He said goodbye as if he would be back soon

PARIS, September 14, 1617 AD — In July, Saint Vincent de Paul said his goodbyes in the house where he had lived for four years. He behaved as if he were going away on a short journey. He had already decided to leave for good and to give the rest of his life to parish work. He told the family nothing.

They were the Gondi, one of the greatest families in the kingdom. Their lands brought in at least 100,000 livres a year. Philippe-Emmanuel de Gondi, Count de Joigny and General of the Galleys of France, had taken St. Vincent de Paul into the house in 1613 AD. His job was to teach the Count’s three sons. He was Madame de Gondi’s spiritual director too. Since January he had been preaching in the villages on the family’s estates, because she asked him to.

So the Count wanted him back in the house. Madame de Gondi wanted her spiritual director. And St. Vincent de Paul wanted the parish he had gone to. He had a spiritual director of his own, Pierre de Bérulle, who had put him into the Gondi house in the first place. He had put himself under Bérulle’s direction about 1610 AD. He called Bérulle “his visible angel”.

He went to Châtillon-les-Dombes, a village in the Bresse, because Bérulle suggested it. On August 1 he became the curé of Châtillon. It was a poor village, and the parish had no house for its priest. So he stayed in the home of a rich young man called Beynier, who was a Protestant. Six priests looked after its two or three thousand people.

He did not write to the Count until he had already taken over at Châtillon. The Count was away at sea with the royal galleys off Provence. The letter told him what St. Vincent de Paul had done, and that he was not coming back. His reason was that he was not fit to teach the boys.

The Count did not write back to him. He wrote straight to his wife instead, and sent St. Vincent de Paul’s letter on with his own. He told her he was in despair, and begged her to do everything so that they would not lose him.

Then he said what he would do to get him back. He would not accept the reason St. Vincent de Paul had given: “even if what he says of his incapacity were true, it would not prevail with me.” If St. Vincent de Paul was not fit to teach boys, he could have an assistant under him to do it. Then came the Count’s terms: “but in any case I must have him back in my house, where he can live as he pleases…”

Six weeks later, in Paris

Madame de Gondi opened the letter in Paris on September 14, six weeks after he took over at Châtillon. She wept for days and could not eat or sleep. “I should never have thought it,” she told a friend. Then she showed the friend her husband’s letter, and said what the family would lose: “I know my children will grow worse daily, and all the good he was accomplishing in the house, and to the seven or eight thousand on our estates is now at an end.”

Then she went to Bérulle. She was afraid that working to bring St. Vincent de Paul back might mean working against the will of God. She had to ask the very man who had given St. Vincent de Paul to the family. Bérulle told her she was free to use every means in her power. He promised to write to St. Vincent de Paul, and told her to write as well.

So she has written. She told St. Vincent de Paul that she could not face the rest of her life, or her death, without his direction. Bérulle’s letter would follow hers. Then she warned him: “If after this you refuse me, I will accuse you before God of whatever evil happens to me…”