Dufour, Father Louis, Paris, France, to Bishop Anthony Blanc, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1844 August 29

Blanc will be surprised to read the writing of one returned from the other world as he knows Blanc thought he had gone to the second or third heaven. Dufour wrote some time after his arrival in Havana but had no reply. Meeting a missionary who boasted of the climate of the Antilles and told how much a French missionary was wanted by Bishop Daniel McDonnell, Dufour decided to go there. He was very well received by the two bishops and French confreres, Father Bertin and Father Poirier, a Eudist of the society of Father Louis of Rennes with whom Dufour was in the seminary at St. Sulpice. Dufour's first mission was in Grenada, at the end of a year the bishop recalled him to Trinidad. Dufour began work in the old town of Trinité. Wishing to snatch from the hands of the Scotch evangelists, the more than 4000 workers in whose midst they had built 2 churches, Dufour devoted himself to saying Mass twice every Sunday and returning to preach at the Cathedral. After 18 months in the burning sun he lingered for 3 months between life and death. It was decided that the air of Europe could restore him. He embarked December 22; he was shipwrecked off the coast of France below Boulogne and lost everything he had. Ten days ago he got to Paris to report on the Antilles and to decide whether to return there or to America. He met Father Angelo Mascaroni who told him all the news of New Orleans. Dufour had always had the idea that he could do good there if certain obstacles were not there. He had confided this to Father Ferdinand Dominic Bach and to Father Stephen Rousselon . Mascaroni told him that the obstacles were there no longer and took him to Father Matthew Bernard Anduze . Dufour will follow Mascaroni a little later and go directly to Blanc. America perhaps will be first in many things some day. They talked often of Blanc and Rousselon at the Marist Fathers who have opened a house in Paris. They talk of establishing themselves in the French Antilles. :: V-5-b A.L.S. French 7pp. 12mo.