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Peter's vocation was occasioned by his fight, certainly an unpropitious beginning, but he must have ever been grateful that, when he applied to Ignatius, he was not turned away until he had become older and more sedate.
Left an orphan at the age of two years, he was brought up by an aunt, who placed him, as a boy of eight, in the convent of the Carmine at Florence. For monastic duties he had no vocation, and the irregularities of his behaviour caused scandal even in that age of cynical indulgence.
To us this command is given: 'Walk worthy of your vocation with all lowliness. If you have the experience of "all lowliness," you will go on in your vocation without discouragement and disappointment, though you are unnoticed and wholly ignored. And though God promotes others and honors them and they are loved and praised by men, you are glad for them and rejoice.
The degrees by which his Eminence rose to the rank of a Prince of the Church seemed, as I thought, to have aroused in my friend a new sense of vocation. He asked me if I myself aspired to belong to the holy priesthood. I answered that this was indeed my aspiration, if I might hope to be found worthy. He appeared to be deeply affected. I ventured to ask if he too had the same prospect before him.
These lessons, elementary as they must have been, were very valuable to the boy, and his work showed such promise that his father finally consented to his adopting this strange profession, insisting only that he first graduate from Harvard, on the ground that a college education would be of value, whatever his vocation.
In those days the dog's ears were closely cropped, not for the sake of embellishment, but as a measure of protection against the fangs of his opponent in the pit when money was laid upon the result of a well-fought fight to the death. For fighting was the acknowledged vocation of his order, and he was bred and trained to the work.
I say that if daily events and scenes do not constantly recall and utilise the ideas and emotions contained in the books which you have read or are reading; if the memory of these books does not quicken the perception of beauty, wherever you happen to be, does not help you to correlate the particular trifle with the universal, does not smooth out irritation and give dignity to sorrow then you are, consciously or not, unworthy of your high vocation as a bookman.
In five minutes, I discovered that my friend was the victim of an abundant vanity, and that he believed that his vocation in life was organ-playing. Again, I remember that, when I was a schoolmaster, one of my colleagues was a perfect byword for the disorder and noise that prevailed in his form.
Eve had the sense to dissuade him from following his terrible vocation; for the inventor like Moses on Mount Horeb, is consumed by the burning bush. He cultivates literature by way of recreation, and leads a comfortable life of leisure, befitting the landowner who lives on his own estate.
And why does this girl, his full sister, Jenny Rintherout, move in the same vocation with safe and noiseless step shod, or unshod soft as the pace of a cat, and docile as a spaniel Why? but because she is in her vocation. Let them minister to us, Sir Arthur, let them minister, I say, it's the only thing they are fit for.
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