So they were, when Purcell returned from abroad. He at once gave permission for Machebeuf to go—but in addition to his merciful purpose, the bishop added an important mission to be carried out in France. Purcell charged him with the complicated task of recruiting clergy and religious for the Cincinnati diocese—priests for the missions, Ursuline nuns to found a convent in Brown County, Kentucky. Finally, in June 1844, nine months after the first word of his father’s grave condition, Machebeuf was able to set out. It was to be a year before he returned. In due course, Lamy learned, as he did in all matters concerning his closest ally, the adventures of Machebeuf on the first journey home made by either of them since they had left France in 1839.
viii.
Machebeuf’s Intrigue
MACHEBEUF SAILED FROM NEW YORK in the second week of June 1844, and arrived at Le Havre on 6 July, not knowing whether his father still lived. But there were Ursulines at Boulogne-sur-Mer only fifty-six miles up the coast, and he had been directed by Purcell to commence his mission there. It must come first. He left Le Havre the next day to begin the affair, hoping to reach Riom during the following week without even pausing in Paris.
He carried with him a letter of introduction from Father Louis Amadeus Rappe, of Toledo, Ohio, who had come to America with him and Lamy and the others in the first place; and this he presented to the Mother Superior of the Boulogne Ursulines in their “large and magnificent convent and academy.” What could one expect offhand? There were no commitments, only a possibility of further discussions. Machebeuf hurried south to his family home in Riom—but arrived too late. His father was dead. It was a cruel loss, after all the delays of the past year. Machebeuf, his brother Marius, their sister the nun Sister Philomène at the Convent of the Visitation, consoled each other, the necessary family decisions were taken, and then duties continued.
There were other Ursulines at Beaulieu, near Tulle. What to do but write their spiritual director, M. L’Abbè Graviche, and open the subject of enlistments with him? An animated correspondence ensued over the weeks. Father Graviche seemed to favor Machebeuf’s appeal. But it was clear that locally there was great opposition to any “disestablishment” of the Ursuline convent of Beaulieu; and Boulogne, allied in a common order of religious, also remained reluctant. In the meantime, there was the other purpose of finding priests or seminarians and Machebeuf fixed upon the Grand Séminaire of Avignon as a promising source. He proceeded to Lyon, where he spent a day with his brother Marius, who lived there, and went on to Le Puy, where he arrived with a cold which he caught passing through the mountains of the lower Loire—the Monts du Morvan. A good sweat set him right and he was soon as good as ever, and he now returned to Lyon, as there turned out to be no direct route south from Le Puy. At Lyon he embarked on a Rhone steamer. The river was high, the steamer was a mean affair compared to “our American boats.” To pass the time he fell into conversation with a pair of Englishmen who spoke bad French, and who appeared to seek him out merely for the sake of a French lesson. They picked his brains about the country they passed through, about which he knew no more than they. The “Irish Question” came up with one of the English travellers, and Machebeuf confounded him so triumphantly with remarks of the injustices visited upon Irish Catholics that he retired to his English carriage, which was lashed to the deck. Docking presently at Valence-sur-Rhone, the steamer picked up more passengers, including an English family one of whom was a young man of twenty-five. When he heard Machebeuf talking in English he was delighted, they talked incessantly, Machebeuf dined with them all when they reached Avignon, and the young man, who hoped in the next year to go to America, vowed to seek out Machebeuf and renew the acquaintance. It was all most agreeable.
Interviewing faculty and seminarians must have revived memories of Clermont and Purcell and Flaget and the student days at Mont-Ferrand. Again there was a hiatus in arrangements, and Machebeuf went to Marseilles, with the great purpose of proceeding to Rome, where he arrived in November. Immediately he had marvels to report.
He said it would take volumes to describe what he saw. The churches of Rome were the greatest of things to be seen there. His very first visit was to St Mary on Minerva—a richly marbled and gilded church built on the ancient site of a temple to Minerva. He had to go five times to St Peter’s to feel at last its tremendous primacy over all other churches in the Holy City. There he descended to the tomb of the first pope, amidst the remains of the original basilica, and there, on the anniversary of the dedication of St Peter’s, he said Mass on the altar over the grave of the first of the apostles. He did the same at the altar tombs of St Paul, St Stanislas, and St Francis Xavier. At St John Lateran’s—so he said—he saw the original table of the Last Supper, and the great baldachin containing the martyred heads of Sts Peter and Paul, and went twice to the cell where St Peter had been imprisoned, and he offered Mass in the very room where St Ignatius died. At St Peter’s he ascended into the cupola and even into the sphere, large enough to contain two persons, which supported the topmost cross in Rome. By his descriptions, in their vivacity and emotion, it was plain that he knew spiritual exaltation.
But the greatest experience was yet to come—he was granted an audience with the Pope. Was it on 17 November? In any case, he was encouraged to present a detailed recital of all the missionary work in Ohio. He evidently spared his listener nothing of the hardships, the gallantries, the discouragements, the absurdities, the near-despairs and the poverty and the persecutions to which the young Frenchmen, laboring away in a new land, knew as their daily lot; for when he was done with what surely was a vivid performance, Gregory XVI said to him, “Courage, American!” and gave the Apostolic Blessing, for him, and for all his Ohioans. The exhortation was the greatest of powers which Machebeuf took away with him, one which in all after years he would remember and invoke when courage should be needed.
Going on to Venice, then, he had as travelling companion a French Franciscan who “burned with desire” to join the American missions, but Machebeuf was not sure he would do, for one could not be too careful in electing recruits, and this one seemed “too eager” and “not sufficiently prudent.” In Venice, he would consult various priests about the suppliant. In the end, the French Franciscan was not added to the party Machebeuf was laboriously assembling.
Once again in France, Machebeuf came together with Graviche to develop plans. Finally, on 20 January 1845, they went together to see Bishop Bertaud, of Tulle, to ask him to issue letters of obedience to the nearby convent which would direct that eight nuns be enlisted for America. The bishop was hesitant, his callers persuasive, and agreement eventually prevailed. But there were still difficulties. What of the Ursulines of Boulogne, who, belonging to the same order as those at Beaulieu, came under a central authority? Letters flew from Beaulieu to Boulogne but without firm issue. March first had been decided upon as the date of departure, and Machebeuf optimistically hastened to Bordeaux to arrange for the westward crossing for himself and his party. It was all to no purpose, for Boulogne did not capitulate until 10 March, when suddenly the Mother Superior consented to release three sisters—two English (both converts) and one Irish. A new departure date must be set, and in the end, could not be arranged before May, in a ship from Le Havre. Machebeuf must make another journey to Tulle in late March to resolve final qualms, difficulties, conditions. There was strong local resentment, now, in the town of Beaulieu, against the departure of any of the Ursulines. All was not yet smoothly arranged.
But Machebeuf had still another errand, and went about it in Paris during the first days of April. He had written to the French royal family begging financial aid to speed