Life of St John Vianney.pdf - the Catholic Kingdom!

RESUMES HIS STUDIES. 33fatteiung a pig for the market. And so theylet himdepart, first exacting a solemn promise that, if possible,he would some day return to Noes to be their cure.Free from all danger of the law, and at liberty to pursue the vocation of his choice in peace and hope, theyoung student returned to his home after fourteen monthsabsence. His mother sjoy cannot be described. The sonwho was to her an object not less of reverence than of love,was to leave her no more ;itsfor her blameless life drew toclose, and she died the death of the just while he wasstill pursuing his studies under the Cur< of Ecully.At the end of about two years after his return, hisgood friend judgedthat it would be better for him tofinish his training at a seminary, where he might behelped onward by the collision of other minds. JeanMarie was therefore sent to the Petit Seminaire of Verrieresto pursue his course of philosophy. Here he hadmany opportunities of exercising and making progress inhumility. His companions, seeing no deeper than thesurface, and discovering that he was inferior to most ofthem in intellectual acquirements, set him down as something not far removed from a simpleton, and treated himaccordingly. His backwardness arose, however, far morefrom want of culture, and the frequent interruptions bywhich his course of study had been broken, than from anydeficiency in his natural powers, which, though not brilliant, were by .no means wanting in solidity ;but theconviction of his own intellectual inferiority, which wasdeepened by the slight estimation in which he was at thistime held by youths of his own age, was no doubt a partof the providential training which was tomake him soperfect in humility. It was not long before a very different estimate began to be formed of him. PrejudiceD