The series  » Series link — Special report from The Boston Globe

NANTES, France — Elder Romney didn't even have time to put on his shoes.

The 19-year-old missionary was in his apartment when a woman burst in to say some Frenchmen were beating up one of his fellow Mormons down the street.

The barefoot Mitt Romney, who had been in France for just six months, joined his roommates in rushing into the snowy night.

They found a team of rugby players, drowning their sorrows after a lost match, hassling two female missionaries. The women had cried out "Allez-y!" which means "go on," rather than "Allez-vous en," meaning "go away." The male missionary who leapt to their defense had been punched out. Romney ended up with a badly bruised jaw.

"There were about 20 guys, very large and very muscular, and we were a group of very young and very small American guys," Romney would recall 40 years later. "If you get into a fight with Muhammad Ali, you don't return the punch, you just put your arms up."

In a lifetime of good fortune, the January 1967 rumble in Nantes stands out as a rare moment of defeat. But as a snapshot of his 30 months as an LDS missionary, it is less exceptional: His time in France posed one of the great challenges of his life. It was marked by frustration and, ultimately, tragedy. The victories were visible only in hindsight.

Day after day, he knocked on doors urging people, most of them Catholic but many of them hostile to religion and often to the United States as well, to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormonism was a religion of mystery to most French people, recognized mostly for its history of polygamy and, in a country that takes its wine seriously, for its prohibition against alcohol.

Serving as a missionary was an LDS tradition. From the very start, in the 1830s, the Latter-day Saints had sent out missionaries to preach the gospel.

"Your presiding officers have recommended you as one worthy to represent the Church of our Lord as a Minister of the Gospel," said the letter sent to missionaries in 1966 by David O. McKay, who as church president was revered as a living prophet by Mormons.

For 2 1/2 years, Romney would wear the dark suits and white shirts of an LDS missionary. He would be allowed to call home only on Christmas and Mother's Day. There would be no drinking, no smoking, no sex and no dating. He would be alone only in the bathroom — Mormon missionaries are paired always with a companion to reduce the opportunity for mischief. All of his time, all of his energy, would be devoted to trying to persuade the people of France to join the LDS Church.