e Most Holy Redeemer into Austria
and other parts of Germany several years before the time of which we
write. A saint himself, and of wonderful missionary gifts, he was
worthy of the title of second founder of the order of St. Alphonsus
Liguori. St. Clement was the son of a Moravian peasant, and in early
life had been a baker by trade. St. Alphonsus was still alive when
Clement, while on a pilgrimage to Rome, was enrolled there in the
Redemptorist novitiate. This event was auspicious of the future of
the entire community, since his apostolate was the means of
propagating the order among the northern nations, and giving to it
some of its present dominant characteristics of Teutonic discipline;
whereas in the land of its origin it has never fully recovered from
the disasters which befell it during the lifetime of its founder. In
Germany and the Low Countries, on the other hand, the children of St.
Alphonsus and St. Clement were, at the time when the three Americans
joined them, the most powerful preachers in the Church. Their
vocation called them to give missions--spiritual exercises lasting
from a week to a month--to the faithful in every part of Catholic
Europe, not excepting France. Their fame was established as the
foremost preachers of penance and of the Redeemer's love for sinners.

St. Trond was the novitiate of the Belgian Province, which embraced
Belgium and Holland as well as the newly established convents in
England and America. The Provincial was Father de Held, whom we saw
in Baltimore while he was there on a tour of inspection of the
American houses. He was an Austrian German, a man of noble presence,
matured spirituality and an accomplished missionary. Father Hecker
knew him well in after years, and always counted him as one who
understood his spirit and approved his aspirations.

The convent in St. Trond was in a narrow street of the quaint little
city; so narrow, indeed, that one almost fancied that he could touch
both walls by stretching out his arms. It was a solid old structure,
built in the first half of the fifteenth century by St. Colette for
her Poor Clares, an ample guarantee of its conformity to the ideas of
religious poverty. It was not architecturally fine, but was a curious
and interesting building. Isaac in one of his letters home says that
the house was very roomy, with long corridors having cells on each
side. It abutted on a church which was open to the public and served
by the fathers;