Memoir | Page 6

given all the necessaries of life, even
to their clothes. Protestants came to see the good work and two
ministers were converted. These gentlemen came sometimes to see us,
and assisted at our religious ceremonies. They liked to converse with
our Reverend Father Abbot, who won them by his frank and polite
manner. In addition to the work of this monastery, our Reverend Father
Abbot supported and directed another house of our Order which he had
also founded, and which was productive of much good. This was a
community of nuns. There was yet another convent, one belonging to
the Ursulines quite near, that is to say about three or four miles from
our monastery, which our community supplied with a chaplain. I was
obliged to go there every Sunday to say mass and to confess the nuns.
When we arrived in their neighborhood they were without a priest; we
could not leave them in such need, so that I, ill though I was, had to say
two masses on Sundays, one in the church of the Ursulines, the other in
that of our sisters. However, this was to me a cause of rejoicing,
although I was fatigued after my voyages and overwhelmed by the
work with which I was charged, I was compensated and consoled by
the good that I could be the means of doing. I remember having
received the abjuration of Protestantism of three young ladies who were
boarders at the Ursuline Convent, and who had the happiness of

becoming Catholics.
Although we were in a Protestant country, our Reverend Father Abbot
undertook to have the procession of the Blessed Sacrament on the
festival of Corpus Christi, thinking it might do some good. He had
several repositories built in a field adjoining our house, these he
decorated in the best style possible and managed to have a canopy and
boys to swing censors and others to throw flowers before the Blessed
Sacrament. When the time for the procession arrived we saw our
Reverend Father bearing Jesus Christ in his hands and walking under
the dais borne by four religious in dalmatics accompanied by the
community and by several strangers singing hymns and canticles.
Numbers of children preceeded the Blessed Sacrament, exercising the
solemn functions which had been allotted to them. This infantine band,
clad in white surplices girded with different colors, resembled angels
and presented a spectacle at once beautiful and edifying to the beholder.
The Protestants who were present appeared to be much pleased with the
procession.
Our Reverend Father Abbot wished with all his heart to be able to
continue the good work thus commenced, but he was obliged to
abandon it for want of pecuniary means, and perhaps also because of
the ill-will of many who offered opposition to his projects; besides
which King Louis XVIII had been restored to the throne of France, and
religion was being re-established in that country. Almost all our
brothers were dispersed here and there throughout Europe, and it would
be necessary to reunite them. Persuaded, besides, that he would receive
more help in France than in the United States, and in short, reflecting
that there would perhaps be more good to be done yet in the old world
than in the new, (the Revolution having been the cause of such
wickedness and having done so much harm) our Father Abbot decided
that he and his community would return to France. He embarked in the
autumn of 1814, and took with him from New York the greater number
of our Brothers and all our Sisters, leaving only six Brothers and
myself behind, with orders that we should join him in France after I had
arranged our business matters and recovered my strength, for I had still
within me the germ of that malady of which mention has been made in
speaking of Maryland where I contracted it, as did the others. It left me
with a slow fever, that lasted for a long time.

At this junction two of our Brothers died, a lay Brother and an oblate.
This latter had been almost a millionaire he having acquired a large
fortune in the West India Islands; he lost it, however, in the negro
rebellion, and retired to La Trappe, where he died poor enough.
Belonging to the house in which we were living was an orchard which
we had made our cemetery, here we had buried our two brothers; but,
as we were going to leave this spot and did not wish to expose their
bodies to be perhaps profaned by heretics who might buy the ground
and not wish to have them there, we determined to exhume them. They
had been buried about a fortnight, and the weather was warm, so we
provided ourselves with incense to burn in