In the spring of 1833 he preached for the first time in public. It was in the great church of St. Koch, in Paris. " I was there," says SI. IVIontalembert, " with MM. dc Courcelles, Ampere, and some others, who must remember it as I do. He failed completely, and, com- ing out, every one said, 'This is a man of talent, but he never will be a preacher.' Lacordaire himself thought the same." His failure was very much like that of Sheridan, D'Israeli, Kobert Hall, and many other ora- tors— an incentive to become great. In the beginning of 1834 he delivered his famous Conferences in the Col- lege Stanislas, the humblest of the colleges of Paris, where he had been appointed as lecturer to the students, and where his failure at St. Roch was now recompensed by a great success, his audience oftentimes amounting to from .500 to 600 persons. In the year following (1835) we find him installed preacher at Notre Dame, and for once it was acknowledged that " France had a living preacher who knew how to fascinate the intellect, kin- dle tlie imagination, and touch tlie heart of the most cultivated and of the most illiterate. Whenever La- cordaire was announced to preach in Notre Dame the cathedral was surrounded, long before the doors were open, by an immense and heterogeneous crowd. Before he appeared in the pulpit, the vast nave, the aisles, and the side chapels were thronged with statesmen and journalists, members of the Academy and tradesmen, workhig-men and high-born women, scejitics, socialists, devout (,'atholics, and resolute Protestants, who were all compelled to surrender themselves for tlie time- to the irresistible torrent of his elofiuenj^n;" (I\. A\'. Dale, in Con- (em/virari/ Rei-iew, May, 180^, p. 2).
Onlv two years after his appointment to Notre Dame, Lacordaire suddenly fixed llie woiidiT of the multitude again upon him by relintiuishing the career of distinc-
tion which had so lately opened to him, and by jour- neying to Rome, "with the principal design," as he himself teUs us in one of his letters, " of entering the Dominican order, with the accessory design of re-estab- lishing it in France." This opens a new phase in the life of Lacoriiaire. " It was always the mark of Lacor- daire's character," says a writer in the SjKctator (Lond, Dec. 7, 18(57), ''that all his deepest feelings, like moral caustic, burnt inward, so that he complained from the beginning of life to the end that even the deepest friend- ship he knew led him not into society, but into solitude," and it is in solitude that his days are mainly spent after his sudden retreat from Notre Dame in 1837. Hence- forth his " inner life" is a story of the inward progress of self-humiliations — self-crucifixions, as he called them, measuring them by the standard of Christ's sufferings. In the complete self-sacrifice of the monk, in the abso- lute life in God to which he now resigned himself, he be- lieved he coidd alone find the true source of a new life for human society. If Christ's self-sacrifice was the soiurce of human redemption, the orders which set forth that self-sacrifice most perfectly to the world contained the true life-l)lood of the world ; and henceforth his life and that of his followers became one long passion of self-im- molation, in which the spirit was trained by the sharp- est voluntary penances to regulate every inward move- ment by the ideal of Christian humiUty or humiliation.- What Lacordaire's biographer reverently calls '"holy follies" were of daily occurrence. " "Will you," he said one day on the Campagna to his disciple, pere Lesson, '• suffer something for the sake of him who has suffered so much for us?" and, showing him a thorn-bush, they both at once precipitated themselves into it, and came out covered with blood. How this was "suffering for Christ's sake" Lacordaire does not explain ; but he seems to have thought that all suffering, needless or needful, voluntary or involuntary, was a lesson in love for Christ. "All his mysticism," says his biographer, "reduced it- self to this one principle, to suffer ; to suffer in order to expiate justice, and in order to prove love." And henceforth his life as a monk was a burning fire cf re- ligious passion and penance, all intended to teach him, as he thought, to enter more deeply into crucified love : " His thanksgiving after mass was generally short ; in making it lie most often experienced veni" ardent emo- tions of love to God, which lie went to appease in the cell of one of his religious. He would enter with his countenance still radiant with the holy joy kmdled at the altar; then, humbly kneeling before the religious, and kissing his feet, he would beg him to do him the charity of chastising him for the love of God. Then he would uncover his shoulders, and, whether willing or unwilling, the brother was obliged to give him a severe discipline. He would rise all bruised from his knees, and, remaining for a long time with his lips pressed to the feet of him who had scourged him, would give utter- ance to his gratitude in the most lively terms, and then withdraw with joy on his brow and in his heart. At oth- er times, after receiving the discipline, he would beg the religious to sit do\ra again at his table, and prostra- ting himself on the ground under his feet, he would re- main there for a quarter of an hour, finishing his ]irayer in silence, and delighting himself in God, as he felt his head under the foot that humbled him. These penances were very often renewed, and those who were chosen to execute them did not resign themselves to the oflice without dilHculty. It was a real penance to them, es- pecially at first; they would willingly have changed places with him. Hut gradually they became used to it, and the father took occasion of this to require more, and to make them treat him according to his wishes. Then they were obliged to strike him, to s]iit in his face, to speak to him as a slave, '(io and dean my shoes; bring me such a thing; away with you, wretch!' and they had to drive him from them like a dog. The religious whom he selected to render him these services were those who were most at their ease with him ; and