to study the time devoted by others to amusement, and thus stored his mind with knowledge both varied and accurate. But such predilections, never viewed with favor by the Church of Rome, disquieted Guettée's professors, and marked him as an independent young man, a character always regarded with jealousy and suspicion. All possible obstacles were accordingly thrown in his way, and had not his scrupulous regularity of conduct and unquestionable piety counterbalanced these unfavorable impressions, he might have found difficulty in obtaining orders.
At the age of twenty-one M. Guettée was admitted to the sub-diaconate; at twenty-two he was made deacon, and at twenty-three years he was advanced to the priesthood, receiving his ordination on the twenty-first day of December, 1839, at the hands of Mgr. de Sausin, Bishop of Blois. He began at once the faithful exercise of his ministry, first as vicar, then as curé. Mgr. de Sausin was succeeded in the see of Blois by Mgr. Fabre des Essarts, a man of liberal mind and of strong Gallican predilections. He soon perceived in the young curé qualities that inspired him with warm interest in his welfare. M, Guettée's studies, directed by a mind unshackled by prejudice, spurred by an ardent love of truth and insatiable thirst for knowledge, had led him, soon before his ordination to the priesthood, to conceive the idea of writing a History of the Church of France. To this work he gave himself with characteristic ardor immediately after his ordination. Having been appointed in 1841 to the cure of a small parish distant about twelve miles from Blois, where the duties left him the larger portion of his time for study, he frequently rose at daybreak, and walked to the city for the purpose of studying in the public library, which is very rich in religious literature, and where he found all the great historical collections and monuments of learning in France. After devoting six hours to close study, he returned on foot to the solitude of his own chamber, where a large part of the night was consumed in work upon the materials he had gathered. Absorbed thus between the cares of his ministry and his literary labors, he at length attracted the notice of his bishop, who remarked that he never presented him-
