3. A PRIEST

There is a notable gap in the records of Regis' life for three or four years after he finished his secondary schooling at the College of Grenoble. They are, however, comparatively easy to reconstruct. He was the only remaining son available to follow in his father's footsteps in the family business. Francois. the older brother . surrendered his claims on becoming a Carthusian. Cesaire was by now in his sixties and must have been anxious to share the burden of the business with a member of the family and,as a self-made man, he would have wanted to prolong his achievement into the next generation. So. for Regis. the progression from school to family business was a natural one, leaving no trace in documents, no disturbance to the rhythm of family life. In all probability Regis was already familiar with much of the business.
It was not to be so simple. Cesaire's plans came up against the values which his own and his wife's way of life had inculcated in their family. A sense of duty was there and so Regis. happily at first, joined with his father in business. In the background. however, there was the example of his Uncle Claude and with it expectations from the canons of the collegiate parish Church of Saint Louis that his good young man would follow in his uncle's footsteps. The piety of the family. with its connections in the Carthusians and Carmelites, must have been a strong call to him to consider priesthood in some form. Eventually he reached the stage where the only harrier to that ideal was his duty to his father and the calls of continuity in a family business - this last no small matter in a middle class community. We can only guess the strain and distress that all this caused to Regis and to his father. He was fortunate that Cesaire's faith enabled him to accept his son's vocation to the priesthood and the effect of that on the business he had worked so hard to develop.
A family tradition tells us that he was educated by the Oratorian Fathers. so we guess that he spent some two years at the Seminary of Grenoble in the study of theology, at that time a normal length for such studies. Then. out of the blue, as far as records and information go. he entered the noviciate of the Congregation of the Mission in Lyons in March 1769. He was twenty one years old and he would be ordained just three year. later. Why Lyons. a world away from Grenoble in those days. in another province? Why the Congregation of the Mission( also called Lazaristfrom the Saint Lazare, their central house in Paris and Vincentians in the English-speaking world)? There are no answers. Effectively his early life was cut in two sharply. one portion being in his home in Grenoble and among family at Varces, and the second when he was appointed after ordination to the priesthood to be a professor of moral theology in the Seminary.

4. A SEMINARY PROFESSOR

His First Appointment
Annecy is some 100 kilometres from both Grenoble where he was born and from Lyons where he had made his vows as a Vincentian. Today it is is the department of Haut Savoy. Though French speaking. in those days it was not in France at all but in the Kingdom of Sardinia which was ruled by the family of Savoy. The seminary was a notable building in a moderate sized town, beautifully positioned on Lake Annecy. The building had been a gift from a pious duke of Savoy some fifty years before. The normal length of the course there was two years. The Vincentian community consisted of some six or seven priests and brothers. It was no accident that young Father Clet had been sent to Annecy. A year earlier the superior at Lyons had been transferred to Annecy. He had noted Clet's intelligence, his diligence at his studies, his piety and regularity of life. We can presume that he moved heaven and earth to have this appointment made.

Life in the Seminars.

In the rather solemn world of the seminary his familiar name of "Regis" ceases to be used. Even "Francis-Regis" will be reserved for signatures. Both staff and students addressed each other formally by surname and title. Inside and outside the seminary they were dressed in their black flowing soutanes. the Vincentians being required by their rule to dress simply and cleanly without regard for fashion. Staff and students lived apart. each in their own section of the building, though the director of students shared much of the life and recreation of the students. There would be no more mountain hikes at Varces to which his rule allowed him to return only infrequently, though in the eighteenth century this rulewas interpreted benignly. The mode of living, deemed suitable for a priest of his status, would say no to helping his cousins in the fields or even to business affairs in his father's shop.
The aim of the seminary was pastoral, seeking to train priests who were pious and dutiful, who understood how to administer the sacraments and handle the general administrative affairs of a parish. These priests would need to know the moral theology that was basic to the sacrament of penance. The emphasis was not on deep learning but on the practice of the pastoral life. The role of the professor of moral theology was crucial to all this and in the fifteen years which he spent at Annecy Father Clet achieved a reputation for his encyclopedic learning, a deserved reputation even allowing for the exaggerations of the closed in seminary world. He was, as the superior who had appointed him expected, the ideal, solid, non adventurous professor, giving a fine example to his students, and always supportive of his superiors. His classical training at the Collge of Grenoble stood him in good stead. He wrote freely in Latin as well as in French. As a preacher he was respected. Eminently practical, a suitable example for his students.
Practical he was, and so, for a period at least, he was bursar to the seminary and that at a time when the seminary was being enlarged to allow for an extension of the course from two years to three. The financial aspects of this should have been no difficulty for this son of a Grenoble business man. The experience he gained in dealing with workers and craftsmen would have a value in the future which just then was not foreseen.