In a jotting he made in 1821J. H. Newman wrote: ‘I speak of conversion with great diffidence, being obliged to adopt the language of books. For my feelings, as far as I remember, were so different from any account I have ever read, that I dare not go by what may be an individual case.'

The abbé Huvelin, who was to be God's principal instrument in the conversion of Charles de Foucauld, felt the same difficulty. 'The story of a conversion', he wrote, ‘even of one's own, is something that can never be fully understood. You can see the stages that have led up to it, but that is all. Our Lord acts in such a variety of ways.’ In this article we will sketch the story of such stages, and investigate as delicately as possible their convergence on the focal-point which constitutes de Foucauld's conversion.