of Louis XIII, who promptly made Vincent de Paul Almoner to the
King's ships, with the honors and privileges of a naval officer and a
salary of six hundred livres. This enabled Vincent to carry his
mission farther afield, and he determined to visit all the convict
prisons in the seaport towns, taking Marseilles as his first station.

Here, where the conditions were perhaps even worse than in Paris,
Vincent met them in the same spirit and conquered by the same means.
The fact that he had once been a slave himself gave him an insight
into the sufferings of the galley slaves and a wonderful influence
over them. Accustomed as they were to be looked upon as brutes, it was
a new experience to be treated as if it were a privilege to be in
their company. This strange new friend who went about among them,
kissing their chains, sympathizing with their sufferings and attending
to their lowest needs seemed to them like an Angel from Heaven; even
the most hardened could not resist such treatment.

In the meantime, through the generosity of Vincent's friends,
hospitals were being built and men and women were offering themselves
to help in any capacity in this work of charity. Many of these earnest
Christians gave their very lives for the galley slaves; for fevers,
plague and contagious diseases of every kind raged in the filthy
convict prisons, and many priests and lay helpers died of the
infection. Yet other devoted workers were always found to take their
place, and the work which Vincent had inaugurated thrived and
prospered.

Chapter 5
MISSION WORK

THE incident which had given rise to Vincent's first mission at
Folleville had never been forgotten by Madame de Gondi. It seemed to
her that there was need to multiply such missions among the country
poor, and no sooner had Vincent returned to her house than she offered
him a large sum of money to endow a band of priests who would devote
their lives to evangelizing the peasantry on her estates.

Vincent was delighted, but considering himself unfit to undertake the
management of such an enterprise, he proposed that it should be put
into the hands of the Jesuits or the Oratorians.

Madame de Gondi, although convinced in her own mind that Vincent, and
Vincent alone, was the man to carry out the enterprise, obediently
suggested it to one religious Order after another. In every case some
obstacle intervened, until the Countess was more than ever persuaded
that her first insti