very consoling truth. And “the preference which he gave to this theme in his later years clearly shows that it was the sentiment of the love of God which he wished to make predominate in souls.”
Many religious and priests, even bishops, sat among the simple faithful at the foot of his pulpit. “It is outrageous that anyone should reproach the Servant of God with the slightest inexactitude in doctrine, dogmatic or moral.”
M. Vianney possessed in his library the Ecclesiastical History by Fleury. He went through it and quoted it sometimes in his instructions, while taking care, at least on one occasion, to indicate the reference.
But the history book which he knew best and quoted most frequently, together with the Scriptures, was the Lives of the Saints. He finished by knowing it practically by heart. “It could be truly said that he had lived with these great saints, by the way he told about the details of their lives.” “Every day,” testifies Catherine Lassagne, who had charge of his little household, “I found on the table this volume which I had put back in its place in the bookshelves the day before.” And Jeanne Marie Chanay, assistant at the orphanage of Mlle. Lassagne, adds: “The Curé never gave up this reading, not even at the period of the pilgrimage when he spent his day entirely in the confessional and returned home, in the evening, overwhelmed with fatigue.” The Lives of the Saints, in the full meaning of the word, was his bedside book.
And there is no doubt but that it was with his preaching in mind that he made this reading a strict rule, in addition to which he found in it rest and consolation. “He loved,” recalls M. Pagés, who was living in retirement in the village of Ars, “to read over each evening the account of the saint whose feast it was the following day, and at his catechism at 11 o’clock, he told with delight what he had read the evening before.”
One of the books from which he took his edifying stories is still preserved in his library. It is indeed the only book, or one
