slow; ten years after the foundation the
Congregation only numbered thirty-three members; but Vincent had no
desire that it should be otherwise. In 1652 it was recognized by Pope
Urban VIII under the name of the Congregation of the Mission.

Vincent lavished the greatest care on the training of his priests.
They were to be simple and frank in their relations with the poor,
modest in manner, friendly and easy of access.

"Our sermons must go straight to the point," he would say, "so that
the humblest of our hearers may understand; our language must be clear
and unaffected." The love of virtue and the hatred of evil were the
points to be insisted on; the people were to be shown where virtue lay
and how to attain it. For "fine sermons" Vincent had the greatest
contempt; he would use his merry wit to make fun of the pompous
preachers whose only thought was to impress their audience with an
idea of their own eloquence.

"Of what good is a display of rhetoric?" he would ask; "who is the
better for it? It serves no purpose but self-advertisement."

The Mission Priests did good wherever they went; everybody wanted
them, and it was hard to satisfy the appeals for missions which came
from all over the country. In due time the Congregation outgrew the
College des Bons Enfants, and was transferred to a large Augustinian
priory which had originally been a leper hospital, and still bore the
name of St. Lazare.

Up to this time the Mission Priests had contented themselves with
ministering to the peasantry, but in the course of their travels it
had become painfully apparent that the clergy themselves were in
urgent need of some awakening force. Those of good family led, for the
most part, worldly and frivolous lives, while the humbler sort were as
ignorant as the peasants among whom they lived. The religious wars had
led to laxity and carelessness; drunkenness and vice were fearfully
prevalent.

To Vincent, with his high ideals of the priesthood, this was a
terrible revelation. The old custom of giving a retreat to priests who
were about to be ordained had fallen into disuse. With the assistance
of some of the French bishops he determined to revive it, and retreats
of ten or fourteen days were organized at St. Lazare for candidates to
the priesthood. Here, in an atmosphere of prayer and recollection,
those who were about to be ordained had every opportunity of realizing
the greatness of the step that they were taking and of mak