Note 133 — BOOK II[75]

Joseph Pierre Picot de Limoëlan de Clorivière (1768-1826) entered the army, espoused the Royalist cause, and refused to accept the pacification of 1799. He returned to Paris, and was on the eve of marrying a charming young lady of Versailles, Mademoiselle Julie d'Albert, when the explosion of the infernal machine took place in the Rue Saint-Nicaise (24 December 1799). Limoëlan was one of the principal agents in the plot. Thanks to the devotion of his betrothed, he escaped to America, and upon his arrival in New York wrote to Mademoiselle d'Albert to come out to him and be married there. The reply came as a shock to him. Mademoiselle d'Albert had taken a vow to devote herself to God, if her lover succeeded in making good his escape. She besought him to forget the past and to think only of his eternal future. In 1808 the young officer entered the seminary at Baltimore. He commenced a new life, changed his name to Clorivière, was ordained priest in 1812, and received a curacy at Charleston. He returned to France in 1815 to collect what remained of his fortune, the whole of which he devoted to pious works in America, including the re-endowment of the Convent of the Visitation at Georgetown, founded by Miss Alice Lalor in 1805. Mademoiselle d'Albert survived Father de Clorivière for many years. She kept her vow of celibacy, but did not take the veil, for want of a vocation. At the age of fifty she was relieved by Pope Gregory XVI. from her vow. She died at Versailles, advanced in years, after a life devoted entirely to works of piety and charity.—B.