r the
convent, and even before that time his brother had gone to Paris to
study at the home of the Picpus Fathers. Joseph himself, in accordance
with his parents' design that he was to become a business man, went to
a town in France called Braine le Comte to learn the rudiments of a
commercial career and to study the French language. But while he had
gone there willingly, he felt the desire for a religious life more and
more strongly, until he finally told his parents that he desired to be
a priest. It was not difficult for him to obtain their consent and
Joseph went to Paris to study at the same school that his brother had
attended.

In Paris Joseph served as a novice and when this term was ended he went
to Louvain where his brother was already a priest in holy orders,
having adopted the name of Father Pamphile. Joseph himself planned to
take the name of Father Damien.

For some time Joseph lived with his brother in Louvain where he
continued his studies, but he was not yet ordained as a priest when an
event took place that changed the whole course of his life and was
destined in the end to make his name famous throughout the civilized
world.

The Picpus Fathers, like many other Catholic brothers, were great
missionaries, carrying on this service in what were then called the
Sandwich Islands, now better known as the Hawaiian Islands, under the
Government of the United States. At that time, however, the islands
formed an independent state under a native king and there was a great
deal to be done by the missionaries that went there.

Father Pamphile received orders to go to the Sandwich Islands and
engage in missionary work. He was delighted, for this work appealed to
him and he felt that he could serve his Church better in that far
country than by remaining in Louvain where he had his parish. After his
passage had been engaged, however, Father Pamphile was smitten with an
attack of typhus fever, and found himself unable to answer the call to
foreign service when the time came.

Now Joseph was even more ardent than his brother, and he burned to
answer this call himself, although he was not yet a priest. He asked
Father Pamphile, however, if it would be his pleasure for him to take
his place and engage in the missionary work that had been intended for
the elder brother; and Father Pamphile was only too glad to have Joseph
perform the task that his illness had rendered him unable to perform
himself. So Joseph wrote