These are the last dying words of Dominic Daley and James Halligan.

At this awful moment of appearing before the tribunal of the Almighty, and knowing that telling a falsehood would be eternal perdition to our poor souls, we solemnly declare we are perfectly innocent of the crime for which we suffer, or of any other murder or robbery, and never saw, to our knowledge, Marcus Lyon in our lives. And unaccountable as it may appear, the boy never saw one of us looking at him, nor either of us leading, driving, or riding a horse, and we never went off the high road. We blame no one, we forgive every one. We submit to our fate as being the will of the Almighty, and beg of Him to be merciful to us, through the merits of His divine son, our blessed Savior, Jesus Christ. Our sincere thanks to the Reverend Jean Cheverus, for his kind attention to us during our long confinement.

Sincerely, Dominic Daley and James Halligan.

Halligan handed the piece of paper to the sheriff. "Would you kindly see that they put that in the papers, sir," he said. "Just as we wrote it."

The sheriff said that he would. Halligan glanced down one last time at the priest, who stood off to the side of the gallows, his hands folded in prayer. Between them passed a knowing look, the sort that passes between those who share a secret. He gave Cheverus a little nod and the priest returned the same. The guards then removed the manacles but bound their arms and legs snugly with lengths of rope. Next they placed the white hoods over their heads. The last thing Halligan saw, the last thing he would see of this world, was a dark bird wheeling across the blue sky, swooping downward, its glistening wings backswept. Then he felt the noose being placed over the hood and tightened about his neck. "Jamy boy?" Daley said, his voice dry, near to cracking. "Aye." "Goodbye." "Goodbye, Dom."

"You been a good and true friend, Jamy." "As have you." "See you in heaven."

Halligan thought of replying but didn't know what to say. Then he heard Daley praying, the sounds muffled by the hood.

A few awkward seconds of silence stretched out, when the world and its affairs seemed to move off somewhere, to grow silent and still and very distant. His heart now was beating so hard he thought it would burst. Easy, he told himself. Take it easy, boyo. You're almost there. It's almost over. He heard the sound of a magpie squawking not far off, and someone in the great crowd clearing his throat. Then he heard a swift whooshing sound followed by the shuddering smack of an ax blade striking wood, and the next thing Halligan knew, the solidness, the firmness of the palpable world melted beneath his feet and he was falling. It was as if he had jumped over the steep cliffs of Slea Head and was dropping into the sea far below. His bowels fell out of him, his head swirled and sparkled with a tingly light. Things sped up suddenly, rushed across his consciousness. There was a clattering, a terrible jumbled noise in his skull, followed by a raging fire that erupted in his eyes and ears, then spread to his throat and lungs. He was suddenly so thirsty. So damn thirsty. More thirsty than he'd be working cutting wheat on the hottest day in August. Oh, what he'd give for a pint of ale!

Then just as suddenly, everything abruptly slowed. He found himself in that quiet, cool place in the woods. Bridie was standing there in the middle of the water. He was afraid to enter it at first, the shocking cold of it, but she was smiling at him so sweetly, holding out a hand, beckoning him in. Come, she seemed to be saying. Come love. Finally, he stepped into the water. Its frigid cold seemed almost to burn the soles of his feet, and he shuddered violently, his entire body quaking. But then as he got used to the cold, it felt good, refreshing, the bottom soft and slick beneath his bare feet. Bridie put her arms around his neck and kissed him. Her lips were also wet and cool, and her body felt soft and pliant against him. Her hair smelled of apples, sweet, ripe apples. He bunched the soft black fullness in his hands and inhaled its aroma. He buried his nose in it. He cried out, "Bridie." But the damnedest thing--no sound came from his throat. Not a peep. He tried again but still nothing.

Then he could no longer see her and everything faded first to dull gray, and then to tan, and finally to a dingy whitish-yellow, the color of old sailcloth. Then there was nothing. Nothing at all. Just a dark silence.

The two bodies swung in the afternoon heat for upwards of an hour. Some of the large crowd remained, staring at the two hooded figures hanging limp and still. A few boys stayed to watch the rest of it from their perch in a nearby ash tree, but most of the spectators had had enough. They turned away, sated and chastened, and walked slowly back to town, to work or to their families, to their lives. Cheverus noticed, however, the change in them. They moved quietly, solemnly, with the almost reverential comportment of those having just received the sacrament. The scene they'd just witnessed had humbled them in some way. He liked to think it had been the final profession of their innocence, right there on the gallows. The utter sincerity of it. But he was not so sure. Perhaps it was just the heat.

Finally, two guards approached and cut the dead men down. They fell leadenly, limply, like bags of wet wool, their limbs spilling awkwardly on the ground. Cheverus had waited nearby, praying silently. He went up to them and knelt. When the hoods were removed, he saw that their eyes were bloodshot and staring vacantly toward the sky. They were as empty as eggshells from which birds had already flown away. He closed them gently. From Daley's hand he had to pry the beads loose. Then, though they were already quite dead, he performed conditional extreme unction, first for Daley and then for Halligan. Touching their foreheads with the oil he'd taken from the pocket of his robe and then saying the words: Ego te absolvo ab omnibus censuris et peccatis . . .

The two men from the wagon approached the gallows, lugging the coffins. Cheverus, though, wouldn't move out of the way until he had finished his ministrations. They stood looking on, annoyed at the inconvenience. It was hot, and they wanted to get out of the sun. Finally, when he was done, they picked up the bodies and tossed them unceremoniously into the coffins. Then they bore the coffins over to the wagon, climbed in.

"Pardon me," Cheverus said to them. "What will happen now?"

One man, a thin, pock-faced fellow, glanced down at Cheverus. "Why, we'll take 'em to the slaughterhouse," he explained. "They'll be cut up and rendered."

"What of their remains?" he asked hesitantly.

"What's left we'll toss out for the dogs."

Then he slapped the horse with the reins and headed off.

Cheverus was thankful they hadn't seemed to suffer, that the whole business ended quickly. Though Daley had struggled for several seconds, his body jerking, his head twitching terribly. He was glad that Finola hadn't been there to witness it. He prayed then that God would take them into His loving bosom. Even Halligan. Especially Halligan. He is so alone. Lord. Cheverus pleaded. And yet he believes. I know he does. In his heart, Lord, he believes.

As he began the long walk back to town, where he would meet Finola and give her her husband's effects--the rosary beads and letters--he thought of that peculiar noise just before the end. One of them--he couldn't say which, though he thought it might have been Halligan-- had called out just before he hit the bottom of the rope. At the last possible moment before his neck was broken. One word. Cheverus couldn't say what it was, or if it was anything intelligible at all. Perhaps just a grunt as the air was squeezed from his lungs. Still, he wondered if at the very edge of mortality, before crossing over, he had asked for God's mercy. Cheverus prayed that he had.

EPILOGUE:.

st. augustine's cemetery south boston, 1821 Father Matignon's tomb lay facing the small chapel's front door. The red brick of the recently completed Gothic-style building, the second church in the Boston diocese, shone brightly in the June sunlight. A handful of white sandstone markers lay scattered haphazardly about, gleaming as a baby's first teeth. Yet aside from the modest chapel and the abbe's tomb, and perhaps a half dozen other stones, the cemetery was still mostly vacant. After all, the parish had only purchased the land three years before, when the city's board of health had finally granted permission for "a group of Christians known as Roman Catholics" to establish a cemetery of their own. Father Matignon's remains had been removed from their temporary resting place in the Old Granary burial grounds and interred here. It was Cheverus who had said his funeral Mass. Many of the city's dignitaries had come to pay their last respects, including old John Adams and Charles Bulfinch, even Caleb Strong, who would himself die the next year. All of the nearly sixteen hundred Irish of the parish had come. The crowd was so large it had spilled out of Holy Cross and onto Franklin Street. Even those who had once openly scorned Catholics made an appearance. They could no longer afford to ignore their growing numbers.

The epitaph on the abba's tomb was from Ecclesiastes: Beloved of God and men, whose memory is in benediction. Cheverus had selected it for his dear friend. He thought of their conversation so many years ago. How Father Matignon had told him that Boston had become his home, and that it was here he wished to be buried. And so it had come to pass. Cheverus found it hard to believe that his mentor and closest friend had been gone three years already. He had founded the mission, had cast his bread upon the waters, but he had not lived to see it come back to him: for Catholics to have their own cemetery, a second church, their first American-born priest, Virgil Barber, ordained in Holy Cross, for the state to grant "papists" the right to hold public office in Massachusetts. How surprised he would have been to see such changes. How surprised, indeed.

Cheverus came here as often as he was able. He especially liked paying a visit on Sunday afternoons. He would make the long walk from Franklin, crossing over the South Boston Bridge to this isolated region once known as Dorchester Neck. He looked forward to it, as one would to meeting an old acquaintance he'd not seen in a while. While he felt his friend's absence each day as a physical ache, he found it comforting to say the rosary or to offer up a prayer, or simply to sit quietly, the way they had so often in life. South Boston was removed from the bustle of the city, and the cemetery was quiet and peaceful, situated on a grassy hill overlooking the harbor. Near the chapel rose a large chestnut tree which spread its limbs for shade. The place reminded him a little of his mother's gravesite back in Mayenne, not so much in its physical appearance as in the quietude and solace it offered. He would kneel on the grass and tidy up about the large white tombstone, perhaps lay some wildflowers he had picked along the way. He would reflect on their early years together, sometimes even speaking out loud. "Do you remember my first day?" he might ask with a rueful smile. And he would think back to the first moment he'd set foot in America a quarter century before: his legs still shaky after three long months at sea, wondering where he would find his new superior, how he would fare in this strange land. Or the many hardships the two had had to endure, which nonetheless seemed to lessen in severity in the hazy light of memory. Mostly he preferred to recall their pleasant evenings in the parlor, their games of chess and cards, reading by the fire. The soothing effect the abba's voice had upon him.

When his visit was at an end, he would say simply, "Goodbye, old friend." He would rise to his feet with difficulty, the rheumatism making his bones ache painfully. He was getting on in years himself, and he had gained weight, which showed in his heavy jowls and in the thickness of his waist. His gait had slowed, and though he still preferred to walk on most of his rounds about the city, it was without the spring in his step he'd once had. His hair had thinned and turned completely white, and his face had become lined with wrinkles, so that now, in his fifties, he had at last given up his boyish looks and taken on a venerable appearance, which matched his office--he was, after all, Bishop Cheverus now. His brown eyes had remained just as sharp and lucid as ever, yet the vague look of melancholy that had always darkened them had altered into something else, something deeper, more profound. There was about them now the hardened look of acceptance, an unflappable resignation toward whatever the future might hold.

Though it was almost the start of summer, he would not be making the trip north to visit the Indians. He had been spending less and less time at the mission, having too many other duties requiring his attention here; and quite frankly, the journey had become too much for his frail health. He let that duty fall to one of his several younger assistants, Father Ryan or Father Byrne. And since his appointment as Bishop, he had been slowly relinquishing much of the day-to-day running of the parish to his vicar-general, Father William Taylor. Cheverus thought Father Taylor, an Irish priest, quite capable. A man of impressive erudition and learning. He was also somewhat stubborn, even at times overbearing. He often disputed with Cheverus about church matters and policy, even about Catholic dogma, so that Cheverus found himself muttering under his breath when he had left him. When he thought about it, Father Taylor was not so very different from himself in his younger days. Perhaps a little more headstrong. Yet the bishop was willing to overlook that, so long as the Irish finally had one of their own to offer them the sacraments.

He had come early today to have a moment alone before he was to meet them. The afternoon was one of those balmy late spring days, warmish but not unpleasantly so, the sky clear and wide and so blue it almost hurt the eye to look directly upon it. A light wind washed softly in off the harbor, rippling the surface and bringing the smell of salt and of spices from the ships at anchor. He could see several small boats, their white sails unfurled, dipping and canting, the light shimmering off the water like scattered diamonds. Across the habor he could see Beacon Hill and the Capitol's dome. As he was looking out, a blur of brilliant red swept across his field of vision and alighted in one of the chestnut tree's lower boughs. A cardinal. Fascinated, Cheverus watched it sitting there for a moment, a red stain on the leafy green. His heart thrilled at its sudden appearance. If he had been someone prone to accepting omens, this would have been one, though he could not have said what it presaged. In a moment though, the bird took to flight again and was gone. He was pleased with how the cemetery and the chapel had turned out. It was really quite lovely, he thought. If left up to him, he would, when his own time came, be very content to rest here, next to his old friend. But he had ceased to hope for things concerning himself. If the years had taught him anything, it was this: his life was not his own to do with as he pleased.

He made his way slowly over to the edge of the cemetery, near a spreading yew. There he gazed down at the two stone markers, side by side. One was for Rose Daley. She had died back in 1806, hardly a month after her son. The priest had been with her at the end. He'd given her the last rites in that small room that smelled of death. She lay peacefully, as implacable as some great stone. Just before she expired, her eyes took on a wild, incandescent look. She stared up at him, but didn't seem to see him. "Father!" she cried frantically, almost blindly reaching out for him. "Father!" He told her it was all right, that he was right there. "D'ye think I'll be seeing me boys in heaven?" He patted her hand and said she would. Then she slowly loosened her grip and let herself go, as if dropping off to sleep. As with Father Matignon, her remains had been removed here.

Next to Rose's was a second stone. It had been placed there just recently. The grass around it was only now beginning to cover the raw wound in the earth. Cheverus himself had paid for the stone. There were those in the parish who didn't want it. Who objected to including it among law-abiding souls. Others spoke of trouble when the Protestants found out. But times had changed during the past decade and a half. It was still difficult for Irish Catholics but not quite as bad as it had been. Many of Boston's Irish had the vote, and they were slowly becoming a political force to be reckoned with. Besides, Cheverus was a bishop now and wielded more than a little influence, not only within the diocese but among many of the city's elite. The little bishop had insisted, and in the end he had won out. He read the simple inscription: "In Memory of Dominic Daley and James Halligan."

As he looked at the stone he couldn't help thinking back to those times. The months leading up to the trial, all the troubles surrounding it. The bitterness and hatred and fear it had caused for so many. He recalled those few days he had spent with the men before their deaths. Innocent men who had died for no reason other than the fact that they were Irish Catholics. And yet in the wake of their deaths, he liked to think he had noted a change even then, a lessening of the enmity in which Catholics were held. Perhaps it was due to the bravery with which the two had faced their end, or with their declaration of innocence there on the gallows. Who could not believe their sincerity? Or perhaps it was simply the fact that people had had their revenge, their fill of blood, and they were sated--at least for a time.

He thought of the one named Halligan. Even now he recalled that last look the man had given him, seconds before he plunged to his death. An expression so disconsolate, so forsaken. How alone in the world he had seemed then. How utterly and completely alone. Cheverus hoped he had been of some comfort to him in his final hours, but he could not say for certain. Every man comes to his death in his own way. Yet each day he prayed to the Virgin on behalf of the man's soul, and at night before he went to bed, he beseeched God to forgive the man's sins, whatever they were. He knew only God could see into a man's heart, only He could know what lay there.

He thought too of the letter Halligan had written to that woman back in Ireland. The letter Cheverus had posted when he returned to Boston. He had never heard from her, though of course there was no reason that he should. Still, from time to time he couldn't help wondering what the man had said to her. And if she had finally come to forgive him and understand that he had loved her. Or were there, as Halligan himself had told him, some things beyond forgiveness? Cheverus's entire life had been based on that not being true.

"Father," a voice said softly behind him, interrupting his reverie.

He turned to see the woman and the boy beside her.

"Hello, Finola," he said. "And you, Michael."

He hugged Finola, then shook the hand of her son, who towered over him now. Michael was a tall, rawboned youth of fifteen, six-foot or better, already with a light beard on his sharp chin. He had his father's long face and broad shoulders, his mother's doe-like eyes and full mouth. Yet he had grown into a handsome boy nonetheless. Finola had hardly changed at all. She was as thin as ever. Though her orange-blond hair now had more gray in it, and there were hard wrinkles about her mouth, when she smiled, as she did now on seeing the priest, she looked as she always had, like a timid country girl unsure of herself.

"Hope you haven't been waiting long, Father," she said.

"No, not at all. How have you been, Finola?"

"Good," she replied, glancing down at the newer headstone. Finola crossed herself, and the sight made her mouth go hard and furrrowed. " 'Tis a lovely stone. Thank you, Father."

He nodded.

She had not remarried, nor had she talked again of returning home. Like Cheverus, she had stayed on in America, though as with him it had never truly felt like home. She had raised her son alone. Michael had attended the school Cheverus had started and could read and write, though he had dropped out at thirteen to work in order to help make ends meet. He was a good boy to his mother, never gave her any trouble. Except, that is, for the occasional fight he was in over some remark a boy had made about his father. Cheverus had heard all this in the confessional. He advised the boy not to pay them any mind, that it was better to turn the other cheek. Michael listened, nodded soberly, but continued to fight just the same. Secretly Cheverus took a kind of fatherly pride in him for such spirit, such loyalty. The priest had kept his word to Dominic Daley. He had looked after Finola and her son, helping them as much as he could. He had taken Michael under his wing. From time to time, Cheverus would slip him a nickel to buy an apple, or see to it that he had a new pair of shoes, or have his mother and him for dinner at the rectory. When the child asked whether it was true what they said about his da, Cheverus would tell him only God knew the truth. But what he did know was that his father had been a good man who loved his wife and son very much.

UA lovely day, is it not, Father?" Finola said.

He agreed that it was. They stood quietly, awkwardly in the gleaming sunlight for a moment, looking down at the stones. Finally, the three knelt on the grass, and Cheverus led them in prayer.

Author's Note.

While this is a work of fiction, the actual incident upon which it is based is real, as are most of the main characters--Father Cheverus, Dominic Daley and James Halligan, Father Matignon, Governor Caleb Strong, James Sullivan, and Francis Blake. In the service of fiction, however, I have taken many liberties with real characters and events and chronologies. By all accounts, Father Cheverus was a remarkably literate, gregarious, courageous, and dedicated man, one who almost singlehandedly turned the scorn of New England Yankees toward Catholics into respect and toleration, so much so that when he finally returned to France in 1823, he was universally admired and missed by all, Protestant and Catholic alike. Yet historical fiction resides in the dark crevices between what is known, flourishing in the hidden recesses of the undocumented heart. It is a fact that Father Cheverus was there at the Convent of the Carmes on that bloody Sunday, the first day of the September Massacres, and what would become known generally to history as the beginning of the French Terror; it is also a fact that he, along with some forty other clergymen, did somehow manage to escape the slaughter by climbing over the convent walls and running into the Paris streets. What happened as he fled from the bloodthirsty mobs hunting all priests that day in the city, as well as what private lifelong effect this may have had on such a sensitive and gentle man, is, finally, only conjecture.

Many years after the hanging of Daley and Halligan on that warm June day in Northampton, Massachusetts, a rumor began that a man, on his deathbed, had confessed to the killing. Some said it was the uncle of the boy who had been the eyewitness, Laertes Fuller. As with Sacco and Venzetti, another pair of immigrants who were put on trial more than a century later, there is little doubt that the politics and prejudices of the time were played out in the courtroom of the Daley-Halligan murder trial. In the following year, 1807, Attorney General James Sullivan ran again for governor as the Republican candidate, this time defeating the Federalist Caleb Strong. Two years after his prosecution of the Irishmen, Sullivan would die in office. And though Strong would later win back his seat, the zenith of the Federalists had passed forever, and the Republican star was on the rise. Father Cheverus decided to remain in Boston, not returning to his beloved France for another seventeen years. Two years later, he was made the first Bishop of Boston, and upon his return to France, a cardinal. In 1818, his dear friend and mentor, Father Matignon, died and was buried in Boston. Nearly a century and a half later, the despised Irish Catholics would become a political force, not only in Masschusetts but nationally as well with the election of John F. Kennedy. Yet it was not until 1984 that the governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis, finally pardoned Dominic Daley and James Halligan for the murder of Marcus Lyon. Part of the official pardon is presented below.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

By His Excellency.

MICHAEL S. DUKAKIS..

Governor.

A PROCLAMATION.

WHEREAS: Dominic Daley and James Halligan were executed by hanging following their arrest, trial, and conviction for the murder of Marcus Lyon in the Town of Northampton in June, 1806; and WHEREAS: Dominic Daley and James Halligan were Irish Catholic Immigrants who lived in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; and WHEREAS:The historical record shows that religious prejudice and ethnic intolerance played a significant role in their arrests and trial which resulted in the denial of their right to due process and a miscarriage of justice; and WHEREAS:Legal counsel for Daley and Halligan were appointed by the court only two days prior to the beginning of their trial and had no opportunity to prepare a defense, or visit the murder site; and WHEREAS:Not a word of testimony was offered in defense of Daley and Halligan and they were helpless to defend themselves because at that time defendants were not permitted to testify in their own defense; and WHEREAS:The trial and execution of Dominic Daley and James Halligan are reminders that we must constantly guard against the intrusion of fear and prejudice in all judicial and government decisions, and to resolve to not allow the rights of any racial, ethnic, or religious group to be denied or infringed as a result of such prejudices.

NOW, THEREFORE, I MICHAEL S. DUKAKIS, GOVERNOR.

OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS.

DO HEREBY PROCLAIM MARCH 18TH, 1984 AS.

DOMINIC DALEY AND JAMES HALLIGAN.

MEMORIAL DAY.

On a small hill overlooking the town of Northampton, at the site where the men were hanged, sits a simple monument to the two men.

I would like to acknowledge a number of sources that were of invaluable help to me in the writing of this book. Foremost were Annabelle M. Melville's wonderful biography Jean Lefebvre de Cheverus as well as AndrPS J. M. Hamon's Life of Cardinal Cheverus. Extremely useful for nineteenth-century Irish culture and politics were The Conversations at Curlow Creek by David Malouf, Famine by Liam O'Flaherty, The Silent People by Walter Macken, and The Diary of an Irish Countryman by Cfn Lae Amhlaoibh (trans, by TomPSs de Bhaldraithe). For information about Federalist Boston and early Massachusetts, I am indebted to Bulfinch's Boston, 1787-1817 by Harold and James Kirker; The Book of Boston: The Federal Period by Marjorie Drake Ross; Bostons Immigrants by Oscar Handling; and Coaching Roads of Old New England by George Francis Marlowe. For information about the French Revolution I relied on The King's Trial: The French Revolution vs. Louis XVI by David Jordan. I am also grateful to Mr. Joseph Trainor for his translation of passages from Saint-Armand's book Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of the Royalty, and I have used his interesting hypothesis that it was the revolutionary, Anacharsis Clootz, who led the sansculottes in their attack on the Convent of the Carmes. For information on early French missionaries in America I relied heavily on Black Robe by Brian Moore and The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, from which I used a quote in Chapter nine. For early execution practices in America, I found Rites of Execution: Capital Punishment and the Transformation of American Culture, 1776-1865 by Louis R Masur and Until You Are Dead: The Book of Executions in America by Frederick Drimmer especially useful. And more generally I would like to acknowledge the following: The Northampton Book by Daniel Aaron, Harold Faulkner, et al; History of Northampton, Massachusetts by James R. Trumball; and The Look of Paradise: A Pictorial History of Northampton, Massachusetts by Jacqueline Van Voris. For the politics of the period I found the following of particular interest: Life of Theodore Sedgwick, Federalist by Richard E. Welch, Jr.; Life of James Sullivan by Thomas C. Amory; and A Memoir of Caleb Strong by Henry Cabot Lodge.

I would also like to thank the American Antiquarian Society, the Boston Athenaeum, the Dubois Library of the University of Massachusetts, Elizabeth Marzuoli of the Massachusetts State Archives, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum, as well as Historic Northampton for their gracious help with research. Of particular assistance for research on the trial itself, I would like to thank Blaise Bisaillon of Forbes Library of Northampton for providing me with a copy of the unsigned pamphlet called Proceedings on the Trial of Dominic Daley and James Halligan, from which I quoted quite liberally in chapters six and eight. I would also like to acknowledge several works upon which I relied for information about the trial: "The Hanging of Daley and Halligan" by Richard C. Garvey; "Who Murdered Marcus Lyon?" by Andrienne G. Clark; "Anti-Catholic Prejudice in Early New England: The Daley-Halligan Murder Trial" by James M. Camposeo; and "The Murder Trial of Halligan and Daley--Northampton, Massachusetts, 1806" by the Honorable Robert Sullivan, himself a former Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice.

I owe a large debt of gratitude to the folks of the Eastern Frontier Society for providing me with a cabin and with the peace and quiet of the Maine woods to write a large portion of the novel. I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge my deep debt of gratitude to Fairfield University for the generous financial support they provided me. A special thanks goes out to the staff of Fairfield's DiMenna-Nyselius Library for their unwavering help in locating many books and articles, and for providing me with a quiet space to work. I would personally like to offer a big thanks to Jonathan Hodge and John Cayer, who were able to locate rare books and articles for me, and to Sharon Sparkman for being such a friendly face in the morning. I also want to thank several other individuals at Fairfield: foremost among them, Father Charles Allen, S. J., for his helpful suggestions about Catholic rites and practices; Dr. Marie-Agnes Sourrieau for translating passages of French for me; and Carleigh Brower, my assistant, for her keen editorial eye. I would, of course, like to acknowledge a deep debt of gratitude to my editor at St. Martin's, Diane Reverand, who has shown more confidence in my career that I can ever hope to repay. Finally, as always, I would like to thank my agents, Nat Sobel and Judith Weber, for their insightful editorial help, their unfailing support, and their ongoing friendship.

end.