How he felt about his chances of recovery is shown by the following: 

“I have nothing further to say about my health than that I have none.  Were I twelve hours, or six, in my former state of health, my conscience would give me no moment of peace in my present position.  It would worry me and set me to work.  As it is I am tranquil, at peace, and doing nothing except willingly bearing feebleness and inertia.”

From Paris, June 2, 1874, he writes to George and Josephine Hecker of a visit to Cardinal Deschamps in Brussels, where he met his old director, Father de Buggenoms.  He expressed himself fully to them about the state of religion in Europe, and, although both were his admirers and warm friends, it was only on the third day that he made himself fully understood, and disabused their minds of reserves and suspicions.  But before leaving “a complete understanding, warm sympathy, and entire approval” was the result.  In one of the earlier

CHAPTERs of this Life we have adverted to Father Hecker’s difficulty in making himself understood.  On this occasion he suffered much pain, for which, he says, the joy of the final agreement amply repaid him.

He formed an intimate friendship with the Abbe Xavier Dufresne, a devout and enlightened priest of Geneva, and with his father, Doctor Dufresne, well known as the mainstay of all the works of charity and religion in that city.  The Abbe Dufresne became much attached to Father Hecker.  “The Almighty knows,” he wrote to him, “how ardently I wish to see you again, for no one can feel more than I the want of your conversation, it was so greatly to my improvement.”  We have received from the Abbe Dufresne a memorial of Father Hecker, which is valuable as independent contemporary testimony.  It is so appreciative and so instructive that we shall give the greater part of it as an appendix, together with two letters from Cardinal Newman written after Father Hecker’s death.

The following is from a letter from Mrs. Craven, written early in 1875: 

“That we have thought of you very often I need not tell you, nor yet that we have thought and talked of and pondered over the many and the great subjects which have been discussed during this week of delightful repose and solitude (though certainly not of silence).  Let me, for one, tell you that many words of yours will be deeply and gratefully and usefully remembered, and that I feel as if all you explained to us in particular concerning the inward life which alone gives meaning and usefulness to outward signs and symbols (let them be ever so sacred), and the ways and means of quickening that inward life, all come home to me as a clear expression of my own thoughts by one who had read them better than myself.”

Such was a devout and intellectual Frenchwoman’s way of describing an influence similarly felt by men and women of all classes, and of the most diverse schools of thought, whom Father Hecker met in Europe.