Following the writings of Eugene in chronological order brings us today to the prize-giving ceremony at the college where many of the members of the youth congregation were studying. Eugene’s fatherly pride in the achievements of “his” youth shines through every word he writes:
The success the congregants had today will be forever an incontrovertible proof that the piety they profess, far from harming the progress of their studies, helps them enormously to acquit themselves well in all their duties. Already beforehand we had given assurance of this to any tempted to doubt it. It had already been evident within the family circle and in the congregants’ daily conduct, but today the proof was plain for the whole town to see and the whole town applauded it with joy when at the distribution of prizes, which took place solemnly in the college chapel, it was acknowledged that the congregants were the ones who had worked most constantly and best during the whole course of the year.
They did in fact carry off the prize for excellence in all classes from rhetoric up to the sixth. Furthermore they were not satisfied with meriting this prize which is incomparably the most valued of all, since it is the reward for application and the success of the whole year’s work, but they added many others of a very honourable kind too.
We cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of setting out the names of those who merited to be crowned by the hand of the first magistrate of this town, and who thus brought honour to the Congregation to which no doubt they owe in large measure their success and their triumphs.
Diary of the Aix Christian Youth Congregation, 26 August 1815, O.W. XVI
Yvon Beaudoin comments: There follows a whole page of names with the prize taken in various areas. Three future novices of the Missionaries of Provence figure in the list: Master Giraud, Léon de Saboulin, and J. B. G. de Bausset.