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ESTABLISHMENT OF CAPUCHIN ORDER IN INDIA- II 553 The Commissary tearfully conceded that he had been labouring under trying conditions especially when it came to getting suitable hands for the Novitiate and the Study. There were not many among the missionaries disposed to follow the regular life in the community. In an emergency the Superiors were wont to recall to their Missions the staff members, even during the academic year. Since the Regular Superiors were based distantly from one another, on short notice it was not practical to seek their counsel. If an all-round religious training was to be given to the Lay Brothers, a mandatory three-year post-novitiate course had to be organized for them. The financial demands on the Novitiate and the Study too used to be occasionally a headache for the Commissary 160 • Ever since he had been invested with the charge of the Commissary, he was finding himself at the receiving end; as Regular Superior of Agra, he had been obliged to humour his friars. It required extraor~aiy knack and tact to get all the Regular Superiors together for the meetings and to arrive at decisions. He had to brave it out when Fr Christopher, the new Regular Superior, and his friars lashed out at the presence of the clerics in their Friai:y. The nee-professed had to stay on at the Novitiate as the space circumscribed at Mussoorie became overcrowded. The same fate was fast overtaking the Novitiate too and the Master was at the end of his tether; he wanted to create facilities for the neo– professed who were now studying of philosophy. Every so often he had to plough a lonely furrow 161 . Even years later the Commissary still held that with a dose of goodwill the locale in Mussoorie would have catered to the Fathers of Agra as their holiday villa and to the clerics as their Study 162 • The Commissary grew disquieted as his letters to Rome had been drawing blank. Taking the hint that the General was averse to getting the Order into the red especially with his term of office drawing to a close, the Commissary decided to find a way out of the cul-de--sac by making the Study fully independent administratively. He, therefore, had a part of his own share of patrimony in Flo- 160 APCapTusc, Missione Indostan, "Noviziato di Sardhana, Studentato di Mussoorie", Commissary to Fr General, Mussoorie 26 August 1926. 161 APCapTusc, Missione Agra, Fr Commissary to Fr Symphorian of Paris, Agra 15 De– cember 1926: "I have no power to give order for more b~dings or for expensive alterations now, so limit your plans to what is strictly required just now.... For the time being the students can be accommodated anywhere with their lector, who I hear will not be long in Sardhana. I do not yet know where tl1e house of study has to be built or bought''.. 162 APCapTusc, Missione Indostan, Commissary, "Sunto Storico...": "Pero dobbiamo confes– sare che con un po' di buona volonta il locale poteva essere adibito per ambedue gli scopi".