Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-05-15
Pere Lacordaire.


Senior-Had Pere Lacordaire much
learning?
Montalembert-He must have had some
knowledge of law, as he studied it for five
years. He had schoolboy's acquaintance
with the best-known classics, and with as
much of ancient history as he could get
from Justin and Cornelius Nepos. He had
picked up the history of his own times
from newspapers and conversations This
was about all the history that he knew.
Like his master, Lamennais, he was pro-
foundly ignorant of medieval history. In
theology he was Thomas, in discipline he
was an Ultramontane.
Senior-Of course he was an Ultramon-
tame Having become Christian, not
from inquiry and reasoning, but from
sudden impression, to use his own words,
by coup de la grace, he must have relied
solely and implicitly on authority, and, as
the highest authority, on that of the Pope.
He could not have been Gallican.
Montalembert-C not; he de-
nounced Gallicanism as disguised schism.
His great intellectual qualities were his
imagination, his rapidity of conception,
and his force and facility of expression.
Senior-That he should have been de-
ticient at first in the qualities for which he
afterward was most distinguished is
strong proof that orator fit.
Montalembert-I should not say that
these were the qualities for which he was
most distinguished for, high as were his
intellectual excellences, his moral excel
lences were still higher and it was to
them that his wonderful power as an or
ator was chiefly due. His impressive and
exciting delivery his clear, and brilliant,
and unprecedented language were merely
the forms in which his boundless love of
God and of man, of liberty and of piety,
was embodied. Never, L believe, did God
create mere human being more approach
ing to faultlessness. He had no vanity,
though continually breathing the incense
which most intoXlcates, that which is
burned before an orator; no love of power,
though he reigned over the opinions and
the consciences of thousands no wish for
money, or for rank, or even for fame. The
possession which he most valued was an
coeu detache de tout, heart in which
there should be no selfish desires
or selfish fears. Perhaps the greatest
sacrifice that he made was when
he became Dominican. His passion was
freedom. As soon as he took the frock he
surrendered his free-will. He invested his
superiors-men, as he must have known,
far below him intellectually and morally
with absolute power over all his actions,
all his habits, almost over all his thoughts.
They might have silenced the voice which
REL echoed through the whole Catholic
world; they might have sent him, at an
hours notice, to China or to Abyssinia
they might have wasted his wonderful
talents in the most trivial employments.
But he knew how useful the religious or
ders had once been to his country. He
believed that he could reopen France to
them. And for such q purpose he was
ready to make, and did make, the total
and the irrevocable sacrifice of his freedom.
Senior-I am told that he sacrificed to it
his life, that the austerities OF his PROBES.
SION brought on the disease which carried
him off at an age at which he might have
expected many years OF usefulness.
Montalembert-It is possible prob
able-that that may be true. If 50, he
added to his other qualities that of martyr
dom.
Conversation with Renan-