About the Anti-Slavery Congress
My young friend,
What must you think of your old collaborator, who contributes so little to your newspaper?
There is a good reason, and one will not say that the one who finds it is happy. Felix qui potuit... It is so simple! Your paper is young, and I am old... and although I feel rejuvenated at the thought of working on this project—I cannot however fly away with those generous pioneers of Africa, who go off to free the slaves, but all that rekindles my childhood aspirations; the rules of Lhomond's grammar—all forgotten. I speak only of this: liberare serros, liberare a servitute.
When I saw you, at the inauguration of the great Congress, next to the venerable Cardinal, whose very name is praise, I said to myself, or rather I remembered previously having students like you who went on to be missionaries in Africa. They were told:
Happy is the family that has preciously kept the heritage of faith! They live in the world; they have watched over the cradle where those elected by Providence rested; they guarded the child with vigilance to conserve his innocence of mind and heart. They have often been prepared to sacrifice; they gave back to God that which he has generously given to them!
And the child understood all of these things, and he kept himself for the one who called it into service; and it grew up conceiving of generous designs. He wants to devote himself to the happiness of his Black brothers, to teach them, to comfort them. And already, far away from the horizon that knew his childhood, he glimpses distant shores, where he hopes to bring divine teachings and liberty. He loves these unknown brothers, whom he wants to welcome into the free Christian family. One day he will leave his country, his family, all the is dear to the heart of man. He knows that in these parts of Africa to which a voice from Heaven is calling him, he will encounter all the tribulations of the Apostles: but hunger, thirst, tiredness, an early death, nothing will stop him. The generous soldier, he is ready for war; he will go, he will water the field entrusted to him with his sweat, and, when the time has come, he will water it with his blood, happy to thus give the vocation of his childhood its final consecration. Happy to be, in the words of the Holy Cardinal, the protomartyr of the Soudan! And his memory will be blessed, and the arches of Saint-Sulpice will retain his name, and hearts will beat at his memory!
So many times I've thought of the white fathers who surrounded you, you whose more than brown face expressed so much strength and energy for good!
But Haiti only has advocates for the great cause of humanity. And I was entrusted with making an artist out of one of yours. God who calls most people to work and to industry, gives a few privileged souls the order to dress material nature with sublime forms and achieve the idea of beauty. That is the vocation of the artist. May he speak to the eyes with drawings and storytelling; may he enchant the ear with the harmony of sounds; may he please the soul above all with the combination of words, signs of thought and feeling! To the poets, as to the musician, as to the painter, your newspaper, an echo of all the noble aspirations, will say the word that encourages and consoles, and will at the same time be a guide: Sursum corda!
Arnould Rogier