This was especially true with regard to Father Rumpler, who was rector of the house, a learned and able man and one of mature spirituality.

He was a German born and bred, with the hard ideas of discipline peculiar to a class of his countrymen though foreign to the genuine German character.

He impressed young Hecker as a sedate man, wise and firm.
The friendship then begun was maintained until Father Rumpler was deprived of his reason by an attack of acute mania several years later.

But more than the friendship of Rumpler, as far as immediate results were concerned, was the providential circumstance of two other young Americans having applied to join the Redemptorists.

To Isaac this was a stimulant of no ordinary power.