Forty one years later Eugene recounts an incident during the mission in Grans that gives an indication of the approach of the missionaries to people:
A man who had been to me to confession and who, like all the others, had promised not to blaspheme again, came to see me one day in a state of awful confusion.
– What have you done my friend, I said to him, to make you so sad?
– Alas! Father, he replied in Provençal, m’en a esquia un. He meant that he had pronounced a blasphemy in spite of himself. But, he added, it happened in the silliest of ways.
This is what took place. The good man was going to his field, and his donkey was walking ahead of him laden with farmyard manure. Suddenly the animal took fright and threw his load to the ground. In the first moment of his anger, the poor man was taken by surprise and let loose one of those words which had been so familiar to him before his conversion, but as soon as he realised that he had done so, he believed that he had committed a grave fault. He took his whip, and after giving a few blows to the donkey, the cause of his misfortune, he gave some more to himself with all his strength, as if he had been taught what taking the discipline meant. That was to punish himself and to make himself think twice on another occasion.
I reassured this good man and sent him away happy. As for myself, I remained amazed in edification.
Diary of 5 September 1857, O.W. XXII