Lamy of Santa Fe Read Online Free PDF

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, Lamycollapsed, “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.

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    America
    B Y 7 J ULY 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