Salesian Literature

7. Father-in-God (1602-1603)

 

at the time when François de Sales became its bishop, the diocese of Annecy—that is the diocese of Geneva without its episcopal city—had about 450 parishes, many of them in very difficult mountain country and almost inaccessible in winter. It was still very much a diocese of the past with unreformed monasteries, three rival Chapters in Annecy itself (two of which were in angry and disedifying conflict), no seminary or other organisa­tion for the education of the clergy. We have to remember the ease with which the Chablais, one of the more cultured parts of the diocese, accepted Calvinism and we have no reason to suppose that the state of religion and education in the rest of the diocese would have assured any tougher resistance there. The cathedral of St. Francis in Annecy was also the Franciscan conventual church so that the Bishop was not even undisputed master in it. There was no fixed episcopal residence, though the rented "Maison Lambert " had the advantage of being only a few steps from the cathedral. Annecy itself was a small town of some 4,000 people huddled together within the waterways from the lake below the famous castle of the dukes of Savoie-Nemours. In other words, despite the piety and zeal of his Benedictine (unreformed) predecessor and the established faith and piety of the people generally, the apostle of the Chablais was faced with an immense task of change and reform if the diocese was to corre­spond with his own high conceptions of a diocese in tune with post-Tridentine times and his own belief in living, personal religion.

 

In fact, there was only one way in which the task could be tackled: to give a shining example of a father-in-God and to do all the work oneself. De Sales, now as in the days of the Chablais, had no thought-out paper plans. He simply filled the yawning gaps and did admirably what others had done indifferently or by rote.

 

He knew, for example, that the Council of Trent had laid it down that "the first and principal duty of the bishop is to preach." So he preached and preached. "Never allow any excuse to turn you away from this order of Trent," he wrote to a friend about to be raised to the episcopate. "Do not preach in order to become a great preacher, but simply because it is your duty and God wills it. A fatherly sermon of a bishop is worth more than all the artifice of any elaborated sermon of other preachers. A bishop needs little to preach well, for his sermons should deal with necessary and useful subjects, not far-fetched ones. His words should be simple and not affected, his mode fatherly and natural without art or over-care. However short his sermon may be and whatever the subject, it always means much that he preaches." All this was de Sales's method, even before he was a bishop. He preached slowly, deliberately, instruction-ally and usually spontaneously, the choice of words, quotations, images assisting and not impeding the sense. He spoke, as we have seen, from his heart to hearts.

 

Two years later, at a time when he was so overcome with work that his fatigue showed in his handwriting, de Sales was to sit down one day and for the benefit of Jeanne de Chantal's brother, newly consecrated Archbishop of Bourges, write a letter of nine thousand words on the art of preaching. Little known, it remains today a document which every preacher, or indeed public speaker, may profitably study. Here one can only quote a sen­tence or two, "  preacher should have sufficient learning, but it is not necessary that it should be first-class. St. Francis was not learned, but he was a great and good preacher; and, in our times, the blessed Cardinal Borromeo was only moderately learned, but he did marvels... By preaching one becomes a preacher: the preacher will always know enough, if he does not try to give the impression that he knows more than he does." He distinguishes between the relish which comes from good preaching and the relish which a preacher seeks to give and, by doing so, ruins his sermon. He meant " a certain tickling of the ears which results from a worldly elegance, from seeking curiosi­ties, from mannerisms, ways, words which depend on mere artifice." Of stories in sermons, he writes: "They are useful, but they should be served sparingly, like mushrooms, to whet the appetite. "Sermons should not be so short as to miss their point, nor so long as to be boring. " I think the structure of a sermon should be clear and obvious, not hidden as among those who think it very clever to be able to hide the structure. Of what use, I ask, is the structure if the congregation neither sees nor knows it?" "Let us avoid the quamquams and the long periods of pedants, their gestures, their attitudes, their movements. All this is the curse of preaching. Rather an action that is free, noble, generous, simple, strong, holy, serious and rather slow . . . The sovereign artifice is not to have any artifice. Our words should be burning words, but because of what we are truly feeling, not because of our cries and our extravagant actions. They must come from the heart, not the mouth. Say what you will, the heart speaks to the heart, the tongue only speaks to the ears."

 

Speaking one day to a nobleman, soon after becoming a bishop, he said in comment on congratulations being offered him: " If only those of my calling, My Lord, love God, they will always be ready to speak of His love, and this docs not require much preparation."

 

What he could do to many at a time from the pulpit, he en­deavoured so far as he could to complete individually through the confessional. His own advice to his priests was certainly based on his own practice.

 

"Above all," he said, "take care not to be rough with penitents… Within the kingdom of grace gentleness alone is in place. Our Lord's anger is like the summer rains that only touch the earth. The Son of God is the stuff of mercy, and He purposely became Man to exercise a merciful temperament. His divine soul is united with His humanity in order to bear with patience, and it is attached to His body in order to sympathise gently with His creatures and to become like unto His brethren. I do not understand sympathy which provides a pillow for vice and a cushion to ease sin; no, but I do understand that we must accom­modate ourselves to the reach of each person, yielding something, not to the malice, but to the weakness. Souls do not wish to be bullied, but gently brought back: such is the nature of man."

 

One of the Bishop's first acts has always been recorded and it cannot be omitted here because it bears on a custom which survives today in English-speaking countries. In the second month of his episcopate, in February, 1603, de Sales publicly condemned and forbade the strongly entrenched local custom of sending Valentines. It appears that the custom had led to a good deal of impropriety and sin, because not only did the young have their Valentines, but the married also. This was certainly not good for maintaining harmony among married couples since the duties of escorting one's Valentine to dances and entertainments were taken seriously. The Bishop's edict caused a good deal of anger which, doubtless, was not assuaged by François's idea of picking out a saint in the calendar as one's spiritual Valentine for the rest of the year.

 

The need to stop the Valentine custom points to looseness of morals in the town, and it was because of this that the new Bishop felt the need to give himself over personally to the formidable task of catechising the children and setting them on the right path from the start. Here we see for the first time in action one of the most charming characteristics and tastes of François de Sales. Just as towards the end of his life, he would love chatting away to the Visitation nuns in the orchard of their convent, so now he was at his best, seated on a little platform of the church of Notre Dame de Liesse, surrounded by the delighted little boys and girls of Annecy, explaining the faith almost in their own language.

 

An early biographer has described the scene: "There was an atmosphere of absolute happiness as he told them in simple language of the first principles of the faith. For every subject, he could think of fruitful images which he would describe as he looked at his little world and the little world looked at him. He became a child with them in order to form in them that inner man, that perfect man according to Jesus Christ." "When we are born, how are we born?" he would ask them. "We are born blind like the puppies whose mothers lick their eyes to open them. It is the same with us: our Mother the Church, when we are born, makes us see by baptism and the Christian teaching she gives us." Often, we are told, the episcopal catechist and the children around him were to be heard laughing heartily at the stories the Bishop told them or at the strange answers which came from the children's benches.

 

It was the beginning of the catechetical age, and dc Sales in the Chablais had written to St. Peter Canisius to tell him how valuable he had found his Catechism in instructing distinguished converts there. But we imagine that this, perhaps first, of epis­copal catechetical instructions to children saw the "question and answer" method used more intelligently and humanly than became the practice when the catechism was reduced to a school textbook to be learnt by heart whether spiritually understood or not.

 

The first enthusiasm of the new Bishop, expressing itself in this personal giving-over of himself to immediate needs could not, of course, last. The manifold business of the diocese, the growing personal contacts over which he was never to spare himself, the crying need for the reform of manifold abuses, such matters took more and more of his time. But he knew what he was about, for the setting of the personal example as to how things should be done easily led to the setting up of organisations which could carry on his lead. Soon a Confraternity of Christian Doctrine was established for lay catechists to assist him and the clergy in a pastoral work which de Sales considered vital. For more than ten years the Bishop would himself continue, whenever he could, to take his turn in the catechetical instruction and he always enjoyed making an unexpected personal visit to see how the work of others was progressing. Not all good men are gifted with the power of becoming children again with children, but of those who in fact are able to do so with the success of a François de Sales one may safely say that they are indeed good men.

 

After the children, the clergy. The Council of Trent, while insisting on the establishment of seminaries for proper clerical education, did not make such education a condition of ordination to the priesthood. Hence a poor diocese like this one had con­tinued as of old, relying on university courses, private study in religious houses and presbyteries and other means of satisfying the not very exigent demands of bishops. Even the new Bishop was never to be able to establish a seminary, whether in Thonon or Annecy. The best he could do was to take the greatest care to examine each candidate with the assistance of a panel of priests and satisfy himself that no one was ordained without a sufficient standard of learning, morals and spiritual qualifications. But once again it would be his own example and his own ordinances which would see to it that the clergy lived according to the calls of their vocation.

 

He ordered a diocesan Synod for the second Sunday after Easter, commanding "all parish priests and others involved to come personally to hear the Constitutions and Ordinances neces­sary for their office and the care of their flocks." Meanwhile "we order residence for all who hold benefices which by right and custom require this. Within two months of the publication of these presents, they must return to their duties and personally exercise their charges and offices, or else give reason why they claim exemption. Failing this, they will be proceeded against according to the rigour of the law and canons." Incredibly, given all the work he was doing, the new Bishop undertook for a time to give courses of theology in his episcopal residence to priests who could attend.

 

But in the end the raising of clerical standards had to depend on François de Sales's first apostolic weapon, his pen. His own writings could be printed and distributed all over the diocese, and so we get the succession of works whose purpose was to teach and help his clergy in the carrying out of their offices and pastoral duties: the Synodal Constitutions of the Diocese; the Method for Teaching the Catechism', the Exhortation to Ecclesiastics for Application to Study, and the Instructions to Confessors.

 

Among the Synodal injunctions one may mention the follow­ing. All priests were commanded to live in their residences and to wear decent, black clothes with the soutane and square bonnet, to be tonsured and bearded. They were forbidden public games, hunting and fairs. They might not use the pulpit for secular announcements for "in the pulpit one must only speak of what furthers the glory of God and the salvation of souls."

 

Most striking among his Exhortations to Ecclesiastics is his insistence on true learning in a priest:

 

"I tell you—and with truth—that there is no great difference between ignorance and malice, seeing that ignorance is not only a personal lack but one which causes the priestly state to be despised. That is why I implore you to spend time in serious study. Knowledge for a priest is the Eighth Sacrament of the Church's Hierarchy. The latter's greatest misfortune has been that the Ark has passed into other hands than those of the Levites. That was why we were taken off our guard by our miserable Geneva. Seeing our laziness and that we were not on our guard —that it was enough for us to recite our Breviary and not trouble ourselves to become wiser—they deceived our fathers and predecessors in their simplicity and persuaded them that up till then I no one had understood Holy Writ. While we slept, the enemy I sowed tares in the garden of the Church and the falsity which he slipped in divided us and set the country on fire. That fire would have consumed us and many others had it not been for the good­ness of God who mercifully raised those powerful minds, I mean the fathers of the Jesuit Order who countered the heretics… My dear Brothers, since divine Providence, disregarding my un-worthiness, has made me your bishop, I beseech you to study with all your hearts so that being wise and of sound heart you may be beyond reproach and ready to answer all who question you about the faith."

 

As one considers this immediate effort to renovate a country diocese off the beaten track and not so many years after the dis­ruption of the Reformation, one is astonished to find that the actions and the words of François de Sales seem only to date in the details of application. What he did and what he had to say always has a contemporary quality, and one may still imagine a modern bishop following with profit the methods and exhortations of this astonishing prelate 350 years ago. But there was another aspect of de Sales's work as Bishop which, happily, is not needed today, though it is interesting to know about it since it helps us to understand the conditions of Catholic life in which he had to labour. It was the reform of the monasteries and religious houses of the diocese. He himself has left us the best account of the situation in a letter he wrote to the new Nuncio, Paul Tolosa, at the end of 1603.

 

"It is certain that the relaxation of all the monasteries of Savoie, with the sole exception of the Carthusians, is so deep-rooted that any ordinary remedy would be useless. To succeed, we need a reformer of great authority and prudence with ample powers of which he would have to make use when necessary. I say not only ample, but absolute and without appeal, for the monks are very experienced and clever in chicanery ... I think it would be right in the case of certain monasteries to introduce religious of a different congregation, such as the Feuillants or the Carthusians, while in others the monks would be replaced by secular priests or canons. Here is my reason. Since some of the monasteries are subject to unreformed superiors, the reform, even if accepted by the community, would not last. Take the example here of the priory of Talloires, a very illustrious foundation, and, near Geneva, the priory of Contamine and the abbey of Entre-mont. The first depends on the Abbot of Savigny in France, the second on the Abbot of Cluny and the third on the Abbot of Saint-Ruph of Valence. How then could these superiors and their monasteries maintain discipline and reform in these depen­dencies, since they do not observe such reforms themselves and do not even know what such reform is? That is why my view is that one of two measures will be necessary to avoid scandal: either to place in the monasteries other reformed monks or turn them into secular colleges. A third way would be to put them under a reformed congregation of the Order to which they belong—a fourth to make them subject to the bishops, as used to be the case with many excellent monasteries before the present exceptions came into force. As for others, such as the monasteries of Sixt, Peillonnex, the Sepulchre in this town, and the like, these will have to be secularised since the monks are Canons Regular of Saint Augustine, but belonging to a congregation which has no General, no Provincial, no Chapter, no Visitor, no express form of vow, no Rule, no Constitutions. It is true that Sixt and Peillonnex are visited by the bishop. I have done so myself, but I was unable to make them observe the rule for they have not got a rule. All I could do was to make them observe the ordinary constitutions, as though they were secular canons, pending the regularisation of their situation."

 

Thus de Sales did not possess the requisite power to succeed on his own in carrying out the vow he had made years earlier in connection with the Chablais monasteries: "Never will I cease to press for, to cry for, obtain, through the bowels of Christ, the measures necessary for the reformation and change of the abbeys of Aulps and Abondance and others which are seminaries of scandal in this land." But his own efforts, where he had the power, and his determination, where he needed higher authority, were to effect a great change in his own lifetime. The long­standing system of commendatory superiors, i.e. ecclesiastics or laymen who were given the nominal appointment and revenues, while a deputy of no consequence held the actual office, had caused these increasing scandals. On his own he restored some sort of canonical order in Sixt and Peillonnex, insisting at least on enclosure and stability for the religious—a first change which was to bear good fruit even in his lifetime. In the case of the ancient and most celebrated of the abbeys of Savoie, Abondance in the Chablais, the six surviving Canons of St. Augustine were replaced, with the authority of the Pope, by a community of Feuillants (reformed Cistercians).

 

But his greatest worry and consolation in this work of monastic reform were to be at the Abbey of Talloires, magnificently situated on the east bank of the Lake of Annecy under the Massif des Aravis, whose northern slopes enclosed his own native Thorens. Bishop Granier had been a prior of Talloires and in the com­munity were his own friends. In the monastery the rule of St. Benedict had been relaxed, though some of the community observed it. With the consent of the commendatory Abbot, the Bishop ordered the return to the ancient rule and the election of a claustral prior, Claude-Nicolas de Quoex, whom de Sales had ordained and with whom he had long been closely bound. The community split in two and drove out the new prior. Frightened at their own boldness, the rebels asked the Bishop's pardon, but in the end the authority of the Holy See was needed to effect the reformation.

 

One day, the Bishop, exhausted by his labours, was to plan the luxury of retiring to Talloires, but in vain.

 

But perhaps the strangest relic of the old order which was to vex the Bishop, so far ahead of his own times, was the curious quarrel between the Chapter of Saint-Pierre, exiled from Geneva since 1535, and the Chapter of Notre Dame de Liesse. The former was, of course, the diocesan Chapter; the latter a Chapter created in the I4th century by Benedict XIII. Historic and well endowed, this latter Chapter, which also had parish rights in Annecy, looked down upon the recent exiles from Geneva, even if they were the diocesan Chapter. In particular, the Canons of Notre Dame de Liesse had claimed and, in effect obtained, the right to be the only attendants on the Bishop during the great outdoor feast of the year, the Corpus Christi procession of the Blessed Sacrament.

 

In his first year as Bishop, the "gentle " François de Sales, who always turns out to be anything but weak when any matter of principle is involved, proclaimed from the pulpit on Trinity Sunday that he would carry the Blessed Sacrament in the proces­sion, accompanied by the Canons of the cathedral. The Notre Dame de Liesse Canons replied by appealing to the magistrates and demanded back their older rights to carry the Blessed Sacrament themselves.

 

Furious—with that fury which, we are told, was sometimes shown by the little boy of Thorens—de Sales replied: "Neither I nor my Canons should be taken for strangers and I would never have expected such words from you. My predecessors in this pastoral charge may have been feeble, old and infirm, but I, by the grace of God, am healthy and strong. Why then should I not carry the Body of my Lord and Master as much as another?" And he made it clear that he intended to do so. The Notre Dame de Liesse Chapter at once appealed to the Due de Nemours, suzerain of Annecy under the Due de Savoie, and so did the Bishop. But meanwhile he insisted on his orders being obeyed. He even threatened with excommunication the Dean of the Chapter when instead of obeying de Sales's orders that members of his Chapter should assist in a lesser position at the procession, he nominated for this service ordinary priests. In the end, at the first procession the Bishop carried the Blessed Sacrament accom­panied only by his own diocesan Chapter.

 

Meanwhile the young Nemours sought the easiest way out by suggesting that the two Chapters should in future processions walk together in parallel columns, as was the custom with two Chapters in Paris. But de Sales had no intention of compromising. Not only that, but in order to prevent the Notre Dame Canons from absenting themselves out of pique once again, he ordered that in future all the clergy should be present for the procession under pain of excommunication, and he set out the order of precedence, the Notre Dame Canons taking second place, while the diocesan Canons directly assisted the Bishop. In 1604, the Notre Dame Canons just did not turn up, but by 1605 peace was re-established on de Sales's terms.

 

This long-standing quarrel had indeed been a scandal, for de Sales himself, happy at the outcome, noted that his success would "increase piety among the laity." This odd story con­veniently reminds us that behind the ways of harmony and peace which we associate with François de Sales there was always a hard core of ruthless principle which was a necessary ingredient if charity was not to soften into sentimentality.

 

One asks oneself whether this new broom with a handle of iron, however soft the bristles, caused murmurs and encountered much opposition among his clergy and people. We know that his attack against the custom of Valentines was not popular and one gets, from time to time in his episcopate, evidence of annoyance and dissatisfaction from different sections of the people. As we shall see, the political authorities and the Due de Savoie himself were not best pleased by the independence of his attitude. But he certainly caused no opposition of a character sufficiently marked as to force his biographers to refer to it, nor do his own letters hint at any difficulties except from the unreformed religious houses.

 

This is a remarkable fact, for even sanctity and the highest principles do not normally prevent human nature from objecting to the man who shakes people out of their set ways. The attraction of his personality must have been immense to carry him through day after day, filled, from morning till night, with reformist pastoral work. How he ever got through these early days of preaching, catechising, hearing confessions, putting him­self at the disposal of all who came to seek his advice or had business with him, is a mystery. For, apart from work, he left himself plenty of time for prayer and especially attendance in the cathedral at the Divine Office which was one of his favourite devotions. Into the bargain we have the irrefutable evidence of his writings and especially his letters, laboriously and neatly written in long hand not only to important clerical and political figures, but to the ordinary men and women who sought his personal spiritual guidance. This latter work was, of course, to grow enormously with the spread of his fame as the greatest director of souls of his time. Even so, in these early days he found time to write immensely long letters of personal advice and direction to a simple novice nun in a Paris convent, Jeanne de Soulfour, just because she was the daughter of a friend. The three letters written to her which we possess run to between five and six thousand words. Long quotations are impossible, but how admirable and finely expressed is the following spiritual advice from this activist bishop of only thirty-five years of age: "Simplify your judgment; do not make so many reflections and replies, but go forward simply and with confidence. For you there is only God and you in this world; what remains should not touch you save only in so far as it is God's will and in the way it is God's will. I implore you, do not look around you so much; keep your looking focused on to God and yourself. Never will you see God save as goodness, nor yourself save as misery; and you will see His goodness a blessing for your misery and your misery the object of His goodness and mercy. Dwell on nothing else but this—I mean, of course, fixed, concentrated, conscious dwelling; the rest consider only in passing. Further, do not look closely at the deeds of others nor what they are going to do, but look at them with a simple, good, kindly and loving eye. Do not demand of them more perfection than you have and do not be astonished at the variety of imperfections, for imperfection is no less imperfection because it is extravagant and strange . . ."

 

"Let us practise the little virtues suited to our littleness. For a small dealer, a small basket. Such virtues are practised running downwards rather than climbing, but they may be best for our legs: patience, helping our neighbours, service, humility, gentle courage, affability, tolerance of our own imperfections, such are the little virtues. I do not mean that we should not climb by prayer, but step by step."

One learns with disappointment that this seemingly over­anxious novice who had the privilege of such an adviser did not persevere with her vocation.

 

To a bishop-elect, de Sales writes another very long letter in which he offers a long list of spiritual reading, with Grenada "tout entier" to be used as a second breviary. Among the recommendations the spiritual letters of "Jan Avila" are to be found, but there is no mention of Teresa of Avila, nor of his beloved Scupoli.

 

His advice as to how to read a spiritual book is interesting because it once again reminds us that François de Sales, despite his endless activity, was a man by temperament slow and deliber­ate in action, in the pulpit and, as here shown, in reading. "To read with profit avoid reading greedily. One must weigh and appraise, and, chapter by chapter, ruminate and apply with much thought and many prayers to God. You should read the book with reverence and devotion, as a book which contains the most useful inspirations that the soul can receive from on high. Thus you will be re-moulding the powers of your soul, cleansing them as you grow to detest their evil inclinations and directing them to their true end by firm and strong resolutions." Some­times in the way in which de Sales teases and worries at his subject matter there is an unexpected affinity with the letters of the Baron von Hügel. He liked simplicity, but was never super­ficial.

 

On November 13, 1603, he sent the long Latin report to the Pope about the whole history of the Chablais from which we have already quoted. Its ending conveniently sums up the posi­tion as it was when he succeeded to the See:

 

"To sum up the history of this great work in a few words: twelve years ago in sixty-four parishes near Geneva and almost under its walls, heresy was in occupation. It had invaded every­thing. Catholicism held not even an inch of territory. Today the Catholic Church in those places everywhere spreads its branches and with such vigour that heresy can find no room. Before, it was hard to find a hundred Catholics within all those parishes taken together; today it would be just as hard to find a hundred heretics. Everywhere the mysteries of the Catholic faith are celebrated and frequented. Every parish has its parish priest. Finally, the three bailiwicks which, by treaty, were returned to the Duke, are completely restored to the Church and, what matters most, their people, after faith and religion had been recovered, have persevered unshaken by the persecutions of the recent wars or the threats of the heretics. And this, most cer­tainly, has been the one and only good thing which the wars have brought to the diocese."

 

The new Bishop was indeed happy after three years of absence to return in September 1603 to his beloved Thonon where he had a special appointment in the church and pilgrimage centre of Our Lady of Compassion of Thonon. Shortly before, he had had to go to the Pays de Gex, where the state of religious affairs, despite all the negotiations in Paris, was in unhappy contrast with those of the Chablais. While there with the Governor of Burgundy, the Due de Bellegarde, his success in bringing back to the fold a number of distinguished Calvinists tempted some enemies to try to poison him. Happily, he was warned in time to take an antidote and he suffered no more than bad sickness. In gratitude for his escape he vowed to render thanks to Our Lady of Thonon. So full of spirits was he at the prospect of seeing Thonon again that when he was reminded of the Ember-Day ordinations—to ordinations he always gave priority—he said that he would not return to Annecy for them—let the ordinands come to Thonon for the ceremony.

 

On foot, then, with Rolland, now the treasurer of the diocese, and his personal servant, François Favre, he trod the familiar miles from Annecy to Thonon, to be received in the town, "in two respects his daughter," as Charles-Auguste puts it, by the whole happy people. In Thonon, he could not resist further discussion with Calvinists and he was especially happy to be able to convince one of the obdurate on the famous day in 1598 when the Duke demanded conversion or exile. The man in question admitted that he was a good deal better at wielding the sword than theology.

 

Consecrating the cemetery that had been Protestant, de Sales, accompanied by some curious Calvinists, was drenched by a sudden autumn storm. "You see how the Lord punishes the Papists," the Calvinists pointed out." "Not at all," replied the Bishop, "It is the fury of the devil whom we are chasing away from his unjust hold by the virtue of the Holy Spirit."

 

Reminding ourselves that the bishop, whether in Annecy or Thonon or even Gex, was never far from Thorens, just as the thought of his family can never have been far from his mind—he had recently ordained Jean-François and accompanied his especially loved brother Louis on his honeymoon which was also a pilgrimage—we may fitly end this chapter with a letter he wrote at this date to his mother in which he underlines the better times.

 

"I write these lines, my most dear and good mother, as I get into the saddle to ride to Chambery. This note is not sealed and I am not worried by that. By God's grace, we are no longer living in those troubled times when even a letter of friendship or one merely carrying but a word of consolation had to be sealed. O my God, O my good Mother, I must, it is true, confess that the memory of those days still has a touch of holy sweetness about it in my mind. Remain joyful in Our Lord, my good Mother, and remember that your poor old son is, by God's mercy, well and expecting to see you as soon as he possibly can and for as long as he possibly can, for I am all yours—as indeed I ought to be.

 

You know I am your son

François, Bishop.”

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