Three days after the trip to Bayeux, I had to make a longer one, that to the Eternal City.129 Ah! what a trip that was! It taught me more than long years of studies; it showed me the vanity of everything that happens and that everything is affliction of spirit under the sun.130 However, I saw some very beautiful things; I contemplated all the marvels of art and religion; above all, I trod the same soil as did the holy apostles, the soil bedewed with the blood of martyrs. And my soul grew through contact with holy things.
I am very happy for having been at Rome, but I understand those worldly persons who thought that Papa had me make the trip in order to change my ideas about the religious life; there was something about it that could shake a vocation less firm. Having never lived among the great of this world, Céline and I found ourselves in the midst of the nobility who almost exclusively made up the pilgrimage. Ah! far from dazzling us, all these titles and these “de” appeared to us as nothing but smoke. From a distance, this had something thrown a little powder in my eyes, but close up, I saw that “all that glistens is not gold,” and I understood the words of the Imitation “Be not solicitous for the shadow of a great name, not for acquaintance with many, nor for the particular love of individuals.”131
I understood true greatness is to be found in the soul, not in a name, since as Isaiah says: “The Lord will call his servants by ANOTHER NAME,” 132 and St. John says: “To him that overcomes I will give a white stone, and on the stone a NEW NAME written that no man knows but the one who receives it.” 133 It is in heaven, then, that we shall know our titles of nobility. Then shall every man have praise from God 134 and the one who on earth wanted to be the poorest, the most forgotten out of love of Jesus, will be the first, the noblest, and the richest!