For whatever motives, he joined the Oblates at their house at Longeuil, in the diocese of St. Hyacinthe, and at the time they seem to have thought themselves fortunate in the acquisition of so famous a preacher, "the most eminent priest in the diocese of Quebec," as the P�re Honorat described him to M. Mailloux, (Doc. B). But they soon had occasion to change their minds about his fitness for their life, and he parted with them -- or they with him -- after a thirteen months' sojourn under their roof. According to his own account "when he pressed them to his heart for the last time, he felt the burning tears of many of them falling on his checks ... for they loved him and he loved them " (p. 312). And yet, as M. Mailloux tells us in his Notes (Doc. B), "he carried away with him from the Oblates a paper in which he painted them in the worst colours," a paper which M. Mailloux, to whose house he went that some day, "refused to receive from his hands, accompanying his refusal with words which M. Chiniquy would not be able to forget." What the nature of this portraiture of the Oblate Fathers - a portraiture in the truth of which M. Mailloux evidently disbelieved - may have been, we may perhaps judge from what he says about them in his Fifty Years (p. 306).

Now that he was free from the Oblates his natural course was to return to his own diocese of Quebec, and ask for another post. But M. Mailloux tells us that "to give him one there could not be thought of." Apparently that diocese had had enough of him, either because of the circumstances known to them in connection with his leaving Kamouraska, or because of his general intractability.

Nor would the Bishop of Montreal give him a fixed post, and he was forced to seek hospitality with his old friend M. Brassard, then Cur� of Longeuil, the parish in which was the Oblate House he had just quitted. M. Brassard suggested that he should give up the idea of stationary work, and devote himself wholly to temperance missions, and for this he managed to obtain permission from Bishop Bourget.

It was in this work during the next four years that Chiniquy acquired what was certainly the best distinction of his life. He was most extravagant in his language and reckless in his statements, so much so as to elicit from Mgr. Bourget some prudent admonitions. But he had undoubtedly a gift of fiery though undisciplined eloquence and could appeal with effect to the sensibility of his hearers. Nor, though the effects, according to his own acknowledgements, were not as lasting as they might have been had he been more solid and prudent in his advocacy and had he relied more on spiritual and less on merely secular motives, did he fail to do an amount of good to which even those whom he most abused generously testify. Thus M. Mailloux writes of him at this time (Doc. B): "No one in the country can deny that by his sermons on behalf of temperance he has dried many tears; he has brought back peace and happiness to a great many families; he has raised from the gutter many thousands of his unfortunate countrymen; and has set a mark of dishonour on the mania for drinking and getting intoxicated at weddings, meals, family feasts, friendly gatherings, in short in the social relations of the Canadians."

The year 1851 now drew on, and it proved to be an eventful year for Chiniquy's fortunes. According to his own account (p. 345), he received from Bishop Vandevelde of Chicago a letter dated December 1, 1850, in which, addressing him (on the envelope) as the "Apostle of Temperance," he invited him to abandon Canada and put himself at the head of a vast immigration of Canadians which the Bishop wanted to draw into the as yet uncolonised parts of Illinois, south of Kankakee. In this way they would be preserved from the temptations of the cities and their Protestantism, and would be kept together in communities apart, and so become one day a great political force in the United States. Only, the proposal was to be kept for the present a secret, as the Canadian bishops in their selfishness would oppose a movement, however beneficial in itself, which could not but reduce the population of their own parishes.

Whether Bishop Vandevelde ever wrote such a letter may be doubted, for the style as Chiniquy gives it in his book is suspiciously like his own, nor is it likely that the bishop would have made this discreditable request for secrecy to the prejudice of his episcopal brethren in Canada. Still, it is true that the Bishop of Chicago did wish, not to entice Canadian colonists into his diocese, but to divert those who were streaming in unasked, from the cities to the new lands to the south, and that he wanted some Canadian priests to take the spiritual charge of them. But so far from wishing to keep this desire secret from the Canadian bishops, he had written a letter - the text of which is before us (Doc. E) - on March 4, 1850, to Mgr. Bourget of Montreal. In it he lays his trouble before that prelate, and begs for a Canadian priest or two in most moving terms. Possibly it was as the result of this letter that M. Lebel, of Kamouraska, was sent, and so came to be stationed in Chicago when Chiniquy afterwards arrived.

Anyhow, there is no mention of Chiniquy in this letter from Bishop Vandevelde to Bishop Bourget. He went, however, in May, 1851, to Illinois to give a temperance mission to the Canadians there, and took with him a letter from Bishop Bourget, dated May 7, 1851, in which the latter asks Bishop Vandevelde to "regard M. Chiniquy as his own priest all the time he is doing work in his diocese," adding, in the humble and tender tone which characterizes all the letters of that truly saintly man: "I trust that his fervent prayers will draw down upon his ministry the copious benedictions of Heaven, and that I myself may experience some of the fruits of them, I who am the last of all."

It would be a mistake, however, merely from this expression of hope that Chiniquy's prayers might be fruitful, to conclude that the bishop was altogether at ease about him. He wrote him a letter, likewise dated May 7, 1851 (Doc. E), in which he gives him some counsels - namely:

"(1) take strict precautions in your relations with persons of the opposite sex;

(2) avoid carefully all that might savour of ostentation, and the desire to attract attention; simplicity is so beautiful and lovable a virtue;

(3) pay to the priests of the country the honour due to their ministry; the glory of God is the best recompense of an apostolic man."

That the last two of these counsels were given in view of Chiniquy's personal temperament is sufficiently manifest. That the rest was also, Chiniquy himself must have understood, since in his letter back to the bishop, dated May 13, 1851 (ibid), he writes: "I will not end without asking your lordship to let me be the first told of it, when detraction or calumny casts at your feet its poisons against me. You cannot believe, Monseigneur, how much harm, doubtless without wishing it, you have done to my benefactor and friend, M. Brassard, by confiding to him in the first place certain things which for his happiness and mine he should never have known. If I am guilty it seems to me I ought to bear the weight of my iniquity. And if I am innocent, and it is calumny which is pouring out its poisons over my soul, God will give me the strength, as He has done already in more than one circumstance, to bear all and to pardon all. But let these empoisoned darts wound my soul only, not that of my friend."

These are fair-sounding words, doubtless, and might be the words of an innocent man. Whether they are so or not we can only judge by taking them in connection with what else we can get from independent sources. But we quote them now as testifying that "in more than one circumstance" Chiniquy had been suspected, and, as Bishop Bourget apparently thought, not always without ground. Suspicion is not the same as conviction, but we shall hear more presently of Bishop Bourget's mind on the subject. Still, it is a point to notice, even at this stage, that Chiniquy should have been so unfortunate as to excite suspicions of the same character in so many independent quarters. His uncle Dionne, and therefore some of his school-masters, had suspected him in this way in his youth: the diocesan authorities of Quebec had so far suspected him as to refuse him further work in that diocese: and now we have Bishop Bourget entertaining similar suspicions of him.

Nor can we in this connection leave out of account another thing that may, perhaps, throw a little light on the unpleasantness of his visit to Detroit, which took place just at this time, namely, whilst he was on the way to Chicago. We have already heard his own version of the contretemps which caused him to hasten his departure from that neighbourhood (p. 349), but an American friend assures us that a version of another kind was given him by the late Very Rev. P. Hermaert, formerly Vicar-General of Detroit. That version is that Chiniquy, who used to visit Detroit on his temperance mission from time to time, had been complained of to the bishop for his offensive attentions to the daughter of a respectable family. During one of his visits he found that the bishop was going to call him to account for his misconduct, and he hastened away before the bishop could return to the city.

He arrived at Chicago on this temporary visit in June, 1851, and went on to Bourbonnais. But he was back again by the middle of July, and on August 13th published in the Canadian papers a glowing account of the prairies of Illinois, assuring the Canadians that, unless they were quite comfortable at home, their best course was to go there to settle, which they could do with a certainty of immediate comfort if they only had two hundred dollars with them to start with (p. 354).

This letter caused a great stir, and induced a great many young men to respond to the advice, but at the same time aroused much indignation among their pastors, who saw, what the result proved to be the case, that the scheme was wild, and that famine rather than speedy prosperity was to be anticipated for those who were caught by it. Chiniquy did not, however, indicate in this public letter that it was part of the scheme for him to be at the head of the emigration, as probably it was not at that time, though it looks as if he were working up towards such an eventuality.

In the account in his Fifty Years, Chiniquy gives the readers to understand that he was going to Illinois in response to an invitation prompted by a sense of his merits, and that he was going in a spirit of generosity, and at great sacrifice to his own cherished objects. "I determined (he says) to sacrifice the exalted position God had given me in Canada, to guide the footsteps of the Roman Catholic emigrants from France, Belgium, and Canada towards the regions of the West in order to extend the power and influence of my Church all over the United States" (p. 353). We have our doubts, however, whether his departure for this new sphere of work was so entirely spontaneous, and even whether it was in response to any invitation at all, and not rather because he had begged to be allowed to go, his position in Canada being no longer tenable. Let us see.

In September, 1851, a very unpleasant thing happened to him. "I found," he says, "on September 28, 1851, a short letter on my table from Bishop Bourget, telling me that, for a criminal action, which he did not want to mention, committed with a person he would not name, he had withdrawn all priestly powers and interdicted me" (p. 363). He went "two hours later" to see the bishop, to assert his entire innocence, and to ask for the crime to be stated and the witnesses made known, so that he might meet them face to face and confute them. But this, he tells us, the bishop sternly and coldly refused to do. Then, after taking counsel with M. Brassard, he went off that night to the Jesuit Coll�ge of St. Marie, at Montreal. It was to make "an eight days' retreat," and likewise to have the "help of [Father Schneider's] charity, justice, and experience in forcing the bishop to withdraw his unjust sentence against [him]." He represents Father Schneider as helping him cordially, and, as his (Chiniquy's) reflections made him suspect that his accuser was a certain girl whom shortly before he had turned away from his confessional, believing that she had come to entrap him, Father Schneider had the girl found and brought to the Coll�ge.

There, in Father Schneider's presence, and under the influence of Chiniquy's firm cross-examination, she owned that "he was not guilty," but that she "had come to his confessional to tempt him to sin," and that it was to "revenge [herself] for his rebuking her that she had made the accusation." This was on the third day of his retreat, and therefore on October 2nd, a date we may find it convenient to remember. When the retreat was over, he went back to the bishop to whom he had already sent a copy of the girl's retraction. The bishop, he says, fully accepted it as clearing his character, and as proof that he had nothing against him gave him a "letter expressive of his kindly feelings," and also a "chalice from [his] hands" with which he might offer the Holy Sacrifice for the rest of his life.

It must be clearly understood that this is Chiniquy's account of what happened, and that he first gave it, not at the time of the occurrence, but nearly six years later, in a letter dated April 18, 1857, which was addressed to Bishop Bourget from St. Anne's Kankakee, and was published in the Canadian press (p. 526). Until then nothing had been publicly known about the story of this girl. The occasion of this letter being written arose out of the schism which by that time Chiniquy had stirred up among the French Canadians in Illinois. We shall understand its character better presently; for the moment it is enough to say that Bishop Bourget had thought it necessary to undeceive these poor French Canadians by revealing to them some of Chiniquy's antecedents. Accordingly, when at the beginning of 1857 some of them, who had renounced their momentary schism, sent him a consoling letter to announce the fact, he replied on March 19, 1857, by a letter (Doc. C) addressed "to the Canadian Catholics of Bourbonnais" which letter "was read out in the Bourbonnais Church on Passion Sunday, March 29th" (of that year). We shall have to refer to this letter again afterwards, but must give a long extract from it now.

"M. Chiniquy sets himself on another pedestal to capture admiration, by pretending that God has made him the friend, the father, and the saviour of the emigrants. To judge from these pompous words one would have to believe that he only quitted Canada for the grand work of looking after the thousands of Canadians scattered over all parts of the vast territory of the American Union. But here again I am going to oppose M. Chiniquy with M. Chiniquy, for I suppose that, even if he refuses to believe the words of the bishops, he will at least believe his own. I am going to give an extract from a letter written by this gentleman, but that its nature may be the better understood, I should say that on September 27, 1851, I withdrew from him all the powers I had given him in the diocese, for reasons I gave him in a letter which he ought to have preserved, and which he may publish if he thinks that I have unjustly persecuted him. Under the weight of this terrible blow he wrote to me on October 4th following this letter: --

'Monsignor, tribulations surround me on all sides. I perceive that I must take the sad road of exile, but who will have pity on a proscribed man on a foreign soil, when he whom he had looked up to as his father has no longer a word of mercy for him?... As soon as my retreat is finished I shall go and embrace my poor brothers and mingle my tears with theirs. Then I shall bid an eternal farewell to my country; and I shall go and hide the disgrace of my position in the obscurest and least known corner of the United States. If, when my retreat is ended, I may hope to receive the word of mercy which you thought it necessary to refuse me yesterday, let me know for the sake of the God of mercy, and gladly will I go to receive it before setting out. It will fall like balm on my wounded soul, and will sweeten the rigours of exile.'

It was under these distressing sensations and in these painful circumstances that he decided to preach the Canadian emigration."

Our readers will note several things about this letter. First, it was written From St. Marie's Coll�ge while he was still in retreat under Father Schneider, and on October 4th - that is to say, two days after the supposed visit and retraction of the unnamed girl.

And yet there is not in it a word of reference to this retraction, nor is what he does say consistent with that story - for Chiniquy certainly does not write as if he felt confident that the bishop would now acknowledge his innocence and reinstate him. Secondly, the letter shows that he was going reluctantly to Illinois, and (so far as he knew then), not to preach, but to hide his disgrace in obscurity. Thirdly, the whole tone of the letter is one of a man who pleads for mercy, not of one who protests his innocence. Fourthly, the circumstances under which it was written imply that he was professing, even if he did not feel, a hearty repentance for an offence committed; since it is evident Bishop Bourget deemed him guilty, and that being so, neither would he have removed the suspension, nor Bishop Vandevelde have accepted him for his diocese, unless he had professed repentance. Fifthly, two other contemporary letters that are before us (Doc. E) point in the same direction. For on October 6th Bishop Bourget wrote to Chiniquy, while still in retreat at St. Marie's, a letter which is apparently the answer to Chiniquy's of October 4th. It breathes the same spirit as all Bishop Bourget's letters, and the reader may judge if it is that of an intolerant despot:

"Monsieur, I am praying myself and getting others to pray for you, and my heart is not so deaf as you appear to think. My desire is that the most sincere repentance may penetrate down to the very depths and to the innermost parts of your heart. I pray for this with all the fervour of my soul, and if I am not heard it will assuredly be because of my innumerable infidelities. O! that I could be free to weep over them, and to bury myself for ever in some Chartreuse, under one of the sons of St. Bruno, whose happy and holy feast the Church keeps to-day."

In this letter the Bishop makes no reference to Chiniquy going to the United States, probably because that project was not as yet arranged. But M. Brassard, on hearing of the misfortune of his prot�g�, took advantage of Bishop Vandevelde's presence at the time in the neighbourhood, and besought that prelate to give him a chance of retrieving himself.

A letter from Bishop Vandevelde to Bishop Bourget was a result of this. It is dated "Troy, October 15, 1851," and contains the following passage, the only one of interest to us now: "After all the instances made by M. le Cur� de Longeuil (M. Brassard), and the promises of his prot�g�, I consented to give the latter a trial on condition that he got an exeat from Mgr. Bourget exclusively for the diocese of Chicago" (Doc. E).

It will be admitted that these various letters throw on the episode of September 25, 1851, a light somewhat different from that in which it appears in Chiniquy's own published account above given, and there will be something further to say on the matter presently. But we have heard Chiniquy appeal to two testimonials of esteem, a letter and a chalice, which the Bishop gave him as a means by which he might always be able to vindicate his character in reward to the charge brought against him by this girl. Let us now investigate this point.

The letter is a letter written by Bishop Bourget in response to Bishop Vandevelde's stipulation that Chiniquy, before he could accept him, must have an exeat for the diocese of Chicago. It runs as follows (p. 528): -�

"Montreal, October 13, 1851.

"The Rev. Charles Chiniquy.

"Sir,�

"You ask my permission to leave my diocese, to go and offer your services to the Bishop of Chicago. As you belong to the diocese of Quebec, I think it belongs to my Lord the Archbishop to give you the dismissal you wish. As for me I cannot but thank you for your labours amongst us, and I wish you in return the most abundant blessings from Heaven. You shall ever be in my remembrance and in my heart, and I hope that divine Providence will permit me at a future time to testify all the gratitude I owe you.

"Meanwhile, I remain your very humble and obedient servant,

"+Ignatius, Bishop of Montreal."

Chiniquy describes this letter as a "testimonial of esteem" (p. 528), and again as "a perfect recantation of all he had said and done against me" (p. 370). Perhaps an undiscerning reader will be disposed to agree in that estimate of its language; but a Catholic acquainted with the style of an exeat, or permission to leave one diocese for another, will rather take it as a proof of Chiniquy's insincerity that he should thus represent it, for we may be sure he knew better what was significant about this particular document. The complimentary words refer to the results he had attained by his temperance preaching, and it is in keeping with Bishop Bourget's character that, in his desire to say the best he could of the unfortunate man, he should give generous recognition to what stood to his credit.

As he himself says (Doc. D) on this point, "We said nothing too much in adding that we protested to him that the diocese of Montreal would never forget his labours for the establishment of temperance. But all this proves that if we refused faculties to M. Chiniquy, it was solely for a motive of conscience, and for the good of the souls for whom we shall have to answer one day before God."

But what is really significant about this "testimonial of esteem" is that it contains not a word of testimonial to Chiniquy's personal integrity. There is generally a printed form for these exeats, with space left to fill in names and anything extra the bishop may think fit to add; and that there was such an one then in use in the diocese of Montreal may be seen from the exeat Chiniquy gives as having been issued to him about a year previously (p. 324). There, in the printed part, we have the phrase "[Charles Chiniquy...] is very well known to us, and we regard him as leading a praiseworthy life in consonance with his ecclesiastical profession, and bound by no ecclesiastical censures so far as is known to us."

But in the "exeat" of October 13, 1851, there is a significant omission of any such attestation of personal character as would certainly have been inserted had it been possible to give it truthfully. And the Archbishop of Quebec, who, as Mgr. Bourget says, was the prelate whose exeat was needful, seems to have given it on October 19th, in response to the solicitations of Mgr. Bourget and M. Brassard, but with similar omissions. For Bishop Bourget, in forwarding it to Mgr. Vandevelde on October 18th (Doc. E), speaks of it as "not altogether in conformity with your desires," and Mgr. T�tu (Doc. A) says, "The Bishop of Quebec gave him an exeat for the diocese of Chicago without a single word of recommendation." So much in correction of the false construction which Chiniquy puts upon Bishop Bourget's exeat.