After this agitating and fruitless journey, Lacordaire returned to Paris, where he lived in seclusion, in duty, and silence, for three years. Immediately after his return the cholera broke out, and he gave himself up with grave enthusiasm to the necessities of the time, attaching himself to one of the temporary hospitals. “The prejudices against the clergy were still in full force,” says M. de Montalembert; “the authorities refused the help of the Archbishop of Paris, and priests could not show themselves in the streets _en soutane_.” But the attendance of Lacordaire and a few of his more zealous brethren was tolerated. “Each day I make a little harvest for eternity,” he writes. “Most of the patients do not confess, and the priest is here only a deputy of the Church, coming timidly to seek, if there may happen to be some soul which belongs to the flock. Here and there one or two confess—others are dying without ear and without voice. I put my hand upon their forehead, and, trusting in divine mercy, I say the words of absolution. It is seldom that I go away without a feeling of satisfaction in having come.” But amid these unappreciated labours, and in the loneliness, deeper than actual solitude, of a great town, the young priest amused his lonely heart with dreams of the tranquil country and a secluded life. He thought of becoming a rural curé, and in imagination chose Franche Comté, the country of his friend. “I would bury myself in the depths of the country,” he writes again, with an effusion of visionary yet profound sadness. “I would live only for a little flock, and find all my Joy in God and in the fields. It should be manifest that I am a simple man and without ambition. Adieu, great works! adieu, fame and great name! I have known their vanity, and I desire nothing more than to live obscure and good. Some day when Montalembert shall have grown grey in the midst of ingratitude and celebrity, he will come to see upon my forehead the remains of our common youth. We shall weep together at the hearth of the _presbyterié_—he will do me justice before we die. I shall bless his children.... For me, a poor Catholic priest, I shall neither have children growing up under my eyes to survive me, nor domestic hearth, nor Church brilliant with knowledge and sanctity. Born in degenerate times, I shall pass from the earth among things unworthy of the memory of man. I shall endeavour to be good, simple, pious,—hoping disinterestedly in the future, since I shall not see it—working for those who perhaps will see it—and not accusing Providence, which might weigh down with heavier evils a life which deserves so little.”