Chronicles of Notre Dame du Lac
Edward Sorin, CSC -- Translated by John M. Toohey, CSC, 1895

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1859

pg 373       know nothing of the youth of this city and we have no place to 
             instruct them; they are compelled to seek elsewhere what they 
             could easily find at home.
                  Without further discussion of what is unalterably decreed in 
             my mind, I demand that you take your measures, because I am myself 
             beginning to take mine.
                  I remain, Very Rev. dear Sir,
                  Sincerely yours in X
                  +James, Bp. of Chicago.
                  
                  It would be useless to attempt to describe the surprise and 
             pain caused at Notre Dame by this first letter.  To dismiss more 
             than thirty members without any other pretext than that of the 
             violation of a contract in regard to which he himself had said 
             that the affair should be left in statu quo until the regular 
             nomination of a Bishop, was something hardly credible.
                  On the following week a Chicago lawyer was consulted on the 
             question of the contract, which he declared to be perfectly valid.
             The Rev. F. Sorin then went to see the Bishop, who agreed as to 
             the validity of the contract and who admitted that it was optional