No sooner said than done. The rector of Salzano was named chancellor
and residential canon of the cathedral of Treviso, and appointed
spiritual director of the seminary. The bishop had not forgotten the
warnings of Don Giuseppe's friends. By this arrangement the newly
appointed canon would reside at the seminary, where the care of his
health would not be left entirely in his own hands. He would,
moreover, preside at the professors' table, and therefore would be
unable to indulge his tendency to starve so as to feed the poor.
The news was received with mixed feelings by the people of Salzano.
Joy that their beloved father should receive such a mark of honour
struggled hard with their grief at losing him. It comforted them a
little, they said, to think that his precious gifts, instead of being
spent on Salzano alone, would now find full scope in a diocese that
counted two hundred and ten parishes.
It was not until the autumn of the same year that Don Giuseppe bade
farewell to his sorrowing parishioners, and, taking possession of his
stall, sang the first vespers of Advent Sunday in the cathedral of
Treviso. Like all the other professors of the seminary, Canon Sarto
had three small rooms set apart for his use. From the windows he
could look across the neatly-kept garden to where the quiet waters of
the Sile, flowing by the ivy-coloured walls, widened out into little
lakes amongst the thickets of poplar and plane trees that lay beyond.
The rector of the seminary was Don Giuseppe's old friend Pietro
Jacuzzi, and there were in the college 160 lay students and 54
aspirants to the priesthood. "I well remember Monsignor Sarto's first
instruction," said one of the latter in after years. "'You are
expecting to find in me,' he began, 'a man of profound learning and
of wide experience in spiritual matters, a master in asceticism and
doctrine. You will be disappointed, for I am none of these things. I
am only a poor country parish-priest. But I am here by God's
will--therefore you must bear with me.' I have forgotten the
instruction," added the narrator, "but the preamble I shall never
forget."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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