Page 73 - March On! God will Provide by Brother Aubert

A START IS MADE 53
for Bruges on the sixth of June. Adams went to see
whether he could be accepted.
"Anthony Melis left his home the night before which
was just one year after the Founder had begun the
foundation. Melis and Adams arrived in Bruges on
the ninth of June.
"The Founder had called at the house of the R.e-
demptorists and there he found a young man anxious to
become a religious. This was Dieudbnne Tomballe,
afterwards Brother Alphonse. He and the Founder
arrived at our house in Bruges on llth.,,
June
In the first year of the foundation and in the second,
aspirants to the religious state continued to come and
go; the life for all of them was either burdensome, mean-
ingless, or unattractive. Duchateau and Smisdon re-
mained for several years and, of course, Melis and. Tom-
balle died as Xaverian Brothers. They were the hardiest
of the hardy.
Messrs. Ryken, Duchateau, and Smisdon with their
respective trades-shoemaker, tailor, weaver-did their
best to supply food for the newcomers who busied them-
selves about the house or studied when they tvere not
following the prescribed religious exercises.
No. 20 Ezelstraar was an object of suspicion. Neigh.
bors noted that the shutters of only one window wire
opened daily. (The occupants lacked the means to pr.o-
cure curtains which would have hidden the bareness of
the interior.) Also mystery was the fact that the number
of-men seen Ieaving early in the morning (they were
going to Mass) varied from day to day and that men from
outside the city came to the house, remained for several
days, and then disappeared. Finally one of the gossipy
neighbors deduced that these strange men were Free-
masons, and since no one in Ezelstriat had ever heard