The novice-master was Father Othmann, and he was by universal testimony entirely competent for his place.  He was himself the novitiate.  Its austerities, and they were not trifling, its long and frequent prayer, its total seclusion from the world, all were refined and adjusted to each one by passing through his soul and being dispensed by his wisdom.  Father Hecker regarded him as a very remarkable man.  He was a student of character, and wise and sagacious in varying the application of religious influences according to temperament and spiritual gifts.  Under him the danger of formalism, which occurs to one’s mind immediately as the incessant round of exercises is mentioned, was rendered remote; for he gave his instructions, and especially used the chapter of faults, in a way to infuse into the souls of the novices the ever-recurring freshness of individual initiative.  His model (after St. Alphonsus) was St. Francis de Sales.  He followed him constantly in his doctrine and methods, and often spoke of him and quoted him.  Of other methods and their advocates he spoke respectfully, but, however much they were in vogue, he did not follow them.  Brother Hecker was a faithful student in his school and learned much from Father Othmann.  The latter especially insisted on the principle of accepting Providence as the chief dispenser of mortifications.  He had no objection to self-imposed spiritual exercises, but he did not positively favor them.  He taught his young men that the traditional practices of devout souls as embraced in the routine of the novitiate, were good mainly to break the resistance of corrupt nature and render their souls pliant subjects of the Divine guidance in the interior life, as well as submissive to the order of God in the events of His external Providence.

The assistant novice-master, who took Father Othmann’s place during his absence, was a Walloon.  His name we have been unable to discover, but he was a holy priest, held up to the novices as their model and esteemed by them as the saint of the novitiate.  He was a very pleasant man withal, and no doubt added in every way to the fruits of the long year of spiritual trial.

When Isaac Hecker presented himself as a novice he took his place among the youths learning the A, B, C of the spiritual life, while he himself had experienced for many months the most rare dealings of the Holy Ghost with the soul.  This could not fail to come to the knowledge of Father Othmann, and, taken with the other peculiarities of his subject, to elicit his most skilful treatment.  “Pere Othmann, my novice-master,” said Father Hecker, in after years, “had a right to be puzzled by me, and so he watched me more than he did the others.”  He watched and studied him and gradually applied the two sovereign tests of genuine spirituality, obedience and humiliation.  These were all the more efficacious in this case, because Brother Hecker was a man of great native independence of character and naturally of an extremely sensitive disposition.