In this little volume the Rev. F. de Ponlevoy has faithfully recorded the Acts, as he well entitles them, of five brave men of our own time, who went forth “rejoicing,” like the apostles of old, “that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus.”
The author has not attempted a biography or any detailed account of the lives of these brave men previous to their arrest “in the name of the Commune,” but simply an exact statement, far more impressive, of their known words and acts from that moment which so plainly marked them as chosen ones of God.
These Jesuit fathers suffered in most saintly companionship, and the world will heartily echo the pious wish of our author that other societies may do for their martyred brethren that which he has so lovingly accomplished for his.
The Jesuits in Paris during the war of 1870 saw plainly the gathering signs of darker days yet to come for France; but it is not in their traditions to yield anything to fear, and so they were resolved, the moment the armistice was concluded, to open their school of S. Geneviève and College of Vaugirard. At the very beginning of the war with Prussia, these two establishments had been freely passed over to the military authorities for the use of the sick and wounded, hundreds of whom had been there received and tenderly cared for, many of the fathers attaching themselves to the ambulances and hospitals with the utmost devotion. Consequently these buildings now needed many repairs and to be almost entirely refurnished. The residence in the Rue Lafayette had [pg 506] fared better, as the greater part of the community were Germans who had been obliged to leave France at the beginning of the war, while the house fell under the protection of the American minister, charged by Prussia to watch over the interests of its people in Paris. Add to which this modest mission had the deserved reputation of being very poor—not much of a bait for the blood-hounds of the Commune. At the house in the Rue de Sèvres such measures were taken as prudence seemed to suggest, leaving the rest to Providence. Thus at first it had seemed best to keep some members of the order in Paris—men at once necessary and willing to stay. Some were sent to the provinces, and others remained scattered throughout the ungrateful capital. At the conclusion of the armistice the College of Vaugirard was hastily prepared for pupils, and its reopening fixed for the 9th of March, by which time nearly two hundred students had applied for admission. But on the 18th the long-threatened revolution burst forth, and the rector, more anxious for the pupils than for the fathers, hurried both to the country-house of the college, at Moulineaux, between Issy and Meudon. However, they were soon compelled to retreat precipitately, first to Versailles, and finally to Saint Germain-en-Laye; for, placed exactly in the narrow belt between the belligerent lines, they found themselves, upon the breaking out of hostilities between Paris and Versailles, veritably between two fires. The deserted College of Vaugirard was surrounded, occupied, and pillaged, but no one was there to be arrested.
The school of S. Geneviève required more time for repairs, and was to be opened on March 20; but the insurrection, coming in the interval, necessitated new delays, and parents were notified to await further announcements. The rector, F. Léon Ducoudray, born at Laval, May 6, 1827, a man of great spirit and energy, was not one to lose time or to be dismayed in the hour of trial. He at once sent out four of the fathers, one to negotiate a loan in England or Belgium to meet the exigencies of the moment, and the others to seek in the provinces an asylum for the exiled school, which was finally removed to a country-house at Athis-Mons, on the railway line to Orléans, not far from Paris. The pupils were notified that the school would open on April 12; the rector, who had remained in Paris to superintend the final arrangements, was to join his community on Monday, the third.
On Sunday, the second, F. Ducoudray perceived that F. Paul Piquet, a sick priest left at S. Geneviève, was rapidly sinking, and at a quarter-past eight in the evening this good father had the happiness of leaving this world and its momentarily-increasing trials. It was a great loss to the house, and at this time a very painful embarrassment. The next morning (Monday) the Commune issued a decree confiscating all the furniture and property belonging to religious houses, and at S. Geneviève they every instant expected a visit on the part of the new rulers of the city. Nevertheless, F. Ducoudray sent for several of the fathers to come up from Athis to attend the funeral ceremonies of the deceased priest, set for Tuesday, April 4.
All at once, just after midnight on Tuesday, before these fathers had returned to Athis, the buildings were [pg 507] encircled by a battalion of National Guards, armed to the teeth. The Rue Lhomond, the Rue d'Ulm, the Passage des Vignes, the very woodyard at the foot of the garden, all were guarded. There were repeated blows at the door of No. 18. The brother porter went at once to say that the keys, according to custom, were in the rector's room, and that he would go and get them. But at this simple and reasonable answer the outsiders got into a rage; a summons was sounded three times at rapid intervals; the whole neighborhood was startled by a general discharge at all the windows of the Rue Lhomond; there were loud threats of bringing cannons and mitrailleuses from the Place de Panthéon near by. Presently the doors were opened, and the rector himself appeared, calmly requesting to be allowed to make some remarks in the name of common justice and of individual liberty. But the day for these things had gone by. For sole response the leader signified, revolver in hand, that he constituted the rector his prisoner in the name of the Commune, and should occupy and search the house for the arms and munitions of war therein concealed. But in reality they were here, as everywhere else, on a hunt for the cash-box. “That which we most need,” said a member of the Commune, “is money.”
Right away every one in the house was on his feet, and each one followed his instinct; but first of all one priest hurried to the private chapel, where, for precaution, the Blessed Sacrament had been previously placed, and hastened to secure it against profanation.
The envoys of the Commune were in number and force enough to carry on several operations at once. They arrested everybody they could lay their hands on—priests, lay brothers, even the servants of the school—and, as fast as they found them, seated them in the entrance hall, and kept them there for several hours. They ransacked the entire house; the rector himself led them everywhere. The search was very long and very minute, without the desired result; for they found no arms and very little money. F. Ducoudray, without falsifying himself in the slightest, replied with so much unconcern, with such dignity and politeness, that they said to each other in astonishment: “What a man this is! What energy of character!” At last, after three painful hours, they took him to the hall; but even from the first moment they separated him from his brethren, and put him in a little vestibule of the chapel in front of the parlors. It is almost superfluous to add that the pillage of the house commenced almost at once, accelerated, and the next day completed, by bands of women and children.
At five in the morning the recall was sounded; it was the signal for defiling and departing for the préfecture of the police. The prisoners were ranged between two lines of National Guards. First came the rector, a little ahead of the others; behind him the Rev. FF. Ferdinand Billot, Emile Chauveau, Alexis Clerc, Anatole de Bengy, Jean Bellanger, Theodore de Regnon, and Jean Tanguy, four lay brothers, and seven servants.
“Well,” said F. Ducoudray, with a radiant countenance, to F. Caubert, who was nearest him. “Ibant gaudentes,112 did they not?”
“What is he saying there?” asked [pg 508] the uneasy guards. F. Caubert repeated the sentence; God knows what they understood by it!
At the préfecture a major exclaimed: “Why have you brought me these rascals (coquins)? Why didn't you shoot them on the spot?”
“Gently,” answered one of the guard; “it is necessary to proceed calmly, or you yourself might get it before the rest.”
The same officer then asked, revolver in hand, for the director.
“I am here,” replied F. Ducoudray, advancing.
“I know that you have arms concealed in your house.”
“No, sir.”
“I have it on certain authority.”
“If there are any, it is without my knowledge.”
“You have an iron will. We are going to see about that, we two; and if we do not find them, you do not get back here.”
Then followed a number of charges against the priests, such as poisoning the sick and wounded in the hospitals and ambulances, perversion of youth, and complicity with the government of Versailles. F. Ducoudray, following the example of his divine Master, made no reply, and, after being loaded with insults, was finally taken secretly and locked up in a cell of the Conciergerie prison. The others were confined in a common hall of the depot prison, intended for vagrant women.
In the meantime, two priests and one brother, who had escaped detection in the tumult, remained at S. Geneviève. The brother was an invalid confined to his bed, and the two priests, one of whom had been concealed all night in the garden, met in his room after the guards had left, and it remained for nearly two months virtually their prison.
The saintly president of the house of the Rue de Sèvres, F. Pierre Olivaint, had seen all his flock sheltered from the gathering storm, and on that Monday was alone in the house with one reverend companion, F. Alexis Lefebvre, and several devoted brothers, incapable of fear. All day long warnings and entreaties poured in upon him to cause him to fly in advance of the impending visit from the Commune. “But what would you have?” he answered tranquilly. “I am like the captain of a vessel, who must be the last to leave the ship. If we are taken to-day, I shall have but one regret: that it is Holy Tuesday, not Good Friday.”
“Why, now, my child,” he said again, at six o'clock, to one who implored him to save himself while there was yet a moment, for it was certain there was to be a visit on the part of the Commune that very evening—“why, now, my child, why do you excite yourself? Is it not the best act of charity we can perform to give our life for the love of Jesus Christ?” And then he went to the lower floor, facing the hall door, and calmly went on with his office. “I am waiting,” he said to a friend who passed by, pressing his hand.
Just as they were assembling in the refectory for the evening collation, at the usual hour of a quarter-past seven, the brother porter was summoned; a delegate of the Commune was at the door, behind him a company of National Guards. The brother was instructed to detain them in the vestibule or in the parlor until the superior himself should come. Brother Francis did so, in spite of the impatience and threats of the visitors. In anticipation of this visit, but two hosts had been left in the morning, and now [pg 509] each father hurried to his room, and each had his viaticum ready. F. Lefebvre returned the first, soon followed by F. Olivaint. The delegate announced the object of his mission—to look for arms and munitions kept in reserve by the Jesuits; but, being himself called away on important business, deputed citizen Lagrange to take his place. This man, well worthy of the deed, ordered every avenue of escape to be guarded, and then, followed by nearly half his force, began the tour of inspection, accompanied by F. Olivaint, and preceded by two brothers, one with a light, the other carrying the keys; two other brothers were stationed at the entrance with the guards, and, as each room was examined, Lagrange left two of his men to guard it. To have any idea of the shameless impiety and vulgar insolence of these functionaries of the Commune, one must have seen and heard them; for three hours the search continued, amid threats and mockery, through all which F. Olivaint remained calm and reserved.
The critical moment came while in the procurator's chamber, where the cash-box was discovered. “Hurry and open it,” they cried. “Where's the key?”
“I haven't it; it is not even here,” answered F. Olivaint. “Our father procurator, who is absent, has it with him.” Then came the tempest; one of the brothers was sent off with three guards, arms in hand, to hunt up the father procurator, and bring him back alive or dead. In the end, F. Caubert really did arrive, and opened the box. It was empty. Naturally, the siege had suppressed all receipts and increased all expenses; for a long time the Jesuits had lived only by borrowing. “We are robbed,” Lagrange exclaimed. “All right, the superior and the steward are my prisoners, in the name of the Commune. Off to the préfecture of police!” F. Lefebvre begged to be taken with his brethren. “No, no,” was the answer. “You stay here and hold this house in the name of the Commune.” And actually the sentence was prophetic; for the house guarded by F. Lefebvre was spared with him.
At about half-past eleven o'clock the two prisoners departed, never to return; they sought in vain for a carriage, to make the long transit. As they passed out, F. Olivaint saw, in the crowd in the street, a group of compassionate friends; he saluted them with a smile, as if to say: “Weep not for me.”
Lagrange and his company quartered themselves at the Place Vendôme, as proud of their prowess that night as if they had captured Versailles; a single piquet of armed men took the prisoners to the préfecture, and there, instead of being placed with the others in the common hall, they were immediately and secretly locked up in the cells of the Conciergerie.
“FF. Olivaint and Caubert are in prison,” F. Lefebvre wrote to our author at Versailles. “They absolutely would not take me. I am alone at the house, with Brother Bouillé, both fearless, thank God! The others are dispersed, and come from time to time to see me. I have placed the Blessed Sacrament in the gallery near my room, and, when they return, I shall consume the sacred hosts. The church will be closed. They are arresting the priests. Monseigneur himself is at the préfecture of police; they say these are the hostages, I am told. Pray, pray for me, my father! Oh! how happy I should be to give my life for our Lord!”
[pg 510]F. Ducoudray accepted his imprisonment without any surprise. “Before long,” he had said, on March 19, to the Prince de Broglie—“before long our churches will be closed, our houses devastated, our persons arrested, and God knows who will regain his liberty. The things which are to be done will have a particular character of hatred to God, and—that which is very sad for a priest to say—there will prove to be no other argument for the miserable ones who are to be masters of Paris than the cannon. I have lived for seven months in the very midst of these men, and I have not met with one heart or one honest mind among them.”
“For six months,” he wrote under date of Feb. 20, “I have seen only grief and mourning.... My God! must I say to you that I can still hope? Paris has lost the last fibre of moral and religious sense. Its population is mad, delirious. Can we hope for the return of divine mercy when this immense city thinks only of founding a society based on the absence of religion and on the hatred of God? Only a miracle can help us out of the abyss in which we are plunged. I hold my peace.... My heart is too heavy, and my soul too gloomy.”
F. Olivaint, loving his country not less, was filled with joy from the very moment of his arrest. “Ibant gaudentes,” he said with sparkling eyes to the archbishop's secretary, who passed his grating—“Ibant gaudentes; it is for the same Master!” “France,” he said, “like the world, requires to be ransomed by blood—not the blood of criminals, which sinks into the ground, and remains mute and barren, but the blood of the just, which cries to heaven, invoking justice and imploring mercy.”
“There must be victims,” said F. Caubert. “It is God who has chosen them.”
On the evening of Holy Thursday there came a change. The archbishop, the president, Bonjeau, FF. Ducoudray, Clerc, and de Bengy, each in a separate compartment of a prison carriage, were conveyed from the Conciergerie to the prison of Mazas. F. Olivaint and F. Caubert were left alone at the Conciergerie, in separate cells, debarred from all possible communication.
“And from this hour,” cries F. Ponlevoy, in tender remembrance,113 “I seem to myself to be really writing an episode of the Catacombs. The church is ever fruitful in generous souls, but it is the hour of trial that more than any lays bare the depths of the heart; and if, on one side, there is in the martyrs a patience beyond all grief, there is in the Christian a charity stronger than death itself.”
A system of correspondence was organized outside those now hallowed prison walls, and continued to the very end, consoling and sustaining the captives, and laying up treasures for the faithful far and wide through the edifying little notes thus preserved. And finally, on Thursday, April 13, safe means were found to convey to the prisoners at the Conciergerie not simply a consolation, but the Consoler himself. Only a few hours after this was accomplished, FF. Olivaint and Caubert were removed to Mazas, whither three of their order, as we have seen, had preceded them.
The prison of Mazas, on the boulevard of the same name, is constructed on the system of cells. At its door all motion ceases; life itself fades out; the isolation is [pg 511] complete; the unfortunate detained there are buried alive. But the love and devotion of the faithful contrived to pierce even these gloomy walls, and letters were again carried back and forth between the imprisoned priests and their exiled brethren. These letters contained few facts, but, put together, make a most exquisite journal of the interior life of the saintly captives. F. Ducoudray opens this series of letters by a formal one to his superior, giving an account of the situation and of his own personal disposition. “You know our history and its sadness,” he writes.
“Here I pass much time in prayer, and a little in suffering. Isolation, separation, uncertainty, and, above all, the privation of not being able to celebrate Mass—this is indeed cruel!
“No possible communication cum concaptivis meis. They are there, near to me, in the same corridor; that is all I know.
“This is the part it is the will of God we should perform. For us, we have only to follow the apostle's counsel: ‘In omnibus exhibeamus nosmetipsos, sicut Dei ministros, in multa patientia, in tribulationibus,... in carceribus, in seditionibus, ... per gloriam et ignobilitatem, per infamiam et bonam faman.’114
“Say to my friends,” F. Olivaint wrote to one of his brethren, “that I do not find anything to complain of; health pretty good; not a moment of ennui in my retreat, which I continue up to the very neck.... I know nothing of my companions.” “I thank you from the bottom of my heart,” to another, “for your charity to the poor prisoners. Here is a work I did not fully comprehend until I was in prison. How well you practise it—I might almost say too well!... No, the time does not seem long to me.” ... “In reality,” he writes again, “I do very well in body; and as for the spirit, it seems to me that I am making a retreat of benediction, Deo gratias.” ... Later on: “I am at the twenty-fourth day of my retreat. I had never hoped that a retreat of a month would be granted me; and see, now I am touching that term. Well, if we do not regain our liberty by the end of the month, I shall not, I hope, lose anything in this way by the prolongation of the trial. You will understand that here we have no news to give. And those frightful cannon that never cease grumbling! But that, too, reminds me to pray for our poor country. If it were required to give my miserable life to put an end to its troubles, how quickly I would make the sacrifice!”
Those cannon jarred on the ears of the other captives. “We hear day and night the roar of cannon,” F. Clerc wrote to his brother. “I conclude that the siege and my detention will not end to-morrow.... People talk of the cloister of religious houses; that of Mazas is not to be despised.... We have neither Mass nor sacraments. Never, I well believe, did prisoners more desire them. I pray to the good God, I study, I read, I write a little, and I find time goes quickly, even at Mazas.... Do not take further measures to see me; I fear further efforts would bring you annoyance, and I have little hope of the result. These gates will be opened by another hand than yours; and, if they open not, we know well that we must be [pg 512] resigned.... I am proud and happy to suffer for the name I bear. You know well the blow did not take me by surprise. I did not desire to evade it, and I wish to support it. I do not hope for the deliverance of which you speak.... The less I am master of myself, the more I am in the hands of God; there will happen to me what he wills, and he will give me to do that which he wishes I should do. Omnia passum in eo qui me confortat.”
F. Caubert writes in the same tone: “My health up to the present remains good. For the rest, I have all that is necessary, and even over. Besides, the moral serves to strengthen the physical in giving courage and strength. Now, this comes to me because I am full of confidence in God, and most happy to do his will in all that he really demands of me. For the rest, the prison rule, in spite of its stern and austere side, is not in itself injurious to the health. They have us take the air every day for an hour, solitarily, and each in his turn. The delicate stomachs can obtain the food they need. Twice a week they give us soup and a bit of beef. The house is conducted with propriety, order, and regularity.... We can visit the doctor or the apothecary daily. There is a library comprising a pretty good number of books of great variety, and any one can ask for them to pass the time. As for the details of the ménage, that which they bring me is quite sufficient, and I need no more. It simplifies matters not to have my cell encumbered, otherwise I should get things a little pell-mell.”
To hear these good fathers, everything was right, everybody good to them. Undoubtedly they suffer, but, as they are patient, they suffer less than others; as they have hope, they endure better than others; finally, as they love Christ crucified, their joy is greater than their pain. A Frenchman and a Jesuit conquered by hard treatment or most distressing privation! Never! Starving, dying by inches, in stripes and in prison, under the tomahawk, at the stake, in hunger and thirst, in burning India or the snows of Canada, at the mercy of Western savages or Paris revolutionists, it is ever the same thing—everything is right and nice and fine; much better than could be expected. The story, fresh in our minds, of our own early missionaries, exiles of the first Revolution, prepares us to hear the sweet patience of the American forests echoing to-day in the prison of Mazas. God wills it. Ad majorem Dei gloriam.
M. Ponlevoy, who had the tender curiosity to visit the prison of Mazas on a holiday, when it could easily be inspected, says: “I saw those three stories of long corridors, with double galleries, radiating around a centre where lately there was a chapel—ah! if the Commune had but had at least the humanity to leave to the captives the divine Prisoner of the tabernacle—on both sides, on all the floors, the doors loaded with bolts and provided with regular gratings, and those narrow cells, of which the inventory could be made in a single glance! Facing the entrance, the grated window, which measured the air and light; in one corner the hammock; opposite, the little table, with just room enough for a straw chair; behind the door a plank for a cupboard, a broom, and some pieces of coarse crockery completed the furniture. As for the famous promenade so often [pg 513] mentioned in their letters, it was a little triangular prison-yard, shut in by a grating in front, and walls on the sides, without shelter anywhere, and no other seat than a stone in one corner. During their solitary recreation the captives could absolutely see no one, unless the guard under the arch who held them in surveillance.”
But the human heart is still human, however resigned the will. Say what they would, the prison was still a prison, and Mazas certainly was more like Calvary than paradise. After all, Christians are not stoics, and the martyr himself feels the weakness of the flesh, that he may overcome it by the vigor of the spirit.
“This poor heart!” writes brave F. Ducoudray. “It sometimes will be tempted to escape and to bound. The imagination willingly takes its part. Neither lets itself be ruled as much by reason as I would wish. Thence come, at times, certain fits or impressions of weariness, the suffering of the soul, throwing it into languor, discouragement, uneasiness, and disgust. ‘Magnum est et val de magnum, tam humano quant divino posse carere solatio et pro honore Dei, libenter exilium cordis velle sustinere.’115 There is matter in that one comprehends only when one feels it. I had the good thought, when leaving the house, to put into my pocket a small volume containing the New Testament and the Imitation. I have read S. Paul much. What a great and admirable heart! It expands my soul to read it, for it has been ‘in laboribus plurimus, in carceribusabundantius,’116 as he writes himself. And I, though I am yet but a carcere uno, I boast of suffering somewhat. But if we are those of whom it is written: ‘Eritis odio omnibus propter nomen meum,’117 how contemptible our tribulations in comparison with those of the great apostle!” “I am still,” he wrote at another time, May 5, “more ill omened than the greatest pessimist. You tell me they fix the 20th as the final term of the civil war. I much fear it will be prolonged even to the 30th. Military operations go slowly. The war beyond the ramparts offers difficulties; the war of the streets has its difficulties also—most bloody ones, alas!... We touch upon the week of great events, or, at least, the beginning of great events.... What a punishment! It was expected. It is here.”
Two or three human consolations were vouchsafed the prisoners, after a time. On May 5 they were permitted to read several of the daily papers approved by the Commune, and about the same time F. Ducoudray had the inestimable privilege of twice seeing and saluting, at a short distance, F. Clerc, and of once seeing far off F. Bengy, his beloved brethren and fellow-prisoners.
In May another favor was vouchsafed. F. Clerc's brother had been incessant in his attempts to obtain an interview with him, but without any success; at last a dear friend, a lady, received permission to visit the prisoner, and, as a French lady must needs have an escort, she took M. Clerc for hers. This was an inexpressible happiness to the noble-hearted priest, and his thanks to God for the favor were boundless. F. Caubert, whose simple and exquisite letters, full of golden [pg 514] thoughts, we would gladly linger over if there were only space enough, received, May 11, a visit from the Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States, which was very agreeable to him. “It appears,” he said, “that I had been recommended to him by some person of his acquaintance. He came to inquire most cordially, in true American style, how I got along, and if I had need of anything.” Here, in uncertainty, inaction, and shut out from all the world, these brave men made light of all the trials and privations to which their bodies were so long and painfully subjected. The Communists knew too much, however, to think of breaking their spirit by bodily suffering; they had the means of creating cruel anguish in the heart of every priest within those prison walls, and well they knew how to use it. From every cell came a cry such as no rack or stake could draw from them.
On Easter Sunday, fifth day of their confinement, F. Clerc wrote to his brother: “To-day is the feast of feasts, the Pasch of the Christians, the day the Lord has made. For us there is no Mass to say or hear.” Just at the hour of leaving the Conciergerie, FF. Olivaint and Caubert had the happiness, so longed for and so unexpected, of receiving the “Consoler himself.” Then came the long days at Mazas, and no such consolation possible. “Oh! if we could but soon ascend the altar!” cries F. Ducoudray in the early days at Mazas. “Here is a privation to which I can never become accustomed.”
“Here,” F. Clerc wrote May 5—“here no confession, no Mass, not even on Sunday. We are lodged, fed—it is enough for animals.”
“I pass my time,” F. Ducoudray again, “praying much, suffering some; for the privation of the Holy Mass, the isolation, the separation, are cruel, but I see not the end.”
On May 8 an order was promulgated which put an end to all visits; on that very day F. Ducoudray had expected to receive our Lord himself. “What a sacrifice!” he exclaims. “I have offered to our Lord this hard trial, incomparably more painful yesterday than ever, on account of the precious pledge of the love of the divine Master. I seek to make my poor heart the altar on which I sacrifice. I shall add that of yesterday as new fuel to the sacrifice.”
“Six Sundays passed in darkness,” writes F. Olivaint, May 14. “How many days without ascending to the altar!” And the next day: “I am at the forty-first day of my retreat. After to-day, I intend to meditate only on the Eucharist. Is it not the best means of consoling myself that I cannot ascend to the altar? If I were a little bird, I would go somewhere every morning to hear Mass, and then I would willingly come back to my cage.”
The fathers outside the prison walls, understanding well the longing indicated by these and similar expressions, had endeavored in every way to find means to answer their desires. But it required infinite precautions to secure the faithful and sure transmission through all the formalities of surveillance. What is there prudence and love together may not accomplish? At last the doors opened; the prisoners came not out, but the Redeemer entered. Towards mid-day of the 15th the Long-Desired arrived. That tells all. Only FF. Ducoudray, Olivaint, and Clerc could be reached at first. Each of [pg 515] these was given four sacred hosts, and each preserved and carried on his breast, as on a living altar, the God of his heart and his heritage for all eternity.
“There is no more prison,” F. Clerc wrote to his brother, “no more solitude; and I have confidence that if our Lord permits the wicked to satisfy their malice, and for a few hours to prevail, he will profit by them in that very moment to glorify his name by the feeblest and vilest of his instruments.”
Once again, May 22, an opportunity was found to reach the captives. Two feeble but intrepid women traversed the vast, deserted districts to Mazas. This time all measures had been taken, and each prisoner received a share—four sacred hosts wrapped in a corporal, as in a shroud, duly enclosed in a little box with a silk case and a cord, in order that it might be carried around the neck. Coming at that hour, the Saviour seemed to say again: “I return, not to live with you, but to carry you with me.” For the end was at hand.
We linger for a few moments over the last letters gathered here in a most fragrant, fadeless wreath. On the 16th F. Clerc wrote his last letter, truly his nunc dimittis:
“Ah! my God, how good thou art! How true it is that the mercy of thy heart will never fail!... I had not dared conceive the hope of such a blessing—to possess our Lord, to have him for companion of my captivity, to carry him on my heart, and to rest on his, as he permitted to his beloved John! Yes, it is too much for me, and my thought cannot compass it. And still it is. But is it not true that all men and all the saints together could not conceive the Eucharist? O the God of the Eucharist! how good he is, how compassionate, how tender! Does it not seem as if he made again the reproach: You have asked nothing in my name; ask now, and you shall receive? I have him now without having asked; I have him now, and I will never leave him more, and my desire, fainting for want of hope, is reanimated, and will only increase in the measure that possession lasts.
“Ah! prison, dear prison, thou whose walls I have kissed, saying, Bona crux, what happiness thou hast won me! Thou art no longer a prison; thou art a chapel. Thou art no longer even a solitude, because I am not alone; but my Lord and my King, my Master and my God, lives here with me. It is not only in thought that I approach him; it is not only by grace that he approaches me; but he has really and corporally come to find and console the poor prisoner. He wished to keep him company; and can he not do it, all-powerful as he is?... Oh! lost for ever, my prison, which wins for me the honor to carry my Lord upon my heart, not as a sign, but the reality of my union with him.
“In the first days I demanded with great earnestness that our Lord should call me to a more excellent testimony to his name. The worst days are not even yet passed; on the contrary, they are coming near, and they will be so evil that the goodness of God will be obliged to shorten them; but, at all events, we are now drawing near to them. I had from the first the hope that God would give me the grace to die well; at present my hope has become a true and solid confidence. It seems to me that I am prepared for anything through Him who sustains me and will accompany me even unto death. Will [pg 516] he do it? That which I know is, that if he will not, I shall have a regret which nothing but submission to his will can calm.”
F. Ducoudray gives us his farewell letter also. It ends with alleluia in the heart and the fiat on the lips:
“I have received all. Tuesday what a surprise, what joy!... I am no more alone. I have our Lord for guest in my little cell.... And it is true, credo! On Wednesday I seemed to live over again the day of my first communion, and I surprised myself by bursting into tears. For twenty-five days I had been deprived of the rich blessing—of my only treasure!
“I shut myself in the guest-chamber,” he continued, referring to the room in which the Last Supper was eaten, and that “upper chamber,” in which the disciples remained concealed until the coming of the Holy Ghost, “and much I wish, after these ten days which separate us from Pentecost are passed, to see again the light of heaven. Between now and then what events may arise! We are near the crisis; but if it is prolonged, we have reason to fear that horrible events will take place. I cannot prevent myself at times from being greatly impressed at finding myself connected with such grave circumstances. But here we make a good retreat, which will facilitate our entrance into eternity. I have held myself, from the first day of my arrival here, ready for any sacrifice whatever; for I have the strong, sweet confidence that if God permits hostages and victims to be made of us priests and religious, it will truly be in odium fidei, in odium nominus Christi Jesu.118
“We pray, pray much, disposed to live if God pleases, to die if God pleases, as worthy children of our most happy father, S. Ignatius.”
Happy the pen that is broken after those last lines.
“It should be well understood,” wrote F. Caubert, “that it is really God who gives us courage in our trials; otherwise the courage would very soon exhaust itself. For me, I have to run often to prayer to renew mine, like a poor clock that has to be wound up every little while. In a life so isolated, sequestered and devoid of occupation, ennui comes quickly. One can easily make himself a rule, but we cannot always read or pray. I should have experienced much of this in myself during this my three weeks' retreat had I not been sustained by this very dose of prayer. You understand that in this monotonous life, whenever the good God hides his presence (and that is usual, in order to make the trial greater), one must often feel the sinking of nature. But this feeling of weakness is precisely the very thing that drives us constantly near to God. The good God is most admirable in his manner of sustaining the soul through these very depressions. Our feebleness is as a chain binding us to his strength, and as an attraction drawing us to his infinite goodness.
“You say to me that it must be that I suffer. In a measure it is true; but if one had nothing to endure, the good God would find nothing in his account. He desires to show mercy to all, and, that he may do so, he wills that we should offer him some sorrows borne for love of him. Alas! if one were not a prisoner (I speak for myself), perhaps he would too easily forget that charity requires [pg 517] that we should have compassion on poor sinners, and offer something for their intention. And then is not the priest the friend of God, and should he not, by this title, devote himself to obtaining for his brothers reconciliation with God, the father of all—the father so full of goodness and so ready for indulgence—especially when he hears himself importuned by the voice of a friend?”
“I take little account of the time of my imprisonment,” he wrote later. “I prefer to leave all that in the hands of God, and to give up to him the care of all that concerns me. He knows better than I what is most useful for my soul. I seek to remember often that one glorifies him so much more, the more that one suffers for his love and to accomplish his holy will. In reality, in submitting to the trial, we practise in an admirable manner the annihilation of ourself.... Is it not also by the sacrifice of ourself that we best imitate our Lord? It is true that my soul has not yet reached to that perfection and to a love so pure and so detached. It is necessary to pass through trials to reach this union with God. He sends them, in his goodness, to purify the soul and to break down the obstacles which oppose themselves to this union. Pray for me, that I may draw this profit from my present trial.”
A few rapidly-written words from F. Olivaint were the last greeting from one of the tenderest hearts and sweetest souls in the world. “What deplorable events!” he wrote, May 18, to F. Lefebvre. “How well I understand the weary souls of other days who fled to the desert! But it is worth much more to stay in the midst of perils and difficulties to save so many unfortunates from shipwreck. My health is always good, and, after forty-six days, I am not tired of my retreat—just the contrary.” To F. Chauveau: “Thanks from my heart. Yes, we are nearing the end, by the grace of God. Let us seek to be ready for all that comes. Confidence and prayer! How good our Lord is! If you but knew how, especially for several days past, my little cell has become sweet to me! Forsan et hæc olim meminisse juvabit. Who knows that I may not regret it some day? I think just as you do—that Eugene [Count Eugene de Germiny] should not interfere; but in the end, if, by the favor of M. Urbain and his associates, I have need of help, I will ask for Eugene. In any case, thank him for me. Tenderest remembrances to Armand; many thanks to all; benedictions to our friends and benefactors. I believe that all of our own here are doing well. For me, I am perfectly sustained. Once more our Lord is good! Yours from the heart.... May 19, '71.”
On Monday, the 22d, the order was given to proceed at once, and on the spot, to the execution of all the hostages confined at Mazas. This was kept concealed from the prisoners, but they could not help suspecting it, from the additional gloom growing every moment heavier and more ominous throughout that ever-gloomy building. The guards came and went, exchanging mysterious words among themselves, replying to the questions of the condemned by threatening allusion, or by an affected silence even more significant. However, the director of the prison, moved by a sentiment of humanity, or perhaps of prudence, ventured to represent to the imperious Commune that an execution in a simple house of detention [pg 518] would be contrary to all forms and precedents; and consequently they were ordered to La Roquette, the prison for those condemned to death. It was on this day that the two pious women succeeded in reaching Mazas, and giving to each of the Jesuit priests there four sacred hosts, with conveniences for carrying them around the neck.
Nearly all were transferred to La Roquette late in the evening of May 22d; but there were so many, the wagons were not large enough to hold all, and some were left at Mazas until the next day. What a moment that must have been when the prisoners, so long in solitude, not even knowing who were their companions in misfortune, came from their cells, and, meeting in the office, beheld and recognized one another! Priests, religious, laymen, all surrounded the Archbishop of Paris.
The transit was long and painful. The prisoners, forty in number, were crowded into baggage-wagons belonging to the railway of Lyon, and exposed to the gaze and the insults of all. They had to cross the populous quarters of the Faubourg Saint Antoine and the Bastile, where the insurrection was still mistress. The convoy went at a walk, between two lines of armed men, followed by the grossest insults and by a maddened multitude. “Alas! monseigneur,” said a priest, leaning towards the archbishop, “look at your people now.”
When they reached La Roquette that night, they were assembled at once, without any other formality, in the hall, called by name, and shown by a person with a lantern to a long corridor on the lower floor; and as each one passed on in the order named, a door opened and closed upon a captive. The darkness was intense; but it is good to remember that in some of the cells there was the Real Presence, shedding light and peace. The Commune was in desperate straits, and it was at first intended to execute the victims as soon as they should arrive at La Roquette; but a few hours were gained through the jealousy of the director. In the cells was a bed, and such a bed!—a pile of straw and a coverlet, and that was all; no tables, not even a chair. Still, Roquette was better than Mazas, for the cells were not vaults, and, though one was locked up, he was not entombed. And, besides, they were permitted to see each other by means of a window between every two cells, and at recreation, which they were allowed to take in a corridor together, and even in some unoccupied cell opening into the corridor. Food was scarce from the first; even bread was rare. F. Olivaint shared some little things which remained to him with the archbishop, and had the happiness, also, of giving him the Bread of the Strong, for which the prelate was overcome with gratitude.
Every hour the Commune was losing ground. It had only strength left for crime, and it hastened, with its dying breath, to order the execution en masse of the hostages of La Roquette. This was modified to sixty at first. At any price the Commune demanded the head of the priests—those hated men who had troubled the world for eighteen hundred years.
About eight o'clock in the evening of May 24, when the prisoners were in their cells, there was heard a confused noise in the distance—the voices of men and of children, a clamor and laughing that was still more terrible, mixing with the [pg 519] clash of arms. It came nearer and nearer, and some fifty rascals, Avengers of the Republic, Garibaldians, soldiers with all kinds of arms, National Guards with all sorts of costumes, gamins of Paris, poured into the prison, hungry for the blood of six victims, their share. They rushed the whole length of the corridor containing the cells of our dear prisoners, and ranged themselves at the head of a small spiral staircase which led to the chemin de ronde. As they passed, each prisoner was pelted through the grating of his cell with a running fire of insult and sentence of death.
Then some one, assuming the office of herald, summoned the prisoners to be ready and to respond each one as his name was called. After that, as each name was pronounced, a door opened, and a victim presented himself. M. Bonjeau, FF. Duguerry, Clerc, Ducoudray, Allard, and Archbishop Darboy were the six chosen. All were present, all were ready, and, in the order named, the procession began. The archbishop and his companions, preceded and followed by this frightful escort, descended the dark, narrow staircase one by one. So unrestrained was the insolence of the captors that their leader was obliged to interfere. “Comrades,” he cried, “we have something better to do than to insult them—that is, to shoot them. It is the command of the Commune.”
No place of execution had been fixed upon. They would have liked to have had it on the spot, but that would give too many witnesses; the first chemin de ronde was in view of the prison windows, and the occupants of the cells on every floor could see all, hear all. So they passed to the second, where they would be sheltered by high ramparts. The victims were ranged in a line at the extreme end of this path, at the foot of the great outside wall.
Those left behind knelt, prayed, and held their breath. The fire of a platoon was heard, followed by a few scattered shots, then cries of Vive la Commune! which told that all was over. There were martyrs now, not victims.
Towards morning the bodies were thrown into a hand-cart and carried to Père la Chaise, where they were tossed into a ditch; no coffins, no ceremony of any kind. “What matters it,” F. Olivaint had said and proved—“what matters it to a Jesuit, who daily sacrifices his heart, once to sacrifice his head?”
Two days passed, and Friday came, rainy, and the prisoners were confined to their corridor. As they were taking their noon-day recreation, a delegate of the Commune appeared, and, standing in their midst, called off fifteen names. F. Olivaint was the first. “Present,” he answered, crossing the corridor. F. Caubert was second, and F. de Bengy third. This last name was badly written, and worse pronounced. “If you mean to say de Bengy,” he replied, “it is I, and I am here.”
The condemned men asked to be allowed to go for a moment to their cells, as some had slippers on, and no hats. “No,” was the response, “for what remains for you to do you are well enough as you are.” New victims were added from other parts of the prison until there were fifty in all, the number required by the Commune.
These were taken a long road to Belleville, a faubourg at a great [pg 520] distance, in order, probably, to excite the passions of the mob, and rouse them once more.
The procession started at about four o'clock from La Roquette. First came a guard bareheaded, who loudly announced that these were Versaillais, made prisoners that morning. The escort consisted of five hundred armed men, National Guards, to whom were added, for this genial occasion, the Enfants Perdus of Bergeret and rowdies under various names. Presently the women, veritable furies, and the children joined in, howling, shrieking, imprecating, blaspheming. The crowd increasing in numbers and insolence, the guards were obliged to interfere to protect the prisoners, not from insult, but from extreme violence. The fury of the mob constantly demanded the moment of execution; a military band was added to the procession to drown the clamor and make the crowd more willing to wait. Finally they reached the entrance to the Cité Vincennes. The passage is narrow, the crowd was enormous, and growing ever more furious as they neared the end. An aged priest, who could not keep up, was shot and killed by a woman, and dragged to the place of general execution. After a time, they found some grounds laid out for country parties or picnics, and an enclosure, uncovered, which was intended for a dancing-hall. The fifty prisoners were forced into this, jammed savagely against the walls, while the crowd showered maledictions upon them. Then, at about six o'clock, there took place a scene absolutely indescribable; not an execution, but a slaughter. They were not shot, but massacred. One discharge followed another; there was an attempt made to fire by platoons, but it was badly managed. The heroines of the Commune climbed the walls, urging on the men and insulting the priests. The tumult at its height lasted for about fifteen minutes. At seven o'clock all was ended. The bodies were left stretched upon the ground until the next day, when they were thrown into a cellar or vault.
It was the death-throe of the Commune. The blood of the just had cried to heaven, and France lifted up her head. The next day was Pentecost; the Commune was crushed, the doors of Roquette were opened, the bodies of the martyrs were recovered, and on Wednesday, May 31, the Jesuit church, for two months closed like the rest, was opened once more, and the funeral ceremonies of the five of their order whose imprisonment we have so hastily followed celebrated with the utmost solemnity. Their remains now repose in the Jesuit chapel of the Rue de Sèvres.
“There must be victims; it is God who has chosen them.” They recognized the divine call, and went forth rejoicing. Ibaut gaudentes.