ages ; he 
 shows us Rome planting her victorious eagles on every soil, 
 civilizing the peoples she had conquered, making laws, en- 
 couraging letters and arts, and splendidly patronizing the 
 gods. He leads us gradually to the point where Paganism is 
 nothing but a mask to hide the deification of Rome. The 
 mistress of the world flings back the portals of her Pantheon, 
 and invites the nations to come and worship ; every god has 
 an altar there ; but the only divinity Rome adores is Rome ; 
 rites and oracles and priests are nothing but a pompous mas- 
 querade kept up for the entertainment of the people-king. 
 By the time that Caesarism had become the true idolatry of 
 Rome, its tyranny had invaded not only the life and property 
 of the subject, but his soul and conscience. Sometimes the 
 god is called Nero, sometimes Trajan, sometimes Heliogaba- 
 lus, but his works do not change ; the Empire is always the 
 same — a paganism whose divinity and high-priest is the empe- 
 ror ; his very statue is worshipped with divine honors ; thou- 
 sands of Christians are tortured and slain because they are too 
 stiff-necked to burn a few grains of incense at its feet. 
 
 Slavery, the natural outcome of this deification, is laid bare 
 in all its degrading cruelty. It was forbidden to kill a slave, 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 293 
 
 but the freeman might lawfully torture him to death provided 
 he paid his value to his master. The master was obHged to 
 feed his human cattle, and the following receipt of Cato's 
 " for making wine for slaves " gives us an idea of how tenderly 
 this duty was performed : 
 
 •' Put into a cask ten axnphoras of sweet wine, and two of very sharp vine- 
 gar, and boil down till this diminishes to two-thirds, with fifty amphoras of 
 fresh water ; keep it stirred with a stick for five consecutive days, and then add 
 sixty-four sextarii * of sea-water," t 
 
 " How truly we recognize Paganism here ! " exclaims Oza- 
 nam. " This bitter draught that it prepares for the slave re- 
 calls the sponge steeped in vinegar and gall that another 
 Roman tenders on the point of his lance to another Slave 
 dying on the Cross for the ransom of slaves." The slave, 
 under this revolting system, became a mere beast, without 
 soul, conscience, or intelligence. He was used to try poisons 
 on, as we use rats and other vermin ; he had no more human 
 individuality than a dog or a horse. Seneca indeed once ven- 
 tured on hypothesis that slaves might after all be men like 
 ourselves, but this same man, who philosophized so loftily on 
 disinterestedness and poverty, possessed twenty thousand 
 slaves, and there is no record of his ever having freed one of 
 them. The slaves had themselves come to believe that their 
 owners must be right, and that they were a lower race of dis- 
 inherited outcasts whom Jupiter had deprived of half their 
 reason in condemning them to the condition of bondsmen. 
 And the poor — how did it fare with them ? Worse than with 
 the slaves, if that were possible. 
 
 And yet such was the prestige of Roman power that in 
 spite of the degradation and corruption it bred in its domin- 
 ions, the most enlightened philosophers believed the salvation 
 of the world identical with its reign, with the endurance of an 
 empire which Tertullian said " alone suspended the end of 
 
 * A Roman measure equal to twelve bushels. 
 t Cato, de Re Rustica, i. civ. 
 
294 i^{f^ ^'^^^ Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 time." When the news went forth that the Goths were 
 marching on Rome, that Alaric was before the gates bargain- 
 ing with Honorius for the city, its inhabitants, and its trea- 
 sure, even St. Jerome, in the depths of his Eastern solitude, 
 trembled and cried out in dismay, " A terrible report reaches 
 us from the West. They talk of Rome besieged, ransomed 
 with gold, besieged again, so that lives may perish after pro- 
 perty has gone. My voice is choked, sobs stifle the words \ 
 am dictating." 
 
 The mighty genius of St. Augustine alone viewed the great 
 catastrophe undismayed. Amidst the clash of warring races, 
 of empires falling to pieces and thrones crumbling under 
 Gothic battle-axes, Augustine calmly looks back to the origin 
 of time, and forward to its fulfilment, and discerning the desti- 
 nies of Rome and the world through the light of Christianity, 
 he proclaims the law of Christian progress in his wonderful 
 work, The City of God. 
 
 The barbarians brought a stream of fresh manhood into the 
 effeminate empire they overturned; they introduced those 
 two primary elements of all civilization, the dignity of man 
 and respect for women; they set the slave free; they raised 
 woman, from a base instrument of man's pleasure, into 
 a divinity ; they placed her on a pedestal and knelt to 
 her as the Velleda who could foretell their destinies and 
 avert them. 
 
 Christianity entered through this breach in the wall of 
 Paganism, and, following up the work begun by the barba- 
 rians, enthroned woman as a queen on her own hearth, the 
 equal of man, his guardian angel and comforter, thus develop- 
 ing into a virtue what was but a primitive instinct in the 
 savage mind. 
 
 Christianity changed the slave into the working-man, and 
 was the first to reinstate him in a position of dignity and inde- 
 pendence. The early Christians worked for their bread ; the 
 Anchorites, Cenobites, and Monks gave more time to manual 
 \^bor than to contemplation, Cicero had worked at manual 
 
Life and ]\\rks of Frederic Ozanam, 295 
 
 labor, and declared there could be " nothing liberal in it " ; 
 the Gospel exalts it, and imposes it as a duty upon all men. 
 
 Paganism despised the poor, and even held it wrong to 
 succor wretches who were abandoned and cursed of the gods ; 
 Christianity proclaimed them blessed. Poverty was thus 
 established in a society that was expiring of over-luxury and 
 wealth ; chastity was crowned and glorified in a society that 
 was destroyed by its own corrupt excesses ; obedience became 
 the law where all was perishing from disorder. 
 
 Ozanam describes at considerable length, and in language 
 of singular beauty, the change which Christianity effected in 
 the social position of woman ; and he shows, too, how worthily 
 she performed the duties imposed by her new privileges, and 
 what a noble part she played in the progress of the religion 
 to which she owed them. Fearing, however, that he might 
 be suspected of sympathizing with unreasonable claims which 
 had already begun to be put forth in her name, he adds : 
 
 "We must not conclude from this that Christianity had destroyed what 
 nature had done ; that it meant to precipitate women into public hfe and re- 
 establish that absolute equality which the materialism of our age has dreamed 
 of. No ; Christianity is too spiritual to accept such an idea. The role of 
 Christian women was something similar to that of the guardian angels — they 
 might lead the world, but while remaining invisible themselves. It is very 
 seldom that angels become visible in the hour of supreme danger, as the angel 
 Raphael did to Tobit ; so is it only at certain moments, long foreseen, that the 
 empire of women becomes visible, and that we behold these angels, who were 
 the saviours of Christian society, manifesting themselves under the name of 
 Blanche of Castile and Joan of Arc." 
 
 Christianity had been accused by a certain school of having 
 corrupted the Latin tongue, whereas, on the contrary, it was 
 Christianity that saved it. Even in Cicero's time its purity 
 was affected, as we learn from his complaints that " the great 
 influx of strangers is adulterating the language." And Quin- 
 tilian, under Vespasian, laments, too, that in his day " the 
 whole language is changed." Christianity came not to destroy 
 but to rescue Latin, and the chief instrument in this re- 
 demption was the Vulgate, translated, as we know, in part 
 
296 Life and Works of- Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 from the Greek, in part from the Hebrew, and thus destined 
 to penetrate the minds of the people with the poetry of the 
 East on one side, and on the other with the philosophical lore 
 of Greece. The Bible itself was served in this mission by two 
 unlooked-for auxiliaries, the Africans and the people — that is 
 to say, a people half-barbarous at the period we speak of. 
 Ozanam lays considerable stress on this African character in- 
 troduced into the Latin literature by Cornutus, the disciple of 
 Seneca ; by Fronto, the master of Marcus AureUus ; by Ne- 
 mesius, by Tertulhan, who brings in his wake St. Cyprian, and, 
 above all, St. Augustine. Whatever importance may be 
 legitimately attached to this innovation, it is clear that the 
 Christian tongue dates from TertuUian, and that it is destined 
 to be the language of the Middle Ages, and the mother tongue 
 of all modern languages. This is what Christianity accom- 
 plished through the instrumentality of the Vulgate, and with the 
 Africans and barbarians as helpmates. 
 
 " Our ancestors were right to carry the Bible in triumph and cover it with 
 gold," says Ozanam. "The first of ancient books is likewise the first of 
 modem ones ; it is, so to speak, the author of these very books, for it is from 
 its pages that were to come forth the languages, the eloquence, the poetry, and 
 the civilization of modern times," 
 
 The concluding chapters of La Civilisation au 5*^ Steele 
 show the gradual development of those things in detail — his- 
 tory, poetry, art, the material civilization of the Empire up to 
 the formation of the neo-Latin nations. The charm and 
 vigor of the style are sustained to the last page, and carry 
 even the unlearned reader with unabated interest through 
 labyrinths of research which excite the admiration of the most 
 erudite. 
 
 Historians had opened a gulf, as it were, between antiquity 
 and barbarism. It has been the triumph of Ozanam to bridge 
 this over, and, by his patient genius and original investigations, 
 to re-establish those lines of communication which Providence 
 never allows to fail in time any more than in space. 
 
 A year or so after Ozanam's death this work was crowned 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 297 
 
 at the Academic Fran9aise, which adjudged to it the annual 
 prize of ten thousand francs, just then founded, for the finest 
 literary work produced within the year. M. Villemain was 
 charged with the panegyric for the occasion, and as the 
 opinion of so illustrious a critic is in itself a valuable testi- 
 mony, we cannot refrain from quoting the following passage 
 from his speech : 
 
 ♦* Learned and natural, always dominated by the same idea, while radiant 
 with a thousand memories, accurate and full of charming fancies, this book is 
 an eminent work of literature and taste. It raises criticism to eloquence ; it 
 conceives and seeks and finds eloquence itself in its highest source, in that 
 type which never dies, or which rather is for ever born anew in the native in- 
 stinct of a soul that vibrates to the good and the beautiful, to everything noble 
 here below, Nartue, liberty, science, and to those great truths above which 
 constitute the promise of Christian faith and hope." 
 
 The most superficial perusal of these volumes enables us to 
 form a pretty good idea of what Ozanam's completed work 
 would have been. We see here how he performed the pre- 
 liminary task of clearing the ground, making his way step by 
 step through the gloomy night of barbarism until the first 
 streak of dawn appears, and the Gospel enters and plants the 
 regenerating doctrine of Christ crucified on the ruins of the 
 effete and spurious civilization of Rome. 
 
 This picture was to have been followed up by another, 
 equally comprehensive and finished, of all the barbarous 
 tribes in the wild, free life of their native forests. We should 
 have seen them encamped on the ruins of the Empire, and 
 watched them gradually conquered by the teaching of the 
 Church, learning to respect those things which they had in- 
 tended to destroy — religion, letters, and art. Advancing 
 through the dreary waste of the sixth, seventh, and eighth 
 centuries, we should have come to Charlemagne, who with 
 one hand arrested the tide of the invasion, and with the other 
 rekindled the all but extinct light of letters. This would 
 have brought us to that period when the seeds of a new and 
 fertile literature were beginning to germinate — when the 
 
298 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 young idioms were lisping their first songs of chivalrous 
 romance, and the enthusiasm of the Crusades was drawing 
 the chivalry of Europe to the East, while, simultaneously 
 with this glorious movement, the Communes were awakening 
 to their liberties, and the schools were filling the world witii 
 the noise of their learned strife— thus, step by step, we sliould 
 have reached the thirteenth century, which ushers in the 
 Christian Renaissance. 
 
 Ozanam has handled almost every point of this immense 
 programme in the course of his work, but the only portions 
 of it that he accomplished thoroughly are the beginning and 
 the end. The History of Civilizaiio?i in the Fifth Century, 
 and Dante J or, Catholic Philosophy in the Thirteenth Cen- 
 tury, the Etudes Germaniques, and the Foetes Franciscains find 
 their places at separate intervals between these two works, 
 which he calls " les galons extremes de nion ouvrage^ 
 
 Les Etudes Gerrtianiques form two volumes, entitled The 
 Condition of the Germajis before Christianity, and Civilization 
 afnongst the Franks ; in other words, the ecclesiastical, politi- 
 cal, and literary history of the Merovingian period and the 
 reign of Charlemagne, the study of the German people pre- 
 vious to their transformation by Christian itv, and the study 
 of this transformation in itself. Ozanam is assisted in his 
 laborious expedition through this remote and obscure past by 
 Tacitus and some German savants ; but they lend him at best 
 a flickering light. As we see him plunge into the sombre 
 regions he has undertaken to explore, we are unconsciously 
 reminded of an adventurous traveller embarking on the obli- 
 terated pathways of one of those notorious forests of Germany, 
 with no hght to guide his steps but a feeble torch, whose 
 vacillating flame every gust of wind threatens to blow out. 
 He does full justice to the erudition and honesty of his pre- 
 cursors, but he contradicts them at every turn, challenges 
 their assertions, disproves their facts, and refutes their argu- 
 ments. He tears up the flimsy delusion of patriotic writers 
 who, like Gervinus, the historian of German poetry, senti* 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 299 
 
 mentally bewail " the mildness of Catholicism, which has 
 destroyed their warlike ancestors.*' Ozanam follows up the 
 study of the ancient religion of Germany to its earliest origin, 
 in order to show what were the obstacles and the resources 
 which it was one day to present to Christianity. 
 
 "Many German historians, in discovering in the traditions of their fatlier- 
 land those grand notions of the Divinity, of immortality, and of justice which 
 sustain the whole human conscience, have reproached the Christian mission- 
 aries with having come to disturb a people who had no need of them, and of 
 having calumniated creeds that they did not understand. It is consequently a 
 novelty in favor nowadav-s to absolve idolatry, to justify even those obscene 
 idols which the ancients adored, we are informed, in innocent simplicity. . . . 
 It was therefore necessary to show the excess to which superstition was carried 
 by these peoples, and how it was leading on to the overthrow of all the pro- 
 tecting laws of humanity, if '^e Gospel had not come in time to reinstate 
 them." 
 
 The historian goes on to show how everywhere, in manners, 
 customs, laws, and creeds, barbarism reveals its true character 
 of savage violence, cruelty, and immorality. He does not 
 deny the existence of the noble ideas which the enthusiasts of 
 Paganism claim for it, but he shows that these elements of 
 true greatness and power are not radically either pagan or 
 German ; they are simply a remnant of Christianity, which 
 links the most famous creeds of antiquity to the creed of the 
 Gospel. Such were the laws for the protection of family ties, 
 property, public justice, and other fine traits which bear a 
 striking family resemblance to tlie legislation of the East. 
 The languages, too, bear many signs of kindred with the 
 Latin, Greek, and Sanscrit tongues, while their poetry con- 
 tains an unmistakable ring of the old fables of the classical 
 apogee. The traces of a tradition, common alike to the no- 
 mad tribes of the North and the more polished races of the 
 South, are everywhere visible. Everywhere we see the same 
 essential conditions, however disguised under special charac- 
 teristics ; it is always an old order of things at war with the 
 spirit of disorder and destruction, always strife and antagonism, 
 the inevitable and distinctive character of barbarism \ tliS 
 
300 Life and IVhrh of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 upheaving of that " imperishable paganism " which Ozanam 
 declares to be an inalienable instinct of human nature. 
 
 These preliminary studies announce plainly enough whither 
 the conclusion tends. The predominant idea from first to 
 last is the fraternity of the German nations with the two 
 great races of the North, the Celts and the Slavs, as well as 
 with the Southern races; the radical unity, in fact, of the 
 Indo-European peoples as demonstrated by the immigration 
 of tribes, by the comparison of mythologies, by the resem- 
 blance of laws, languages, and religions, and a subsisting basis 
 of principles and traditions. 
 
 " There is no people, however barbarous, in whom we do not detect some 
 vestige of civilization struggling to defend itself ; there is none so refined but 
 that we can put our finger on some root of barbarism which nothing can 
 eradicate. At the bottom of every community, as in the depth of every human 
 conscience, we come upon law and revolt, we find contradiction and disorder ; 
 that is to say, what God has not put there." 
 
 It required nothing short of the courage of Christianity to 
 claim brotherhood for the fierce rude German races with the 
 refined Greeks and Romans, and it was a task worthy of mo- 
 dern science and Christian philosophy to undertake to search 
 out and produce the links of this kindred. 
 
 " It was reserved to philology," says Ozanam, "that is to say, to a study 
 which is counted idle and barren, to arrive at these fertile discoveries, to refute 
 the conjectures of the materialists, and to establish, by the community of lan- 
 guage and ideas, an incontestable community of origin between the blue-eyed, 
 stalwart races who wandered through the wildernesses of the north, and those 
 other races browned by the sun, small-limbed and hot-blooded, who built 
 cities, opened schools, and dug out ports under the fiery skies of the south." 
 
 We do not pretend to estimate this dogma, to discuss its 
 merits or its flaws ; we merely aim at giving some idea of the 
 work before us, of its research, its power of synthesis, its clear, 
 subtle analysis, and that union of qualities which render his- 
 tory a science as admirable as it is useful, a science which 
 lays bare to mankind the story of their travail and mission in 
 the past, making it a light to them for the accomplishment of 
 their destinies in the yet unacted drama of the future. 
 
Life and Works oj Frederic Ozanam. 301 
 
 Ozanam proceeds in the second part of this first volume t.o 
 show us the conflict between the Germans and the Romans. 
 He describes the causes of the power of Rome and of her 
 weakness, her conquest ot Germany and its resuhs : cities 
 founded, roads made, forests cleared away, Paganism thus de- 
 spoiled of those sylvan solitudes where, as in an inaccessible 
 stronghold, its gods abode, the entire mechanism of imperial 
 civilization — political institutions, military and municipal sys- 
 tems, schools, etc. — is examined and judged with rigorous im- 
 partiality ; its merits and vices are faithfully depicted. We 
 watch the decline of letters in the imperial schools ; we see 
 the growing cruelty of the Roman government, and the im- 
 placable hatred with which it is regarded by the vanquished 
 race. It had conquered the territory and taken the people 
 captive, but there was one fortress beyond the reach of its 
 victorious arms ; this was the human conscience, and so long 
 as tliis remained impregnable the victory was incon plete ; the 
 conqueror was defied by an element of resistance which, 
 sooner or later, must triumph, and prove to him that no force 
 of arms, however tremendous, can annihilate that which alone 
 and truly constitutes a people — their nationality. 
 
 Yet Ozanam would not have us conclude that the mission 
 of Rome in Germany was altogether fruitless or fatal. 
 
 " When Providence takes such workmen as the Romans for a work, we may 
 be assured," he says, "it is for no ordinary purpose." "When it permits a 
 country to be for three hundred years ploughed up by fearful wars we may 
 know that God means Himself to scatter the seed in the furrows. At the mo- 
 ment when Drusus was tnrowing bridges across the Rhine, and cutting roads 
 through the piack Forest, it was time to make haste, for ten years later a town 
 of Judea would give birth to Him whose disciples were to pass along these 
 roads, and complete the destruction of barbarism. The laws of the Emperors, 
 so learnedly commented on by the jurisconsults, were introducing the reign of 
 justice, which prepared the way for the law of charity. The Latin tongue 
 was helping the human mind to acquire those habits of clearness, precision, 
 and firmness which are as necessary to the progress of science as to the main- 
 tenance of the faith." 
 
 The second volume of the Etudes Germaniqties goes on to 
 show how this conquest, which baffled the legions of Caesar 
 
^Oi Life and Works of Frederic Oza?iam. 
 
 and the prestige of Rome, was achieved by the omnipotent 
 sweetness of the Church of Christ. The Franks, who had be- 
 come the first champions of the Gospel, took the Cross in 
 their hand, and, plunging into the dark forests beyond the 
 Rhine, went forth to attack barbarism in its very citadel. 
 They used no weapons but love, gentleness, and self-devotion ; 
 but, stronger with these than the soldiers who had overcome 
 the world, they triumphed; patience conquered those stout 
 hearts and rebellious natures, which the power of arms had 
 proved powerless to subdue. The author dwells with pecu- 
 liar furce on the three great events which decide the complete 
 triumph of Christianity — the conversion of the Franks, the 
 preaching mission of the Irish, and the conversion of the An- 
 glo-Saxons. The mission of the Franks is clearly defined 
 from the moment when the conversion of Ciovis enlisted them 
 under the flag of Christianity, and made them successors to 
 the Romans in arresting the tide of invasion; they make 
 Christianity penetrate by degrees into pagan laws and institu- 
 tions, until its reign becomes universal and secure under the 
 glorious sceptre of Charlemagne. We see the barbarous na- 
 tions, under the benign influence of the Gospel, bringing forth 
 a new civilization and a new empire, whose growth and fruits 
 are admirably described in the ch sing studies, entitled The 
 Churchy The State^ The Schools. With Charlemagne the era 
 of barbarism ceases, a new era begins, and a new society is 
 established. 
 y/ Ozanam brings out the mission of the Irish race in striking 
 relief : 
 
 " The monastic people of the barbarous ages, the missionary people destined 
 to cany tlie liglit of faith and science into the gathering darkness of the West, 
 are a people whose sufferings are better known to us than their services, and 
 whose marvellous vocation we have not sufficiently studied — the Irish."* 
 
 The historians of modern civilization are apt to trace it ex- 
 clusively to the decay of the Empire and the invasion of the 
 Teutonic races, overlooking the fact that the Romans were 
 
 * Etudes Ger., vol. ii. p. iia. 
 
Life and iVorks of Frederic Oza7iam. 305 
 
 coming to an end just as the Germans were beginning, and 
 that they were too old and worn-out to complete the educa- 
 tion of the on-coming race, so that it required a new genera- 
 tion to continue the chain and rejoin the links. This, Oza- 
 nam says, was the mission of the Celtic race, which he shows 
 us at an early period spreading itself like a fertile seed over 
 part of Germany, of Italy, Spain, Gaul, Brittany, and Ireland. 
 The church of Gaul soon cast the nets of her proselytism over 
 the rest of the Celtic nations; and while early in the fifth 
 century she was sending St. Loup and St. Germain to appease 
 the troubles excited by the Pelagian heresy in Brittany, she 
 was bidding a Gallo-Roman, named Patricius, found the 
 monastic life in the cloisters of Marmoutiers and Lerins, 
 and then go forth and bear the tidings of the Gospel to the 
 Irish. 
 
 ♦' This virgin island, on whose soil no proconsul had ever set his foot, which 
 had known neither the exactions of Rome nor its orgies, was also the only 
 spot in the whole world of which the Gospel took possession without resist- 
 ance and without bloodshed. The first fer\-ors of the faith which in other 
 lands drove the Christians to martyrdom drew the neophytes of Ireland into 
 monasteries, and St. Patrick rejoiced to see the sons and daughters of the 
 chiefs of the clans ranging themselves under the rule of the cloister in such 
 numbers that he could no longer count them. . . . Christianity, which has 
 always dealt tenderly with converted nations, which spared the temples of 
 Italy and Greece, did not lay the axe to the sacred woods of the Irish. The 
 grave genius of the Druids passed, with their science and their traditions, to 
 be purified by the monks. The nuns of Kildare kept up near the church of St. 
 Bridget a sacred fire, which was still alight there after six hundred years. . . . 
 St. Columba, ou a rock of the Hebrides, lived in familiar intercourse with the 
 wild beasts of the desert ; and when St. Kevin prayed with outstretched arms, 
 we are told that the birds came and laid their eggs in his palms. The bards 
 lured the people after them to the monasteries, taking with them the national 
 harp, the songs and memories of the land ; saints sought relaxation from 
 their austere labors in listening to the flute-players ; the poetry of the nation 
 finds a vent in its legends ; and while the monk is enclosed within the narrow 
 walls of his cell, his imagination wanders over the seas with St. Brendan, or 
 roams through the invisible world on the footsteps of St. Patrick."* 
 
 AVe must refrain from further quotations, difficult as it is to 
 resist giving some of those delicate legends which Ozanam 
 
 * EtiuUt Gtr^ vol. ii. p. 114. 
 
304 Life and Works of Frederic Ozaiiam, 
 
 delights in, and interweaves so gracefully with the austere and 
 learned narrative of these ancient island saints. 
 
 We lay down these two volumes, unable to decide which 
 most commands our admiration, the eloquence of the writer 
 or the erudition of the historian. It is rare to find the two 
 qualities united in one man ; the slow, patient research and 
 analysis of the savant are apt to prove fatal to the ^laii, the in- 
 spired impulse, of the orator; for we must recollect that these 
 glowing chapters were lectures delivered spontaneously ; but 
 Ozanam possessed the twofold power of oratory and erudition. 
 " One was as natural to him as the other was," says Lacor- 
 daire, a competent judge of both ; " he was great when stir- 
 ring up the dust around him with the miner's mattock, and 
 great in the full light of day, with the direct glance of the 
 mind's eye. It was this that composed his moral nature — a 
 mixture of solidity with young and ardent enthusiasm." * 
 
 The following letter may be appropriately inserted here: 
 
 COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT TO MADAME OZANAM. 
 
 ** La Roche en Breny, C6te d'Or, 
 Z2d Dec, 1855. 
 
 "How kind of you, Madame, to have thought of sending me that precious 
 volume ! I should certainly have procured it myself, but coming from your 
 hand it is infinitely more precious. I shall have it bound, and keep it by me 
 against the return of those sufferings which I earnestly wish I may learn to 
 bear with the patience and fervent piety of your husband. I noticed with 
 pleasure and with tender emotion some letters of his at the beginning of the 
 Ltvre des Malades. One longs for more of them, for it was there that his 
 soul poured itself out fully. . . I was all the more touched by this souvenir 
 that has come to me so unexpectedly from you and from kim^ because I have 
 been living in community of studies and thought with him for some time 
 past. I have a volume of the Etudes Germaniques always open before me, 
 and I am forced to acknowledge, with a pardonable sort of despair, that M. 
 Ozanam has left absolutely'^iothing to be said by those who come after him to 
 glean in the fields where he has reaped. The affection that I have always 
 borne him, and my reverence {culte) for his blessed and noble memory, can 
 alone console me for being thus always left so far behind by his eloquence and 
 his loyal erudition. 
 
 " My wife wishes me to remember her specially to you. Your image is 
 
 • Frederic Osanam, p. 45. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 305 
 
 constantly present to us, and your name recurs continually in our conver- 
 sations. 
 
 " Believe in the respectful attachment of your most humble servant, 
 
 "Charles de Montalembert." 
 
 We have now to speak of Da7iie et la Philosophie Catholique 
 autreizieme siede. The prestige of Dante's name is so subhme 
 that it requires some courage to approach it, even under the 
 protection of an authorized guide; yet it is impossible, in the 
 most cursory notice of Ozanams works, to pass by in silence 
 that which is perhaps the most widely known of them all. 
 
 Our readers have probably not forgotten the profound im- 
 pression he received when, on standing for the first time in 
 those chambers of Raphael which he designates " the sanc- 
 tuary of Christian art," he beheld amidst the doctors of theo- 
 logy, in the '* Dispute oi the Blessed Sacrament," a figure 
 " remarkable by its originality, a head crowned, not with the 
 mitre or the tiara, but with a wreath of laurel, yet noble and 
 austere withal, and nowise unworthy of that high company " 
 
 Why is Dante Alighieri placed side by side with the angel 
 of the schools, with St. Bonaventure Savonarola, and other 
 accredited teachers of the divine science ? This sudden 
 enquiry awakes in the mind of the boy tourist a reverent curi- 
 osity which deepened with years, and gives us the true motive 
 and immediate scope of the present work. 
 
 No book written by man has begot so much commentary 
 as that immortal song which Gioberti * styles " the human 
 Bible of modern society " ; from the fourteenth century to the 
 nineteenth it flows on in an unbroken stream, each age bring- 
 ing its peculiar character and spirit to the task of criticising, 
 interpreting, elucidating ; and yet Cesare Balbo, the latest 
 and most admired of Dante's biographers, declares that a 
 commentary of the Divina Commedia remains yet to be 
 written. Nor will this assertion seem exaggerated if we come 
 to consider the extraordinary contradictions that exist amongst 
 all those that have yet appeared. 
 
 • Dtl Prtmato, p. 378 
 
3g6 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 The immense family of Dantesque commentators may be 
 classed in four schools, the ascetic and the political, thesqhool 
 of the grammarians, and the historians. The ascetics discover 
 in the allegories a whole series of mystical and theological 
 doctrines. This school comprises nearly all the commenta- 
 tors from Dante's own contemporaries down to Cristoforo 
 Landino in 1457. 
 
 The political school includes those who regard the emanci- 
 pation of Florence and of all Italy from papal supremacy as 
 the main object of the poem. 
 
 The grammarians and the historians split hairs over the 
 interpretation of the letter, and contest the chronological 
 accuracy of the facts. Each school contains a principle ot 
 truth and a principle of error. Of truth, inasmuch as these 
 four elements all exist in the poem, but are so harmoniously 
 balanced, and grouped round thq, central idea in such exqui- 
 site symmetry, that we may apply to the Divina Commedia 
 those words of Dante describing the beauty of Beatrice, 
 "... sola il suo Fattore tutta la goda." Of error, because, 
 instead of viewing these elements as distinct, yet harmonizing 
 in a perfect whole, each commentator detaches one from the 
 rest, and works it to excess, neglecting the others, and thus 
 straying from the lines of full and accurate interpretation. 
 
 The ascetic school slips into mystic subtleties that end by 
 clouding the poem, effacing the true Dantesque idea, and re- 
 placing it by neo-Platonism. Again, we see the purely political 
 allegories strained and tortured to express the jargon of free- 
 masonry, of seers and humanitarians ; while men of letters 
 and students of history, by attending exclusively to the literal 
 interpretation, open the door to the cavilling of the sophists, 
 and by pushing chronological research too far reduce the 
 poem to a chronicle. 
 
 Balbo, therefore, is justified in saying that the worthy com- 
 mentator of Dante is yet to come, the one who, by embracing 
 in their proper proportions these diverse but not heterogene- 
 <3us elements, will restore to th§ Qommedia that unity of con 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 307 
 
 ception whicli has hitherto been so grievously misuinierstood. 
 Ozanam did not aspire to so elaborate a work. His ciiief aim 
 was to reveal to us in Dante the theologian and philosopher, 
 the disciple of St. Thomas Aquinas and Niger de Brabant. 
 
 After having been the most glorified of men, venerated and 
 exalted for centuries, Dante was destined, like all human 
 celebrities, to experience the fickleness of human glory. Phi- 
 losophy had been the master passion of his mind, and yet the 
 work which most victoriously embodied this, the book to 
 which he sacrificed his life, and which, as he pathetically puts 
 it, " made me lean for years," had come down to us after sbc 
 hundred years shorn of the greater portion of that philoso- 
 phical interest which its author prized above every other. 
 
 This was the task which Ozanam set himself to accomplish : 
 to reconstitute this mutilated portion of the poet's glory, and 
 rehabilitate that formula of starry and translucent truth with 
 which, guided by his seeing eye, the Florentine penetrated 
 into the inmost mystery of life and human destiny. 
 
 Nothing in the Middle Ages has been more calumniated 
 than their philosophy. It is represented as turning in a 
 groove of systems, quarrels, and sterile speculations, having 
 for its instrument a barbarous, indocile, and pedantic lan- 
 guage. Dante stands forth to vindicate this maligned period, 
 and he does so in an idiom intelligible to women and chil- 
 dren. He takes up one of these semi-barbarous mediaeval 
 tongues and shows us what can be done with it; in his hands 
 the Italian vocabulary expands to the breadth of his vast 
 comprehension ; it grows strong with his strength, sweeter 
 with his sweetness, its mellifluous tones borrow a more liquid 
 music when they become the medium of his inspired thoughts. 
 
 The secret of Dante's immortality lies in that union of phi- 
 losophy with poetry which his sublime song presents ; the 
 Divina Commedia addresses itself to doctors, princes, souls of 
 every class and in every age, and all listen entranced, " un- 
 derstanding every one in his own tongue." A poem which 
 embraces such an illimitable range present? a horizon too 
 
3o8 Life and Works of Ftederic Ozanam. 
 
 vast for any one critic to span. And Ozanam wisely confines 
 himself to one aspect of the work, that which, he says, " is 
 the least cultivated, but perhaps the most fertile." But to do 
 even this thoroughly involved an immense toil. A philoso- 
 phical system is not an isolated fact, " it is the produce of the 
 concurrence of all the faculties of the soul, and these faculties, 
 in their turn, obey the anterior education they have received, 
 and external impulses. It is therefore necessary to begin by 
 studying the general aspect of Dante's epoch, the phases of 
 contemporary scholasticism, the special characteristics of the 
 Italian school to which he belongs, the studies and vicissitudes 
 that fill his life, and the effect which these united causes must 
 have exercised on his destinies." * 
 
 The answer to these enquiries would involve the solution of 
 endless historical questions. It would be necessary, in order 
 to sift the various mediaeval conceptions grouped together in 
 the Divina Commedia^ to trace them up to their original 
 sources, starting from the Eastern sanctuaries, and proceeding 
 through the Arab, the Alexandrine, the Latin, the Greek, and 
 the Christian schools ; but as no individual life would suffice 
 for such a process, Ozanam takes only a rapid glance along 
 the vista; like Dante before entering the circle, he looks and 
 passes on, granting but a brief interview to each period, 
 school, and personage. But with Beatrice he lingers ; before 
 this sweet conception, this heavenly light whom all surround- 
 ing beams irradiate, who combines the very essence of the 
 mystic song, its. divine philosophy and its purest earthly inte- 
 rest, the enthusiasm of the commentator gives itself free vent 
 and rises to ecstasy. Others have written wisely and beauti- 
 fully about Beatrice, have analyzed, exalted, explained her ; 
 but Ozanam, like Dante himself, tunes his lyre to a seraphic 
 key, and sings like one who worships. Avoiding the two 
 rocks on which his predecessors have split — one school re- 
 garding her as a purely abstract symbol, the other as nothing 
 but an earthly reality — he shows us Dante passionately loving 
 
 • DuHtc tt la Phil Catk., Introd. p. 63. 
 
Life and Wot ks of Frederic Ozanam, 309 
 
 the woman, longing for her, losing her ; we see his life irre- 
 parably impoverished by the loss of this ideal which it never 
 possessed, but which was destined to color it as no reality 
 could have done ; we see him pass from sombre despair to 
 exulting adoration, and rise up from his sorrow to sing of her 
 " as no man has yet sung of woman " \ we behold the trans- 
 formation of the reality into the symbol, we see the mystic 
 waters rise from their source at the crystal throne, we watch 
 them flow to meet the stream of human tears, where, blend- 
 ing in one translucent wave, they bear Beatrice from our 
 sight, until we behold her emerge on the golden heights of 
 vision, as the heavenly lady who will guide her votary through 
 the effulgent circles of Paradise. 
 
 It is difficult to see how the most uninitiated student of 
 Dante can fail to recognize this twofold character of the 
 poem, or to understand how any controversy could have 
 arisen about it in the face of his own assertion. " The sense 
 of this work," he says in the curious letter where he dedicates 
 // Paradiso to Can Grande, " is not simple, but multiform. 
 There is first the literal sense, and then the sense hidden 
 under the letter." It would seem that he attached more 
 weight to the real than the allegorical sense, for he adds in 
 the same letter : " The aim of my work, the aim of the whole 
 and every part of it, is to rescue the living from their misery 
 and guide them to happiness, not only in the next world, but 
 in this." 
 
 Yet in spite of this authority, the multiform character of the 
 poem was denied by commentators up to a very recent period. 
 Ozanam has, it is generally admitted, thrown more light on its 
 complex meanings than any other modern critic. He sees, 
 in the poet's wondrous capacity for love, the secret of his true 
 poetic mission, and shows us how this love, its growth in 
 sorrow and supreme development in worship, is the experi- 
 ence that was needed to work out his destiny to its fulfilment. 
 
 •'According to the laws that rule the spiritual world, the attraction of one 
 soul is needed to ejevate another. This attraction wc call love \ in the language 
 
3IO Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 of philosophy it is also called friendship ; in that of Christianity it is called 
 charity, Dante was not to escape the common law. At nine years of age — ■ 
 that is to say, at an age whose innocence admits of no impure suspicion — he 
 meets at a family festival a child full of nobleness and grace. This sight 
 awakes in him an affection which has no name on earth, and which he pre- 
 serves tender and chaste during the perilous season of youth ; dreams wliere 
 Beatrice appears to him in her radiant beauty; an indescribable yearning 
 to find himself in her pathway ; a bow, the merest inclination of the head — 
 in such things as these did he place his happiness. He was a prey to 
 fears and hopes, to joys and sadnesses that exercised his sensibility and puri- 
 fied it to the most extreme delicacy, disengaging it by degrees from all 
 vulgar habits and sohcitudes ; but, above all, when Beatrice quitted this world 
 in the bloom of her youth, his thoughts followed her to that invisible world of 
 which she had become an inhabitant, and he delighted to adorn her with the 
 choicest flowers of immortality ; he surrounded her with the canticles of the 
 angels, he seated her on the highest steps of the throne of God, he forgot her 
 death in the contemplation of this glorious transfiguration."* 
 
 Grief drove Dante to seek consolation in the writings ot 
 Cicero and Boethius, St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. 
 Thomas Aquinas, St. Bernard, Richard of St. Victor, and 
 these noble masters amply rewarded his patient study. It 
 was not long before philosophy became the mistress of his 
 soul, ruling it as Beatrice had done, but witli austerer sway. 
 In order to perfect himself in her service he travelled in pur- 
 suit of science to all the great universities of the day. The 
 [nferno'f and Paradiso\ bear traces of an itinerary which, 
 passing through Aries, Paris, Bruges, and London, would 
 seem to land the illustrious student at Oxford. Ozanam re- 
 frains from pronouncing on its accuracy, but holds it for cer- 
 
 * Dante et la Phil. Cath.,p. 119. 
 
 It is generally assumed that grief at Beatrice's death was what first awoke Dante's poetic 
 genius. He himself would seem to prove that it was despair at her marriage. That morning, 
 after he met her in the streets of Florence, robed in white, and accompanied by women older 
 than herself— clearly on her way as a betrothed bride to the church— and when she spoke to him 
 those words which filled him with such joy that he thought he had " reached the limits of 
 beatitude," he went home aud had that vision where he sees her held up in the arms of a man, 
 who awakes her with the words, "Ego Dominus tuus," and, after constraining her to eat the 
 burning heart, bears her away, " his joy being suddenly changed to bitter lamentation." Dante 
 at once sits down and writes his Jirsl sonnet, which he sends round to several friends, asking 
 them to interpret it ; but they all fail to do so, as he tells us in the Viia Nuova. 
 
 We are indebted for this idea — entirely original, as far as we are aware, though so trans- 
 parently suggestive— to the unpublished notes of an accomplished Italian scholar, Mr. Augustus 
 Craven. 
 
 t Inferno, ix. 38 ; xii. 40 ; xv. 2, } Faradis", x. 47i etc, 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 311 
 
 tain that Dante passed some time in Paris, where, in company 
 with the common herd of students, he attended the lectures 
 of the learned Sigier in the Rue.Fouarre; but here, as in his 
 native land, science closed her gates against him. He gained 
 the highest grades, but he was not received into the Academy, 
 *' because he was too poor to pay the fees." So he wended 
 his way back to Italy, and at Verona sustained a thesis " on 
 the elements of fire and water" with an /ciat which, mayhap 
 consoled him a little for the loss of academical honors. One 
 year later he died, and Guide Novello placed a crown of 
 laurels on his tomb. Thus we see in Dante three distinct 
 lives, each complete in its sphere — the citizen, the poet, and 
 the philosopher. We see him in possession of " those three 
 faculties," says Ozanam, *' which, united in certain propor- 
 tions, compose genius — intelligence to perceive, imagination 
 to idealize, will to realize." 
 
 It would seem but too true that the pure memory of Bea- 
 trice failed to preserve worthy of it the life where it was so 
 magnificently enshrined. Ozanam, with all his reverence for 
 Dante, does not attempt to palliate his faults, but he alleges 
 deprecatingly, " They have a wonderful secret for making you 
 overlook them — repentance. In the thirteenth century, the 
 art, so common nowadays, of legitimizing vice by complaisant 
 doctrines was little known. Sooner or later men came to seek 
 in religion that grace of expiation of which she is the immortal 
 dispenser." Dante comes before us in this penitential atti- 
 tude, as he himself describes it, " with downcast e}e.s, like a 
 child that confesses its fault," avowing in the face of all future 
 generations the follies of his youth. The Vita Nuova is the 
 naive confession of his early years ; the two books de Vulgari 
 Eloquenfid are a philological apologia of the despised idiom 
 which he used as the instrument of his finest inspirations; the 
 Convito is the outpouring of those philosophical doctrines which 
 he had gathered from the sages of antiquity and modern doc- 
 tors. Then follows the work of which these are the heralds 
 and the preparation, the Divina Commedia, But earth wa? 
 
312 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 too narrow a stage for this vast, unfathomable poem. True 
 poetry is an intuition of the infinite, a perception of God in 
 creation, a divine instinct reaching to the Hfe beyond life, up- 
 hfting the soul with a sweet and powerful might of inspiration, 
 and compelling it to seek its abiding-place in that boundless 
 realm which is the natural home of immortality. In every 
 remote period, and amongst the rudest tribes, we see this in- 
 stinct guiding the literature of mankind, seeking in the invisi- 
 ble a refuge for the noblest human needs, invoking the super- 
 natural, though it be but in horror, as an instinctive canon of 
 poetic art. The Divina Commedia is the grandest affirmation 
 of this truth which human genius has yet produced. Dante's 
 eagle flight chafed within the limits of time and space; he 
 passed beyond them through the gates of death, and placed 
 his poem in the infinite. From this stupendous stage he con- 
 templates the world, he sees the nations like the tribes of old, 
 coming up one by one, an endless procession, to the judgment- 
 seat; he passes sentence on the rulers and the peoples, justly 
 but pitilessly ; he uses without mercy that terrible scourge of • 
 satire which the prophets wielded when the world was young; 
 he takes up Jacopone's rod, and in his hand it becomes a ser- 
 pent whose bite stings like fire. Science serves him as a 
 docile handmaiden ; his seer's eye dimly descries in coming 
 years the worlds that Newton and Columbus are to discover. 
 But his Muse is led by a loftier star than physical science or 
 philosophy. Religion and sorrow are his guides; these lead 
 him into the mystic sanctuary where only they may enter; they 
 initiate him into the cause of existence, the sanction of the de- 
 crees of conscience, the germ of future misery and happiness 
 contained in our merits or demerits here below, the final re- 
 sult of human actions. The study of human actions becomes 
 naturally thenceforth the one whose interest absorbs him above 
 all others, though he interweaves it with the most varied and 
 seemingly irrelevant ones. Standing beyond death he con- 
 ceives a plan of the philosophy of life, of universal science. 
 But though Dante's thoughts were steadily centred in death, 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 313 
 
 they bear no traces of that egotism which, as Ozanam says, 
 " hides itself so frequently under the appearance of melan- 
 choly." Strong human sympathies still bound him to the 
 great heart of humanity, and drew him back to the scenes 
 where the fiery passions of his youth had found an outlet. 
 Ozanam feels so strongly this sympathetic current flowing 
 from Dante's soul that he claims him as the prophet of de- 
 mocracy and of the revolution of modern society. 
 
 " Doubtless," he says, '* Dante borrowed from the publicists of his day many 
 of the arg;uments on which he supports the monarchy of the Holy Empire. 
 But the Empire, as he conceives it, is no longer that of Charlemagrie. . . . 
 It is a new conception, reaching to two great things; on one side to the 
 primitive Roman Empire, where the prince clothed with the tribune's power 
 represents in his triumph the plebeians conquering the patricians ; on the other, 
 the French monarchy raising itself by alliance with the communes on the 
 ruins of the nobihty. The depositary of power, even under the name of 
 Caesar, with the imperial diadem on his brow, is in Dante's eyes no more than 
 the immediate agent of the multitude, the level which renders all heads equal. 
 Amongst all privileges, none is so odious to him as that of birth ; he shakes 
 feudalism to its base, and his rude polemics, in attacking hereditary honors, do 
 not spare hereditary possessions. After seeking for the regenerating principles 
 of a social philosophy in the highest regions of moral theolc^y, he follows out 
 their deductions relentlessly to the most extreme and impracticable democratic 
 maxims."* 
 
 Rit if Ozanam proclaims Dante the precursor of modem 
 ideas, from his having been the first who gave a moral, politi- 
 cal, and universal direction to the philosophical sciences, he is 
 careful to exonerate him from complicity in the excesses of 
 which our days are witness. 
 
 " He did not deify humanity by representing it as self-suffidng, with no light 
 but reason, no rule but its own will. . . . He saw that it was not all here be- 
 low, where it passes, as it were, in swarms ; he went first of all to seek it at 
 the end of the journey, where the innumerable pilgrims of life are gathered for 
 ever. It has been said of Bossuet that, with the rod of Moses in his hand, he 
 drove the generations to the tomb. It may be said of Dante that he awaits 
 them there with the scales of the last judgment. Leaning on the truths which 
 they should have believed, and the justice Ihey should have served, he weighs 
 their works in the balance oi eternity. . , . Thus, with thfe idea Ot an eternal 
 destiny, piorality re-enters into history ; humanity, Jiumiliated Under the iaw 
 
 • Panic iii. p. 362, 
 
314 -^^ <^nd Works of Frederic Ozananh 
 
 of death, rises up with the law of duty, and if we deny it the honors of an 
 arrogant apotheosis, we spare it the opprobrium of a brutish fatalism."* 
 
 After measuring the various points of contrast and analogy 
 which exist between Dante's philosophy and other systems, 
 jancient and modern, Ozanam comes to the question which 
 has engaged all the commentators of the poet for three centuries 
 — his orthodoxy. 
 
 "Protestantism," he says, "at its cradle felt the necessity of creating a 
 genealogy which should link it to the Apostolic times, and justify in it the 
 accomplishment of those promises of infallibility which the Saviour has left to 
 His church. ... It is not exacting in the matter of proofs ; a few embittered 
 words, dropped from the pen of a celebrated man on contemporary abuses, 
 suffice to place him at once in the catalogue of these pretended witnesses of the 
 truth. Dante could not escape this posthumous honor. . . . Various pas- 
 sages of his poem, ingeniously tortured, appeared, it was alleged, to contain 
 derisive allusions to the holiest mysteries of the Catholic liturgy" {JPar. 
 xxxiii. 12). 
 
 It was not unnatural that English lovers of Dante should 
 seize with avidity anything that struck them as evidence of 
 his Protestant affinities ; but if the Protestants of the sixteenth 
 century tried to claim him for their own, it was reserved to 
 the zealots of the nineteenth to make him out a freemason; 
 M. Aroux has written a learned treatise on the subject, and 
 proved the charge of freemasonry to his own satisfaction. 
 The honor of originating the idea does not, however, rest 
 with him. Ozanam relates how, when, emancipated from the 
 fatal influence of the Seicentisti, Italian literature returned to 
 worthier traditions, the worship of the old poets of the father- 
 land was turned to account by the secret societies, who grafted 
 their religion and political theories upon it. 
 
 " And in our own day, when the heads of the conquered party, worthy of all 
 respectful pity, sought refuge in England, the need of something to while 
 away the dreary leisure of exile, perhaps also the desire to recognize in some 
 way Protestant hospitality, inspired the new system proposed by Ugo Foscolo, 
 and supported by M. Rossetti, not without a vast display of science and im- 
 agination," f 
 
 Witnesses, however, were forthcoming to avenge Dante and 
 
 • Partie iii. p. 3^. \ DatiUa Phil. Calk., p. 37a 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozatiam, 315 
 
 rescue him from these profanations. Foscolo has found 
 learned contradictors in Italy (Cesare Balbo and the editors 
 of the Milanese edition of the Convito)^ and Schlegel, the 
 oracle of German criticism, has refuted exhaustively the para- 
 doxes of Rossetti. 
 
 The fierce invectives with which the exiled Florentine pur- 
 sues the Roman Court and certain Popes have furnished a 
 ground of suspicion against him to many; but Ozanam 
 answers this charge by the obvious Catholic argument that 
 Papal impeccability is a totally distinct matter from Papal in^ 
 fallibility. St. Bernard and St. Thomas of Canterbury head 
 the list of canonized saints who in evil days stood dauntlessly 
 forth to denounce the iniquities of Popes and the corruption 
 of their courts. If Dante overstepped the bounds which the 
 filial reverence of these servants of the Church respected, we 
 must remember that he was not a saint, but a man of proud 
 and fiery temperament, swayed by strong passions, and self- 
 charged with a mission which exacted more severity than 
 mildness. Yet his violence, even in its fiercest paroxysms, is 
 acquitted of the slightest stain of heresy by those who hold 
 the right to judge it. Catholicism is not so careless of its 
 glories. The orthodoxy of Dante was defended and estab- 
 lished by no less an authority than Bellarmine in the seven- 
 teenth century. Three Popes accepted the dedication of the 
 Divina Commedia, Paul III., Pius IV., Clement XII., and the 
 Roman edition of 1791 was sanctioned by the same supreme 
 authority. Even in the poet's lifetime, the shafts he levelled 
 at contemporary corruption and abuses laid him open to the 
 charge of heresy, and an ancient tradition tells us how the 
 Roman Inquisition dealt with it. His poem, on its first ap- 
 pearance, was rigorously examined by the doctors of theology, 
 and certain Brothers- Minor, noting that passage where St. 
 Francis meets Dante, and asks for news of the Franciscan 
 order, because for so long a time it has sent nobody to heaven, 
 took offence, and summoned the satirist before the Inquisi* 
 tion. 
 
3i6 Life and Works of Fiedcric Ozanam, 
 
 " Dante appeared before the judges after vespers, and begged for a delay 
 until the morrow, that he might draw up his creed in writing, consenting, if lie 
 erred in any point, to undergo the deserved punishment. He watched through 
 the night, and the next morning, at tierce, presented his credo, in the form of 
 a poem of 250 lines, wherein every article of the faith was separately treated. 
 The Inquisitor having read it in presence of his counsel, composed of 
 twelve masters in theology, dismissed the poet, and laughed at the brethren, 
 who were mightily astonished to see such a wonderful composition produced 
 in such short delay." * 
 
 This record is to be seen in the MS. ion of Riccardiana 
 at Florence, and, even admitting a doubt of its veracity, is 
 invaluable as proving what the contemporary estimate was of 
 Dante. 
 
 Homer has been styled the theologian of pagan antiquity, 
 and Dante has been called in turn the Homer of Christian 
 times ; but the comparison, if it glorifies his genius, dishonors 
 his religion. 
 
 ♦' The blind poet of Smyrna has been justly accused of lowering the gods too 
 near to man, while none better than the Florentine has known how to elevate 
 man and raise him up towards the Godhead. It is by this, by the purity, by the 
 immaterial character of his symbolism, by the infinite breadth of his concep- 
 tion, that he leaves so far behind him all ancient and modem poets, and above 
 all Milton and Klopstock. If we would raise one of those comparisons which 
 fix in the memory two names associated to recall and define one another, we 
 may say, and it will be the risumi of this study, that the Divine Comedy is 
 the literary and philosophical Somma of the Middle Ages, and Dante the St. 
 Thomas of poetry." \ 
 
 Thus Ozanam brings us back to the point from which he 
 started, to that fresco of Raphael's, where the laurel-crowned 
 figure, standing side by side with St. Thomas, first awoke his 
 curiosity and prompted the research which was to solve the 
 puzzle. How far he has succeeded in his task each one will 
 pronounce according to his individual judgment and sympa- 
 thies. For our part, we confess that in every line of the 
 august epic we see the philosophy of Dante, like all the phi- 
 losophy of the Middle Ages, ever the obedient handmaiden of 
 theology. Whether he penetrates into the mysteries of Crea- 
 tion, or unravels the truths taught by the Church, or opens 
 
 • Ozanam's Pursatorio, p. 628 t Dante tt Cath. Phil., p. 381, 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Gzanam. 317 
 
 the inspired writings of prophets and evangelists to gather in 
 their divine arcana rules and types and a voice to proclaim their 
 hidden meanings, we see ever shining on his page the serene 
 and dazzling light of a gigantic human intellect illuminated 
 by faith. His poem is a glorious psalm of worship, a voice 
 from the very heart of humanity chanting the praises of God; 
 all created things, ice and fire, abysses and floods, the trees 
 of the forest and the stars of the firmament, are called in to 
 swell the chorus ; all through creation, in nature and beyond 
 it, in life and death, from the happy realms above, from the 
 desolate Uccps below, the voice rin^s loud and clear like the 
 roar of many waters shouting out Hosannah ! And yet in the 
 midst of the glowing visions where the song resounds, througli 
 mystic dreams and fiery shudderings and raptures of delight, 
 we never lose sight of the entrancing spectacle of a human 
 soul, suffering, heroic, intense. Whatever be the scenes 
 through which we pass, whether they be full of tragic satire, 
 or pathos sweet as the breath of heaven, or tenderness pass- 
 ing the love of woman, we hear the chords attuned to the 
 ?ame dominant key, that of Dante's sublime and powerful 
 personality. 
 
 Ozanam has left us only an unfinished monument, a mere 
 fragment of an almost infinite design, yet there are few writers 
 whose works are less marred by a sense of incompleteness. 
 At times, no doubt, his genius rises higher than at others, and 
 flashes out in its maximum of power, but he never falls below 
 liis habitual level of finely-balanced thought, true poetry, and 
 philosophy. He had the enthusiasm of a real poet, but it 
 never carried away his judgment; his thought was always 
 strong enough to bear the utmost weight of emotion without 
 being obscured or defaced ; his style is finished as a cameo, 
 musical, delicate, and masterly ; the diction is invariably pure 
 and choice, though it occasionally sins from over-redundance 
 of imagery — his desire to express his idea perfectly leading 
 him sometimes to an exuberance of words ; for however ab- 
 sorbed he was in his subject, Ozanam never forgot that others 
 
31^ Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 were listening who required explanation. His eloquence in 
 its most impulsive movements — and it is full of impulse — is 
 always free from exaggeration. He was preserved from this 
 by what, for want of a better word, we call taste, that dehcate 
 instinct of the imagination which tolerates no excess. French 
 critics are fond of instituting a comparison between the style 
 of Ozanam and his two celebrated contemporaries, Berryer 
 and Montalembert; yet, except in their contrasts, it is diffi- 
 cult to see what there is to suggest it. The philosopher and 
 historian seldom reaches that triumphant energy that marks 
 the eloquence of the two political orators. His power is of a 
 different order altogether; it is penetrative and convincing 
 rather than dazzling, and lingers on the mind like the glow of 
 sunset long after the meteoric flash of the more brilliant stars 
 has died away. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 1853. 
 
 And now we are on the threshold of the closing scene. 
 We are approaching that hour which puts the seal on every 
 life — that hour which, even on this side of the grave, is like 
 the opening of the Book through which the secrets of hearts 
 are revealed. It is always a mournful spectacle, though gene- 
 rally an instructive and sometimes a consoling one, to witness 
 the last great crisis of a human soul, to watch the light going 
 out, to listen to the changing accents of the well-known voice, 
 to note, it may be, those " lears of the brave and follies of the 
 wise " which come to mar the beauty and completeness of the 
 final act, adding poignancy to our grief, and lingering in the 
 memory like a pain or a dim, distressing doubt. We have no 
 such experience to fear from Ozanam. He will not disap- 
 point us in death, who in life was faithful to his noblest self. 
 Sofdy heroic the life had been all through, and now we shall 
 see the same gentle heroism enduring to the last. 
 
 All that he had loved in life he loves now with a warmer 
 tenderness and a clearer appreciation. In the days of his 
 boyhood he had gone through Italy enamored of lier beauty, 
 and singing her praises with the poetic fervor of a young 
 heart. He is going through the sunny land again, conscious 
 that the journey is the prelude to his entrance into the valley 
 of the shadow of death, and yet we hear him just as of old 
 bursting out into passionate delight as the scenes of familiar 
 beauty break once more on his sight. He forgets the cruel 
 throes ot disease, the exhausting languor that makes every step 
 a pain on the way to Nice, and goes into ecstasies over 
 
 3»9 
 
320 Life and Warh oj Frederk Ozanam, 
 
 *' The road, of magic beauty, bordered with olive-trees and orange-trees all in 
 full bearing, to say nothing of the palms that we saw at long distances waving 
 over some Roman ruin. Yet, admirable as tins is, it seems nothing when you 
 arrive near the Antibes, and suddenly behold the great curtain of the maritime 
 Alps unfold itself and close in the horizon, mountains whose brow is crowned 
 with snow while their base is plunged in a shining sea. It is only then that 
 the Pyrenees and the coast of Biscay are conquered ! All creation is there, 
 with the majesty of the glaciers and the wealth of the tropical climes : oiive- 
 trees as large as our finest oaks, orange-trees growing in forests, oleanders 
 flowering wild in the dried beds o^ rivers, aloes and cactuses as in Sicily." 
 
 His heart exults in the beauty of God's beautiful world, and 
 he sees the hand of the Creator everywhere — in the grand 
 waving palms " that are worthy to be borne before our Saviour 
 on the day of His triumphal entry " ; in the glorious hills " that 
 are surely a bit of the terrestrial Paradise where God walked 
 and conversed with Adam." All the old memories and sym- 
 pathies are strong as ever as the time approaches for separa- 
 tion, and he dwells on them lovingly and gaily. " What was 
 there to prevent our fancying ourselves on the coast of Syria 
 in the time of the Crusades, especially when the battlements 
 of an old dungeon or some ancient chapel peeped above the 
 neighboring hill-tops ? " he says playfully to M. Cornudet, 
 and then goes on to describe how, although no swarthy Sara- 
 cen bore down on them to bar the way, 
 
 ** Ces dames (t\\s wife and her mother) declare that, as we were ascending the 
 Esterelle, men armed with hatchets prowled for a whole hour about the car- 
 riage, casting terrible glances at it. If this fact should not appear to you suf- 
 ficient to constitute the robber episode which ougVit to be found in every 
 journey worth the name, I assure you it is amply completed by the multitude 
 of honest brigands who, under the name of inn- keepers, hat in hand, have 
 been fleecing and despoiling us during these two hundred leagues. In order 
 that nothing should be wanting in our epopee, we came by sea from Genoa to 
 Leghorn, and that perfidious element treated us as so many heroes : the winds 
 were let loose, the billows rode over the deck, and Madame Ozanam's trunk 
 was so thoroughly soaked that on alighting at the hotel she was compelled to 
 make the finest exhibition of clothes hanging out to dry that has ever been 
 seen since the days when the Princess Nausicaa washed her ]inen." 
 
 The monuments of man's genius claim his admiration and 
 interest, as formerly, next to the works of God. Those of 
 Pisa fascinate him by their " young, virginal grace, which it is 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozatiam, 321 
 
 impossible to describe. The cathedral, an edifice of the 
 eleventh century, before the first Crusades — that is to say, the 
 creation of a period reputed barbarous, but which, after the 
 lapse of eight hundred years of civilization, the world is f Tced 
 to contemplate with admiration," inspired the traveller with 
 one of those lyrical outbursts that his intimate correspondence 
 is full of: 
 
 " When you enter the bronze g:ates, and, standing at the end of those five 
 naves divided by a forest of pillars, behold resplendent in the mosaic of the 
 vaulted roof the colossal figure of Christ, seated as He will appear on the last 
 day, upon a throne of glory between the Blessed Virgin and St. John, you feel 
 for one moment overpowered by the divine majesty, you recognize truly the 
 eternal Son of the Father, you rejoice that our Lord has allowed a people to 
 build Him a temple that is almost worthy of Him. The fear of God, the sense 
 of the nothingness of man, the legitimate pride of the Christian, all these emo- 
 tions are spontaneously awakened, and you understand those words of the 
 Psalmist: ' How beautiful are thy tabernacles, Lord God of Hosts 1 ' " 
 
 The unrelenting rain which had spoiled and checked their 
 Spanish tour followed them to Italy, and Ozanam congratu- 
 lates himself that there are at Pisa some places of resort which 
 ke can visit and enjoy under shelter from the torrents. " A 
 library of sixty thousand volumes gives me pretty nearly all I 
 want in the way of history and ecclesiastical and municipal 
 antiquities," he s:.ys, and then relates, with that generous 
 pride in the kindness of others that was one of his character- 
 istics, how courteous and obliging everybody is in tlie said 
 library; how the learned Professor Ferrucci has ensconced 
 him at a table in a comfortable corner free from draughts, 
 and how genial and intelligent are all the authorities. 
 
 "We have, in fact, a little Athens here, and I am the more justified in call- 
 ing it by this name in that there are a round hundred of good Greek students. 
 But I must admit that these sons of Aristides and Philopoemen are less assidu- 
 ous at the schools than at the theatre, and have the name of not paying their 
 debts." 
 
 The mention of schools and scholars naturally calls up the 
 imnge of other seats of learning to which the exile's heart 
 turns yearningly. 
 
32 2 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 "Ah! my poor Sorbonne ! " he exclaims, with a sigh, "how often do ray 
 thoughts go back to the blackened walls, the bleak courtyard, the studious, 
 begrimed halls which I have so often seen filled with the generous youth of 
 Paris ! Dear friend, next to the infinite consolations which a Catholic finds 
 at the foot of the altar, next to the joys of family life, I know no greater hap- 
 piness than that of addressing young men who have heart and intelligence." 
 
 He owns, as if confessing to a foolish weakness, that the 
 memory of this young, eager, sympathetic crowd is continu- 
 ally pulling his heart-strings back to Paris ; he asks for news 
 of the examinations, and " how the Baccalaureats are getting 
 on," with the tender interest of a man recalling the scenes of 
 his own youthful struggles in the learned Alma Mater. The 
 very thought of being able once more to ascend his chair, 
 and lay his hand on the vibrating crowd around it, stirs him 
 with an irrepressible thrill of delight. He dares not dwell on 
 the hope, but turns aside with a " Fiat ! it will be well, how- 
 ever it ends, for it will be as God wills. Volo quomodo vis, 
 volo quamdiu vis. " 
 
 His pleasure in his friends, in their sympathy, their joys 
 and pursuits, is as keen as in the days when he was free to 
 share them all actively. 
 
 " I know not what God may ordain for us henceforth," he says to his old 
 colleague M. Lenormant, whose battle he had fought so bravely, " but I know 
 that in choosing our friends for us He has done quite enough for the honor 
 and happiness of our lives. Whatever bad opinion I have of myself, I cannot 
 believe that He has created me to do nothing, when He has made me ac- 
 quainted, one after another, with the grandest Christians of my time and the 
 most chosen souls. Their ciffection, as you truly say, supports and encourages 
 me ; it helps me to bear trials which are, indeed, tempered to my weakness." 
 
 He is away over the Atlantic in spirit with M. Ampere, ex- 
 cited by the stirring scenes through which the erudite traveller 
 passes, and which he describes in his letters home : 
 
 " I have stood with you in the midst of the prodigious activity of man, and 
 admired the strange aspects of surrounding nature, the flaming sunsets that 
 surpass those of Italy and Greece. You have given me friends, too, in the 
 new world as in the old ; through you I have penetrated into the very heart of 
 the University of Cambridge ; you have introduced me to men whom I 
 scarcely knew, and whom I now love— Everett, Agassiz, and, above all, tlj^ 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozatiam. 323 
 
 poet Longfellow. I owe you a delightful hour in his cottage, with the book 
 of his poems in my hand ; thanks to your superior lights, which have been «is 
 precious to me as your friendship, I have been able to judge the literature of 
 America at one stroke. I see it compelled to link itself to the old traditions 
 of Europe, and I admit that the ocean no longer divides us." 
 
 But the consolation which Ozanam gave thanks for above 
 all others was the fervent activity of the Conferences which 
 he found established in the various places he passed through. 
 
 "Our little Society of St. Vincent de Paul has a great share in the pre-occu- 
 pations and consolations of my journey," he says to M. Cornudet, writing 
 from Pisa. " 1 saw the presidents at Marseilles and Toulouse, where the re- 
 spective Conferences number two hundred and four hundred members. I saw 
 also the president of Nice, a man full of zeal, and as amiable as he is pious. 
 But what charmed me above all, what fills me with hope for the future of 
 Italy, are the Conferences of Genoa, all so fervent and so discreet, amidst the 
 religious perils of the country ; the president of these Conferences understands 
 the work as if he had been engaged in it with us these twenty years, and he 
 goes about propagating it with indefatigable activity in the duchy of Genoa 
 and in Tuscany. . . . See the designs of God 1 In 1847 I passed through 
 Tuscany, and became acquainted with some zealous and influential men ; I 
 gave them the rules of the Society, and I left them determined to do some- 
 thing. But no one could see the use of it in a country that was already so 
 good, so Christian, and so rich in old established charities. The revolution 
 came, however, and ploughed up these soft soils ; its ploughshare tore up many 
 institutions that only held on by dry roots. And lo ! we now behold a new 
 proselytism multiplying our Conferences : the ecclesiastical authorities lend it 
 their countenance, religious orders commend it, fervent laymen become en- 
 rolled in it. The Conferences are flourishing at Leghorn and at Pisa ; they 
 are beginning to prosper at Florence and Pontadera ; they are being establish- 
 ed at Prato, about to be so at Volterra and Porto Ferrajo ; here then we 
 shall have seven families of St. Vincent de Paul in this fair Tuscan land, 
 where Catholicism was languishing, stifled, as it were, under the golden 
 chains of Josephism. But the most important thing of all, and that which 
 touches me most, is that the primitive spirit of our Society has communicated 
 itself so wonderfully to our new brethren. I have met with all the simplicity 
 and cordiality of our early beginnings amongst them. Don't picture to your- 
 self solemn, cold meetings of old parishioners in black silk skull-caps. Not 
 that the old are excluded ; but I see with pleasure a great effluence of young 
 men, students, merchants' clerks, sons of noble families, university professors, 
 and the draper round the comer, all elbowing each other, and all led by first- 
 rate presidents. I cannot tell you how attached they all are to the centre of 
 the Society, nor what an amount of consideration they hav$ shown to tbt 
 vice-president of the Conseil-G(n(ral.^'' 
 
324 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 The Conference of Florence was a subject of special joy 
 and edification to Ozanam. 
 
 " In this capital of Josephism," he says, "a learned canon,* whose mother 
 is lady of honor to the Grand Duchess, devotes all his zeal to the propagation 
 of our confraternity. I had the consolation of assisting at one of their meet- 
 ings, as I did at those of our confreres of London and Burgos. Tears of joy 
 start to my eyes when at these great distances I meet our little family, always 
 little by the obscurity of its works, but great through the blessing of God upon 
 it. The tongues are different, but it is always the same friendly clasp of the 
 hand, the same brotherly cordiality, and we can recognize each other by the 
 same sign as the early Christians : * See how they love one another !' " 
 
 He is delighted with the great concourse of people in the 
 churches and at the Divine offices, even on week-days, at Pisa, 
 where, " so different from our France, one sees not only des 
 gens comme il faui. but workmen, peasants, coachmen, and 
 market-women in such numbers that one has to elbow one's 
 way through them to get to a seat on one of the benches that 
 replace our prie-dieu." But this consoling manifestation of 
 faith dof^s not blind him to other facts. He sees Protestantism 
 making tremendous efforts in Italy, " and meeting with the 
 sympathies that it already excited in the sixteenth century. 
 There is a great liberty for publishing and selling," he adds ; 
 '' I have seen translations of the very worst French books 
 figuring on the stalls of the little book-pedlars at Florence. 
 The clergy are frightened, and fright does good, inasmuch as 
 it wakes them up. The Church sees that she is on the eve 
 of recommencing a life of struggle, and the near approach of 
 the combat renders possible now works that six years ago 
 would have been considered inopportune." 
 
 Genoa offers the same varied character to his observation. 
 
 " In this most democratic of cities I found pretty much the same physiognomy 
 as in Paris at the end of 1848. The book-shops and stalls expose for sale the 
 most audacious pamphlets ; Protestantism, Fourierism, and every description 
 df socialism placard their special propaganda. . . . On the other hand, there 
 is a great awakening of CathoHcism in this country, which has been so long 
 
 •Guido Palagi, a canon of the cathedral who died in September, 1871. He was followed to 
 the grave by the entire population of Florence, whom he had edified by his heroiq virtues dur. 
 ing a long life. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 325 
 
 asleep, a serious effort to resist the propaganda of the enemy ; there are five 
 Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul, counting those of the suburbs ; and at the 
 head of them are men of talent and activity. Here at Pisa the Revolution 
 seems to have passed over the heads of the people, and to have acted only on 
 the upper classes. There is a great deal of faith amongst the people, at least 
 if one may judge from the churches overflowing with men even on the week- 
 days. In the middle classes, and amongst the students, Voltairianism is rife, 
 but the case is different amongst men of letters and savants ; many of these 
 are still Italians of the last century, minding only their own business, abusing 
 the priests every now and then, but performing their duties as Christians. 
 Others are converts, men of noble minds, open to all that is generous in the 
 new ideas, but reduced to silence by Austrian bayonets." 
 
 An incident occurred in connection with the foundation of 
 the Conferences in Tuscany which Ozanam, with characteristic 
 modesty, refrains from mentioning even in his intimate letters 
 home. It was true that when he arrived at Pisa he found the 
 Society was known there, and already counted many admi- 
 rers, who were eager to propagate it ; but their efforts had 
 been crushed in the bud by the Grand-Ducal Government, in 
 whose eyes the whole thing bore a dangerous and suspicious 
 character. The struggle to overcome tliis opposition was all 
 but given up when Ozanam arrived at Pisa, and he at once 
 took zealous steps towards reviving the movement. His 
 name carried weight with it; for he was well known, even 
 celebrated, in the country on account of his work on Dante, 
 which had been enthusiastically applauded, and translated 
 several times into Italian. The Dowager Grand-Duchess 
 heard of his arrival, and coming one day to Pisa, sent word 
 to him to wait upon her the same evening. He was extreme- 
 ly ill just then, and it required an heroic effort to rise from his 
 sick-bed, and betake himself in full dress to a royal audience; 
 but no personal sacrifice could deter Ozanam when there was 
 a chance of furthering the cause of charity. He got up, and 
 was at the palace at the appointed hour. The Grand- Duchess 
 was a large-hearted woman, possessing a cultivated mind and 
 a genuine zeal for good works. She received the pale, dark- 
 eyed Frenchman with kindness and sympathy; but she was 
 strongly prejudiced against his work, and bluntly tolc^ him so; 
 
326 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 adding that the Grand- Duke believed the Society of St. Vin- 
 cent de Paul to be a hotbed of socialism and political intrigue, 
 and that he never could be induced to sanction its presence 
 in his States unless certain men, whom she mentioned, were 
 dismissed from amongst the members. Ozanam answered 
 these accusations with respectful boldness ; he told the story 
 of the origin of the Httle confraternity, and how from the very 
 starting its founders had directed that it should be a work, of 
 charity, from which the political element should be rigorously 
 excluded ; this primary condition of the Society made it in- 
 cumbent on them to receive indiscriminately any person who 
 presented himself, provided he was an honorable man and a 
 Christian. He spoke with great warmth and all the glow of 
 an enthusiasm purified, but not abated, by suffering and the 
 approach of death. The Grand-Duchess listened with pro- 
 found attention, and a few days later the Conference at Flo- 
 rence received formal notice of the sanction of the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Ozanam was induced to speak at the opening siance^ and 
 his speech, delivered of course in Italian, was considered so 
 fine that it was printed in all the newspapers next day. He 
 was annoyed beyond measure, and declared he never would 
 have spoken had he foreseen such a result. *' It is entirely 
 contrary to the spirit of the Society, which is to work in 
 obscurity and make no noise," he said. Soon after, they again 
 begged him to address the Conference ; he only consented on 
 the express condition that the offence was not repeated. The 
 next day, however, several important members came to en- 
 treat him to release them from the promise ; he resisted their 
 persuasions for three days, but at last yielded to the prayer of 
 his confessor, who assured him the speech, if circulated, would 
 probably lead to the formation of a Conference at Loreto. 
 He gave permission for one hundred copies to be struck off; 
 but this was extended to twelve hundred, a piece of treachery 
 which the orator did not quite forgive, until he found that it 
 had led to the forming of Conferences at Macerata, Porto Fer^ 
 
Lif^ a;:d J '. \,r',s cf F, cdc i :c Czanam. 327 
 
 raj.), and in Sardinia, where the speech of the ** celebrated 
 French Professor " produced a great effect. 
 
 The success of this effort seemed to give new life to Ozanam, 
 and, in spite of the dreary, disappointing winter, with its eter- 
 nal rain, he gradually gained strength towards the spring, and 
 with it his hopes of a possible recovery revived. 
 
 "They don't disguise from me the fact that my illness is slow and difficult 
 to cure," he says to M. Ampere, in the first days of April ; "but as there is 
 now no fever, and as I still keep by me two excellent doctors — sleep and appe- 
 tite — they give me good hopes, and allow me to think of returning home by 
 the end of April, and even to talk of resuming my cours on the 15th of May ! 
 Meantime we have had some painful hours and great anxiety. All agreed that 
 a warm and dry climate was absolutely essential for me, and we have been 
 hving for over sixty days in a continued down-pour of rain, which is constantly 
 calling up these lines of Dante : 
 
 ' lo sono al tcrzo cerchio della piova 
 Etema, maledetta, fredda e grave ; 
 Regola e qualiti mai non 1'^ nuova/ 
 
 " It is possible to read the In/crno in spite of the rain, but one cannot carry 
 one's dreams to the Carapo Santo, where the torrents are enough to wash out 
 all that remains to one of the history of Job. . . . We stay at home by the 
 chimney-comer ; but consolations are not wanting in this home which trial has 
 visited. You know what an angel of goodness dwells therein, and what a 
 merry imp enlivens it. . . . Moreover, God, who is the best of friends, never 
 abandons those whom he tries. At this moment He has granted me a mental 
 serenity which is not usual to me. In this peaceful city, in the midst of this 
 life of rest, I seem to taste the sweets of family affection more deeply, to caress 
 the memories of friendship more at my ease ; I have leisure to look into my 
 own heart, and I find much to correct there ; but I think I find peace and faith 
 there, and this suffices for many moments of pure happiness." 
 
 We repeat it : few men, out of the ranks of the saints, were 
 more diligent in giving thanks than Ozanam. It was a 
 favorite exercise of his to recall, in meditation, all the graces 
 and mercies he had received from his childhood upwards, and 
 to return thanks for tliem one by one. On the day of his 
 marriage, when he took his young wife home, he told her how 
 he had suffered from doubts when a boy, and how he had 
 been delivered from them, and sworn to devote himself ever 
 after to the defence and service of God's truth ; he then asked 
 if she would join him daily in giving thanks for this particular 
 
^2^ Life and Works oj Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 mercy; and every night from that day forth, until the last 
 that he spent on earth, they sent up their act of thanksgiving 
 together. 
 
 In the midst of his keenest sufferings, gratitude, the sense 
 of the alleviations and blessings granted him, rose above every 
 other feeling. His letters all through this painful winter are 
 like canticles of thanksgiving : 
 
 "You know her whom God has given me for my visible g^uardian ang-el ; 
 you have seen her at work," he writes to an old friend from rainy Pisa ; "but 
 since my illness has become serious, you can have no conception of the resources 
 she has discovered in her heart, not only to relieve but to cheer me ; with what 
 ingenious, patient, indefatigable tenderness she surrounds my life, guessing, 
 cinticipating every wish. Happily God gives her strength for it ; she and my 
 little Marie are in perfect health just now. My mother-in-law has also made her 
 pilgrimage to Rome without any mishap. We hear from her often, and also 
 from my brothers and many friends. We have some kind and agreeable 
 visitors who bring a little new life into our solitude, and we have good and 
 beautiful books in abundance. So you see that Divine Providence, while try- 
 ing us, does not forsake us. God treats us mercifully ; and if there are days 
 of despondency, there are moments too of exquisite enjoyment between my 
 wife and my child. I know that my malady is serious, but not utterly hope- 
 less ; that I shall take a long time to recover, and that I may never recover ; 
 but I try to abandon myself lovingly to the will of God, and I repeat — more 
 with the lips than with the heart, I fear ! — Volo quod vis^ volo quamdiu vt's, 
 volo quia vz's." 
 
 One day, at San Jacopo,* he took a piece of paper and 
 wrote down, in the form of a prayer, an enumeration of the 
 many " little kindnesses " he had received from God. 
 
 " We are not sufficiently grateful for God's little benefits. We thank Him 
 for having created and redeemed us, and given us good parents, and a wife, 
 and beloved children, and for so often giving us Himself in the Sacrament of 
 the Altar. But besides these powerful graces, which support, so to speak, the 
 woof of our life, how many delicate graces are wrought into the tissue 1 There 
 was the steady comrade I met during my first year at college, and who edified 
 instead of corrupting me ; there was M. Ampere's paternal welcome, and M. 
 de Chateaubriand's advice to me not to go to the theatre. And then, smaller 
 things than these, an inspiration that prompted me to go and see my poor on a 
 day when I was in a bad humor, and sent me home ashamed of my imaginary 
 woes by the side of the appalling reality of theirs. How often has some insig- 
 nificant circumstance, an importunity, a visitor that bored me, and whom I 
 
 • It was to this village on the sea, near Leghorn, that that grand soul, Mrs. Scton, cam« 
 wiA Inr iyiag bwAM4. They reoouncd theri a month ; she left it a widow. 
 
Life and Works of Fraicric Cziinam. 329 
 
 wished at Hongf-kong, been the occasion later of enabling me to do good to 
 someone." 
 
 He forced himself to write in a comparatively hopeful 
 tone, but he had in reality little or no hope of ultimate re- 
 covery. 
 
 " During the last three weeks of Lent," he says to M. Ampere, '* I was pre- 
 paring myself seriously for the final sacrifice. It cost nature something, yet 
 through God's help it seemed to me that I was beginning to detach myself 
 from everything except from those who love me, and whom I can love else- 
 where than here below. But my poor wife prayed so hard, and got so many 
 prayers said, that I begin to revive, and without being cured I may venture to 
 hope for a cure. The worst of it is, that I attach myself again at once to life, 
 and all the vanities of Ufe. According as I begin to think seriously of seeing 
 Paris again, I think of my work, of my schemes, and — must I own it ?— of the 
 opinion of the learned and the public 1 This draws me off to the circulating 
 library — another piece of vanity ; I read the Rei'ue des Deux Mondes^ , . . 
 and I ask myself if you could not find a page there to devote to my Poites 
 Pranciscains. But would it be possible for you to find time to occupy your- 
 self with these beggars ? And yet they deserve something at your hands, for 
 you know what your friends Dante and Giotto owe to St. Francis. . . . My 
 poor /'<??/^jr* have found a cordial welcome here. Cardinal Mai was greatly 
 taken with the life of Jacopone, and sent me many kind complimentar>' mes- 
 sages. . . . See what comes of a half-and-half convalescence 1 Perhaps to- 
 morrow a relapse will come and make short work of my literary projects, but 
 to-day the stray sunbeam that is awakening the flowers wakes up my hopes 
 and ambitions too." 
 
 He said truly it was but a stray beam, a passing respite in 
 the struggle. The malady was working its way slowly but 
 inexorably ; the improvement that sliowed itself from time to 
 time was only a delusive one, a transient alleviation caused 
 by some new remedy, or a change of climate, or sometimes 
 by an effort of the vigorous will asserting its supremacy over 
 the exhausted body. Ozanam underwent every remedy that 
 was proposed, often even when he had no belief in their effi- 
 cacy ; his cheerfulness, his unselfish thought for those around 
 him, enabled him to disguise his own hopelessness, in order 
 not to destroy the faint hopes of others. Prayer and medita- 
 tion on Divine things were the fountains from which he drew 
 
 • The Poites Franciicains had come out in detached articles in the Correspoitdant, and were 
 alreaidy widely knuwn, but they were publibhcd in a collective fonn only about this time. 
 
330 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanant, 
 
 his serenity and courage. He had loved the Scriptures 
 above every other book all his life ; it had been his practice 
 from boyhood to read a portion of the Gospels every day ; he 
 called this his " daily bread " ; he generally read the Bible in 
 Greek from an old edidon that he was fond of. Now that 
 evil days were come, and that he was called upon to prove 
 himself, he remained faithful to this habit of his life. Every 
 morning, the first thing on awaking, he gave half an hour to 
 reading the Bible, and at the end of his meditation he would 
 note down the texts which had penetrated him most during 
 the course of it, in order that he might refer to them, and rest 
 his mind on them throughout the day. He derived such ex- 
 traordinary comfort and sustenance from this practice, that it 
 occurred to him he might in his helplessness still render a last 
 service to other invalids by pointing out to them the pas- 
 sages that had soothed and nourished his own soul in the 
 course of his illness. His wife gladly acquiesced in the sug- 
 gestion, and every morning wrote down some pages from his 
 dictation. These have since been put together and publish- 
 ed under the title of Le Livre des Malades, On the 23d of 
 April, his birthday, and the anniversary of his marriage, he 
 wrote in his own hand the following lines : 
 
 *'I said : In the midst of my days I shall go to the gates of hell ; I sought 
 for the residue of my years. 
 
 *' I said : I shall not see the Lord God in the land of the living. I shall be- 
 hold man no more, nor the inhabitant of rest. 
 
 " My generation is at an end ; and it is rolled away from me as a shepherd's 
 tent. My life is cut off as by a weaver ; whilst I was yet but beginning he cut 
 me off ; from morning even to night Thou wilt make an end of me. 
 
 "I hoped till morning; as a lion so hath he broken all my bones; from 
 morning even to night Thou wilt make an end of me. 
 
 "I will cry like a young swallow ; I will meditate like a dove ; my eyes are 
 weakened looking upward. Lord, I suffer violence ; answer Thou for me. 
 
 " What shall I say, or what shall he answer for me, whereas he himself 
 hath done it ? I will recount to thee all my years in the bitterness of my 
 soul. 
 
 •' This is the beginning of the canticle of Ezechias. I know not whether 
 God will permit me to apply to myself the end of it. I know that I complete 
 to-day my fortieth year, more than half the ordinary term of man's life. I 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 331 
 
 know that I have a young and beloved wife, a charming child, excellent 
 brothers, a second mother, many friends, an honorable career, studies brought 
 precisely to the point when they might serve as the foundations of a work long 
 dreamed of. And yet I am a prey to a long and grievous malady, which is 
 the more dangerous that it hides perhaps a complete exhaustion. Must I then 
 leave all these things that Thou Thyself hast given me, Lord ? Wilt Thou 
 not be satisfied with a portion of the sacrifice ? Which of my irregular affec- 
 tions must I immolate to Thee ? Wilt Thou not accept the holocaust of my 
 literary self-love, of my academical ambitions, of even my projects of work, 
 wherein mayhap there mingled mor«: of pride than of pure zeal for truth ? If 
 I sold half my books and gave the price to the poor, and, confining myself to 
 the bare duties of my position, were to consecrate the rest of my life to visit- 
 ing the indigent, teaching apprentices and soldiers, wouldst Thou be satisfied. 
 Lord, and wouldst Thou leave me the happiness of growing old beside my 
 wife, and of finishing the education of my child ? 
 
 *' Perhaps, Lord, Thou dost not so will it. Thou dost not accept these in- 
 terested offers ; Thou dost reject ray holocausts and my sacrifices. It is myself 
 Thou dost ask. ' It is written in the beginning of the book that I must do 
 Thy will,* and I said, ' Lord, I come ! ' 
 
 " I come, if Thou callest me, and I have no right to complain. Thou hast 
 given forty years of live to a creature who entered this world sickly, fragile, 
 destined to die ten times, if ten times he had not been rescued by the tender- 
 ness and intelligence of a father and mother. Let not my people be scandal- 
 ized if Thou dost not see good now to work a miracle in order to save 
 me ! . . . Five years ago Thou didst bring me back almost from death, and 
 was not this delay granted me to do penance and become better ? Ah ! the 
 prayers that were sent up to Thee then were heard. Wliy should those that 
 are being offered now, and in so far greater number, on my behalf, be lost ? 
 Perhaps Thou wilt answer them, Lord, in another way. Thou wilt give me 
 courage, resignation, peace of soul, and those ineffable consolations that 
 accompany Thy real presence. Thou wilt enable me to find in illness a source 
 of merit and of blessings, and these blessings Thou wilt cause to fall on my 
 wife and my child — on all those to whom my labors perchance would have 
 been less useful than my sufferings. If I express the years of my life with 
 bitterness before Thee, it is because of the sins that have sullied them ; but 
 when I consider the graces that have enriched them, I look back upon them, 
 Lord, with gratitude to Thee. 
 
 " If Thou shouldst chain me to this sick-bed for the days that I have yet to 
 live, they would be too short to thank Thee for the days that I have lived. 
 Ah ! if these pages be the last I ever write, may they be a hymn to Thy good- 
 ness ! " 
 
 Such were the outpourings in which Ozanam's soul sought 
 comfort amidst the cruel distress of bodily sufferings. But he 
 did not force himself to dwell exclusively in sublime and 
 solemn thoughts. When a respite from pain restored his 
 
332 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 strength a little he seized the opportunity to send letters to 
 absent friends, full of the old brightness. 
 
 " I am deeply touched by your kind reproaches," he says to the Marquis de 
 Salvo, in one of these breathing-spaces, " but assuredly I should not have de- 
 served them if my pen were as ready as my heart ; if my thoughts, which are 
 so often at the Rue d'Angouleme, could transform themselves into a letter and 
 fly to you on white wings. But, alas ! those poor thoughts have lost their 
 wings, if ever they had any, and this forced inaction weighs heavily on my spirit. 
 What little verve was left me I have spent on Ampere, whom it is my interest 
 to conciliate in his quahty of Academician, and to persuade that I have not 
 sunk quite to the level of the beast 1 I have exhausted all my topics with him 
 too. . . . My wife adores this country, but she is, above all, in love with the 
 fishermen and their pretty barks with lateen sails : she has made a vow that 
 if I recover, we should sell our books and buy a boat, and go off singing with 
 the Italian coral-fishers along the coasts of Sicily and Sardinia. Luckily I did 
 not go partners in the vow ; I hold to fatherland, and I suspect that the first 
 sail that bears me away will be set towards France." 
 
 M. de Salvo was a Sicilian gentleman long resident in 
 Paris. He had made Ozanam's acquaintance when the latter 
 was known to i^^N of the great world, and, with that instinct 
 which enables cultivated minds to recognize genius before 
 fame has made it patent, he held out his hand to the young 
 Professor, prophesying that he would one day be a great man. 
 Ozanam was for years a constant and honored guest in the 
 salofi of the Marquise de Salvo, and also in those of Madame 
 Swetchine and Madame R6camier, where he met the ^lite of 
 social as well as intellectual celebrities. M. Ampere the 
 father had presented him to Madame Recamier when he was 
 a student in Paris, but Ozanam seldom went to her house ; 
 and when she playfully reproached him with this, he said, " I 
 am too young yet for such learned and wise company, ma- 
 dame; when I am a man, in seven years hence, I will return 
 and pay iny respects to you very often, if you permit me." 
 When he did return to Paris as a married man, one of his 
 earliest visits was to the charming recluse of the Abbaye-aux 
 Bois. *' Ah, so you have kept your promise! " she exclaimed 
 laughingly when he appeared ; " it is just seven years since 
 
Life and Wofks of Frederic OzanatH. 3^3 
 
 your last visit to me ! " And so it was ; Ozanam had forgot- 
 ten the promise, but he had kept it. 
 
 He had become acquainted at Pisa with a Jew who had re- 
 cently embraced Christianity at the cost of many sacrifices, 
 and had still much to contend with. Ozanam was deeply in- 
 terested in him, and when the convert left Italy he gave him 
 some valuable introductions to friends in Paris, and corre- 
 sponded with him, making it a duty to sustain and cheer him 
 by letters suffused with his own vigorous and joyous faith. 
 
 ' ' It would have been a delight to me to write to you much sooner, had I not 
 been too weak to accomplish it," he says. " But the hand of God has touched 
 me, I believe, as it touched Job, Ezechias, and Tobias, not unto death, but 
 unto a prolonged trial. I have not, unfortunately, the patience of those just 
 men ; I am easily cast down by suffering, and I should be inconsolable for my 
 weakness if I did not find in the Psalms those cries of sorrow which David 
 sends forth to God, and which God at last answers by granting him pardon 
 and peace. Oh ! my friend, when one has the happiness to have become a 
 Christian, it is a great honor to be born an Israelite, to feel one's self the son 
 of those patriarchs and prophets whose utterances are so beautiful that the 
 Church has found nothing finer to place on the lips of her children. During 
 many weeks of extreme languor the Psalms have never been out of my hands. 
 I was never wearied of reading over and over those sublime lamentations, those 
 flights of hope, those supplications full of love which answer to all the wants 
 and all the miseries of human nature. It is nearly three thousand years since 
 a king composed those songs in his days of rej>entance and desolation, and we 
 still find in them the expression of our deepest anguish and the consolation of 
 our sorrows. The priest recites them daily ; thousands of monasteries have 
 been founded in order that these psalms might be chanted at ever>' hour, and 
 that this voice of supplication might never be silent. The Gospel alone is suf)e- 
 rior to the hymns of David, and this only because it is their fulfilment, because 
 all the yearnings, all the ardors, all the holy impatience of the prophet find 
 their accomplishment in the Redeemer issued of his race. So great is the 
 bond between the two Testaments that the Redeemer Himself had no name 
 dearer to Him than that of Son 0/ David. The two blind men of Jericho 
 called Him by it, and I often cry out to him with them, • Son of David, have 
 mercy on us ! '" 
 
 The warmth of the soft Italian summer by the seaside 
 brought a perceptible improvement to Ozanam's health he 
 was once more induced to believe himself really better. 
 
 " I take long walks," he tells M. Ampdre, at the end of June. " I pass my 
 
334 ^i/^ ^^'^^ tVorh of Frederic QzandM. 
 
 morning on the rocks, watching the sea, until I have learned the play of its 
 waves by heart. I am gaining strength but slowly, which was to be expected 
 after so severe a crisis ; but if July and August, who pass for being great phy- 
 sicians, treat me well, I shall be cured this autumn," 
 
 The old passion for work came back, strong as ever, with 
 the slight return of strength. 
 
 " Since I find myself equal to thinking and writing, I am writing my Odys- 
 sey, my journey to Burgos, in spite of Madame Ozanam's protestations," he 
 says, with that touching waywardness of invalids, who rebel against an autho- 
 rity rendered powerless by love. " Don't scold ; I had a whole portfolio full 
 of notes nearly all ready, and then legends, songs bought in the streets, and 
 finally the poem of the Cid. ... I have even made my peace with my impla- 
 cable guardian by reading to her a certain page of my work where she recog- 
 nized the merry row of the Spanish kitchens." 
 
 In the midst of his many consolations, there was one dis- 
 appointment which Ozanam felt keenly : he had failed to es- 
 tabhsh a Conference at Siena. It was all the more to be 
 regretted because the Grand Duke had recently divided the 
 University of Pisa, and placed half of it at Siena, which thus 
 became the centre of a young population grievously in want 
 of some moral resource in the shape of healthy and interesting 
 occupation. The effeminate character of the young Tuscans 
 themselves, added to local prejudices against the Society, had, 
 however, frustrated every attempt to import it there up to the 
 present. Ozanam could not be persuaded but that a vigorous 
 personal effort might overcome these obstacles, so he deter- 
 mined to go to Siena himself. His wife and medical advisers 
 entreated him not to compromise the improvement in his 
 health by the fatigue and excitement of the step, but he 
 silenced this argument by asking, " What better use can we 
 make of the health God gives us than by exercising it in His 
 service ? " He certainly did not spare it on this occasion. 
 During the four days that he remained at Siena he worked 
 indefatigably at the business of his mission ; but it was all to 
 no purpose. Padre Pendola, who was his friend, and perhaps 
 the most influential man in the city, being head of all the 
 deaf and dumb institutions in Tuscany, and of the College of 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 33^ 
 
 Tolomei, as well as Professor in the University — even Patire 
 Pendola refused to be convinced. " It is not possible," he 
 repeated to the Frenchman's pleadings; "the young nobles 
 of Tuscany are too soft, too idle; you never could get them 
 to visit the poor." He spent his last evening in trying to 
 persuade the Padre, but, beyond a warmly-expressed hope 
 that the future might see the scheme realized, the latter re- 
 mained unmoved, and Ozanam left him more downcast than 
 he had been in the whole course of his illness. " I am no 
 longer good for anything ; God will not deign to make use 
 of me any more," he said, when he came home tired and 
 crestfallen; and he confessed it was only the hope, amount- 
 ing to certainty, that he would have succeeded in rendering a 
 last service to the poor which had enabled him to undertake 
 the journey. 
 
 This was at the end of June. They went on to Antignano, 
 a little village overlooking the sea, and there Ozanam deter- 
 mined to make a final effort. He wrote to Padre Pendola, 
 adjuring him to yield to his entreaties and take the cause of 
 his beloved confraternity in hand : 
 
 "... All that you hare done for myselt and my little family touched me 
 less, Reverend Father, than the hope you held out to me at the last in favor 
 of St. Vincent de Paul. This dear Society is also ray family. Next to God, 
 it was the means of preserving my faith after I left my good and pious 
 parents. I love it, therefore, and cling to it with all my heart ; it has been a 
 joy to me to see the good seed growing and prospering in Tuscan soil. 
 
 "Above all, I have seen it do so much good, sustain so many young men in 
 the path of virtue, and inspire a smaller number with such wonderful zeal 1 
 We have Conferences at Quebec and in Mexico. We have them at Jerusalem. 
 We most certainly have one in Paradise, for during the twenty years that we 
 have existed at least a thousand members have taken the road to a better 
 world. How, then, is it possible that we should not have one at Siena, which 
 is called the antechamber 0/ Paradise ? How is it possible that in the city of 
 Our Blessed Lady a work whose chief patroness she is should not succeed ? 
 . . . You have amongst your children many who are rich, Reverend Father — 
 oh 1 what a salutary lesson, how strengthening for those soft young hearts, to 
 show them the poor, to show them Jesus Christ, not in pictures painted by 
 great masters or on altars resplendent with gold and light, but to show them 
 Jesus Christ and His wounds in the persons of the poor ! We have often 
 talked together of the weakness, the effeminacy, the inanity of even Christian 
 
33^ Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 men amongst the nobility of France and Italy ; but I am satisfied this arises 
 from a want in their education. There is one thing they have not been taught ; 
 there is one thing they are only acquainted with by name, and which we must 
 have seen others suffer from in order to learn how to bear it ourselves when, 
 sooner or later, our turn comes. This one thing is sorrow, privation, want. 
 These young seigneurs ought to know what hunger and thirst and the destitu- 
 tion of a naked garret mean. They ought to see fellow-creatures in misery, 
 distress — sick children, little ones crying with hunger. They ought to see 
 them that they may love them. Either the spectacle would make their hearts 
 beat with awakened pulses or they are a lost generation. But we should never 
 believe in the death of a young Christian soul. ' She is not dead, but sleep- 
 eth.' Dear and estimable friend, I send you, in the Bulletin of the Society, 
 some excellent instructions on the ^formation of Conferences in houses of edu- 
 cation.'' Assuredly your experience needs not to be enlightened. . . . Soon 
 your best young men, divided into little batches of three and four, and accom- 
 panied by a master, will be nimbly ascending the poor man's stairs, and you 
 will see them coming home sad and happy— sad at the sight of the wretched- 
 ness they have seen, happy at having even ever so little relieved it. Some will 
 go about it coldly, perhaps, without zeal or inteUigence ; others, on the con- 
 trary, will take fire at the work, and will pass on their heat to places where no 
 Conferences yet exist, or they will rekindle the warmth of those that are al- 
 ready in existence, . . . and out of all this good a portion will be taken, and 
 added to the crown which God is preparing for Padre Pendola, but which He 
 will give him, I earnestly hope, as late as possible. 
 
 *' And now it dawns on me that I am practising the old French proverb, 
 Gros Jean veut pi'tcher son curi! No, no, my Father, it is not I who am 
 preaching ; it is you, your example, your charity that are preaching to me, and 
 bidding me leave this good work confidently in your hands." 
 
 Ozanam waited a fortnight for an answer to this letter ; it 
 came then, brief and pregnant : " My dear friend, I founded 
 yesterday, the Feast of St. Vincent de Paul, two Conferences, 
 one in my college and one in the town." 
 
 He was very happy after this. Everything amused and 
 pleased him. He was full of sympathy with the joys of Hfe 
 that were opening out to others, while they were swiftly pass- 
 ing away from him. A friend writes to announce his ap- 
 proaching marriage, and Ozanam answers gaily : 
 
 " Ha ! ha 1 so he is caught at last, the impregnable ! The free heart has 
 been taken captive and put in chains — silken and golden chains, bonds that 
 possess everything to charm the eyes and the ears, the imagination and the 
 reason. The good fairies vi^ho destined him this fair companion took care to 
 load her with their fairy gifts ; they crowned her with all the graces ; no 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 337 
 
 wonder the proud freeman capitulated ! . . . You deserved to meet with one 
 of those souls whose society constitutes the joy and the honor of our destiny. 
 Such meetings are rare here below, and only those who have experienced their 
 blessedness have a right to speak of them ; and so I congratulate you. I re- 
 joice, as at a good omen, over the name of Amelie, by which you will call 
 your wife. Is it after us also that you choose the 23d for the day of your 
 wedding ? The 23d brings luck." 
 
 His playful appeal to M. Ampere for an alms to his " beg- 
 gars " in the Revue des Deux Mondes had not been made in vain. 
 A brilliant review of the Foeies Franciscains appeared in that 
 periodical in June, and was a source of great pleasure to 
 Ozanam, in whom the author was still strong enough to be 
 keenly alive to an enlightened criticism. 
 
 *• You have far surpassed my hopes ; you have overpowered me and my poor 
 Franciscans," he says to the critic. " I must thank you in the name of those 
 dear beggars, who come to life again under your touch, and whom you paint 
 better in this brief sketch than I in my long gallery. Your three pages have 
 the perfume of that convent garden which you describe with the jessamine 
 creeping along the wall. Amelie and I, being impartial judges in the case, 
 have agreed that this short article is one of your most exquisite touches. I 
 must say that your word of regret for the absent Professor touched something 
 deeper than self-love, and had an accent that went to my very heart. ... A 
 certain Padre Frederic, himself a Franciscan, and a poet greatly admired at 
 Florence, is going to publish a translation of the little volume, and, from the 
 silence of his cell in Ara Coeli, the General of the Order has addressed his 
 thanks to me with a diploma, which is not the least precious of my titles. He 
 places me on the list of the benefactors of the Franciscan family, and associates 
 me to the merits of the Frires-Mineurs, who work and pray for all the 
 world." 
 
 He had looked forward, while it was possible, to following 
 up his candidature for the Institute this summer, on his return 
 to Paris, but in spite of the rally, which still maintained itself, 
 he saw it was vain to cling to the hope. 
 
 •' Ahermit of Montenero has no business to think of the Academy of In- 
 scriptions," he says good-humoredly to ti. Ampere. "In making up my mind 
 to remain in Italy, I necessarily gave up the chance of canvassing for the 
 venerable M. Vtirdcssus' faiiteuil. . . . Moreover, in a moment of such solemn 
 import, wlicn all other questions of the future hang upon the supreme question 
 of my health, when I am asking God to grant me life for the sake of my wife 
 and child, it seems to me that there would be a kind of temerity in asking for 
 anything superfluous, for what flatters my literary self-love. It seems to me 
 
338 Life and Works of Freikric Ozajiam. 
 
 that I ought to wait humbly on Providence until it is decided whether I am to 
 be cured or not, and if God permits me to resume my career, then I may legiti- 
 mately aspire to those honors which would put the crown upon it." 
 
 He continued to work at his Odyssey, as he called it, al- 
 though his weakness had greatly increased after his removal 
 to Antignano; he could only write a few lines at a time, 
 being compelled to rest on his sofa during the intervals. The 
 closing pages of this exquisite narrative are almost the last he 
 ever wrote. By the time he had finished them he was no 
 longer able to hold a pen, except to write down some fugitive 
 thoughts and short prayers which his wife was anxious to pre- 
 serve. Up to the end of July he was able to walk out a little 
 in the evening, and to go to Mass every morning. The 
 church was at only a few minutes' distance from the little villa 
 where he lived. It was in the fortress, a remnant of those 
 stormy ages when the blue Mediterranean was ploughed up by 
 the ships of the Saracen, and its peaceful shores turned into 
 bloody battle-fields. Ozanam had been the object of many 
 flattering tokens from the highest personages during his stay 
 in Tuscany. He had been made a member of the Academy 
 of La Trusca simultaneously with Count Cesare Balbo ; all 
 the social and learned notabilities had sought him out, anxious 
 to testify their admiration and regard. He was grateful for 
 this, but indifferent to it. He had always rather avoided 
 than sought the notice of the great ones of the earth, and now 
 that death was casting its vivid light over the vanities of life, 
 these attentions became irksome and distasteful Xo him. He 
 avoided receiving visitors of rank when it was possible. If 
 the Prince X. drove up to the villa in his fine equipage and 
 requested " the honor of making the great savanfs acquain- 
 tance," Ozanam would send a courteous message excusing 
 himself on the plea of his extreme exhaustion ; but if, the 
 same evening, as it once happened, a poor young man walked 
 in the dust and heat all the way from Leghorn to obtain some 
 information as to how he should found a Conference in his 
 native village, he was joyfully received, and the dying man 
 
Life and Works of Fredetic Gzanam. 339 
 
 would gather up his strength to converse with him for two 
 hours. The surest way to rouse, and even reheve hini, was to 
 give him the opportunity of doing good. 
 
 There were a few kind famihes on tlie coast who used to 
 come and see him often; amongst them the Ferruccis, so 
 well known now through the fame of their saintly Rosa. 
 Ozanam enjoyed their visits so long as he was able to see 
 any one ; but none, perhaps, were so tenderly welcome as 
 those of his brothers of St. Vincent de Paul. It was indeed 
 touching to see their cordial affection for him, and the simple, 
 kindly ways they had of showing it. Three young men who 
 lived near Leghorn came constantly to see him, then merely 
 to ask how he was, and if they could not be of any use by 
 doing some litde commission at Leghorn for Madame Oza- 
 nam. One afternoon they came laden with flowers and a 
 provision of ice and snow, which was not to be had at An- 
 tignano; he was in great pain accompanied with fever; they 
 went away with sad hearts. About three o'clock the same 
 morning the servant was awoke by a noise as of sand flung at 
 the window ; it was the young men, who had come back 
 with more ice, unable in their anxiety to pass all night witli- 
 out news of the sick man ; they were going to walk back 
 again, but Madame Ozanam insisted on their resting the re- 
 mainder of tlie night at the villa. The fishermen and i)eas- 
 ants of the neighborhood had grown attached to the " saintly 
 stranger," and carried their graceful tribute of sympathy in 
 flowers and fruit to him, and assuredly none were more grate- 
 fully received by the humble and loving heart that so prized 
 the affection of simple souls. 
 
 From the beginning of August he was not able to go be- 
 yond the terrace before the house; on the eve of the 15th, 
 however, he declared he would go to the church and hear 
 Mass the next day. His heart seemed so set on it that his 
 wife had not the courage to oppose him ; accordingly she 
 sent to Leghorn to order a carriage; but when Ozanam 
 heard this, he said he preferred to walk, *' If it is to be my 
 
340 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 
 
 last walk on earth, let it be to the house of God on the Feast 
 of the Assumption !" he said ; and so, leaning on her whom 
 he so truly called his guardian angel, he set out on foot. 
 The villagers knew he was coming, and assembled outside 
 the church, to testify their affectionate sympathy. As Oza- 
 nam came slowly on, looking like a spirit in his transparent 
 pallor, the men all bared their heads, and the women and 
 children greeted him with a pretty wave of the hand, their 
 graceful manner of saluting. He was moved to tears by the 
 homage. 
 
 But another more touching still awaited him. The old cure 
 of Antignano was dying; but when he heard that Ozanam 
 had come to the church, and wished to receive Communion 
 before Mass, he said to those about him, "Get me up; I 
 must give it to him ; no one else shall have that privilege." 
 They dressed him, and he was assisted downstairs. The 
 church was garlanded with flowers, and brilliantly hghted up 
 in honor of Our Lady's Assumption ; the contadini, too, wore 
 their gala dresses in her honor. Chance seemed to have in- 
 vested the scene with the grace and glory of a bridal pageant ; 
 but there were tears instead of smiles amongst the spectators 
 when the husband, supported by his young wife, advanced to 
 the altar, and knelt down by her side, they two alone, as they 
 had been twelve years ago on that other bridal day of which 
 this was the crown and completion. The dying priest, assist- 
 ed likewise in his weakness, came forth and administered 
 Communion to them, and then was led away. It was the 
 last time he exercised his priestly office on earth ; he never 
 left his room again ; neither was Ozanam ever again present 
 at the holy sacrifice. 
 
 Three days after this he added a codicil to his will, which 
 had been made at Pisa on his birthday. It is dated the i8th 
 August, 1853, Antignano. The following is an extract from 
 the will itself: 
 
 •' In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. ... I 
 commit my soiil to Jesus Christ my Saviour ; with fear because of my sins, but 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam, 341 
 
 confiding in infinite mercy, I die in the bosom of the Catholic, Apostolic, and 
 Roman Church. I have known the doubts of the present «ige, but jdl my life 
 has convinced me that there is no rest for the mind and the heart except in the 
 faith of that Church and under her authority. If I attach any value to my long 
 studies, it is because they give me the right to entreat those I love to remain 
 faithful to a religion where I found light and peace. 
 
 " My supreme prayer to my wife, my child, my brothers and brothers-in-law, 
 and all those who may be born of them, is to persevere in the faith, in spite of 
 the humiliations, the scandals, and the desertions they will be witness of. 
 
 " To my tender Amelia, who has made the joy of my life, and whose de- 
 voted care has consoled my long sufferings, I address a farewell — short, like all 
 earthly things. I thank her, I bless her, I await her. It is only in heaven that 
 I shall be able to give her back all the love she deserves. I give to my child 
 the blessing of the patriarchs, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the 
 Holy Ghost. It grieves me not to be able to carry on further the dear labor of 
 her education, but I confide it without fear to her virtuous mother. 
 
 " To my brothers Alphonse and Charles I offer my sincere gratitude for 
 their affection — to my brother Charles especially, for the anxious care my 
 health has caused him. To my mother, Madame Soulacroix, to Charles Sou- 
 lacroix, I give a rendezvous amidst those over whom we have wept together. 
 I embrace in one thought all those whom I cannot mention here by name. . . . 
 I thank once more all those who have been kind to me. I ask pardon for my 
 hastiness and bad example. I implore the prayers of my friends, of the Soci- 
 ety of St. Vincent de Paul. 
 
 "Let not your zeal be slackened by those who will say, He is in heaven. 
 Pray unceasingly for one who loved you all much, but who has sinned much. 
 Sure of your supplications, dear, kind friends, I shall leave this world with less 
 fear. I firmly hope that we shall not be separated, and that I shall remain in 
 the midst of you until you rejoin me. 
 
 "May the blessing of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost rest 
 upon all of you. Amen." 
 
 He now grew rapidly worse. His brothers were sent for ; 
 the news went forth to his friends to pray for him — that he 
 was dying. All felt it as a private grief and a great public 
 loss. 
 
 " The last news of M. Ozanam is heart-breaking," the Abb^ Perreyve writes. 
 •' Charles had a telegram from Madame Ozanam four days ago, saying that 
 the dear invalid is in a state of extreme weakness. ... I cannot tell you the 
 profound griet that this telegram has been to the hearts of all those who knew 
 and loved M. Ozanam. What a loss for all that was right, religion, truth ! 
 But, above all, what a loss for me, whom he loved ! I assure you that his death 
 will be for me a great sorrow, and I would give many days of my own life to 
 redeem it. How feeble our prayers are 1 Are there no more saints any- 
 
342 Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 
 
 where ? And who was more worthy of a miracle, if a miracle there must 
 be? 
 
 ♦' But I will stifle the murmurs that are rising in the depths of my heart. 
 God has His own designs on souls. There are those whom He means to make 
 into great saints, and who therefore have need of great sorrows, . . . But 
 meanwhile this is sad, and calls for tceirs. Pray for him in your Mass. Who 
 knows ? Perhaps God is only waiting for a last great effort on our part to 
 grant us this grace. For my part, I could ask nothing yesterday of our Lord 
 but that He would grant him the grace of a calm death, without agony, with 
 sure hope of heavenly rest. The mere sound of the word rest has something 
 appropriate and touching in it applied to that sensitive, impressionable soul. O 
 how he will enjoy that serenity of bliss, whose very foundation is the immuta- 
 bility of God 1" * 
 
 Yet Ozanam was far from enjoying this serene sense of se- 
 curity which others felt regarding him. He had always had 
 a great fear of death, or rather of what makes death terrible — 
 judgment; and now that the shadow of the Great White 
 Throne was upon him, this feeling deepened in intensity. He 
 spoke frequently of his sins, of the punishment they merited, 
 of the scandal they had caused, the world expecting so much 
 from Catholics, who profess to embody the faith in their 
 actions. Once, when he seemed more than usually impressed 
 by these considerations, one near him thought to soothe him 
 by suggesting tenderly that after all he had not been such a 
 great sinner; but Ozanam answered quickly, in a tone of 
 austere humility, " Child, you do not know what the sanctity 
 of God is!" 
 
 His piety seemed to grow more fervent as his bodily pros- 
 tration increased. He read the Bible almost constantly now, 
 and would remain for hours rapt in meditation on it, express- 
 ing himself from time to time in a sublime manner on various 
 passages, in the Psalms and the Book of Job especially. The 
 words of Scripture took such complete possession of his mind 
 that they made him oblivious of what was going on around 
 him. It had always been a great pain to him to inflict the 
 least trouble or fatigue on others, but now that his condition 
 exacted more laborious attendance than ever, he submitted to 
 
 • This letter is dated "August 8" in the collection of the Abb(i Perreyve's letters, byt it \% 
 flesrly a mistake. Charles did not rejoin his brother until quite the end of August 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 343 
 
 it almost unconsciously ; it was sufficient to recite aloud some 
 verses of the Psalms while he was suffering most to make him 
 forget his own pain and the distress of those who were striv- 
 ing to alleviate it. He frequently greeted his wife with those 
 words which he loved to apply to himself: "It has been 
 written at the beginning of the Book that I should do Thy 
 will, my God. I have willed it, and placed Thy law in the 
 midst of my heart." He lived almost out of doors, stretched 
 on his sofa, which had been wheeled out to the terrace, and 
 there he would lie silent for hours with the Bible open by his 
 side. One evening he lay thus, watching the sun sinking into 
 the blue Mediterranean ; his wife had drawn her chair a little 
 behind him, that he might not see the tears she could not 
 restrain, when something in the extreme serenity of his coun- 
 tenance prompted her to ask which of all the gifts of God he 
 considered the greatest. He replied without hesitating, 
 as if the question had fallen in with his own thoughts, 
 " Peace of heart ; without this we may possess everything and 
 yet not be happy ; with it we can bear the hardest trials and 
 the approach of death." 
 
 A few days later they were sitting together on the terrace lis- 
 tening to the murmur of summer seas and the birds singing in 
 the ilex grove, when Ozanam, after along silence, began to speak 
 with regret of his interrupted work. " If anything consoles me," 
 he said, " for leaving this world without having accomplished 
 what I wished to do, it is that I have never worked for the 
 praise of men, but always for the service of truth." Such a 
 testimony was indeed a consolation worthy of his noble life. 
 Ozanam thought he had lived to no purpose ; that his life 
 had been a failure because he left his work unfinished. It is 
 always so with souls like his. They trace the furrow and 
 scatter the seed, and then pass on, leaving others to come and 
 reap the fruit. No man ever fully achieved his life's pro- 
 gramme except Him who came down from heaven to do His 
 Father's business, and, having done it, died. 
 
 For the last twelve years of his life Ozanam had the grace- 
 
344 ^f^ ^^ Works oj Frederic Oza7tam. 
 
 ful habit of presenting some flowers to his wife on the 23d of 
 every month, the date of their marriage. He remembered it 
 now, and when the festive day came round, he greeted her in 
 the morning with a branch of lovely flowering myrtle, which 
 he had sent for to the shore, having heard her admire it. 
 
 On the last day of August they left Antignano. His two 
 brothers had arrived to take him back to France. He had 
 prayed for this last grace, to be allowed to die in his own 
 country and amongst his own people. When all was ready 
 for the departure, and the carriage awaited him at the door, 
 he expressed a wish to go and look upon the sea once more ; 
 his wife and one of his brothers assisted him to the terrace, and 
 he stood for a moment gazing at the waves breaking upon the 
 beach ; then, baring his head in the sunlight, he lifted up his 
 hands and said aloud, " O my God ! I thank Thee for the 
 afflictions and the sufferings Thou hast sent me in this place; 
 accept them in expiation ot my sins." Then, turning to his 
 wife, he said, ** I should like you, too, to give thanks with me 
 for my sufferings." 
 
 They prayed in silence for a moment, and then, clasping 
 her in his arms, he cried out, " And, O my Lord ! I bless 
 Thee for the consolations Thou hast granted me." 
 
 He was assisted on deck, and lay there watching the shores 
 of Italy till they faded from his view. The sea was calm as a 
 lake, the skies were cloudless. He bore the voyage without 
 much apparent fatigue. As the shores of Provence came in 
 sight, he burst out into subdued thanksgiving at being per- 
 mitted to see France again. When the vessel entered the 
 harbor of Marseilles, he roused himself as with a last effort, 
 and said almost cheerfully to his mother-in law, and other 
 members of his wife's family who had come to meet him, 
 ** Now that I have placed Am^lie in the proper hands, God 
 may do what He sees fit with me ! " 
 
 He cherished the hope ot going on to Paris, and dying 
 amidst the scenes ol his labors ; but this wish was not grant- 
 ed \ he was far too exhausted to bear the additional journey. 
 
Life and Works of Frederic Ozanam. 345 
 
 His arrival at Marseilles was quickly known, and the 
 brotherhood of St. Vincent de Paul hastened to his door with 
 every testimony of sorrow and respect. He was too ill to see 
 any of them, but he was greatly touched to hear of their con- 
 stant visits. Nothing could surpass the serenity that his soul 
 now enjoyed ; every trace of fear, of apprehension had vanish- 
 ed : all bodily suffering had likewise ceased, and he appeared 
 like one already dweUing in the sensible presence of God ; 
 he seldom spoke, but communed still with his beloved ones 
 by a pressure of the hand, a sign, and that smile that lay like 
 a halo on the wasted face, touching it already with the peace 
 that passeth all understanding. Feeling that the end was 
 near, he himself asked for the last sacraments, and received 
 them with great fervor and the liveliest consciousness. When 
 all was over, his brother, remembering how keenly he had 
 feared the Divine judgments, urged him gently to have con- 
 fidence in the great mercy of God ; but Ozanam, as if he un- 
 derstood not the allusion, answered with a look of sweet sur- 
 prise, " Why should I fear Him ? I love Him so much ! " 
 
 On the evening of the 8th of September, the Feast of Our 
 Lady's Nativity, the summons came. His wife was beside 
 him, and his brothers, and a few near relatives. The adjoin- 
 ing room was crowded with those other brothers, the members 
 of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, who knelt in silence, 
 joining in the prayers that were speeding their founder into 
 the presence of his Judge. He had fallen into a gentle slum- 
 ber, waking up at intervals to murmur a blessing, a word of 
 love, an invocation. 
 
 Suddenly opening his dark eyes in a wide, startled gaze, he 
 lifted up his hands and cried out in a loud voice, " My God ! 
 my God ! have mercy on me! " 
 
 They were his last words. Frederic Ozanam had passed 
 into the light of his Redeemer's presence. 
 
Q. 
 
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