He never feared to make mistakes, nor dreaded a smile at his expense, and as a consequence was soon able to talk to any one.

But his French was always curious, and when he took his turn at reading during meals he gave the community some hearty laughs.
All the new-comers were invested with the Redemptorist habit about three weeks after their arrival, in September, 1845.

"You can scarce imagine the happiness I felt on my arrival here," he writes to his mother in his first letter home.

"For three days my heart was filled with joy and gladness.

I was like one who had been transported to a lovelier, a purer, and a better world." He tells her that he had waited for a fortnight before writing, to learn the place, and then, after expressing his satisfaction with everything in such sentences as the above, he fills the rest of the letter with arguments in favor of the Catholic Church and exhortations to join it.