Lamy of Santa Fe. Paul Horgan

was not alone in his thoughts of far places. Machebeuf had also thought of missionary life, always with America as its imaginary scene. France had already partaken of America in determining ways—early exploration, support for the ideal and act of the American Revolution, and more lately the religious colonization of the new states by clergy who had fled revolutionary France.

      French missioners returning from across the Atlantic reported news and marvels of the sort to challenge youth. The seminarians at Mont-Ferrand heard a certain Lazarist, John Mary Odin, who first became bishop of Galveston and later archbishop of New Orleans, tell of hardships and needs on the barbaric coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Begging for money and men, he was rewarded also with stirred imaginations. In 1833 an old bishop—Benedict Joseph Flaget, who long ago was a seminarian at Mont-Ferrand—came back to his native Auvergne from Kentucky and spoke to his young successors of how he had spent his forty years in America. In his time, the Appalachians had been breached, the westward map was slowly unfolding. He was consecrated bishop of Bardstown, Kentucky, by Archbishop Carroll in Baltimore in 1810, and his first cathedral—in a Roman and Gothic town they heard him tell of this—was an open log cabin, and his diocesan parishioners consisted of four families in an area half a dozen times as large as Italy. He was at times companioned by Algonquins, and slept in the open air or in the conical hide tents of the Indians. His work in Auvergne while Lamy and Machebeuf were still seminarians was to give zest to others who would follow such a path as he had walked in all weathers—the exhausting prairie summer heat, the blizzard of prairie winter, the slow progress through vast pathless woods. The old bishop looked frail but was hardy as dried rawhide, and his seamed old face suggested gem-hard wits mixed with Latin gaiety, rather like traits seen in such faces as those of Voltaire and Leo XIII. During the early 1830s, at the express wish of Pope Gregory XVI, he worked for two years in France and Sardinia, stirring alive America and her needs in the aspirations of the new generation of clergy and religious. His authority was that of the survivor of far and dangerous enterprise; his vision was of that sort which kindled youth. Lamy and Machebeuf often talked together of the appeal of that distant life, and not only they—other seminarians were drawn toward it, until their priesthood converged with the needs of history. Their ordeal of preparation must be so solemn, under ancient ways, as to be an irrevocable source of strength.

      vii.

       To Go

      IN THE MONT-FERRAND SEMINARY chapel Machebeuf was ordained by Bishop Féron of Clermont on the Ember Saturday of Christmas week in 1836, Lamy two years later on the same feast. They were assigned to small parishes in the diocese of Clermont, Lamy at Chapdes, Machebeuf at Le Cendre.

      Presently, in 1838, a letter reached the Sulpician rector of Mont-Ferrand, Father Comfé, from a former student who had worked under him in Paris years ago. It came from the bishop of Cincinnati, Ohio, John Baptist Purcell, who wrote from Rome. Returning now to Ohio, he would come to France on the way, where he hoped the Father Rector, his old spiritual counsellor, could help him to recruit a party of young priests to go with him to work in America. He stood in great need of more missioners.

      The Father Rector lost no time. He spoke to Lamy, Machebeuf, and other young priests of their classes, whose interest in America was known to him. Their response was eager. Machebeuf evidently led the enthusiasm. Along with three others, Lamy and he resolved to go, and readily obtained approval of Bishop Fèron of Clermont-Ferrand. Even before the arrival of Bishop Purcell in Paris, their plans and conjectures for departure were taking form. They were soon, as Machebeuf said, “notified to be ready to go in the spring with Bishop Purcell to Cincinnati.” Gathering their few belongings, they thought of the furious winters of America, and took the precaution of buying lengths of heavy cloth of the sort from which the Auvergnat mountaineers made their cloaks.

      Their arrangements went forward with a certain secrecy. The seminary rector feared that Machebeuf’s father might under parental authority forbid his son to go so far from home, and when it was time to go, he put Machebeuf under obedience to depart without taking leave of his family in Riom. Matters stood differently in Lempdes—there Lamy was able to disclose his intentions without meeting obstacles. Even so, saying a final goodbye was hard in his weakened state after the recent illness which had followed upon his great decision. But affairs had been set in train, there was no time either to grieve, or to ease what must be done, for the date had been set when the young Auvergnats were to meet their new bishop at the Sulpician Seminary in Paris.

      So it was that they were northbound in the Paris diligence before word of their flight became general. Friends were astounded, and Machebeuf’s father, the leading baker of Riom, was enraged as well as hurt when the young priest who had seen the fugitives waiting for the coach before dawn hurried about town with his news. But by then nothing could be done to reverse matters. Lamy and Machebeuf reached Paris safely, reported to the seminary at number 120 rue du Bac, where they were received with “paternal and affectionate cordiality,” and settled down to await the bishop of Cincinnati.

      They found a remarkable population of missioners on the alert—eight priests preparing to depart for China, Cochinchina, and Tong-King in Siam. Other parties had already gone to the Orient, and still others would follow. According to seminary gossip, the endurances awaiting in China made those expected by the Auvergnats destined for America seem less formidable. It appeared that priests going to the Asian kingdoms would be obliged, in order not to be noticed, to wear Chinese garb, and smoke a pipe four feet long all day, and never be seen to read the breviary, and use a small stick of ivory for a fork, and sleep on the floor with a simple mat for a bed—all this in addition to the chance of persecutions rumored to be far worse than any elsewhere. It was comforting news, of a sort, to send to the home villages left behind near Clermont. Meantime, Lamy and Machebeuf took from their bundles their supply of heavy Auvergnat mountain cloth. They first had it dyed black, and then ordered cloaks made from it, with extra linings of black cashmere for warmth in unknown America.

      In a day or two Machebeuf heard from his sister at home that their father was inconsolably chagrined that his son should have left home without taking leave.

      “Very dear Papa,” he wrote at once, “let me assure you that it was not through indifference or lack of consideration for you, but in reality through obedience to the Superior of the Seminary, who enjoined upon me the most inviolable secrecy. In the face of all the longing which I had to tell you goodbye, he insisted that the interview would be too painful for both of us.… The sacrifice was great for me, but my course was marked out and I had to hold to it.

      When Bishop Purcell arrived in Paris from Bordeaux, he learned that one of his recruits was in disgrace at home, and wrote on his behalf.

      “Dear Sir,” he addressed the elder Machebeuf, “my heart feels fully the sorrow that the departure of your dear son for the missions of America has caused you,” and went on to speak of a father’s love which on occasion must include sacrifice. Begging him to forgive his son, the bishop offered an august consolation.

      “It was in this manner,” he wrote, “that the great Apostle of the Indias, St Francis Xavier, passed the house of his parents without saluting them, to go to a barbarous land much farther away than ours,” and he closed by assuring the baker of Riom that he would love his son for him, who would pray for him and render him blessed on earth and in heaven by the souls who would be saved by his ministry. Then, “pray for him, and for me,” concluded Purcell. Full forgiveness came from Riom in early July, along with a gift of five hundred francs to the young Father Machebeuf, who reported that the bishop was delighted. It would be possible to go to America with a lighter heart.

      Purcell was a large-natured man with whom Lamy and his new followers were able to establish lifelong confidence and affection. Born in Ireland in 1800, he emigrated to the United States in 1818, where he began his theological studies, completing them and receiving ordination in Paris in 1826. At thirty-three he was made bishop of Cincinnati, and when he joined Lamy and the others in the rue du Bac, he was thirty-nine years old, a well-fleshed man with dark expressive eyes under black brows, an amiable mouth, and a strong chin.

      There was much to organize for the voyage westward. The party was to consist of fifteen people, including