AFFECTION FOR MOTHER BARAT
Her life, to all outward appearances, flowed on quietly enough at St.
Charles, but it was marked by several heavy crosses. The one which
caused her the bitterest affliction, and weighed upon her longest was
the suspension of Mother Barat's correspondence. It began at the time of
her return from the Pottowatomie Mission, 1842, and lasted until 1847.
Her letters, all but one, reached Mother Barat; but the first two
written after her arrival at St. Charles having remained unanswered, she
thought herself in disgrace with her Mother General, to whom she had
always been so tenderly united, and did not venture to write again
except on one or two important occasions. The silence of Mother Barat,
or the suppression of her letters to Mother Duchesne, if it really took
place, is a mystery which will probably never be explained. The Superior
General had no reason for displeasure against her old friend and one of
her dearest daughters; nor was there any one, either in the Mother House
or in St. Charles who could have any motive for intercepting her
letters, or was capable of conduct so unworthy and so cruel. The motive
which led Mother Duchesne to write to Mother Barat in 1843, and again in
1846, was to save the houses of St. Charles and Florissant from the
suppression with which they were threatened. The former escaped, but the
latter was closed, to the great sorrow of the holy mother, who grieved
not from personal motives, but because of the loss it would entail upon
the poorer people of the town, since it was the only Catholic school in
the place. From the beginning the house of Florissant had been scarcely
supporting itself; and Reverend Mother Cutts, the Vicar, thought it
better to close it, and so strengthen the other two communities.
In 1847 a business affair required Mother Duchesne to write to the
Mother House. This time, not venturing to address Mother Barat in
person, she directed her letter to one of the Assistants General, who
was well known to her; but her anguish of soul was too keen not to find
expression in it. The kind heart of the Mother General was filled with
sympathy and compassion; and as she was about to send to America, Mother
Aloysia Jouve, a niece of Mother Duchesne, she directed her to go to St.
Charles immediately on arriving, in order to comfort her aunt by her
presence. At the same time she made her the bearer of a letter full of
the warmest affection. Mother Duchesne's joy and gratitude were in
proportion to the bitterness of her past sorrow, and for the remaining
years of her life, her correspondence with her beloved Mother General
was all that her faithful heart could desire. The latter often sent her
presents, which she knew the aged Mother would be happy to bestow upon
the other houses, or upon the Indians, or upon the poor.
During the latter years of her life, many of her most valued friends,
both in France and in America, passed into their eternity, among others
Father Van Quickenborne, and Bishops Dubourg and Rosati, with whom,
during so many years, she had borne the heat and the burden of the day,
in the harvest field of her Missouri mission. Several times, also,
during those years, she was tried by severe illness, to say nothing of
the infirmities which overtook her after her arrival in America, and
caused her a great deal of suffering without impairing her wonderful
activity or inducing her to relax either in her austerities or in her
devotions. As she advanced in years, though growing naturally weaker,
she was never idle for a moment. When not on her knees in the chapel,
she was busy knitting, seated with a prayer-book open before her, in her
narrow cell, which to her great consolation, was separated from the
chapel only by a partition wall. Sometimes, when the weather was fine,
she would go and sit under an old pear-tree in the garden with her
knitting. This she would lay down now and then to take up her French
hymn book, and with a weak and quavering voice, she would sing the
beautiful hymns she had always loved. One of them, entitled "Beau Ciel,"
was her favorite, for it gave expression to the longing of her soul for
her eternal home.