The Story of a Family

The Home of St. Therese of Lisieux

Rev. Fr. Stephane-Joseph Piat

• Publisher: TAN Books
• Year: 1994
• ISBN:
  9781618902245
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Fabulously captivating and popular life of the Martin family, showing the background that helped produce "the greatest Saint of Modern Times." (St. Pius X). A profound reading experience; tears at one's heartstrings. Great for the whole family. 464 pgs,

CHAPTER 1

ORIGINS AND FIRST STEPS

Ancestry and early years of Louis Martin and Zélie Guérin.

NOT far from the Alpes Mancelles, in the heart of a bright countryside, overlooked by the high trees of the forests of Perseigne, Multonne, and Écouves, Alençon lies displayed in its careless, rather aristocratic grace. Its old medieval houses, with their projecting upper stories painted balconies with bare beams, the later mansions in a plain, severe style, the streams with places for public washing beside them, the quiet streets crossed by the muddy waters of the Briante and the Sarthe, give it a picturesque and peace-giving aspect. It is a lordly city where the stones sing; a dream city where the wood prays; there is a certain natural air of distinction about it, a penetrating charm and a nobility marked with the seal of old France. There are silent hours when, in its almost deserted streets, you might think you heard the footfall of the watchmen of yore going their rounds and see pass by the shy ghost of the "Good Duchess Margaret."¹

Modern urban development has not robbed it of its mystery. Willy-nilly, it has respected the old-world aspect of the Maison d'Ozé; it has left to the Tribunal de Commerce its hoary splendor described in the Cabinet des Antiques of Balzac. The Hôtel-Dieu, the Tour Couronnée, the local government offices—the Préfecture—attract the notice of the tourist, whilst the historian loves to question the façades, troubled and weighted with their secrets, of the Rue Bonette and the shops in the Ghetto.

Three churches stand open to the pilgrim; the tottering sanctuary—now rebuilt—of Saint Pierre-de-Monsort, Saint Léonard, which owes its restoration to the Blessed Margaret of Lorraine and, above all, Notre-Dame, an example of the flamboyant style which, unlike the King's daughter, is more glorious without than within. Its triple arcaded porch is indeed a veritable masterpiece, with its octagonal towers, its corniced balustrades, its slender gables and the thousand arabesques which recall the exquisite art of the Alençon lacemakers. We forget the over heavy choir, and the inelegant tower, both rebuilt after the fire of 1744. The traveller almost forgets to admire the soaring grace of the nave, the magic of the painted windows, the subdued light of the aisles, so fascinated is he at the sermon in stone written on the threshold of the building at the dawn of the 16th century by the genius of Jean Lemoyne. There beats the real heart of the city. It is there, before Our Lady of the Assumption or, as certain competent authorities say, the Transfiguration, facing the gaping niches and the holy personages mutilated by the Huguenots, that we really enjoy the intimacy of the "changeless province," as Balzac called it, and love to reread the lines in which Paul Harel has drawn poetically the portrait of the city over which the Spirit breathes:

"Twixt slope abrupt and forest high,

And a plain widespread, she rose

Bathed in the brightness of the dawn,

Her lace-like spires, her pale cathedral,

And her homestead roofs, some high some low."²

But behold how, its present glory now linked with the splendors of its past, Notre-Dame, so rich in memories, enters once more into history. On Tuesday, July 13th, 1858, at midnight—the custom was not unusual at the period—Louis Martin and Zélie Guérin crossed the threshold of its imposing entrance, accompanied by a few intimate friends. Simply, without the least parade, they were united before God. Fifteen years later, on the 4th of January, 1873, the last child of their marriage, Thérèse, entered beneath the gothic vault in her turn, in order to receive holy Baptism. Yet another half-century will go by, and the statue of the Carmelite nun, beatified on April 29th, 1923, then triumphantly canonised, will take its place amid those portrayed in stone by the chisels of the sculptors of long ago. Alençon will be the cradle of "a spiritual renaissance."

Preparing the way for this renaissance there was, providentially arranged, a whole family heritage of courage, soldierly honor and faith. Legend is ever roaming round sainthood, and legend has tried to blacken the ancestry of Thérèse of the Child Jesus. The result has merely been to encourage certain delvers in archives, and these have promptly disposed of the calumnious insinuations. To the cultus rendered to her "incomparable parents" the Carmelite could add a legitimate pride in her forbears.

It is at Athis-de-l'Orne, a good-sized market town in the Domfront district, that the church registers, which mention several families of the name of Martin, record on April 2nd, 1692, the appearance of a whole undoubted progeny of Jean Martin, terminating at the date of April 16th, 1777, with the baptism of a little Pierre-François Martin. The parents, who were subsequently to settle in the neighborhood of Saint Quentin, lived at that time close to the church. The maternal uncle and godfather of the infant, François Bohard, "Bon Papa Bohard," as he was called in the neighborhood, owed to the honorable distinction of his family of fourteen children, and his dauntless courage, a popularity which was one day to cause him to be chosen mayor of the town. It was he who, at the height of the Revolution, braved the proscriptions of the Jacobins and hid the church bells in his own house. There the spirit of the old countryside still lived. Amidst persecution the Faith entered more deeply into men's souls. To make up to him for the glories of the liturgy of which he was thus early deprived, Pierre Martin was able to learn by experience what it meant to be supported by the example of a faith that would not die. A military career did not weaken his convictions.

On August 26th, 1799, he was drafted to the 65th infantry of the line, and from the army of the Rhine to Belle-Ile-en-Mer, from Brest to the Belgian frontier, then in Prussia, Poland and through the campaign in France, he followed eagerly after the tricolor and the imperial Eagle. After the Restoration, he gained his commission and, as an officer, passed into the departmental regiment of the Lower Loire, then to the 19th light infantry, and finally, to the 42nd infantry of the line, then doing garrison duty at Lyons.

It was in that city that he made friends with the Captain Nicholas Boureau whose daughter he was to marry. Nicholas Boureau, who had volunteered for the army at the age of seventeen, had lived through the tragic events of the revolutionary campaigns from 1791 to 1796. In 1812 and 1813 he had taken part in the vicissitudes of the Grande Armée, and experienced the hard captivity in Silesia, in which his son, captured with him, perished at the age of twelve and a half. Twice in the course of his career, he was the victim of odious accusations which forced him to withdraw from the camps. The records which witness to these allegations refute them triumphantly. The Marquis d'Averin, peer of France, M. de Grandmaison, chaplain to the Catholic and royalist army of the Vendée, both testify with many others to the perfect rectitude of the life of the accused. The parish priest of Ainay attests that "M. Nicholas-Jean Boureau, Captain, domiciled in this parish at no. 4, Rue Vaubecourt, with his wife and two daughters, had led a life grounded upon principles of honor, right conduct and religion, and that on account of its virtues this honorable family is worthy of the esteem and admiration of the citizens of this town."

During the years 1816 and 1817, Pierre Martin was frequently a guest in this Christian home, and became engaged to the Captain's second daughter, Marie-Anne-Fanie, aged eighteen. Reverses of fortune having swallowed up the dowry then obligatory for an officer's wife, the noble-hearted soldier would not on that account forsake the woman of his choice, but furnished the requisite sum out of his own resources. Of the marriage, which took place on April 7th, 1818, five children were born: Pierre, destined to be lost in a shipwreck when still very young, Marie, who died in her twenty-sixth year, Louis, who was to give to the world Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Fanny, whose earthly life closed at twenty-seven, and lastly Sophie, who died as a child of nine.

Louis-Joseph-Aloys-Stanislaus Martin³ was born on August 22nd, 1823, in the Rue Servandoni, Bordeaux. He was immediately baptised privately, the completion of the ceremonies in church being deferred until his father's return home. The latter, then attached to the 19th light infantry, was taking part in the Spanish campaign, from which he returned decorated with the cross of a Knight of St. Louis. As the military operations were prolonged, however, the Abbé Martegoute, then prison chaplain, performed the baptismal ceremonies on October 28th, 1823, in the church of Sainte Eulalie, where one day a monument would commemorate the father of the Saint. Had the holy Archbishop of Bordeaux, Monseigneur d'Aviau du Bois de Sanzay, some vague intuition of that day, when he said to the relations of the infant: "Rejoice, this is a child of destiny!"

The unpredictable chances of camp life led the Martin family to Avignon and thence to Strasburg, where the Captain was acting as town Adjutant on the general staff. When, on December 12th, 1830, he retired, it was to the land of his ancestors that he returned to seek rest. He wished to see again his Normandy, Athis, and the church tower, for which in secret he had been homesick. A right concern for his children's education led him to prefer Alençon, where he would find greater resources for their training and settlement in life, and he took up his residence in the Rue des Tisons, and in 1842 the Rue du Mans, whilst waiting to join his son, Louis in the house attached to the clock and watchmaker's shop, which the latter opened in the Rue du Pont Neuf.

For a professional soldier retirement is the crucial trial, which may launch him into civil society deprived of occupation, without ideal or object in life. Captain Martin was proud of his Faith and a great character. The daguerreotype which has preserved his portrait for us shows features strongly marked, as though hacked out with a hatchet: thin, compressed lips, and an expression in the eyes which is keen and almost imperious. The face expresses, in fact, the inflexible energy and intransigent uprightness that becomes an officer of the Napoleonic wars. A lady moving in the leading circles of Alençon, who had often met him at close quarters, in after years thus described him to the Carmelites of Lisieux, his granddaughters: "He won our admiration by his immaculate appearance; he looked very fine in his greatcoat, decorated with the red ribbon which one did not meet in the streets in those days. What a lineage of saints you have in your family!" Those who knew Captain Martin intimately have owned to the emotion with which they listened as he recited the Pater Noster. When the regimental chaplain once remarked to him that some of the men were astonished at Mass to see him remain so long on his knees after the Consecration, he replied without flinching: "Tell them that it is because I believe!"

For a man of this stamp the return to civil life could mean merely a change of scene. As a Christian, he appreciated the peaceful environment of the Norman countryside. He occupied himself in the more vigilant fulfilment of his family duties, as also in a more intense practice of his religion, and in works of charity, in which he was supported by his admirable wife. In the latter, her daughter-in-law, Thérèse's mother, was one day to recognise "an extraordinary courage and very fine qualities." An example of the principles which animated the Martin household may be found in this letter of congratulations addressed by the Captain to M. Nicholas Moulin, who was to become his nephew by marriage:

"Praised be Jesus Christ!"

Alençon. August 7th. 1828.

Monsieur,

I have received your letter from which I learn that, by my communication, the consent to your marriage has safely reached you. At last, thank God!, my task is fulfilled to the best of my ability; now I desire, with all my heart, that our divine Master may deign to bless your union with my beloved niece, and that you may be as happy as one can be in this world, and that when you draw your last breath God may receive you into His mercy and place you among the number of the blessed, there to live forever. Kindly greet your estimable parents and ours. We all send you affectionate greetings.

Yours sincerely in Jesus and Mary.

MARTIN.

Surely such a letter reveals a soul of high spiritual lineage! Who today would think of writing in such a strain to a young engaged couple?

Little Louis was only seven and a half when he left Strasburg. He had early known the elation produced by the measured tread of marching soldiers, the delights of the mess and camp fires, the hubbub of the maneuvers. Lulled to sleep by the stories of the Napoleonic epic, brought up amid the sounds of fifes and drums, he was to retain a fondness for travel, an esteem for the military profession, and laid aside his childish uniform with regret.

His parents, whose best-loved child he was, provided carefully for his education. If he does not seem to have had the advantage of secondary schooling at this time, he was sufficiently initiated into the study of French to appreciate good books and, of his own accord, enter upon a course of reading in the classics of the language, a study that would enable him in the future to enrich his conversation with reminiscences culled from his reading and to furnish his library with sound literary taste.

By what miracle was this soldier's son, adventurous by inclination, directed to a completely sedentary profession? Personally, Louis would have preferred a military career, but what harvest of laurels could be gathered, now that "the Other" had died on the rock of Saint Helena? His artistic instinct, which was evident from the sure touch that marked his drawings, attracted him to work of delicate quality. He would have been happy carving precious objects. A sojourn at Rennes initiated him into the delicate mechanism of clock ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• LETTER TO THE AUTHOR
• PREFACE
• Chapter 1. ORIGINS AND FIRST STEPS
• Chapter 2. IN PURSUIT OF AN IDEAL
• Chapter 3. A VOCATION TO HOME-MAKING
• Chapter 4. THE GREATNESS OF FAMILY LIFE AND ITS SERVICE
• Chapter 5. THE HOUSE AMIDST THE STORM
• Chapter 6. THE LITTLE FLOWER OF THE FAMILY
• Chapter 7. THE SPIRIT OF THE HOME
• Chapter 8. HOME TRAINING
• Chapter 9. THE EARLY TRAINING OF A SAINT
• Chapter 10. A MOTHER'S CALVARY
• Chapter 11. LIFE IN THE FAMILY CIRCLE AT LES BUISSONNETS
• Chapter 12. THE LITTLE QUEEN AND HER KING
• Chapter 13. THE OFFERING OF THE CHILDREN
• Chapter 14. THE FATHER'S SACRIFICE
• Chapter 15. THE CROWNING OF THE FAMILY
• CONCLUSION
• THE PRAYER OF A SAINT'S CHILD
• APPENDIX