NOW I AM PROPERLY AND LEGALLY A FRENCH PRELATE AND NO LONGER NEED TO FEAR EXPULSION FROM THE BORDERS OF FRANCE

Five days later, on  January 25, Eugene came to the Tuilleries to take the oath to the king, which would officially prove his reconciliation with the July regime. He wrote to Father Courtès.

My dear Father Courtès, although Tempier is charged with the duty of passing on my news to those entitled. I don’t want my stay here to be prolonged any further without writing to you directly myself. I have completed the business which dragged me to this capital city. Now I am properly and legally a French prelate. No longer need I fear expulsion from the borders of France, to return no more, at the hands of some moody minister suffering an attack of ill-temper.
I have been twice to the Palace. In the first audience [the King] had me sit down beside him and kept me for a full three-quarters of an hour. He spoke to me very ably on all the topics he broached and took pains to give me reasons that I wouldn’t have dreamed or dared to ask for. The Queen and Madame Adelaide were also very gracious to me, but the King’s affection during the second audience passed imagination: for ten minutes he held my hands in his, and when I had to leave he again took my hands and told me yet again….

Letter to Hippolyte Courtès, 31 January 1836, EO VIII n 558

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1 Response to NOW I AM PROPERLY AND LEGALLY A FRENCH PRELATE AND NO LONGER NEED TO FEAR EXPULSION FROM THE BORDERS OF FRANCE

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Oblate Associate says:

    A period of intense suffering for Eugene has come to an end. It has been a long difficult road for him to walk.

    I notice immediately how Eugene separates his restored relationship with the king from that of any relationship he might have with the king’s Minister of Worship who he refers to as ‘some moody minister suffering an attack of ill-temper’.

    We have all experienced a time in our lives when we felt that another disliked us, perhaps blaming us for their own inadequacies, for their own struggles. We might have wondered if the occasions of scorn, anger or injustice were sometimes our fault; if we deserved it. And perhaps even more difficult – we might have recognized in the other’s treatment of us a way of being that was uncomfortably familiar.

    This morning I am thinking how difficult it can be to separate ourselves from the unpleasant actions or ways-of-being of others. How difficult it can be to recognize in them some of our own suffering and struggles; and to continue to love them, to stand before them rather than turning away from them in reciprocal anger or in blaming ourselves.

    This has been for Eugene his own experience of the cross and having to walk the long road to Golgotha; he has had to die to himself. Somehow it makes my struggles and problems look very small; but I will not discount them for they are my struggles. Perhaps though, if I can change my attitudes, if I can look at the person I am struggling with –through the eyes of my crucified Saviour then I will be able to carry myself in the new way that Eugene does. I am again reminded how Eugene is a model for me.

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