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 old Bishop Flaget, who was returning to America for the last time. In addition to five priests (four of whom were to become bishops), three nuns were emigrating. Purcell made a hurried trip to London, and from there would proceed to Dieppe, where Machebeuf was instructed to join him for various duties. On a Thursday morning Machebeuf left the rue du Bac to reserve his seat in the Dieppe coach and attend to his passport.
Lamy did not accompany him on the errand. Suddenly, during the little while that Machebeuf was absent arranging for his ticket, Lamy collapsed, “deprived of all his strength,” evidently on the verge of falling seriously ill. On his return from his brief errand, Machebeuf was astonished at the change in Lamy, put him to bed at once, and sent for the seminary doctor, who questioned the patient extensively and concluded that there was nothing critical to be concerned about—it was only a curious weak spell. But Lamy’s fever kept rising, and Machebeuf remembered a letter he had had a few days before from a fellow priest in Clermont who told how Lamy was “always ill,” had been bled twice, and treated fifteen times with leeches on the abdomen. Behind that serene control, that lamb-like gentleness, and within his square peasant frame, Lamy’s tendency to nervous response sometimes appeared in moments of irrevocable commitment.
Privately, Machebeuf feared Lamy might not be well enough to sail with the mission party on 8 July, and only hoped that if this were so he might follow with another party sailing ten or eleven days later. Hard as it was to leave his friend ill in bed, Machebeuf must go to meet Purcell. After all, he said in practicality, as he put Lamy in the care of others, he had already reserved his coach seat. When he met Purcell at Dieppe, he could describe how affected the bishop was by the news of Lamy’s collapse.
But there was much to do—the bishop had tasks in the neighborhood, and Dieppe was a port where Machebeuf had his first glimpse of the sea, and ships, and above all a steamship—a sort of amazing vessel which, in addition to sails, had a tall chimney to carry away smoke. It was a beautiful ship, he said, handsomely decorated with a green interior, and a chocolate-colored exterior with gilt-work. But Lamy was in his thought, and a week or so later hurrying back to Paris without the bishop, who was to proceed to Le Havre where they would all embark, he was relieved and amazed to find Lamy happily “promenading after supper,” talking about him, as it happened, with the remaining colleagues who had arrived from Auvergne to join the expedition—Fathers Rappe and De Goesbriand. With them, Lamy had spent recent days in seeing the sights of Paris. He was well enough now to make the Atlantic crossing.
viii.
America
BY 7 JULY 1839 they were at Le Havre, waiting to sail on the following day. Purcell was there already. Sailing day, Monday the eighth, was stormy, and the boarding was postponed until eight o’clock the next morning. In the deeply land-locked harbor, masts and spars made a web of fine lines like bare trees against the sky. The sail packet Sylvie de Grasse was at her dock. Her captain, an affable master from Bordeaux, knew Purcell, who as a seminarian fifteen years earlier had crossed to France with him in the same ship.
The captain now oversaw the boarding of his complement of passengers—the ship would be full—and at nine o’clock, as the deck-hands sang their capstan song under a fine sky, while a crowd watched from the quayside, and a blessing was given from the pier, the voyage began. The Sylvie de Grasse made her way down bay, past the great stone fortress, moving so slowly (the wind was set against her) that a steam tug was summoned to help her out of the narrow harbor entrance. Presently the wind changed, the tug cast off, and the wooden ship leaned and made for the open sea under her own sail, though still so slowly that not until night was falling did the voyagers lose sight of land “and then,” said one, as distance and darkness engulfed France, “we began to get acquainted with the other passengers.”
There were about sixty, mostly Protestants, in that part of the ship where the bishop’s party were cabined. They included young men and women returning to the United States after studying in Paris, and solid businessmen emigrating to establish themselves in America. In the steerage were emigrant Germans—Catholic, Protestant,
