It was the greatness, not the weakness, of Lacordaire, that, before loving God, he had loved glory. Few men have spirit enough truly to seek fame: it is notice which they wish. The heart of Lacordaire was a pure fire, encased in a cold intellect. It reminds us of an intense flame clothed in transparent ice. Sometimes, he said, he hardly knew whether his voice was moved from within by the spirit, or from without by renown. In regard to every such scruple Madame Swetchine was an infallible counsellor. Her advice was as the speech of incarnate reason and love in their most purified and exalted form. The heavy perfume that drenched his oratoric atmosphere would have intoxicated most men with self-adulation; but he offset every such allurement by constantly withdrawing from trifles, excitements, and seductions, and spending long hours in the unbroken solitude of thought and the awful neighborhood of God. If both these extremes brilliant public triumphs, and severe seclusion and asceticism had their special dangers, Madame Swetchine was his resistless guardian against them both. No one who has not read their correspondence, reaching richly through a whole generation, can easily imagine the services rendered by this gifted and saintly woman to this holy and powerful man. Community of faith, of loyalty, of nobleness, joined them. It was in looking to heaven together that their souls grew united. Drawn by the same attractions, and held by one sovereign allegiance, such souls need no vows, nor lean on any foreign support. The divinity of truth and good is their bond.
No prayer persuades, no flattery fawns, Their noble meanings are their pawns: And so thoroughly is known Each other's counsel by his own, They can parley without meeting.
At first Madame Swetchine shrank from the excessive agitation she underwent in listening to the great sermons of Lacordaire in Notre Dame. "I go through all his perils," she said: "I tremble at every rock; I feel every stroke. His way of speaking acts upon the human soul in the same way as sanctity: it wounds; but it enraptures." At length her attendance on his sermons became so constant, and her pleasure and admiration so obvious, that many of the congregation supposed her to be literally, as she was morally, his mother. One day, as she was leaning against a pillar in the crowded church, her face upturned towards the pulpit, two persons were heard whispering to each other: "Would you like to see the preacher's mother?" "Why, she died ten years ago." "No, there she is: look at her."