University of Virginia Library

My Lord:—In your letter of the 19th of March, you assure
the public that you have interdicted me, a few days before
my leaving Canada for the United States, and you invite me to
give the reasons of that sentence. I will satisfy you. On the

28th of September, 1851, I found a letter on my table from you
telling me that you had suspended me from my ecclesiastical
offices, on account of a great crime that I had committed, and of
which I was accused. But the name of the accuser was not
given, nor the nature of the crime. I immediately went to see
you, and protesting my innocence, I requested you to give me
the name of my accusers, and allow me to be confronted by
them, promising that I would prove my innocence. You refused
to grant my request.

Then I fell on my knees, and with tears, in the name of
God, I requested you again to allow me to meet my accusers and
prove my innocence. You remained deaf to my prayer and unmoved
by my tears; you repulsed me with a malice and air of
tyranny which I thought impossible in you.

During the twenty-four hours after this, sentiments of an inexpressible
wrath crossed my mind. I tell it to you frankly, in
that terrible hour, I would have preferred to be at the feet of a
heathen priest, whose knife would have slaughtered me on his
altars, to appease his infernal gods, rather than be at the feet of
a man who, in the name of Jesus Christ, and under the mask of
the gospel, should dare to commit such a cruel act. You had
taken away my honor—you had destroyed me with the most infamous
calumny — and you had refused me every means of
justification! You had taken under your protection the cowards
who were stabbing me in the dark!

Though it is hard to repeat, I must tell it here publicly, I
cursed you on that horrible day.

With a broken heart, I went to the Jesuit college, and I
showed the wounds of my bleeding soul to the noble friend who
was generally my confessor, the Rev. Father Schneider, the director
of the college.

After three days, having providentially got some reasons to
suspect who was the author of my destruction, I sent some one
to ask her to come to the college, without mentioning my
name.

When she was in the parlor, I said to Father Schneider:

"You know the horrible iniquity of the bishop against me;

with the lying words of a prostitute, he has tried to destroy me;
but please come and be the witness of my innocence."

When in the presence of that unfortunate female, I told her:

"You are in the presence of God Almighty, and two of his
priests. They will be the witnesses of what you say! Speak
the truth. Say in the presence of God and this venerable priest,
if I have ever been guilty of what you have accused me to the
bishop."

At these words, the unfortunate female burst into tears; she
concealed her face in her hands, and with a voice half suffocated
with her sobs, she answered:

"No, sir, you are not guilty of that sin!"

"Confess here another truth," I said to her; "Is it not true
you have come to confess to me more with the desire to tempt
me than to reconcile yourself to God?"

She said, "Yes, sir, that is the truth." Then I said again,
"Continue to say the truth, and I will forgive you, and God also
will forgive your iniquity. Is it not through revenge for having
failed in your criminal designs, that you have tried to destroy me
by false accusation to the bishop?"

"Yes, sir, it was the only reason which has induced me to
accuse you falsely.

"And all I say here, at least in substance, has been heard,
written and signed by the Right Rev. Schneider, one of your
priests, and the present director of the Jesuit college. That venerable
priest is still living in Montreal; let the people of Canada
go and interrogate him. Let the people of Canada also go to
the Rev. Mr. Brassard, who has in his hands an authenticated
copy of that declaration.

"Your lordship gives the public to understand that I was
disgraced by that sentence some days before I left Canada for
Illinois. Allow me to give you my reasons for differing from
you in this matter.

There is a canon law of the church which says:

"If a censure is unjust and unfounded, let the man against
whom the sentence has been passed pay no attention to it. For,
before God and his church, no unjust sentence can bring any injury

against anyone. Let the one against whom such unfounded
and unjust judgment has been pronounced even take no step to
annul it, for it is a nullity by itself."

You know very well that the sentence you had passed against
me was null and void, for many good reasons; that it was founded
on a false testimony. Father Schneider is there, ready to prove
it to you, if you have any doubt.

The second reason I have to believe that you had yourself
considered your sentence a nullity, and that I was not suspended
by it from my ecclesiastical dignity and honor, is founded on a
good testimony, I hope—the testimony of your lordship himself.

A few hours before my leaving Canada for the United
States, I went to ask your benediction, which you gave me with
every mark of kindness. I then asked your lordship to tell me
frankly if I had to leave with the impression that I was disgraced
in his mind? You gave me the assurance of the contrary.

Then I told you that I wanted to have a public and irrefutable
testimony of your esteem, written with your own hand, and
you gave me the following letter:

Sir:—You ask me 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 exeat you wish.
As for me, I can not but thank you for your labours among 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.