But the missionary impulse still burned strongly in the breast of this enthusiastic youth, and it burst forth again a few years later. He received the tonsure, and entered holy orders in 1675, at the age of twenty-four, and went for a while to work in the diocese of his uncle, the Bishop of Sarlat. It was at this time that his thoughts were turned to the Levant. A letter of October 9, 1675, sets forth somewhat rhapsodically his excited feelings: “I long to seek out that Areopagus whence St. Paul preached the unknown God to heathen sages.... Neither will I forget thee, O island consecrated by the heavenly visions of the beloved disciple! O blessed Patmos, I will hasten to kiss the footsteps left on thee by the apostle, and to imagine heaven open to my gaze!... Already I see schism healed; East and West reunited; Asia awaking to the light after her long sleep; the Holy Land, once trodden by our Savior’s feet and watered by his blood, delivered from profaners and filled with new glory; the children of Abraham, more numerous than the stars, now scattered over the face of the earth, gathered from all her quarters to confess the Christ they crucified, and to rise again with him.” This was decidedly visionary, and somewhat overwrought; but it shows at least a heart on fire to do something extraordinary for God, and this he had at all periods of his life. He did not go to Greece and Palestine, abandoning the project in deference to the wishes of his family, to whom he was extremely reluctant to give pain. It was a romantic dream rather than a true vocation.