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Leo Dehon - the young student in Paris (ca. 1859/60)

Although Leo Dehon in his first academic year studied at the Institut Barbet for his entrance to the Military Academy (Polytechnique), at the same time he enrolled at the university to study law, which he concentrated on beginning with his second year.
Leo Dehon "put his time in Paris to good use in other ways. He became acquainted with the social and political life there and began to take more interest in the arts. He regularly went to the Catholic Club in the St. Sulpice district... The club was a popular place for Catholic students and intellectuals to meet and have discussions. Conferences were held there on literary topics, as well as current issues. The problem of Gallicanism was a subject of passionate debate, as was the question of liberal Catholicism." (Yves Ledure, A short life of L. Dehon, p. 25s)

In his first year in Paris Leo Dehon also joined the St. Vincent de Paul Society. His own description gives a good idea of the charitable profile of this organization but also of the quarter:

"Our poor belonged to the Mouffetard quarter, in our days crossed by the Boulevard St. Germain: thickly populated, old, dirty and full of physical and moral miseries. The poverty was abominable there. I specifically looked after two elderly men, who lived under the roof, totally destitute, in a small attic in which I couldn't even stand up straight. I managed to instil in them some Christian sentiment, and they in turn edified me. Social hatred was rampant in that neighborhood. One day a woman of the working class shouted insults and threats at me merely because she thought I belonged to a higher social class than she did." (NHV I/36r f.)