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Kraimokou, the minister, during a visit which he was paying on board the Uranie, had caught sight of the Abbé de Quelen, the chaplain, whose costume puzzled him a good deal. As soon as he had learned that the strangely dressed person was a priest, he expressed to the commandant a desire to receive baptism.
Saint Nicholas, under his headship, was a thoroughly ecclesiastical establishment, its comparatively few students having a clerical career in view, and the secular side of education was passed over entirely. M. de Quélen was very well inspired when he entrusted the management of this college to M. Dupanloup. The archbishop was not the man to approve of the strict clericalism of Abbé Frère.
The action at Monte-Libretti, which took place on the 14th October, was of a more serious character. Eighty Zouaves contended from half-past five in the evening till eight o’clock against twelve hundred Garibaldians. Arthur Guillemin, their captain, and Urbain de Quelen, their second lieutenant, fell gloriously.
He was very much attached to M. Dupanloup, who was at that time Legitimist and Ultramontane. It was only the exaggerations of a later day which so changed the parts that he came to be looked upon as a Gallican and an Orleanist. M. de Quélen treated him as a spiritual son, sharing his dislikes and his prejudices. He doubtless knew the secret of his birth.
When the moment came, as the archbishop was passing in front of the pupils, Mademoiselle Bouchard, to the indescribable terror of her companions, stepped out of the ranks, and said, "Monseigneur, a day's leave of absence." Mademoiselle Bouchard was tall, blooming, with the prettiest little rosy face in the world. M. de Quelen smiled and said, "What, my dear child, a day's leave of absence!
At my own inclination, and the advice of Abbé Tresvaux, a pious and learned Breton priest who was vicar-general to M. de Quélen, I chose M. Gosselin for my tutor, and I have retained a most affectionate recollection of him. No one could have shown more benevolence, cordiality and respect for a young man's conscience. He left me in possession of unrestricted liberty.
They knew that scholasticism would not go down with the only public for which they cared the worldly and somewhat frivolous congregations which sit beneath the preachers at St. Roch or St. Thomas Aquinas. Such were the views entertained by M. de Quélen when he made over to M. Dupanloup the austere and little known establishment of Abbé Frère and Adrien de Bourdoise.
The families which had looked after the young priest, had made him a man of breeding, and admitted him into their exclusive coterie, were those with which the archbishop was intimate, and which formed in his eyes the limits of the universe. I remember seeing M. de Quélen, and he was quite the type of the ideal bishop under the old régime.
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