Jeanne le Royer / Sister of the Incarnation

LIFE INTERIOR OF

THE SISTER OF THE NATIVITY,

For serve as a sequel to his Revelations, by the same Editor.

INTRODUCTION.

The confidence that the sister of the Nativity had given me could hardly go further, as noted in the account that I gave back his confidences and his stories. This confidence had increased in proportion to interest that this holy girl saw me take to all that concerned an extraordinary consciousness and ways, of which it does not had hidden nothing from me of anything that might interest me Church and State. I would even admit that he would have was very difficult for me not to take it to heart, as soon as I had known well and the temperament of its character and the solidity of its virtues, especially the great favors with which heaven had showered her: but I do not care. I did not believe that God, who, in spite of my unworthiness, and for reasons known to him, seemed to have called me to the direction of such a beautiful soul, wanted me to have taken advantage of the disposition where He had put it himself on me, for the show the public in all respects that may interest them and instruct him by edifying him.

In any way that this second undertaking has been suggested to me, I regarded the execution as a duty or a new one. task which was imposed on me, and of which perhaps I would be asked to account one day. Besides, souls of this character are so rare, their virtues are so above the vulgar, that it can be boldly said that there is nothing small in and that there is always something to be gained in all that can make them better known and appreciated. In this persuasion, I told him of the design I had conceived. to write one's inner life, or rather the conduct from heaven to him; adding, to prevent Apologies for his modesty, that I thought I was following the will in this of God, who, as I hoped, would not fail to to draw glory for the salvation of souls and perhaps the Conversion of sinners. It was truly take the Sister by her weak, and yet she asked for Time to think about it. It was necessary to return to the charge, he recall the interest of the glory of God and the salvation of the souls redeemed from his blood, and speak to him with all the authority I could have over her; enjoining him to obey me in this, on pain of disobedience to God who sent me, and to the Church that approved of me....

You're talking to me, she says. and the conversion of Sinners Alas!

my Father, I should well to fear rather to scandalize the righteous, if my life Interior especially was well known to them. However she added, "I will obey you, since you command it. May heaven take advantage of it, as you say! at least this story, true as much as I can, by making me Knowing of you, will serve to make his triumph mercy to me; there will see how much I needed his special graces, by which he warned me in every way, and how much his infinite goodness had to do for triumph over my evil heart; how many I have opposed resistance to his divine love. In this way, my Father, by giving glory to the God of

Mercies I may inspire confidence in the greatest Sinners. Well, from that point of view and in this Hope, we will enter, when it pleases you, into the detail that you demand, and by this we will finish Interviews that cost us a lot of concerns and much care for both.

Such a beginning, which I had expected well, announced myself to what else I had to expect, and what turn it would give to the whole story of his inner life. For example, All the Saints Who Spoke

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of themselves; We Let's soon see only on the side the least favorable, exaggerate its slightest defects; and whether it is obliged to speak of graces and favors singular that she has received, like virtues that she has acquired, it will be, like them, only to humiliate themselves more, in relating everything to Him from whom she has received all and who must hold him accountable for everything.

Anything, or rather This is one more reason, I will try, here as elsewhere, not to depart from his ideas, to employ even to its terms as much as the delicacy of the language will allow me. I found seriousness even in his dreams, as we have already seen: let us Don't be surprised if I bring back a few more, as much that they will be able to go into the details that I have to give. Everything in such an extraordinary life bears the imprint of the divinity; moreover, Sacred Scripture gives us so much examples of prophetic and meaningful dreams, such as has already proved that it would at least appear a little reckless to reject all those of a soul like the one we are talking about. I compare it to a lamp

suspended in the middle of the sanctuary to illuminate night and day, consuming before the lamb who receives our adorations there. For a long time it burns there, it is consumed with the beautiful fire of its holy love, and men, always distracted and blind, have not become still glimpsed of its light. His age and infirmities tell me that it will soon be time for the Pull the bushel from underneath. I applied myself to collect all the rays before it goes out for us, and that we are deprived of it forever.

LIFE INTERIOR

FROM THE SISTER OF THE NATIVITY.

Two or three days had passed, the Sister approaches me and Thus begins the story of his inner life:

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; through Jesus and Mary, and in the name of the adorable Trinity, I do obedience. »

Manner of which the Sister enters into matter.

You therefore demand, my Father, Let me now tell you about myself!. Expect well that you have never been aware of a

life so extraordinary, if inconceivable, nor perhaps so criminal as the one I owe Maintain you: in any time and under any point of Seen that we consider it, we will find something to admire and groan. God that the end be so tranquil and also assured that the duration was little! because my Father, to consider the course of my life, this has not been, to take it well, and you will not see it that an uninterrupted sequence, that a continual alternative of darkness and light, joy and consolations mixed with many droughts and aridity. Finally, will I tell you? the favours he has pleased God to fill me beyond, with all that that we can say, have been, as well as my life, crossed and as if soaked with bitterness, labor, sorrows, continual agitations and sorrows: in a way, my Father, that it is impossible to define me, and I do not know myself what I am, what I will become, or if I have more reason to be reassure that to fear, or to fear more than to reassure me; I see only the party of

surrender to the good God who has pulled me out of nothingness, and who does not want the loss of No one. But it's time we started.

That who happens to the Sister's mother during her pregnancy.

(1) It seems, my Father, that before my birth God and the devil were already at war on my occasion. During my mother's time carried me, she was in danger more than she had run in all his life: terrors, falls, unforeseen accidents; She couldn't take two steps than she didn't was pursued by furious beasts or terrified by spectra. One evening, among other things, that she was out At the door, an unknown animal suddenly almost jumped on her, with a threatening face of which she had a fright able to kill him. These dangerous impressions are communicated to me in a way that cannot be explain well, but which is no less real, if necessary stick to experience; So much so that up to At the age of two the slightest noise threw me into tremors and convulsions that announced the deciduous evil and made everything fear for my life.

(1) The Sister had begun by telling me his baptismal and family name, as well as the time and place of birth; But I didn't believe in Repeat here what which I said at the beginning of his outer life, which I have precedes the volume of his revelations. In this way I will try to abbreviate everything that will have has already been affected, and repeat as little as I can.

First favor that the Sister receives from the Blessed Virgin.

My poor parents had recourse only to the power of heaven to me preserve; they dedicated me to the Blessed Virgin, and promised for me a journey, which I paid in the aftermath, to Notre-Dame de Pont-Aubré, Maine. Since moment they had put me under the powerful protection of this enemy of the power of darkness, Not only did I no longer have

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No fear, but never I was not susceptible to any childish fear and unfounded. The idea of spectres, ghosts, etc., who terrifies

so many others, do not make me not the slightest impression: I would go alone night or day; I would watch alone with the dead; I would sleep, if I had to, among corpses, without being terrified of them; and This especially since the age of twelve, when I accomplished the wish they made for me. "I inquired about it in time, and all the nuns gave me back the same

testimony adding that the Sister of the Nativity was long lying with a skull next to it of his pillow. We have seen previously what is happening

passed, watching over one of his sisters dead. »

Grace singular that makes him J.-C. at the age of two and a half. Vision of a luminous globe.

This first Mary's favor was only the first attempt on me. of the protection of heaven, which was followed by many other graces which should have undermined absolutely all expectations of my enemy, if he could get discouraged from something. I was still very small, and I was barely four years old. or five years (she made me write since she was then). that two and a half years, a few days more, according to what J.-C. had just made known to him), when it pleased God to favor me in another way, but so striking, that it never came out of my memory and never will.

This trait, to my opinion, has not had a little influence on all the rest of my life, and I Look as the source of all the graces that followed him. I was far away, especially at that age, to be able to enter for something; I didn't have any knowledge neither of God, nor of religion, nor of myself, not the slightest idea of right and wrong; I was having fun then, like the others, to everything that could fix lightness of my imagination, without worries, without worries, and without Almost no thought.

Behold, then, my Father, The singular feature that happened to me one day on Sunday that I found in a house next to the one my father occupied, while my parents were at the office divine. I remember, as in the present time, that between other persons of different sexes who were in This house, there were two or three young men sitting at the table, who drank, sang and entertained themselves with their better; I had the two hands resting on the end of the table, and in this attitude I looked at them and listened to them attentively without almost nothing to understand either their actions or their song. One of them suddenly cried out: That's good. Too bad you have to leave life and die! that we would be Happy if we always stay here, and are eternally as we are now! I would ask for no more, and I would give up all the remainder... But death.! ... when you think about it!. etc.

These words, which were applauded and repeated by others, Struck. What do they mean by that, I said to myself. myself? because I still had no idea or a other life, nor the necessity of dying. While I thought according to my little litter, the sky took it upon himself to explain the mystery to me, and this is the first vision of which he favored me. A luminous globe of figure oval, and about the height of a man, seemed to me descend from the sky and stop under the floor of the apartment; His fire had all the shades of the rainbow, But its colors were much brighter. In this globe I glimpsed, without distinguishing well, like the figure of a man standing, who made himself heard to me by these words spoken very distinctly, and which I have well remembered: " Do you see, my child, these fools? Do you hear what they say? in their extravagance? I am the God of heaven and earth; I created everything, who created them themselves by my power. I I have drawn man out of nothingness only to know me, Love me and possess me eternally. Well, my Child, would you also, like them, give up such a high destination, to share eternally here below fate and Home of the quadruped and the reptile? Would you like to change the Happiness of heaven with the miseries of earth? didn't you rather want to be mine, to possess myself one day, and to enjoy forever the happiness I have acquired for you and prepared at the cost of all my blood? »

At these words, my Father, at these tender invitations, my mind was filled the knowledge of its author. Discovering in him infinite and inexpressible perfections, seeing in him my sovereign Well, I felt my soul seized, penetrated. of his presence, and my heart all ablaze with fire of his love, as well as the desire to possess him without end. From that moment, the happiest of my life, I made him the homage of my being and the sacrifice of my whole person. I longed for or to die on the hour to see and possess earlier, or live only to serve Him and love it. Yes, my God, I said to him, God of my heart and of all my soul, you know, you

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See how eagerly I desires to be yours; for as well I feel that My heart, which is your work, is made only for you, and that he can never find rest except in you! That the world is vile and despicable, in

Comparison of your beauties and of your ineffable perfections! I renounce it as soon as that moment; I renounce it forever, to think only of you, O my God! which are my principle and my end.

Incontinent the vision disappeared, and left me in feelings and reflections that I did not even have the temptation to demonstrate at person: God had put in me, on this point, a discretion whose children of this age are not capable, and who has me accompanied in more than one meeting where I celebrated (x), without any effort, to my own parents, what Naturally I should have hastened to tell them. They had no idea; and yet, all the times that they were talking to me about God to teach me my prayers or my catechism, whenever they told me about J.-C. or the Holy Trinity, I always remembered this first vision, and I said to myself: We must surely it is the same good God that I have seen, and who has spoken to me once in this beautiful globe, and who was so bright and so bright. Ah! that I would enjoy to see it and hear it again! that I would like good to know him more and more! but above all what Happiness, if I could ever own it! Thus I spoke internally; but I never said it but in myself; My parents wouldn't have understood anything, and I didn't have the slightest want to talk to them about it.

Celé (???)

Appearance hot coals, a figure of the Church of the last times.

It wasn't the only time that God favored me in this way at such an age tender. I still had, I think, all my baptismal innocence, when I had that other apparition I told you about elsewhere, and which figured, by fiery coals surrounded from a circle of light, the state of the Church in his last times, according to the explanation I have received since then, and which I have reported to you in talking about the persecutions of the Church. Perhaps, my Father, and presumably God would have continued to give me sensitive brands of a free predilection, if on my side I had continued to be faithful to him, in Still retaining the grace of my baptism: But, alas, ! Must sin have come imperceptibly? interrupt such a beautiful business, such a happy correspondence with my God, my creator and my sovereign good!

Negligence and infidelities of the Sister; Admission that she makes mistakes of his childhood.

Unfortunate creature, I abused his kindnesses! So heaven withdrew its gifts from Measure that malice took hold of my mind and corrupted my will! so true is it that God's sight is due only to purity. from the heart, its tenderness to innocence, and its familiarities than fidelity to graces whose goodness warns us! Far from doing, as he required it of me, a holy and worthy use of my incipient reason, I neglected to think of him, to worship him, to love him, to Pray him, to turn my first thoughts to him by meditation on his divine law and perfections, and dedicate the first movements of my heart to him. Guilty and fatal negligence!... The first infidelities, that we will perhaps look at as minutiae, trifles which should not be talked about, I have known since, these alleged minutiae were really real infidelities, which attracted many others in chilling my heart first with regard to God, and then God's heart for me. Fatal origin! Sad sequence!

I felt imperceptibly a certain pride take the place of candor and simplicity; Soon wickedness began to settle on the ruins of Mon innocence as well as my happiness. I became in a short time Stubborn, rebellious, disobedient to the voice of my mother, who was sometimes forced to punish me against his heart: I took his corrections so badly, that, far from enjoying it, I was all the more wicked; I harbored aversions against her, and resentments against her. my brothers and sisters when they made me scold. I I lied to apologize, I said: Truly, in conscience, this is true, as God sees me, etc.

When they wanted me To upset and especially to punish myself, I blackened with anger; that which desolate at the last point my poor mother, who did not knew how to go about correcting myself from this terrible flaw. I continued to be subject to it until an event that God, who knows how to draw good from evil when he wants, allowed without doubt out of goodness for me. It happened that one day I saw a man carried with anger, as I had been myself so many times; his face was disfigured. to be scary; and indeed I was so horrified of it, that as soon as That moment I resolved never to indulge in this Furious passion and so unworthy of a soul who must represent everywhere the sweetness and image of J.-C., his model.

His remorse; his fears and confidence.

Despite so much of inclination to evil, I often experienced disorders interiors, involuntary agitations, which were No doubt the effects of the

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grace that J.-C. spared me: a thousand returns on myself, A thousand good movements constantly called me back to God. I am I sometimes felt penetrated by the fear of displease him and not love him as I had promised him, sometimes from that of being separated from it one day for eternity; I was apprehensive at the last point to be surprised by death in a bad state, and this Thought of death and its inevitable consequences, this Salutary fear of God's judgments was the first way in which this God of goodness, who has fought so long against my resistance, used to triumph.

How many Other sinners have experienced the strength of this Victorious weapon in his hands!

In this state of disgrace, everything terrified me: a noise, a thunderstorm, a Thunderclap, a flash, made me shudder. I trembled as the general judgment did not go to begin without me having time to dispose of it; I was running sometimes hide in some secluded corner, to avoid to be quoted therein; I was transfixed for fear of getting there. to see condemned, and could not, without shuddering, think of the fate of a soul who will have the misfortune of having lost his God for never. What happiness can taste a creature whose Conscience is thus troubled? But the misfortune is much more Big, the state is much more deplorable, when you live in the state and habit of crime without experiencing or Trouble and remorse: this is the most to fear for a sinner.

One thought for me reassured myself a little: I told myself that the God Almighty who had appeared and spoken to me in the globe, was too good in himself and seemed to love me too much to want to Lose forever.

When I will be before him, at his judgment, I said, I will pray to him so that he will let himself relent and will be as if forced. to forgive me. I will even tell you, my Father, whom this hope has always served to support me against what the fear might have been excessive; Yes It is this hope together with fear that makes me To look at this first apparition as the grace of Hello most precious to me, the one who influenced the most on the rest of my inner life, becoming like the principle of all other favors of heaven.

Sound particular attraction from childhood for devotion to Blessed Sacrament.

You have to be told, in passing, my Father, may God inspire me early and throughout my life a special attraction for devotion at the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar; From childhood I have experienced extraordinary impulses, hitherto that I could not pass in front of a tabernacle where resided the real presence of J.-C.'s body, without feeling me inwardly and as if forced to stop and Kneeling down to worship this profound mystery. More Once in the church I exposed myself to the laughter of children, whose example had led me to irreverence while waiting for the priest who had to catechize us; They could laugh and laugh at I had to atone for the fault they had to atone for the fault they had before them. had made me commit, by external acts which made amends to J.-C.

When it happened that my conscience would have reproached me with something a little considerable, so I found myself arrested in the Holy Temple; An invincible force seemed to forbid me the sanctuary and forbid me to approach the altar. Alas! my Father, all these graces pointed out granted to so few people, the attentions so well marked of a very particular providence, are not merits ; they only serve to make more criminal and more inexcusable and my ingratitude to the author of so many favors, and the countless sins I have surrendered guilty towards the real presence of this amiable Saviour to the Most Blessed Sacrament of the altar.

May I confess to the face of the earth to repair his offended glory, by erasing the outrage he received! may Angels and the Saints make amends for it, and compensate him for it by the fervor of their love throughout eternity!

That's already it. much, as you see, my Father, of my wretched inner life; Many years ago. extraordinary graces on God's side, without almost no correspondence from mine. So that's it. Already many infidelities and many ingratitudes, these are many sins committed, of which I will soon have to report to my judge. But we We are not yet at the end of these infidelities and These crimes: alas! for much time yet they will not than going up. Since you are curious to hear All the details, tomorrow, if you want, or even this Evening, we will resume the continuation; as well as my duty is calling me somewhere else right now. Farewell, my Father, please apologize and pray for myself.

Defects of his confessions and his First Communion. Suites Fatal for his soul.

"In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Through Jesus and Mary,

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and in the name of the adorable Trinity, I do obedience. »

My Father, My Mother made my examination of conscience and led me to confess, but the fear I had of being scolded by My confessor made me hide half of my faults, Especially the disobedience to my mother. One I received communion at the age of nine-1/a-half. It was a lot too soon in my opinion, and I had reason to repent of it. As I feared nothing so much as to be obliged, following a fairly general custom, to make apologies and even to ask my mother for forgiveness before Communion, I went a month before to confess all that the conscience reproached me towards him; but in this I went ahead of what I wanted to avoid: God allowed that to test me my confessor ordained me from him ask for forgiveness and change your behavior towards her.

That one is blind and Unhappy especially at this age! I could never resolve to a satisfaction so just yet and if necessary; and for added misfortune, fear of a refusal, too deserved made me hide all this when I received absolution. So I took communion in this state. against the remorse of my conscience, which, from that moment, began to torment me. Sky! that this memory is bitter! Will I have enough tears, and will my life be enough? to deplore such a fault and all those who were the fatal effects?

From that moment on, my Father, more favors from heaven, more consolations inner, neither peace nor contentment! All my happiness had vanished by the action that was to put the fills and contributes more to make it eternally durable. That one is to be pityed when one finds death in the source of life, and that what should sanctify us serves only to make us more guilty than we were before! That Unfortunate state lasted more than five deadly years, during which use, human respect and brotherhood of the Rosary, where I was enlisted and of which I abused, made me commit many sacrileges of which I Shudder again, and of which I have every reason to shudder.

Far from slowing down However, my passions, as you must well think, do not were only gaining new strength and increasing day by day. day. The devil had every reason to applaud himself and triumph. Perhaps my heart had finally fallen into hardening, if a special grace had not been for me preserved from this deep abyss by remorse overwhelming that I experienced in spite of myself, and that did not gave neither peace nor truce. It seemed that at every step I heard inwardly a voice that told me in a tone Severe: What have you done, wretched, and what do you want become? thou hast obeyed neither J.-C. nor the mother; thou hast deceived thy confessor; Your confessions are null, your communions are bad; thou hast not the love of J. C: after so much attention and blessing from him, you live in disgrace of thy God; and if thou hast had the misfortune to die in this state, Where would you go, unfortunate! Ah! Hell would be your sharing for eternity. But was that where what you promised your God? Was that the case? What he was entitled to expect after so many benefits of his .part?

Day and night these reproaches overwhelming sounded deep in my soul.

I was so troubled, that, in spite of my pride, I threw myself one day Suddenlykneeling at my mother's feet, in the intention to punish me for not doing it instead. My mother was so surprised by this move on my part, that, in spite of the emotion where I had put it by my resistances, She was baffled to see me like this in front of She and didn't know what to attribute it to...

She converts and makes a general confession to the occasion of a jubilee or plenary indulgence. Fruits she reaps from it. Humble admission of his miseries.

This first Victory over myself began to calm me A little; But not everything was done, in the meantime arrives the great jubilation or general forgiveness of the Church: It was a friend of mine, who had come to see us, who announced that it had been published in the parish. Good news, I exclaimed! Oh! what I am Ok! I will make a general confession and convert me quite and all good. To this Exclamation on my part, my father burst out laughing. We But here it is, he cried, and we will See beautiful things! our daughter Jeannette will convert and make a General confession. Notre-Dame, it will not be for few, and the priests need only be astonished; There are will have great difficulty in this.

My father loved me Singularly, and the good idea he had of me did not did not allow him to imagine that I would have needed conversion or from

General confession. Alas! I felt all too much reality of this need. Yes, father, I replied, I want convert myself with God's grace, and I hope that after This I will be much better than I have been. until now. We'll see what happens. parents...

As soon as the jubilee was opened, I had nothing more to heart nor more in a hurry to throw myself at the feet of the late M. Maillard, then rector of our parish (Janson Chapel).

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My Father, Him I said, "when I arrive, I ask you in grace to make me do A confession of my whole life, because I am very unhappy of all the ones I've done so far... He listened to me with A lot of attention and helped me a lot. When he asked me if It was out of fear of being beaten by my mother. that I had refused to obey my confessor, I gave him, albeit weakly, an affirmative answer which was not yet according to the exact truth. It was again a little disguise of which I repented again, though it was not, at much close, as essential as the first foul that I had done.

My jubilee had began to surrender, to myself: I had then about fifteen or sixteen years (1).

This jubilee of which the Sister speaks, and that she did at the age of fifteen or sixteen, had to therefore take place in 1746 or 1747; for she was born in the January 1731. The jubilee is known for the election of Benedict XIV in 1740, which corresponds with the First communion of the Sister at nine and a half years of age, and the great secular jubilee in 1751, including the Sister will speak soon, and which she did at the age of twenty Years. We do not know the one she is talking about here. Must So to say that this good girl in her ignorance confused a Great Jubilee with a Small Jubilee granted to the diocese of Rennes, on whatever occasion we Let's ignore, or perhaps more likely again with this plenary and solemn indulgence that one gains in the form of jubilee at the end of a mission, and to which the people of the countryside are quite accustomed to give the name of jubilee. Besides, this error, or rather this lack of just expression on the part of the Sister, does not does nothing at the bottom of the things she tells us with so many naivety and simplicity.

From then on God appeared get closer to me, as and in proportion as I I was approaching him, or rather, O my God! It was You who had taken the first step and who, in the excess of your love, had sought me from all manners; who had done everything possible to regain! But alas! O God of goodness! time From my perfect conversion had not yet come, and you have been good enough to wait patiently for him, and to bear hitherto infidelities of which I blushed now, and a conduct that must have been to you unbearable. What must not have cost your Love during this long and criminal delay!

Everything I tell you here, my Father," said the Sister, "as well as all that I must tell you again, will not serve little to make me know about you; It will already be a big lead For the general confession I intend of you do, God gives me the time and the means. In the meantime, I sense carried, by obeying you, to repair my past conduct, as much as it will be in my power. That we learn, by my own admission, how much God's grace has had to to do in me, from what abyss his mercy has withdrawn me, and let it be known how much I am indebted to him in all respects. Ah! No doubt, faithful souls will see with astonishment and admiration, on the one hand, so many infidelities, revolts, ingratitudes and misery; on the other, So much kindness, patience, search and kindness. May this God of love have forgotten what I am about to tell you, and never punish me for it! may, on the contrary, it withdraw its glory, and the next his edification! Placed between the presumption and distrust, that my story at least restrain the reckless who exposes himself, and prevents to despair him who had the misfortune to fall!

It is the most fruitful desirable as one can hope for....

For two whole years I had tasted the fruit of my general confession; The peace, the sweet tranquility of my conscience, had me allowed loving returns to God and reflections serious about myself. I was taking a lot of taste singing spiritual hymns and reading books piety; for I had learned to read, as is the case made in the countryside, that is, enough for these kinds of readings. I loved the company of virtuous girls and conversations about spirituality. provisions that

seemed to announce everything something other than what happened. I was much more docile to my mother, to whom I still resisted a Sometimes, but in a circumstance which I believe reciprocated, if there were any, much more excusable than in the past. Here is What was this circumstance, that you may judge:

Like my sister As youngest, I had many times had the weakness to help our mother. in certain superstitious practices which are so ordinary among the

Country people. There are even had in it something of a curse, although it was not my mother's intention. One One day, it fell sharply into my mind that there was offense. of God in this practice. My conscience immediately revolted, and I refused to do so. I say clearly to my mother that I would not obey him, because I saw sin in it

; My sister followed my example. I had expected to Wipe at least some words of vivacity from my Mother. Not at all, she remained all pensive, and set herself. contented to say to me rather softly: Well, my daughter, I speak to my director, and if there is sin In this, we will not do it again. She confessed to me since she became involved. was confessed and had done penance with it. Thus, my Father, the motive and the event have me always consoled over this latest disobedience to my mother.

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Death his father; Deviations from his youth.

Around that time Came the death of my poor father, which caused me a very sorrow. sensitive and made me shed many tears; for I liked him sincerely. I took the opportunity to go back more in myself and think about securing my Hello for the future. So, my Father, these two years since my return to God, without being marked by no extraordinary favors, had gone quite well and gave some hope for the future; At least, there was no appearance that this time must have been. as soon as followed by a conduct that made me quite forget my God and my first dispositions to his regard.

I was almost touching My twentieth year, critical time for virtue, for little that it is exposed; perilous season when passions are felt with force; and God knows how I was soon besieged. I was young, robust and of working age. As it was impossible for me to To subsist without this help, I had to find myself in the works campaigns with young people of both sexes, very free in actions and especially in words. With passions as vivid as mine, what a young girl of that age is it not exhibited in these kinds of works and of amusements, especially as long as the demon of impurity gets involved! And it never fails to be of, the part. O How dangerous diabolical conversations are! That games

and the risks they are criminal, and let those who contribute to them surrender guilty almost without realizing it!

I heard continuously repeat in my ears these dirty words and double meaning, those crude or equivocal words that made On my imagination the most fatal impressions from where it Sometimes everything became dangerous to me, even the most dangerous objects. Indifferent. Constantly my ears were shocked and sullied by licentious speeches of all kinds. Sometimes the insulting words, sometimes backbiting, sometimes slander or false reports, and almost always impurity animated the conversations of these young libertines. Judge as the Demon was using it against me!

First, I wanted to hold firm; but my firmness did not last long against the torrent of the bad example and especially against a certain desire to to please and to be welcome, a human respect that made me to fear as a great misfortune to be seen with an evil eye, to be called a bigot, a scrupulous, a hypocrite or of false devotee.

Thus, pride and Human respect were the two weapons used by the devil. to ruin almost from top to bottom this reputation of modesty which I had prided myself until then. II is certain that naturally we do not like to be rejected and despised by those with whom one lives and has to live. Little by little my ears became accustomed to hear the outrageous and brazen words that first had made me blush. My mouth was even at the repeat. Noticeably, I became mocking, jealous, impertinent, though I was still only reluctant and some moderation. The passions had so much blinded my understanding, which I could hardly distinguish that hardly the first notions of faith, of the I believed, for example, that there was no Bad to say bad about the neighbor, provided that where does not say than the truth. Thus, I feared only slander, and I removed the backbiting of the number of sins However they found my virtue

kinder, because she was less fierce, i.e. less distant of vice. Thus, according to the too ordinary usage, I was believed more virtuous in proportion than I was less so.

His Regrets. Vivid reflection of the dangers to which the ignorant youth, especially in relation to purity.

Just heavens! in which Excess could I not give, if grace had given me? Quite abandoned! and in what a horrible state was not to be before God a creature enough unhappy, a conscience blinded enough to stick to the only exemption from outside the crime, without putting itself in penalty of

the interior (I want to say of thought, perhaps of will), which in fact all the enormity before the eyes so pure of the Lord!. Would you believe it,

my Father, and those especially who, in the world, still follow such a plan of Conduct, will they not take all this for exaggerations of a conscience that is ill-fated and without there being the slightest danger! Ah! I beseech them, let them abjure for a moment. such a damnable maxim, to consider with me what is required of a Christian soul and its own character, and all the benefits she owes to the love of her God, and I dare to believe that they will not be able to help agreeing that I have lived, as they may do themselves, in such fatal blindness, that it would take tears of blood to mourning him (1).

(1) Some dangerous and some insulting to God that this state was in itself that the Sister reproaches herself, and of whom she accuses herself here with so much Repentance, if we pay close attention, we will see that grace and the fear of the Lord has always held her back in some ways. Terminals; So that she never gave, I do not say in No glaring excess, but in no fault or action criminal itself. She herself doubts whether she has never had the will to offend God; We can well doubt like her. What is certain is that this fatal blindness, these errors so guilty, these faults, these ingratitudes, these crimes that she deplores with so much of bitterness, would almost pass for virtues in the eyes of so many People of the world who live quietly and without any remorse in infinitely more criminal habits. Where does this difference? It is that the love and fear of the Lord see, by the torch of faith, enormous crimes, Revolting ingratitudes, where the spirit of the world does not discovers only trifles and lightness. Which of the two is wrong?

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Yes, my Father, I Repeat, my fatal blindness went so far as to counting for nothing inner sins. I I believed, for example, that there would have been a problem with flying, to be avenge. I thought there would have been sin in

getting drunk or committing impurity in action of any kind; But I didn't believe that It would have been wrong to talk about it voluntarily in oneself, provided that one had adhered to it there, as I did, and that nothing had been executed. outside, etc....

To what, I ask Still, is not exposed every day a poor girl ignorant, who has no other rule of conduct than principles also false

and also damnable? What will it oppose to the dangers that the world offers at every step? For how many traps have been set for his innocence! How many of fights to support! How many encounters the demon Does he not know how to take advantage of the impurity to attack his frail virtue!...

The shameless, young and old, will attack it in every way, and will do it in every way to overcome his constancy and triumph over his modesty. They will spy on his steps and his words; they will study his inclinations; they will pretend to take his party, to enter into all his views, to favor his projects, and This only to better insinuate himself into his friendship, by taking by its weak. If it has virtue, they will borrow the mask and try to play the role; if it does not They will not score, they will be indifferent to it and will say that it Everyone must be free on this article and that we must not interfere No one. If it shows some disgust, a certain aversion to piety, they will not fail to applaud a provision that is most favourable to them. They will immediately affect a strength of mind, a disbelief. that perhaps they will not have in the depths of their souls, and will appear ungodly declared to come to their purposes.

Yes, my Father, and Let there be no doubt for a moment, there are no characters if opposed and so contradictory that an experienced shameless person does not Tries to succeed: if he notices especially, as I I said, that the person has the disposition to become Incredulous, he will not fail to slip her doubts, in attacking before it the fundamental truths of the faith, the dogmas whose belief is absolutely necessary to the Hello: convinced that he has no more effective means than to remove and annihilate the salutary terrors of Religion, he will mock her a lot on the fear of hell or judgments of God; he will become with her serious or playful, reckless or hypocritical, depending on whether he deems it more expedient to his purposes, and that is what must be expected of all men of this trade, who are, alas! much more numerous than we imagine in the age of inexperience and blindness.

Yes, these impudent will abuse at the same time, to seduce her, her ease, of his recklessness, of his ignorance, of his good faith, of his passion, of his very poverty, by putting the salvation of his soul, as well as their brutality, to Silver prize. How many examples could not be found, and don't I have some in myself! and although, by a large margin, we have never been, thanks to God, so Far from me, I will quote a single trait, which proves pretty much everything I just said. It's The most obvious danger where my honor has ever been Found exposed. I invite young people again without experience in making a profit; they will see to it how much they need

to be on their guards, if they want to keep the precious treasure of their innocence, and that in general they should not proud, on this delicate point, that to very few people, I would say almost none. But, my Father, as he is late today, and I have spoken enough, we postpone the story to the next session, if you want it. Let me leave you.

His virtue is under attack. Strength with which she flees and escapes danger.

"In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Through Jesus, etc. »

There was in our Village a certain widower, over fifty years old who enjoyed the best reputation for wisdom and probity; One would have gladly regarded him as the more good man and the best Christian in all the world. parish. For some time he had been attending the my father's house, and it was almost always when I was there; for if I were absent,

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they stop there rarely. I did not dislike his attention. I was then eighteen or nineteen years of age, and a Very playful character. It is clear that I do not Must not hate honest company. Without being Evaporated, this man was even more cheerful than me; He amused me with his kind words and with the stories he knew how to tell with a certain salt that did not leave that to spice up, without ever going beyond the bounds of decency. For, my Father, especially in that time, the least freedom in words would have revolted me; and whether must say the pros and cons, I owe it to the truth The admission that, never of my life, I have not suffered from anyone the slightest action whatsoever Reprehensible, the slightest freedom at all Indecent. Yes, I can say that the slightest familiarity Indiscreet would soon have had a Young man, something it should have cost me (1).

(1) This sincere admission of the Sister is enough, in my opinion, to show on which foot we must take all the trouble it has already done to us says of herself, and what she must tell us more.

This widower testified to me A friendship of pure benevolence that we did not think of at all to know him reluctantly at home. We were all charmed by his company. Who would have said, my Father, that this man of probity, who used so much reserved, who put so much honesty in his process, yet carried a corrupt heart; that he had in the depths of his soul a perverse design, of which I had no idea, that my parents were reproached for suspecting, and perhaps, alas! that he did not see himself? Because who can understand about This point the blindness and misery of man, and how much he It is easy and ordinary for him to delude himself?...

How many times the only Didn't recklessness stir up a fire unknown to us? not, or turned back on the one thought extinguished; Caused finally, fires, where it did not appear that there had been had reason to fear nothing! It is very difficult to know each other oneself, and almost always one considers oneself less guilty than one is indeed not.

One day he took advantage of a moment of absence of my mother, to say in my ear certain words whose meaning I did not understand at all, and to which he added certain gestures which I understood still less, so far was I from any bad suspicion against him. I was laughing though, because that I was laughing, and that I was taking everything on this foot there. It was a mistake that I had; But the fault was material good on my part. It was simple or stupidity, as one wishes; But the hypocrite was soon to to prove to me that he had taken the matter on another footing, and that he had simply judged me for himself. Since this time he spied only on the occasion of finding me alone; she introduced himself. My mother sent me one morning keep our cattle in a meadow located near Our widower's house. He came to find me there, and asked me of my news, approaching me with a jovial air. He sat down without a way right next to where I was layer. I only noticed a tune and words to him a lot. freer than usual. He still wanted to make me annoy; but his banter, joined to some words of cajoling, gave me suspicions and made me suspect his intentions. He wanted to give me money; he offered me presents; I refused everything, saying that he would not owed nothing; that I did not need his presents, and that I didn't know why he was offering them to me.

While I avoided his approach, and that I rejected his hand games, I thought I heard someone says to me loudly: Get out of here, or else I will abandon you; Flee, flee, time is running out and the danger is great for your innocence... That voice, which resounds from the depths of my soul, opening my eyes to the danger, gave me, to avoid it, incredible speed and strength of body, to which, I think, three or four men would not have

not resisted. With a single effort I escape like lightning from the hands of this unfortunate man whose intention was no longer equivocal, since he declared it clearly (1).

(1) Some examiners of the notebooks told me that they had found this adventure a little too much circumstantial, as well as a few other accounts revelations concerning the sixth precept, the dangers of marriage, etc. I do justice to purity of their intentions, and I am very far from despise their advice; But they will allow me to tell them that I wasn't the only one to think differently on all these points. I even believed that God had not allowed, perhaps even dictated these details of the Sister, only for the spiritual good of so many people who are find in these different positions, and who will be able to find rules, salutary warnings, and a Driving model. Should we wait, then, to be in Guard, that we have committed evil by experience? and what can be done risk discovering in advance ordinary walking and Traps of the demon of impurity, which does not triumph never better than when he finds the inexperience attached to Simplicity? Will the fear of Scandalize, by instructing them? It is again precisely there a trap of this impure spirit, which this ignorance favors more than you think. Besides, on that foot, how much of the best places of the Fathers of the Church writers, and even of the Holy Scriptures, do not Should we not subtract? The temptation of the chaste Joseph, the attack that the chaste Suzanne suffered from the two infamous old men, etc. The Holy Spirit in thought differently here, as there, we can follow him.

This is so, my Father, which my imprudence exposed, as I have said, my honour to the most great danger where I have ever found myself, and of which I have only gone out, as you see, by a special help, An extraordinary favor from heaven. Hey! how many young people Were they shipwrecked there?

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than by this recklessness even, which does not sufficiently foresee the danger, which does not Defiance of nothing? How many who have only been lost without return for having treated certain procedures as trifles very reckless, some games, some alleged banter innocent, and who imperceptibly led them from banter to privileged, privileges to the licence, the license

to crime, from crime to habit, from habit to hardening, finally hardening to the abandonment of God, which leads to the last woes!

It is therefore very important, my Father, to forbid any entry to an enemy as cunning, to grant him nothing of all that can be given to him refuse. With him, believe me, there is no deliberation, nor to capitulate, because he does not know how to keep measure. If you give him a foot of land, he will take two, three, four, etc. Finally, if you don't lose it sooner, sooner or later it will lose you... What will a poor girl do without defiance, Who is here, more than anywhere, the mother of safety? Forced to live with sworn enemies of her innocence, what will become of it once again, if it is not continually attentive to each of its steps; if It does not cease to join the prudence of the snake to the Simplicity of the dove? Finally, I will say it bluntly, What relief is not needed! How many graces are not to him necessary to be chaste, in the midst of Sodom; I mean in the midst of a corrupt world, where everything breathes voluptuousness and makes swallow the poison; especially in some states, where the dangers are still the greatest

!....

Fortunately escaped, and as if by miracle, of the greatest danger of my life, I feared not plus my enemy, either that it would have been necessary to run to attack him, or defend. I was in a rage where I no longer knew me: seeing that, all bewildered, he remained in the same place, without daring to follow me, I stopped fifteen or twenty paces to overwhelm him with insults and tell him whatever came to my mouth in the moment of my fury. I have never said so much to anyone; and if he had tried to use violence, I think I would have had the courage to knocking him out, so outraged was I with him. I tell him promised never to trust him on anything in the world, and I kept his word. What do you think, my Father, of my anger and my compliments?

Seeing that the Sister was waiting for an answer before continuing, I ventured him I think, my daughter, that in this moment your anger became a duty for you indispensable, for the reasons you have just explained to me.

As for the insults you could absolutely have spared him, since your conduct in said enough, I look at them as a strong admonition, a good one correction, which he had deserved too much and of which he did not It was up to him to enjoy. It was a small justice that you would make it very timely, and who could well to enter into himself, expressing him in a way more energetic all the horror you had of its bad purpose; I think you can not blame yourself. We must sometimes this kind of alms to neighbor, especially when he needs it so urgently

whereas it appears that This one had it. Thus, it is then a duty, rather than a act of supererogation. How many libertines would have been corrected, if they had never had anything like this Receptions! But unfortunately there are more indulgent, and who have a conscience too delicate to anger in such cases. This does not prevent them from doing well other meetings, where patience is needed; but in this one anger seems to them too great a sin.

Let's go back to what I look," interrupted the Sister; for, my Father, I have too much of faults to reproach me to stop at those of which others may also be guilty, and I must not to think than to make the trial to myself. Alas! my Father, it is still a long way to go that my Libertine life be over. So let's go back to the deplorable story. at the point we were before the coming digression to keep us busy.

Defects that the Sister reproaches herself: vanity, dissipation, etc.

There was no more in me a fights only between the different passions. I was jealous of other girls' wealth and clothes, and sometimes even a little bit of the good idea we had of them. I did not avoid the company of men except by the fear of dishonour, that is, that one would have badly spoken as one did of a few others, and that I had it not lost the good reputation which I loved above all to sting me. Although I loved dancing, I rarely danced, because I

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was doing wrong, and in a way not to satisfy my little gloriole, or rather my Foolish vanity.

So it was always the pride and self-esteem that ruled all my I fought one vice only with another, as do so all those who do not take faith for their torch, nor the gospel for their rule. I was sometimes dispelled at the last point. I was reading bad books, that is, amusement books, which had been rather contrary than favourable to religion and manners. I even once lent some to one of my companions; why I was well taken back from my confessor. I don't

made almost more cases No rules. Adorable sky! who would have said, my Father, Seeing all that was going on in me, in those unhappy times, that I was made to be a nun; that it was God's place for me

marked, and that a heart as mine was, so far from His fear and love, however, had to profess to be to him forever?... That you are good, that you are lovable, O God of virtues! May I eternally Sing your infinite mercies, when you have put the to your benefits, by crowning your own gifts! But Continue.

One Think about marrying her. His repugnance.

You know, my Father, let the poor girls of the country, provided they have strength and that they know how to work well, find faster to to marry than those who are richer, because there is a more parties accommodated to their fortunes. It is therefore not surprising that he presented himself to I, and even some for whom I was not Indifferent. A young man, among others, very wise, suited me more and pleased me very much, without ever having had with him very particular conversations about the article. I felt that I loved him more than others. We had done for him, even before my Father's death, different Démarches with my parents. There were requests, solicitations, promises; But what is worth noting, However, it was a question of coming to some real agreement of engagement, he was always on either side Someone unforeseen obslacing, always some setback that broke the game and baffled all projects.

I must also confess, my Father, that despite all that I have felt human misery, whenever it was a question of me Talking seriously about marriage, I felt in myself A terrible fight, or rather I don't know what I don't know could make me right, and that no one could understand, although everyone noticed. It was a certain repugnance, as if invincible, which seized me suddenly, and who went so far as to take away my breathing and speaking, making me change color, and surrender sick with fear and apprehension.

So I found myself relieved to see everything missing, and by a very oddity singular I became jealous, until I lost my peace, of the people to whom young men turned to my refusal. Finally, I was already for myself an enigma all the more inexplicable, since God had not given me Point encore made known the effects of this continuous fight of the nature and grace, which makes it find itself as two Opposing men

in the same no one, especially when Satan's angel joins nature and uses it to blow us.

But, my Father, regardless of the lights God has given me Since on all this, I will always be, as I have always been, A real enigma for me and for many others.

I don't understand you Not, sister, one of my confessors once told me, spoke to me of God as an angel, and you speak to me of yourself as a demon; I don't understand anything to all this Ah!

It's that the matter was very different, and that of Both sides I tried to follow the truth which was shown to me; That's the mystery that he did not understand. But let's pick up the thread of my sad again. history; because, alas! my Father, the time of my conversion has not yet arrived, if I may say so that he ever came perfectly, and if I don't have to fear that it will never happen, at least as I always have desired.

False ideas that the Sister formed in the trouble of Passions. The passions, the only obstacle to faith.

In this sad state, I had the most false idea of the clearest things and the most obvious. I have, so to speak, ignored The first principles of natural law, so much had my passions troubled all the faculties of my soul; Yes I say this to my shame and repentance, my blindness was such that at the age of nineteen I had much less light to discern good and evil, much less knowledge in the things of God and salvation, than I had when I was seven or eight years old. Should to be astonished, after that, at the inconceivable discrepancies, In fact of belief, of so many men distinguished by their lights on any other point, when once they have let their passions dominate?

Sir so-and-so, it is said, does not believe, he has no religion, and yet He has knowledge: he's a bel-spirit, he's a genius.

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As long as you please; But what do you want to conclude? What favorable induction can rescue you from his disbelief against morals or The religion he rejects? In order to judge soundly, it would be necessary that His spirit was

Free on that side and could see things in their true point of view. But No, the passion in him obscures the understanding and the lights reason; it extinguishes common sense, blunts all the natural faculties, stultifies man, and in fact, as says Scripture, a species of animal that does not understand nothing to the things of God or salvation. Unable to rise Above the reach of the senses, he loves and understands only what is related to it. The objects of faith are foreign to him: These are for him enigmas where he believes he sees only contradictions with reason. Hence it comes enough Often the most beautiful spirits are people in fact of belief, but still much more children, let's say better, much more ignorant than the ignorant themselves, since this ignorance is common to them with the former. They still oppose all the reluctance of their passions to admit what makes them represses and that reason cannot understand. Yes, my Father, and be sure, remove the passions of the Human heart, you remove all the obstacles to the faith, you make him a Christian; Take away the passions, you Remove the unbelievers, because the passions are the the only source of their disbelief.

That's what I made a Sad experience (1).

(1) It is also the thought of one of our poets in this beautiful gradation, where he tells us: ... Let all libertinism walk with order, and His real character

is to slide, by degrees sound poison from the senses to the heart, from the heart to reason. ( J.-B. Rouss., epit. to M. Racine).

So I thought, my Father, And can we deplore it enough! I thought it was to love God enough than not to hate Him; that we have faith without having to believe all points of belief that the Church proposes to her children; that we can Save with general and speculative faith, without himself

put in pain of reducing it in practice; than good works, therefore, are not necessary for salvation; that it is enough to worship God in his heart, without be subject to any practice of religion; that the wishes of baptism do not oblige us to renounce the maxims of the world; that the poor and suffering are unhappy, and that only the rich are happy and worthy of envy; that we can return to the next aversion for aversion, indifference for indifference, etc.

Or rather, to To speak more exactly, I did not think of all this, and I lived accordingly, with almost no effort whatsoever Careful. Thus, in practice, I made myself a species of of monstrous gospel, which I substituted for the gospel by J.-C. It was indeed the gospel of the world and of the passions, as favorable to nature as it is contrary to true faith. There you go

Yet what has been My rule during all this unfortunate time. I didn't know Absolutely what is the state of a soul that has had misfortune to consent to sin. I had no idea about the offense of God, nor of his consequences in relation to us. I made pride consist in wealth and greatness, did not able to understand that poor people can be proud, though I was an example and a very good proof visible to anyone other than myself; for, my Father, I think there was only me who didn't To see this background of pride of which I was as if kneaded. I also imagined that only the rich could to cling oneself heartily to the goods of the earth, to love the world and vanity. So many illusions! So many mistakes!....

In spite of her wanderings, she fulfilled her duties of religion, loved the word of God, and frequented the sacraments in the great solemnities.

This strange blindness of my mind, this kind of voluntary hardening of my heart, I attribute them above all to my pride than God wanted to punish, to the abuse of graces, and to profanations that this unfortunate pride made me commit: for, my Father, In the midst of my wanderings, I always retained a certain funds of religion, which woke up especially to the big ones Solemnities. I loved Church ceremonies, and over all things the word of God. But, alas! The inconstancy of my will made in me this taste sterile, not to say, dangerous. My soul, delivered continually to dissipation, to frivolity, at the bagatelle, resembled this stony field and more open to the incursions of my enemies, in which this divine Seed could not germinate or lay deep roots. She was therefore trodden and crushed under the feet of passers-by, removed by my pride, suffocated by my inclinations, corrupted and parched by fire of my passions. What condition!..,.

I heard it willingly, This divine word, it touched me for the moment; But the moment I didn't think about it anymore. So, instead of justifying myself, it made me more guilty; Instead of converting me, she hardened me more and more; instead

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to work my salvation, It became the source of my condemnation. That we are at Pity, another blow, when one makes such a use of favors may heaven grant us! What resource can be relied on, when The last resources turn against us through abuse What do we do with it? O the pitiful state! Oh the Desperate situation!

Yet it is, my Father, and the state and situation I spent during more than a year, always keeping the outside and the reputation as a virtuous girl, of which I was strong Flattered: putting all my perfection in the outside of the piety, I was jealous of not failing to one communion of happy feasts or brotherhoods, and I did not bother to prepare myself well and to reap the fruit of it. Blindly taking the ghost For reality, I flattered myself inwardly to be devout and virtuous, while deep down I was not little more than a hypocrite and a whitewashed sepulchre. I thus passed for alive in the eyes of men, while I was dead in the sight of God. Such was my situation, my Father, when Providence, which never ceased to watch over I allowed me to be struck with a stroke of which probably you have never heard of, and have not read or seen of example in no place. But how it's time to finish Today, we will please give the story, and then we shall begin tomorrow's sitting (1).

(1) I don't know what will think so, but it seems to me that the different portraits that the Sister just gave us, look like more than people than we imagine, and therefore a very Many can identify with it and make their profit from it. Wherever these details come from, they do not appear or without purpose or usefulness.

Trait singular of a three-year-old child. Effect it produces on the Sister.

"In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Through Jesus, Mary, etc. »

One day on Sunday that my Mother had me, while she was at Mass parish, entrusted the care of my little brothers and sisters, I went with them to seek the company of one of my friends, who was the daughter of a customs employee, whose house was close to ours. She was also responsible for watching over his little family in the absence of his parents. We put all the children together to have fun, and, sitting next to each other, here we are singing a hymn about God's love. The Little sister of my companion, aged three, had left those of his age to come and listen to us more closely; she held her hand on my shoulder, and listened to our singing with attention surprising for her age, and an air of joy,

of satisfaction and interest that animated us a lot, because it was it's impossible not to notice; His very attitude, everything announced in her the greatest contentment.

The hymn that gave him so much pleasure, ended more or less with these words: And if for him we burn in these places, with what fires then. Will we burn in heaven? or by these other verses, for I don't remember them exactly: If now we burn From these fires, what fires shall we burn in heaven? It's Always the same thought for the substance.

Something unheard of and everything to be done. astonishing, Father! hardly the latter Were the words of the last verse sung, that under our Eyes, the attentive child was raised from the ground by three taken up to the height of three or four feet, without make no effort to jump, but holding his body straight, having arms outstretched, face inflamed and eyes elevated to the sky. In this attitude, as if to respond to At the end of our last verse, she pronounced very distinctly and with great force those words which made about I the strongest impression, and which she repeated to every revival it was removed: Du feu de l'amour! du fire of love! fire of love! At each rehearsal From these words she was therefore taken away and fell back slowly so many times without doing any harm: it was done successively and for a good time, after which the Petite, returned to herself, ran to have fun and play with the others, without him appearing to do it any further. It is very Probably she had no memory of it.

For my partner and me, We were so struck, so forbidden, and for so to say so dizzy of what we had just seen, that we remained speechless and we parted ways. without making the slightest thought, without saying a single word. Ah! my Father, how many returns this event singular made me do on myself, remembering what I had once been!

There you have it, I thought, as God manifests Himself to the pure in heart, while others are deprived of his favors! I saw it, this soul innocent and so pleasing to him, to ignite by words that did not make the slightest impression on me, that did not touch the hardness, the insensitivity of my heart. 0 which will restore my first innocence! who me will give back that happy time when I also felt the presence of my God, where his love was felt to me where I enjoyed his most

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intimate familiarities ! Precious time, you are no more!. Fortunate days,

What have you become? What have I become myself? O source of bitter tears! O inexhaustible subject of bitter and perhaps repentance Eternal! It is through my fault that I lost everything! By a just substitution God withdraws his graces from those who do so. abuse, to give them to others who do not put any effort into it obstacle....

Often, it is true, I indulged in these salutary reflections; but they were still only slightly less distant provisions to my complete conversion, which came only some time after. Something more was needed to destroy The reign of the devil and fix the triumph of grace in a heart almost stultified by sin: it is to What divine mercy had been working for a long time, without never put off my resistance, and for a long time so the work progressed as if without my knowledge, and for so to speak in spite of myself. There finally came that happy moment when God spoke as master and clearly declared this will. to which nothing resists; This will which, without hindering man's free will, uses obstacles even to overcome his grand designs. She Only opera in me this essential change, to which a grace considerate had disposed me for so long.

Short story Conversion of the Sister on the occasion of the Great Jubilee of 1751. She gives herself all to God. Death of his mother.

It was again, my Father, the year of a great jubilee or general indulgence plenary, which finalized The work of my conversion begun at this time time, by spreading this superabundance of graces where Sin had abounded. I felt my need More than ever, and I was too drunk with my poor conscience not to seize this new opportunity again to return to God: I therefore resolved again to Prepare with all possible care to win the plenary indulgence of the jubilee. Hey! which Wasn't it already that this disposition! During the entire time that our stations lasted I confessed every day, and it was three days before I finished my review, may heaven, to triumph at last over my resistance, struck me with the salutary blow which struck me, like St. Paul, on the Damascus Road. He poured upon me, at that happy time, a grace so strong and abundant, that it triumphed over all. At The moment every obstacle was overturned, every difficulty Disappeared; It was necessary to yield to the victor who could no longer

suffer to be argued with victory. Fortunate moment, what did you not come sooner!

I was old then about twenty and a half years, and this happy blow from heaven came a day while I was busy, with my mother and my sisters, picking hemp from a wasteland or orchard, any neighbor of our house and

joining our area to thresh the grain. It was there, my Father, that I felt. suddenly penetrated and as if flooded a bright and gentle light that enlightened my spirit and changed my heart. She finally fixed my inconstancy in teaching me what the God wanted of me who would forgive me all the past and finally give me back all its good graces.

Without swinging for a moment, I promised to be his forever and never to share my heart again. I blushed from my past conduct, and I conceived so much horror for any species of sin, which, without daring to think yet of to become a religious (alas! I saw no way), I immediately renounced the world and all dangers that it provides. I promised God to part with it as much that it would be possible for me; and for this, I proposed to stay with my mother, to serve her and assist her from my work until the end of his life or mine; which did not go far. The sky, who never allowed me to live without affliction, had The most sensitive reserved for this circumstance: my Poor mother died precisely in time that she could hope to be happier, and where I proposed to console her and compensate her for all the sorrows and all the sorrows I had caused him. Let us hope that the good Lord will have kindly taken charge of it. to console and compensate him for it by himself, and that she will not have lost anything.

She imposes fasts and other mortifications on himself, and vows of perpetual chastity.

To meet the divine justice and preventing the revolts of the flesh, I promised to fast every Friday and Wednesday, and to perform more mortifications every week; but, in order to To better triumph over the demon of impurity, I I proposed to take a vow of perpetual chastity, and I wanted to pronounce it before the image of Notre-Dame-des-Marais (1) the day of the Assumption, which was precisely the one where I proposed to receive communion to earn my Jubilee indulgences.

(1) This is an image of the Holy Virgin, placed in a chapel, at the entrance side of the church of Saint-Sulpice de Fougères. She is very famous in the country by the vows and the pilgrimages that are made there, the consolations and favors that we receive there.

I went there to This intention, and on the same day I heard two masses at Saint-Léonard and one at Saint-Sulpice, which appeared to me Very short, I assure you. It is impossible for me to speak to you how much, during these masses

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and my communion, God me made sweets taste; how much consolation he gave me indoors about my current and past state; how he enlightened me on the mysteries of religion, and especially the real presence of J.-C. to the Holy Sacrament of the altar! etc., etc.

Happiness that she tastes in the service of God.

Finally, my Father, I began to breathe and live again, and I felt that it is not, that there can be no true happiness, without the inner peace of soul, and that this peace of soul, so desirable, cannot be Never find that in a blameless conscience, in the intimate feeling of a heart that has experienced that it is all to his God, and that his God is all his; one heart at last that burns only flames of sound love... Absorbed in this good and merciful God Above all that can be said and imagined, I felt his divine presence, and I was all flooded with Ineffable delights that this divine presence has in me Communicated. Oh happiness!. my God was

returned to all its rights. I was happy, because I was very much at he, and that he was all mine When my mother's death wouldn't have come

disturbing a state as desirable, I think, my Father, as he could not last a long time, because it is not due to the unfortunate mortals, whose fate is to groan in this valley of tears; it can only be the reward and the prerogative of those who have earned it by dint of work, fights and victories; and when it pleased God to do so favor, I've always looked at it and received from him as a true indulgence for my weakness, or, if you like better, as an encouragement to better Suffering the crosses and tribulations that besieged every moment of my poor existence, and may his goodness me still had reservations for the future.

Having renounced any establishment, but on the other hand having not enough to live on without being obliged to serve, and by therefore to return to the dangers I had vowed to go away, one must think well what blow death brought me. of my mother. When I would have considered it only under this report, there was, as they say, enough to lose your mind, if God would not have been kind enough to moderate my pain of the way I said it.

His sad situation after the death of his mother; She has recourse to the Blessed Virgin.

Almost not knowing which I first retired with my younger sister to a very old aunt, who we soon missed to both. After therefore that death had taken it away from us, I had recourse to that of all the creatures I trusted the most: I went to Saint-Sulpice, and, prostrate before the holy image of Notre-Dame-des-Marais, I said to her: "Holy virgin, my maid and respectable mother, for I have none but you, I beseech me, do not abandon me when everything abandons me; I will tell you I have made my vows depositary. Yes, Virgo incomparable, it is in your hands and under your auspices that I am consecrated to your divine Son; Get me then, from Grace, the means to be faithful to my Resolutions.

Arrange of this matter, and I shall be pleased; I will never despair, provided that I have only reason to believe that it is between your hands. I will only add that I received them as soon as The hour even a certain consolation which seemed to me as a pledge of Mary's protection, an assurance she had listened to favorably my prayer, and that I could hope for everything; which reassured me a lot.

My two sisters and I had agreed to be at the spiritual retreat of Pentecost, which was to be held at Faubourg Roger de Fougères. We went: it was there, if I may say so, where the Blessed Virgin was waiting for me, to give me an even better glimpse of the effect of my prayer and the great purposes God had for me.

Sound attraction for religious life. Dream she had had very often about it.

See me associated for the life of some religious community, for living away from the world as a servant, had long been the object of my desires; but the Little appearance that I saw of being able to succeed, had not me still allowed me to open it to no one; however I am doing it found continuously carried by a particular taste and an inclination

natural that awakened Ceaselessly a certain dream which I am going to tell you, and which was to me Arrived already more than a hundred times, at start at the earliest age; Here it is, you will Judging:

Very often, my Father, when I was asleep, I imagined myself to be surrounded and assailed by ferocious beasts, who sought to devour me or to make me fall into some precipice; Enemies relentless, who wanted less for my life than for my innocence and my salvation. I only had one left resource against their unwelcome lawsuits and pitfalls multiplied, it was to implore the help of heaven when There was no other way to escape. I was doing it all weeping, and then, my Father, I felt raised, as with two wings, to a height where my enemies could not reach; and, escaped from their fury, I hovered in the air like a dove; I was carried by an arm

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invisible. Sometimes the ride was quite long; but what's good particular is that the term of my race, or rather of my theft, was always to fall gently into a community of girls, and the place where I first set foot in Falling was still their church, where I prostrate before the Most Holy Sacrament, which was to me indicated as the assured asylum against all my enemies, and the port where I had to stretch incessantly to triumph more surely.

Let one think of this dream, and many others like it, whatever you want; that we try, If one wishes, to explain them by quite natural reasons, I do not object to it; But what is of course, and what I would find it very difficult to fit into this The opinion is that this dream happened to me several times at an age when I was and could not have any knowledge of the religious status; That is the fact. I I will say even more: it is that at that very age, dreaming once that I was at the ordinary end of my Flight, I was very surprised to find myself very large before the altar, and dressed precisely as I am Now, I who had never seen any nuns before, who perhaps he had never heard of it, and who, although Certainly, still had no idea about their costume. Yet I saw myself tall as I am, dressed as I am. am, as a religious urban planner,

prostrated before the altar of the same church where I never had Entered. I was already the daughter of a saint Francis and St. Clare. This dream ceased as soon as that I had the happiness of being really clothed the holy habit of religion; that is, to speak next My way of taking things, when the figure had its accomplishment. But we are not there yet.

Other dream, in which St. Francis calls him into his order.

I also remember a another dream which may well have the same meaning, and which I still had in the time we are talking about; I believe you are having spoken elsewhere. I thought I heard the voice of a great Preacher: As I was out of the church where He was preaching, I climbed on something to hear him better. and see it a little through a burnt out window. It was our Father Saint Francis who preached forcefully of the men and women religious of his order, to whom he reproached cooling and their violations of the rule. The Saint preacher saw me while preaching; and gesturing towards me, as if to apostrophe me, I heard that he said to me: "Since there is almost no obedience anymore. nor fidelity in mine, well! that the foreigners take its place. Come to me, girl from Egypt, come by your fidelity to me Console for the ingratitude and lukewarmness of my own children. »

So I took again for A mark of vocation these words that saint Francis addressed me: Come to me, daughter of Egypt. I'm even very

convinced that Many others will agree with me in this regard; but as there are always more intelligent ones, and who prick themselves to give reason for everything without needing God's help, nor to The supernatural order, I gladly abandon this occupation to them, if it can satisfy them, and I come back to my goal; because, what whether it is these dreams, as well as the explanation or the turn of phrase that they will like to give there, which then had no appearance Yet it has been achieved, despite all the obstacles that The world, the devil and the flesh were able to bring to it. Moreover my Father, you will judge best by the details at who must be attributed my vocation to the religious state and my entry into this community. All this was the continuation of my retreat from the Faubourg Roger; But I think we will Good to postpone the narration to tonight or to a other times. What do you think, Father?

She is admitted to the community of Urban Planners of Fougères as a servant of the boarders.

" On behalf of the Father, Son, etc. »

My Father, I opened all this to M. Debrégel, then superior. From retirement, which I had chosen for my director: it was at this zealous worker for the glory of God and the salvation of the souls which Providence wished to address to me, in order to give him back account of my interior. Mr. Debrégel did not judge I made a general confession to him, as I wanted it, saying that they should not be renewed if often; and so he contented himself with making me the questions he judged necessary to get a fair idea of my consciousness and my condition. Then he took me to task, and I found in this apostolic man a true father, who put all his care to assist the designs of Providence, may he declared himself in a manner that was not Equivocal point. He served as my guide until his death, always recommending me not to put obstacles in the way of wills from heaven, and to be faithful to grace, Because, he said, I was more indebted to him than No one.

This Mr. Debrégel had much ascendancy over the spirit of the nuns Urbanists, of which he led a number; He proposed me to them to be admitted to the community as a servant of boarders: it was

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Precisely the first year that they are allowed to have, that is, in 1752, as far as I can remember. So it was on his Recommendation which I came here, provisionally, to serve the boarders, first outside, waiting for the Chapter would have taken a side on my account.

During the six weeks that I remained outside, there was much trouble inside in my subject; It seemed that everything stood in the way of my happiness. The nuns were divided, some wanting to admit me, and others reject me and send me away. Have admitted boarders, said the latest, it is already a violation of our rule; admit one more person To serve them would be to deviate even further from them. Four or five chapters

were held successively, and it was finally concluded that Madame l'abbess could not admit to me that on the condition of passing inside as a sister

In addition, or rather as a help of the sisters for the service of the whole community. This was precisely what I desired, and I recognized with pleasant surprise that the Blessed Virgin had used the very obstacles to produce the effect that the demon wanted to prevent.

Six weeks later, she entered as a Converse Sister. Postulant.

So I was admitted within as a postulant Sister; It seemed to me that I saw The open sky, I trembled with joy, without leaving anything appear, and I think I would not have left any to feel, even if I had foreseen all that I would have to suffer in the aftermath, and in how many ways The devil had to go about shaking my constancy, prevent the issuance of my vows, and destroy absolutely my vocation, if it had been in his power... So here I am finally in this house religious that I had so desired, and in the state where I had sucked so much, that heaven had indicated to me from childhood in so many ways.

First, we can say that I was a novice in all the force of the term: even before than to be in the novitiate, fallen, so to speak, into a brand new world, I was so new, so new on all the that the most widely used terms of religion were algebra for me. When people talked to me about spirituality, of searching, or self-denial, of abandonment to God.... of postulate, of coulpe, of obedience, to work, to parlor. from

dickey it was speaking Greek or Hebrew; I was fine often forced to keep quiet, sometimes not to answer, for fear of preparing to laugh by countersenses that could have gone so far as to form heresies monastics, for lack of knowing the proper terms of each thing.

I heard the nuns talk about my vocation, and I didn't know what they meant; I would have understood better, if they had talked about taste or the inclination to be religious, or the desire to the becoming. One day, I

asked a sister where were currently the choir nuns. She replied that they were at prayer; I imagined they were to be read an oration like those I had in my Hours; but I soon had occasion to see them there; I noticed that they were all on their knees, without saying anything, several eyes closed, with a thoughtful and thoughtful air. So, my Father, I suspected that their spirit was applied to something serious; that presumably they were thinking of God; that they talked to him, and let him communicate to them in that moment, as he had communicated to Me in so many encounters in my life, where I had found and where I was still very much often, all occupied with him, without being able to distract me or think of something else. No doubt, I thought, this is where

What we call doing prayer. So I judged for myself; for God also had his method to make me meditate, and this method is the one I've always followed. All I needed was time (1).

(1) After all we We have seen, it seems to me that we can ensure, without much recklessness, that none of these good souls made prayers as sublime, nor as profitable as were those of that poor girl who ignored until the Name of prayer: both true and in matters of spirituality above all, the names, definitions, method, Science are nothing, and that the feeling alone that produces the Holy Spirit is everything. Opto magis sentire compunctionem quàm SCIRE EJUS DEFINITIONEM. (De Imitât., cap. 1).

Sound zeal for the most arduous work.

As I was very Pleased with my lot, I devoted myself entirely to the service of my Sisters and the whole community. In that time, I don't

Missed neither strength, nor activity, I may add nor good will for all that was my duty. My hands were hardened, my arms tamed to the hard labors of The countryside, and my whole body accustomed to the painful training. God knows how we enjoyed it! My life had never been more laborious than in the community: all there was the hardest to do was reserved for me; and if there was a difficult obedience, or a burden a little heavier to carry, either in the farmyard or at the kitchen, it was always necessary that the poor Sister of the Nativity took it from one end or the other. I can to say, my Father, that I went there with ease which made me judge that it was a pleasure to call me there.

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Not content with relieving the Converse Sisters, according to my destination, I still gave back all the services I could to the ladies of the choir, who do not did not leave to have recourse to me often: which did not take long I hardly had to be subjected to a severe setback, for I had to be proven in many ways.

Persecution that she experiences six months after her entry, from the shares from some of her Sisters. His patience during this Long ordeal.

Six months ago at most that I enjoyed thus, by force of arms, so to speak, the esteem of the whole community, when the devil is served the jealousy of some Sisters to arouse me a Storm maybe I needed. I can well, my Father, tell you in confidence. God knows I don't I never wanted to do that, and I want them today less than ever. They are all dead; you have not them known, and I will not name any of them. Thus, I do not think that Charity may be wounded by a narrative which enters as necessarily in the account that I you Must.

God therefore permitted, my Father, no doubt to test me, that two converse Sisters, Among other things, become a little jealous of the services I

gave back to the nuns of choir, as well as friendship as all nuns and Madame the Abbess herself had kindness to testify to me (1). One of them, among others, which was then spendthrift, had, I have since been told, taken to task to test my patience and my vocation. If so, she certainly deserved praise, and I owe him many obligations; Because during for some time she paid her commission very well. After reproaches and sorrows, they went as far as persecution: I had never said well, nor done well; if I kept silent, it was mood; if I said something to justify myself, it was pride, or at least self-love; if I I was making my way by admitting my fault, it was hypocrisy; I was like the bête noire that you only ever see

bad eye and on the wrong side. Finally, it didn't take much. at a time when all the nuns were against me.

(1) I already have says that for a very long time respect and veneration nuns for her had always been to increasing: I now add, on behalf of all those who still live that, in the very time of which the Sister speaks here, She enjoyed the esteem of all, without even excepting any. those who persecuted her.

Against so many assaults and the discouragement which was naturally to be the consequence, I had only divine light and consolations interior which, as we shall see, were not Little Much, in conjunction with the advice of my wise and respectable director, who came to me very often to urge me to patience and encourage me to go over everything and suffer

all with consistency and Resignation: what I tried to do out of obedience and out of love for God.

So it happened my two years of postulancy; but, my Father, I forgot that I must speak to you here only of my inner life. So let's go back to it and stop thinking about these little setbacks. of which, however, I have spoken to you only as much as there are report. Let us think of it, you and I, only to pray for those who were less the cause than the instruments, and still unintentionally Absolutely maybe, or at least believing to do well in everything that. Let us admit again, my Father, that I needed it, and that God most likely allowed it for reasons that had to turn to my advantage.

She is favored by the gift of God's presence. Apparitions of J.-C.

All the while, my Father, my poor little devotion went as best she could; Despite all the troubles my mind felt, I lost the presence of God as little as I was possible: for it seems to me that God wanted to compensate me and To support me against the assaults that were delivered to my constancy: I had never been so frequently favored from Heaven. The divine presence was felt to me in the midst of the most dissipating occupations, and often I was all God's, when I was believed to be all about my work. How many times has he become sensitive to my soul! How many times he spoke to my heart!

What shall I tell you, my Father? and will you believe that many times our adorable Savior Jesus Christ allowed Himself to be seen at I myself by the eyes of the body, I think I can assure it; sometimes in the form of a perfectly beautiful little child, for touch me by his tears and win me by his caresses; sometimes Taking the air and tone of a young man, he followed me into our cell, remembering what he had done for me, and Sometimes reproaching my lack of gratitude and fidelity. "How many souls in hell," he told me, "who were have attained eminent holiness, if I have reached them had granted only half of the favours of which I I have fulfilled you, and of which I will have to be accounted! etc. etc. »

I was then so filled with confusion, fear and love, that I did not have the strength to answer him. So, for me Reassuringly, he spoke to me with an air of good friendship that restored trust; He told me, for example, that I had to to console and not lose heart; that he wouldn't cut me off

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his favours, let him not would not withdraw his graces, if I would promise him to be more faithful to the future...

So many words, so many of strokes of light with which I was illuminated and as overwhelmed; each of his eyes penetrated The bottom of my soul: forbidden and outside of myself, I do not Often knew what I was becoming in front of him. Judge the position where I put such an astonishing conduct of his .part!. On the one hand the fear of illusion, on the other that of mistrust

Offensive threw me into a trouble and embarrassment of which it seemed Sometimes like having fun. Is it you, O my God! he I once said that he spoke to me in the most Touching? is it you, my Savior and my God? for if it be you, Please forgive me for the fear I am of being The toy of illusion. Then, my Father, he stretched out his hand to me, addressing to me these words which he said to his apostles, when they mistook him for a ghost after his Resurrection: "Fear nothing, it is myself. »

Hardship of his confessor to ascertain the truth of these apparitions.

One day, my confessor did not knowing what to think of all that I had brought him of these various apparitions, ordered me to ask him at the First time the meaning of a certain very obscure passage of the Holy Scriptures. I did not dare to take this commission on Me, afraid of having neither the boldness nor enough memory to remember the words. Jesus Christ wanted to make up for to my shyness and to undergo the test we desired. Come on, my daughter," he said as he approached me, "tell your director that the place of Scripture he desires The explanation, means such and such, that he tells me. That passage, Jesus Christ added, was written in such a circumstance, by such an author who then had such idea in the spirit I reported word for word to

my director of all that had been said to me, and of which I lost immediately after the memory. I remember only does it basically, and that my confessor tells me in time that this explanation was the most satisfactory he had Still seen nowhere on this dark place.

Alas! My father The same confessor had no reason to be so satisfied. another commission which I was charged with carrying out to him. It was a small admonition that it cost me A lot to notify him, especially since I was planning that he must have been mortified. Yet he received my Opinion with much submission to the divine will. That is all I remember; because immediately after my commission done, God again took away the memory of all that that he had instructed me to tell him. So that's all it I can attest to that.

It is true, my Father, and God had made it to me hear enough, I had to successively from peace to trouble, and from storm to serenity; From light to darkness, and darkness in the light: but, as doubt does not destroy not the obvious, nor the illusion the truth; like The thickest cloud can only obscure the sun itself, a certain light or ray that penetrates The cloud, enough to persuade us of its existence, despite the darkness that robs him from our eyes. Well! my Father, it is exactly the same with the sun of spirits than of bodies.

Difference between the operation of God and that of the devil. Effects of the presence of God in the soul.

What a difference between God's operation and the devil's work! and that the soul that experiences them is found differently assigned to the approach of one and the approach on the other!. This, Father, is what I have already had occasion to

you to point out more than once, and on which I cannot dispense to tell you something more, speaking of my interior, since the angel of darkness, as we already have explained, often tried to make me take the changes, turning into an angel of light. At The approach of the devil is only doubts, worries, darkness and fear,

Discouragements etc.; This is the storm, it is the work of the wicked spirit which carries everywhere disorder, confusion, disorder and Hell.

On the contrary, when it is God approaching, we feel a calm, a sweet tranquility, a profound peace which illusion does not produce, and whose Prestige cannot even approach; a soft light and Long live that penetrates the soul without any constraint, carries the conviction of the divine presence, and seems to say to the agitated passions: Shut up, here is the Lord. So he makes a deep calm, a peace that nothing can disturb, and it is in this silence of the senses, that the taste and smell of divinity are felt inwardly to the soul, but of a way that it is impossible to render well by any comparison. The most excellent liqueurs, the

the most exquisite perfumes, The brightest colors, the most melodious concerts have nothing close to it, because God has nothing to do with bodily senses.

However we feel it, we feel it touch, we taste it, we hear it; But all this happens in the bottom of the intimate sense. God is intimately united to the soul; It then enjoys the sovereign good, which consists in the possession of his God.

It's a flow of paradise. What am I saying? one is a paradise oneself

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lively and animated. The soul lives by its God, and its God lives in it; There you go In two words, all the happiness of the saints, beyond which one does not can no longer imagine anything.

One only word spoken from God in the soul has infinite senses.

In this happy time, my Father, the soul indulges in the transports that make it to experience the presence of his God, who seizes all its powers, to unite them intimately. What a height of Happiness is not found in this ineffable union of a creature with this Being par excellence who is at the same time his principle and its ultimate end, in the possession of which it finds its Perfect and blessed existence, his eternal and sovereign Ok! Happy with the happiness of her God, this wealthy soul lends an ear to the delicious accents of his voice which enchants him; she swims in a torrent of pure voluptuousness, etc.; and here again, my Father, from where it is needed leave to hear the words I have often repeated to you in the account I gave you: I see in God, I see in the light of God, God told me. God made me see, etc.; Because all these different expressions mean that this that I state happened in me in a way which I cannot make otherwise, but so eloquent and so eloquent and so persuasive, that nothing in the world is comparable to its evidence, and that it is also difficult for the spiritual man to get there. to deceive, that it is impossible for carnal man to do anything about it understand. A single word said like this from God has meanings infinite, and says infinitely more to the soul that hears it, than whole speeches of human eloquence would make, and that it is true to say that it infinitely surpasses the language of angels themselves. I

I will quote some, if you want, a single little stroke by the way, and while it comes to me to the mind (1).

(1) Allow me again to ask if it is natural, if it is reasonable to think that a soul Who speaks like this can be in illusion? Is it nothing More divine than the language we have just heard? How a Can ignorant woman hold it? How the father of lies Could he inspire him to do so?... But let's continue to hear it herself.

The other night that, during a moment of insomnia, I thought of God's tenderness for I, that one word, my child, that he made me hear so many Times, then came to my memory, and on this word alone a single A stroke of light struck me, and this is in substance what he made it clear in one

Wink.

Yes, my daughter, you are my child, and you are in more ways than one; considers what I am to you, what you are to mine; See what I have done for you, in the order of nature as in that of the grace; how much you have cost my love, and Judge from there how dear you must be to my heart; Remember the benefits of your creation, your redemption, of your predestination; recalls the graces of predilection, the favors of which I have warned thee, and Tell me if I have the right to call you my child? Tell me if my heart has rights to yours, and if he could complain about your indifference? Ah! have no doubt, never Father had rights comparable to mine, and never had a child obligations more sacred or indispensable than are yours to me.

Yes, my daughter, you are my child, and this is what I demand of your gratitude for all my Benefits; It is my love that will dictate to you a Law, listen to it well so that you never deviate from it. I want you to conform in all your will to my will, to become one and the same will, because that the child must only want what his Father wants. Likewise I want you to contain your love in my love, to do no more that one and the same love, and that without environment, without sharing and without

no reservations, As a child's heart is closely united to that of the authors of its existence; which fill him with attention, Eager care and all kinds of benefits.

It is necessary, my daughter, that you sacrifice to me all search for yourself and your self-love, all earthly affection, all return to creature, to want and love nothing in the world but in me, for me, and because of me This is what is called A real girl who meets the full extent of this beautiful name, and this is also what I want you to hear by the same name

of a child I gave you so many times, and that you have to work to deserve more than ever, by gentleness, simplicity, recognition filial, tender, submissive and affectionate love, which owe it to you make dignified more and more.

All this, my Father, and much more, was included in this little trait of light that suddenly illuminated me in one instant, on the only word of child, which was first of all to me came to mind; but all this was presented to me, and as printed, with a clarity and depth that made me see it in all respects. Ah! my Father, that Human eloquence is weak and puny in comparison! That she is powerless to give back what God does See with a single wink to the soul that has happiness to own it

! Let us please postpone the rest until tonight, after that you will have recited the divine office.

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Training of piety of the Sister. His attraction to humility, self-denial and penance.

"In the name of the Father, etc. »

My Father, besides this continual exercise of the presence of God, I made my evening and morning prayers with the most accuracy of was possible for me, I often attended matins, where I found much consolation and pleasure. Although I goes to confession only every eight days at most, However, I frequently received communion, by the advice of my director. Madame l'Abbesse had kindness for me than she testified to me in a thousand encounters, especially through freedom full and complete that she left me complacently, by Relation to everything that concerned my devotions Special.

The impression I had felt at first, and which had quite determined me, was an impression that kept leading me to humility, self-denial, penitence. Continually I felt pressured to renounce more and more the world, sin and myself. I was looking for every opportunity to please God by mortifying the senses. Grace made me use many means for this, of which my directors have given me. sometimes removed something: it would be useless to itemize.

During my two years Postulate the devil had left me quite alone. I had only been exercised by a few people from the house; and God, as we have seen, had taken Care to support and console me by himself. There are no did not always appear so in the sequel, where the fighting was even harsher and of a completely different nature.

After His two years of postulancy, his great poverty is a Impediment to admission. His sorrows and efforts to succeed.

Time to leave the dress of the century, to take that of religion was approaching, and This approach excited a storm of a new species. First, to begin my novitiate, I had to provide a sum de 3oo liv.: I was asked for them, and I had in all only 6 liv., with no hope of ever having more. This first an obstacle, which would have seemed so light to so many others, was considerable compared to me, and capable he alone to baffle everything; for at last they were necessary, and where take them? I was allowed though, and that's all we could grant me to take a trip to the Janson Chapel, to try if in the place of my birth he would not have been some souls charitable enough and comfortable enough to help me with something. My research was useless, and I tired many in vain. All my parents were also poor than myself; our tutor had given his account, and The inventory was barely enough to pay the fees. of justice and provide us with the necessities of life. My races only succeeded in exposing me to the last danger that I've raced the world.

Returning from my village, I was attacked by a drunken man, who held me very bad remarks, and against which I had to, so to speak, put in defense. The fear, and the strong emotion that he gave me a fever, with an extra disgust for a world that offered me nothing but peril without consolation or resources. That's all I reported to the community when they came back sick, three days later that I had come out of it.

It must be agreed, my Father, that my position was very sad, and my fate very uncertain, at least to consider it only on the side of things Human. The community itself needed help, and I saw, not without much fear, postulants, very rich in comparison to me, to present myself for take my place, with considerable dowries. What a fear

! What a sorrow! I would have gladly gone from door to door to interest the pity of the inhabitants of Fougères, if anyone had allowed me, to try to get enough to be admitted to the dress.

She turned to Mary, was finally admitted to the novitiate, and took the name of Sister of the Nativity.

Not knowing anymore, as one said, to which saint to dedicate myself, I addressed myself to the boarders, to pray them in grace to recommend me to their parents; but I do not know for what reason, after having Deliberate among themselves, they answered me that they did not take care of anything and could not provide me with anything. What a heartbreaker! I saw myself continuously at the day before being fired, and already was talking about placing myself in the retirement home in quality maid !. I cried day and night, without experiencing or resting nor consolation.

What to become? Seeing myself abandoned by everyone, I turned to

God, according to my usage to find in him what I could no longer promise myself means humans, and I tried again to interest the divine Mother of J.-C., which I also called mine, and I did not delay to feel again that it really was, since she showed all the feelings and care to my regard.

So I prayed again to the Most Holy Virgin to pull me out of this bad step, or, if you love him better, from this unfortunate situation. I promised him that if she would get me to be admitted to

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The dress, I would do burn a candle and say mass in front of his image of Saint-Sulpice, where I had made my first vows; that I would take the monastic habit under his auspices, and the feast of the Nativity for my religious name, as soon happened after.

It never happened to me to address myself to the Blessed Virgin in such distress without receiving much hope at the hour. and relief. After this prayer, which consoled me many, I went to find our Mother; It was then Madame Saint Joachim, and I asked her to put me in chapter for that my fate would have to be decided. Our Mother loved me

sincerely, and do not I would not have rejected with an indifferent eye. Not "Don't hurry me," she said; I have an idea: I want a can take my time and my

measurements; let me do it, I will do everything to keep you, be sure. So I took the gone to wait, hope and pray, because already I did not despair of anything.

Finally, Madame l'Abbesse assembled the chapter on my occasion, in which, by his care or otherwise, everything went so that, despite the Considerable offers from wealthy applicants, despite The opinion of the nuns in large numbers, I had the happiness of prevail. I was admitted to the novitiate, without any dowry, and on the the only title of poverty, which was surely neither fraudulent or imaginary. So I finally took the holy habit of religion, with the name of Sister of the Nativity, which I have Always worn since. Ah! poor Sister of the Nativity, that you still have fights to endure and dangers to fear for your salvation and sanctification! Don't expect The devil will leave you Long quiet in this new state you come to embrace and which was so long the object of your work!....

Violent temptation of the devil against his vocation.

Calm followed therefore again to the Violent Storm; But alas! It was only to make room for a more furious squall. although all those of the past; for, as I told you, So many times, my poor life has so far been only one succession of pains and bitterness, consolations and sorrows, of joy and sadness, of darkness and lights, of temptations and favours. Please heaven, my Father, may the End be at least calm and quiet!

The demon, who since For a long time had used only external means To trouble me, returned to his first attacks. There are I had been enjoying the happiness of being clothed a few months ago of the holy habit I had so longed for, when he awakened in me the taste of the world I had left, and the passions I had renounced, even many of the time before I entered religion He repeated to me Strongly that having had no vocation for a State if Holy, I had made, on entering it, the most imprudent of all the The most dangerous steps for the future: what if I were bold enough to make my vows, I was obviously going expound my eternal salvation; that these reckless vows being made against the will of God, would be for I a source of repentance, and would only serve to surrender me more guilty, and that they would infallibly become the cause of my damnation; that it was necessary to think about it while it was time; that it was a thousand times better to defy human respect leaving the community, than to make oneself unhappy forever by irrevocably attaching oneself to it, etc., etc.

These cruel thoughts troubled and agitated me so much, that I lost some absolutely peace and rest; More tranquility, more sleep that was not interrupted by frightening dreams. I Reflected, I wept, I prayed; well, almost Overcome by these mortal worries, I thought of withdraw and transfer. A day that, all busy with These sad and overwhelming perplexities, I passed by The church, I heard very distinctly a voice that seemed to come out of the depths of the sanctuary, and said to me, "Hey what! My daughter, would you like to leave me? No, you won't escape me step!

This voice, which I recognized to be that of J.-C. He himself penetrated me. of confusion in discovering to me the trap of my enemy, and the temptation disappeared. No, my Lord and my God, I replied. Immediately, no, my divine and adorable Master, I do not Leave Point: You Know My Desire for You Choose for my sharing and be all yours for always.

To be more in In the safety of conscience, I went to find my director, who was then the late Mr. Duclos. He had clothed me with the saint dress of religion. I told him about the temptation I had. and he finished reassuring me and dispel. Don't stop there, he tells me, and don't stop there. Talk to no one. Your discouragement cannot come than the devil; come, my Sister, despise your enemy; It only takes a little courage: I answer of your vocation (1).

(1) When the Sister spoke to me thus, it had been five or six years since Mr. Duclos died in the village of Parrigné, two leagues from Fougères. He was then seventy-one years old, and there are had at least twenty that he governed this parish. I had been for eight years his last vicar, and it was in my arms that he Died. He had often told me about the nuns Urbanists which he had directed for a long time before becoming rector, and among others of a Sister whom he named me of the Nativity, as of an extraordinary daughter for the solidity of her virtue, and by the lights God had bestowed upon him. He quoted to me some features of his revelations, which had made noise, and which I found exactly compliant to the account that the Sister has given me since. Neither he nor I, would not have said at that time that I should one day know her even more particularly than he himself had never known.

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Terrible Assault delivered to him by the devil at the time of his profession.

Since that time, my Father, The demon looked confused and left me quite alone, until moment of pronouncing my vows, when he returned to the charged with more rage than ever, and delivered to me the furiest I would have suffered again at his part; Assault that we can well to put among the traits of my life that many will not believe period, and that they will only regard as one of the extravagances which they will call the fruits or delusions of my imagination. Whichever way they still take it here, here is The fact as it happened before my eyes:

While, following the Ceremonial of the profession, mothers me

were driving from the bottom of the choir at the top, to receive the veil, the crown of thorns, etc., etc., and to pronounce my solemn vows there, I live In front of me a spectre, a terrible monster whose shape was very much like that of the bear, although it was much even more hideous. He walked triumphantly to the top of the choir, turning to me at intervals, in a way both horrible and indecent; It seemed wanting to dirty as much as to terrify my imagination. He implied that it was for him alone that I was going to do my vows; that all the profit would accrue to him, and that if I was bold enough to do the latter not, there would be no hope for my salvation, since heaven would abandon me forever to its power, etc., etc.

Judge, my Father, if, In such a critical moment, when we are barely at Myself, I had to be hit and shaken of this strange apparition? What would I have become, I will tell you? ask, if God had not yet been kind enough to rescue me in that terrible moment, or if help had not been proportionate to the gender and circumstance of The attack? I therefore had recourse to him alone in this matter. pressing danger, and he allowed the very words of the ceremony provided me with the weapons I needed to defeat my enemy and to win a victory over him complete.

Going up the choir, The ceremonial prescribes three genuflections, to each of which the choir sings words that begin by Suscipe..., and whose meaning, which I had learned well, is about: Receive, Lord, devotion and the consecration of your creature, and do not allow that I am confused, because it is in you alone that I have put everything my hope. The meaning of these beautiful words could not come to me. more appropriate in all respects.

God and the Church put them in my mouth, and for so say in hand, and I used it as an offensive weapon and defensive, of which I pierced my enemy at the moment when He flattered himself with victory, and where he triumphed with more of insolence.

I pronounced them So three times in all the sincerity of my heart, as much as the fear I was in left me of freedom to do so, and three times I drew strength from it inside that I felt always going increasing. My God, I said, do not confuse me, since I hope to

you. Receive, I beseech you, the homage of my good wishes and my No one! I take you for my only share, and it is to you alone that I give myself and that I want to be for the time and for eternity....

Already on Monster had disappeared menacingly and full of spite. But my fears still remained, and seemed to redouble to measure that the moment was approaching. Arrival at the top of the choir, I made an effort on myself, and I determined to hope against all hope, if necessary. I am hurried to the knees and feet of the Abbess, for promise him obedience as to J.-C. himself and from that moment I passed from hell to heaven. The calm on Deeper succeeded the furiest storm, and J.-C. made these consolants heard in my heart words that dispelled all the trouble and all The commotion: "I receive, my daughter, the homage of your vows and of your person; Be faithful to me and do not be afraid Not, I will know how to defend you against your enemies. It is I who You took for your sharing, and it is me, if you answer to Your vocation, which will be your sharing in time and eternity. »

For once, my Father I believed my happiness assured, and in this I flattered myself too much. again. In that moment, I found myself so happy and so quiet, that I would have dared to defy all hell. It would have been presumption, and J.-C. does not want us to rely on ourselves. The monster, which I no longer feared, had been confounded by the help of heaven alone, it is true; He even had fled; But it wasn't for long, and I had

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Still many fights in support, many wickedness to wipe from his .part. We'll talk about that another time.

Favors extraordinary which she receives from J.-C. His ecstasies and Raptures.

"In the name of the Father, etc. »

Finally, my Father, my Solemn vows were pronounced, my profession was done, despite all the efforts of hell; I was finally a nun forever, and J.-C. It didn't take long to show me his satisfaction by favours all new and proportionate; What am I saying? well superior to anything I had done for him. There are I had barely been a few months old when I had been a professed, that he communicated himself to me by favors and graces more abundant than ever, and which soon became as if habitual, until then, will you believe it, my Father, that I had to ask him more than once to moderate the Belongings. I hardly dare to say it, for fear that is attributed to the extravagance all that I have made you write of more serious; for, my Father, how many are No people who, judging spiritual things only by this that they have experienced it, can believe nothing of this that spends any of their experience or the scope of Their understanding?

You would say that God is obliged to leave it at that, without going further. Supported by a reason as misleading as it is weak, they dare, so to speak, to draw the line for him, According to them, he cannot deviate, and reject with a pride and contempt, as unworthy of him, all that does not does not accommodate their way of seeing and judging. That they know, these reckless, that God holds none counts, and that regardless of their little reasoning, it does as he pleases, and in the manner he judges by the way, for his own glory and the salvation of all who want to enjoy it...

First, my Father, J.-C. communicated to me and made me feel a light extraordinary which sometimes goes so far as to produce the deprivation of the use of the senses, raptures, ecstasies... After My profession, I hardly made communion without experiencing something similar. We rang the bell next door of me; we sang; The nuns entered the

choir, or in were coming out, without me noticing it in the slightest. I was delighted in God, but always in my place, without movement and without any feelings. Coming back to myself, I don't Didn't always remember what had happened in my inside. However, here are some traits that I have recalled very distinctly, and that I will tell you: So we will think of it all we want. By giving you this account, I will still only obey the order I have received.

She is like a little child in the arms of J.-C.

The first time that Such a thing happened to me, it was in one communion, four or five months after my solemn vows. What a pleasant Surprise, when in the center of a brighter and more extended, and where God's presence went More sensitive than ever, I found myself in the form of a small child in the arms of J.-C., who cherished me. I was wrapped in swaddling clothes, without force, without movement; all that I had more than ordinary children, it was intelligence to know my benefactor, and will to love him, to thank him, without being able to do so only very faintly. I remember him telling me, caressing me, " Thus, my child, my providence has always taken care of your conservation, and that you have always been between the arms of my love. For, he added, there is no mother who loves so tenderly the child who is indebted to him for life.

So I want, my daughter, He continued, in response to the care of my tenderness, that, Similar to the little child you represent right now, you conform in all things to my holy will, not to do and want only what I will demand of you After that, my Father, I was returned to myself and

my ordinary form. That Trait and many others like it have been reminded to me keenly in mind when we started to write my revelations. J.-C. said to me: It is Now my daughter, that you must be in the state of small child, who, far from bringing any opposition to the will of his mother, conforms to it without understanding her. This is the disposition I demand of you.

In another apparition of J.-C., she wants for love to start in his arms. She feels repulsed. Words she Hear.

In a circumstance Such a J.-C. appeared to me: I was so delighted to see him that I Swinging between love and respect. Sometimes I prostrate at his feet to worship him, and sometimes, do not Being able to resist my eagerness any longer, I would rush in his arms; but I found myself constantly rebuffed from her breast, which only ignited the desire I had I was eager to get there and to rest there. I did to Several times the same attempt and always unnecessarily. Suddenly, a loud voice was heard, which seemed to me to be the of a blessed spirit: "There is no time yet," he cried to me, These favors are bought only by tribulations and Cross suffer for his love. I therefore confined myself to desire, as the only way to be happy, and I I was already thinking that this means

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if easy was at my disposal, and so to speak between my hands; that I could at any moment make use of it and the put into practice; for, what is the man in the world who has not the opportunity to suffer something for the love of J.-C.? and what The day of our life does not offer us a thousand ways to move forward in this way. His good graces, and to make progress in this saint Love that alone can make us happy for time and for Eternity!...

Favors reported that she receives from J.-C. in the Holy Eucharist.

It is above all, my Father, with regard to the Holy and Adorable Eucharist, for which God has always given me a devotion very sensitive, what happened in me the most surprising, by this divine light and if extraordinary that we have talked about so much. I have to tell you gives you acquaintance, reminding you of some of the main traits that have been like the source and origin of good lights, and on the occasion of which I experienced the most of the things you've already written to write them.

This trade of love, if we can say, this intimate familiarity with my divine master, my Saviour and my God, began the day of St. Augustine, where I went to worship J.-C. In the Holy Sacrament for a few minutes. It was, if I reminds us that at least three or four years after my profession. I was so keenly struck by the presence of real of J.-C., in the divine Eucharist, which one would have said then that the reality of this presence followed everywhere, and everywhere made me sensitive to annihilations of my God in this adorable mystery. O if those who doubt, if the unbelievers who deny and blaspheme him, could feel such favour; if their passions, their disbelief, their bad faith, their blindness Voluntary, their wickedness, did not put it obstacles!... But alas!. God is the master of his gifts, and the ungodly surrender

Unworthy: So he is a God doubly hidden for them!....

I had continuously mind and heart to the Blessed Sacrament; Constantly I saw him, at least with the eyes of faith, and in a way which cannot be well explained, for lack of comparisons that give Just an idea.

A thousand times, and especially during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, I thought I saw J.-C.

of the eyes of the body, so as not to Not to say I actually saw it. At elevations Consecrated species, it seemed to me between the hands of the priest, surrounded by a globe of light, and all shining with glory and majesty. The sun is less luminous in all its splendour. Then I saw him lying down on the altar, in a state of self-immolation testifying to the regard of many his eagerness to be received of them through Holy Communion, and his aversion to entering into the hearts of others.

Sound love trade with J.-C.

I have seen the Holy tabernacle as a furnace of love, J.-

C. in the midst of which the purest flames let me see A small child of ravishing beauty, sitting on the species which was kept there, and which served as an unofficial veil, which covered her adorable body and tempered the brilliance of her majesty... I saw him, I heard him, he handed me the arms and called me to him. Judge what should be the activity of my desires!

It is here, he told me, that I am captive to my love!... Priest and victim The time, it is here that I still satisfy the justice of my divine Father, and that I still immolate myself every day for the salvation of all. This is it that I await all hearts to immolate them with me, and burning flames that consume me... Come, my daughter, come unite with my sacred heart to honor your author as it deserves to be !... Make haste!. Come, let's not have

that a heart and a love, and you will feel relief in temptations and in Sorrows that overwhelm you! This holy union, source of your happiness, dampen the violence of your passions and extinguish the fire of your concupiscence....

Eh! why Are you suffering, children of men? Why do you persist in want to perish when the remedy is between you hands!. Come so all,

and don't resist longer to the haste of my love! Hey! My father how many times have I received this love invitation and urgent from my God! how many times have I experienced the almighty power of this divine remedy!...

For fifteen days or Moreover, these tender commitments, these loving invitations do not ceased point; It was even as a result of these touching conversations with J.-C. that he prescribed me the six practices that I have told you about elsewhere, and that I have first given in writing. I live in this same light all that he required of me in this regard, or rather it was he himself who dictated them to me word to me. word, as you read and wrote them. I am explained the meaning, and he demanded that I commit myself to it by vow, adding that it was a way to please him and to satisfy his justice

For My Sins and those of all men. He told me, however, that he did not want to Charging my conscience

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from way to make me guilty, if I failed sometimes, provided it was without contempt and even without negligence on my part. Finally, my Father, he enjoined him in the same sense that you allowed me to do Renew the vow for the rest of my days. So he wanted that I had reported it to my directors.

Accordingly I waited a year to commit myself to it in the first place, and I did not did so that with the agreement of the late M. Audouin, who had just succeed Mr. Duclos. It was the day of the Sacred Heart, After my communion, that I took this vow for the sequel. Right now I live next door of me J.-C. who seemed to strongly accept this commitment. He appeared then under the figure of a priest clothed in a Very fine dawn, but above all of such a brilliant whiteness that my eyes were dazzled by it and that it was to me. Impossible to fix it.

In a thousand other encounters of which I have reported to you elsewhere, my spirit went to J.-C. to the Blessed Sacrament of the altar, by this same extraordinary light; and either that the bodily senses were actually affected as I I often believed it, that all this was happening in my mind only and through the eyes of faith, in whatever way the This has happened, I can say in a very true sense, that I saw J.-C., that I heard him, that I talked with him; and if I were in the illusion, as one will not miss Not to assume it, they are at least the most pleasant where we can find each other. These so-called illusions have made me Always provided the most perfect and true happiness that I have never tasted on earth, to the point that everything Another pleasure disappeared in front of this one. That's what he There is certainty, and what one would try in vain to challenge me.

Grace that she receives for others. J.-C. makes him known the state of consciousness of a few people.

I still have to tell you, my Father, whom by an increase of goodness, God has wanted sometimes to reflect on others than on me the Benefits of which it

filled me without any merit from me. He made me known more than once The state of consciousness, and more than one soul has benefited of the knowledge he had given me. So I saw everything that was going on in the minds and hearts of some people, the temptations they experienced or had to Experience, the traps that the devil them was preparing, and I was instructed to warn them, by indicating the means to discover these traps and to thwart the plans and tricks of their enemy. Those who followed my warnings deceived his cruel expectation; those on the contrary, who amused themselves by doubting and arguing, were certainly fooled by their disbelief, and were not long in repenting of it.

It happened to me, my Father, with regard to different lay people, religious, ecclesiastical, sometimes even with regard to my superiors, and even of my confessors, as I have already told you said, to whom I gave different opinions, following their different needs, and according to the light I saw in God, and spoke to them on behalf of J.-C.; finally, my Father, I have sometimes warned you yourself, as you know (1).

(1) I reported elsewhere the various warnings that the Sister has given me given.

Considering one day a nun, I knew inwardly that she was strongly tempted by pride. I live the same way that a servant of the house did not know a word of her religion, This was verified by the absurdity of the answers which she did to the simplest questions of the catechism. Alas! how many others more learned than she about any other This, do not know more about this essential point! They had yet formerly learned their catechism; but they didn't not seen since childhood, and the superficial dye they had, totally erased from their memory and their spirit.

For a while, There was a boarder here who was much talked about in the Community: she wore the haire and the cilice, took frequently disciplined, practiced austerities extraordinary, of which everyone was aware. One heard him sigh day and night so as to disturb the rest of others, and even the choir of nuns. God made me see that she was being deceived by the devil. I went on her behalf to warn her: she found herself so bewildered. of my committee, and so struck by the evidence that I Donnai, that she confessed her hypocrisy and pride.

Mr. Duclos, now Rector de Parigné, had the misfortune to give a blow to a children of his parish to whom he taught catechism. The next day, or the same day, the child was attacked. a high fever that

removed it in a short time. The parents of this child accused their rector of having caused his death, by what they called his brutality. Mr. Duclos had little to justify himself than to do exhume and visit the child's body. His friends urged him: he himself believed that this party was necessary to avoid the blow of the slander and the consequences it could have; Because what Scandal for

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a parish, and how many Isn't it hard and unsightly for a pastor to be looked at? as the murderer of a child he wanted to teach, and to which he had given only a charitable correction for the make you more attentive?

The case was keenly pursued, and M. Duclos in great embarrassment: he was about to have the body exhumed; but God commanded me to Bring in to warn him not to do anything about it. This exhumation, he I said, could prove nothing in your favor, and would leave it to the On the contrary a very disadvantageous impression on the spirit of your parishioners. Suffer a little time slander, and God takes it upon Himself to better justify you. M. Duclos passed by, and a few weeks after his accusers and their forgeries. Witnesses came of their own accord to recant, and he make a public repair at the end of the High Mass (1).

(1) This trait had been for me told when I was parish priest of the same parish, where many people still had them knowledge.

After an election which was made in a community that I do not name point, God made me see that the new superior was not point according to her choice, and that the ways she had used could not please him. In the next election she was continued, and God said to me, She wanted to be, but It won't be for long. She died soon

after Two of our boarders, who were sisters, seemed to want

equally enter into religion. I saw them both in a dream; but one was dressed as a nun, and the other as a new bride. I announced on this the party that each of them had to take, and my advertisement was verified by the event. But we will talk elsewhere about my dreams Prophetic.

She also knows the fate of some deceased persons.

That's it, my Father, some of what God has made me see in favor of some characters, and this in the time when he taught me so much at the on the fate of the Church in general, and that of France in particular. It would be like impossible for you to detail all the circumstances of these revelations concerning these individuals, and who sometimes went until publicize the fate of deceased persons; as happened among others with regard to the mother Sainte-Hyacinthe, whose entry into heaven I learned afterwards A few days of purgatory. I even knew for what faults She had spent that time there.

My report to our Mother fit perfectly with a letter that we received from Father Cornillaye, his brother, who reported what a widow of Nantes, to whom God had communicated the same light on the fate of Madame Sainte-Hyacinthe (1).

(1) In writing this place, I had before me the copy of this letter which Madame Superior had communicated to me. It carried in substance, only after several days of prayer and penance for the relief and recovery of This sick nun, this good and holy widow being at the reads, heard complaints and moans in her room, which she saw illuminated with a light all extraordinary. Having risen to pray, she saw This nun who tells him

that she was the Sister Sainte-Hyacinthe, for whom she had prayed so much, by the opinion of its director, but that it had suffered the fate of all men; that she urged him to finish the novena she had begun, and to have the Mass she had acquainted had the charity to promise for her. The next day the Mass was said early in the morning by Father Cornillaye, brother of the deceased. The holy widow attended, and saw, all the time of sacrifice, a nun of St. Clare kneeling on the first step of the altar. It disappeared after the blessing, and the widow saw her rise to the sky, bearing some kind of stars on his clothes. She recommended to him her little girl afflicted with obsolete evil, and who was healed at once. Despite the lapse of the At the time, we remembered it and we still talked about it. It appears, by the testimony of the nuns, that the fact had been well established, as well as its conformity with the statement of the Sister, who had never had the slightest relationship with the widow of Nantes. We know what happened to the Sister after the death of Madame Saint-Benoît.

Just recently still, my Father, God has made me see the frightening fate of one of the his greatest enemies, whom he has just quoted, so to speak, to his court, and whose hasty death made sensation. He forbids me to name him: he even wants, in General, let me refrain from passing judgment on those whom he tried, even if they would have been his most declared enemies. As for those who He still lives, he makes me hear that I must pray for them and the pity; that his mercy will take place with regard to of a large number, and that it

is none that does not may still deserve his forgiveness. Thus, my Father, Let us surrender everything to his goodness, and surrender to the next time the continuation of my inner life; and it will be for sometimes, if you like.

New assault of the demon against the Sister. In the name of the Father, of the Son, etc.

He was not Possibility that so many graces and so extraordinary would have been for me. granted without the devil having been jealous and would not have taken the opportunity to attack my humility by pride, which he knew only too much how to inspire me, and which, very Probably, contributed the most to the failure of the First project to write, as we will soon see. Yes, I must admit, if the thing did not succeed first, as saints and so learned characters had desired, I say this to my shame and confusion, it is

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particularly to my pride that must be attacked. Yes, it's my pride diabolical, whom God wanted to humiliate and punish, which must above all be attribute this unfortunate setback (1).

(1) This shows and by a thousand similar accusations, that the Sister spares herself not and does not make itself more inclined. Those who would be tempted to regard her as a hypocrite, must at least agree that this would be a hypocrite of a very singular kind, and that it would be difficult to find anyone to whom one could compare.

The demon was not missing So not to tempt me on that side, and we can To say that he put into it all that he had of tricks and addresses. He began, therefore, with a long hand, by throwing into my soul the seed of this unhappy pride, seeking in all my actions to nourish and maintain the self-esteem of which my Wicked heart has always been filled. He pointed out my least virtues with great care, and gave me, In spite of myself, feelings of preference on the Other. He compared me to the greatest saints, and took advantage of every opportunity to get noticed how much I was pleasing to God by my humility, my patience, and how many favors and graces God had reserved for me which he had not yet granted to

and that I finally would one day be much higher in the sky than so many others which, he said, the Church has nevertheless placed there. Constantly he called me back These unwelcome and really extravagant ideas.

He went even further, and was transformed into an angel of light; He strove to counterfeit God's work by apparitions in His way. They were also species of lights of which the spirit was sometimes struck very sharply, but which served only to dazzle or offend him, rather than enlightening it. False lights, therefore, which never affected the depths of the soul in the way I talked about it before. Far from being satisfied and enlightened, the soul remained in greater turmoil and darkness more. Thick. Everything was therefore limited to illusioning that the mind, and sometimes the senses, which were troubled by it and affected. The heart remained insensitive, or at least All that was left was some swelling, very different. the sense of humility and annihilation that always leaves the feeling of presence after you divine.

I remember that subject, that one day when obedience called me to Working in a dirty and foul place, the devil made me experience the sensation of a sweet and charming smell, of which I could not guess the cause, until he had me inspired that it was God who produced it at cause of my great holiness. See, he told me as he did. loves and favors you. From that moment the trap Grossly tense was discovered, and everything disappeared. I I therefore remained in the smell that exhaled naturally from the place where I had to work.

Thus, my Father, of Time to time, this enemy was ashamed to find itself caught in its own nets; but the indefatigable did not do it than with more skill in the suite; and far from being disconcerting for a disadvantage, he knew how to take advantage of his defeat, and always returned to the charge with a new fury. He took great care to arouse outraged praise everywhere that was made of me and my practices of piety. I heard that I was being proposed for a model of virtue. Our Sister is a Saint, it was said; It's an excellent nun. I pretended not to believe it, and

same not to hear it; But no matter how hard I did, in spite of myself something said to me inwardly: It can hardly be otherwise.

My confessors themselves did not allow the small ones to contribute unwittingly respect which they sometimes showed me: for the devil knew how to enjoy everything. One of them said to me recklessly one day: My Sister, you are now hidden in the sanctuary; One day you will be put on the candlestick O heavens! What a blow to my humility, and that this

Word gave me to do! Fortunately, God, probably to punish me, has me well. humiliated since then by means of my confessors. On I do not Know

What noises had occurred Spread outside, the people of the world came to see me on purpose, and asked me in the parlor to consult me. As soon as I I noticed them, I sent them back. Sometimes it is even Sometimes rushing them or not answering them anything. To cut off all these dangerous visits and Annoying, I gave up the parlor altogether, and did not I've never been since.

Maybe (1) Did I not give fully in pride; but the demon that He made a retreat in my heart, always had his shares in all my actions, even in my best works. At least that's what I understood, when it once appeared to me that I I was prepared to do a general review. He was all busy tying and making a package composed of all that he had collected, and as if gleaned, on all the good works of my life. His wicked air, His mocking laughter seemed to tell me: no matter how hard you try, I will have my part in everything, and all this belongs to me from your so-called Virtues. And indeed, pride had blinded me to many Things I had always hidden, not believing in them sin.

(1) It maybe, in the Sister's mouth, especially if it is attached to her conduct, the only interpreter of true feelings, is, at My opinion, a good proof that she did not give it at all, or less entirely, and that just about everything is ended in temptations and fights.

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But, my Father, this which gave more hold on me to this dangerous and Cursed temptation of pride, these were the apparitions and The visions, the extraordinary graces with which heaven had me Favored. There is no doubt that my enemy was served to lose me absolutely by pride, if God had not done it served himself to humiliate me, by pulling, as he did, the counter-poison of the poison itself.

Visions and revelations that concern the Church, and which she had written by M. Audouin, its director.

It was while God was pleased to compensate me for my sorrows by intervals of inner consolations, most of which I had visions and Revelations that have occupied us so much about the fate of the Church. I talked to

a few people who were very struck by what I told them. The little who sweated, made a great noise. Good, skilful priests theologians, assembled to deliberate. It was arrested between them that I would have written the continuation of the revelations of which I had told them some thing. Mr. Audouin, then our director, in whom I had a lot of confidence, took charge of this painful commission, of which he acquitted himself with great zeal and special care. But, my Father, the devil knew how to play his part so well, that he took the opportunity to cause trouble in the community, which split into two factions. He took advantage of my bad provisions, and perhaps those of others, for excite against me the furiest, as the longest storm that I would have wiped again. At last he played his character that he manages to baffle everything, and We end up burning the writings of

M. Audouin. But, my Father, this denouement did not come that after many scenes, all more contrary and more humiliating for me.

His writings are burned. His great humiliations at this topic. She passes for crazy and visionary.

First, my Father, Things did not happen, by a large number, as secretly as it happened, between you And me. It wasn't long before I discovered my interviews. secret with M. Audouin. They soon caused suspicion and shading; My steps were observed, They came to listen to us and spy on us. It was spread even though I had been heard saying extravagances to M. Audouin, touching misfortunes where the clergy, the nobles and even the royal family, had to be wrapped. I was made to look like a visionary, a real deregulated brain: M. Audouin was reproached for entertaining me in my illusions. They went so far as to write to the superiors, and the Small parlor was forbidden to us (1).

(1) However, it is by This same little visiting room, once forbidden, as the last notes have been drawn again, and that we have again passed and received the materials of the new work. God can postpone and choose moments; but, when he wants it, nothing cannot obstruct his designs.

Judge, my Father, how much all this was to molest me; to make matters worse, M. Larticle and M. Audouin fell out a little at The opportunity to what I had written. Finally, everything ended as I did. already said.

In what penalties, in What humiliations did this unfortunate setback not have to throw me away? And what must not have cost my Poor self-love! Alas! my Father, this is what I am in. was earning more than I thought;

punishments, fights and Temptations against charity through resentment and aversion which I felt against those of my Sisters who had most

contributed to my grief. How much effort did it cost me to overcome that antipathy which, without a special grace, does not would never have allowed me to

the to see with a good eye, nor especially to love them ever from the bottom of the heart, as God commands to all without no distinction! Overwhelmed with shame, confusion and of opprobrium, I was subjected to the ironies by which, to All words, they satisfied their secret jealousy. I Becoming the fable of the community; but God assisted me to the point of finding pleasure to see me, thus humiliated, although moreover these Different temptations and sorrows of mind were really the torment of my life.

His Temptations against faith and mysteries.

Fights, temptations and sorrows of mind on the object of my belief; because of how many Didn't the devil attack me? The Will you believe, my Father, after all that I have for you? said? He even tried to shake my faith in the the main mysteries of our religion; He inspired me doubts about the great mystery of the Holy Trinity, that of the incarnation of the Word, and on the perpetual virginity of J.-C.'s mother. The Blessed Virgin has well wanted to dispel them herself in a vision. I had a long time a terrible penalty on the validity of my baptism; my confessor and a reading had given rise to it. The devil, Who knew how to enjoy everything, kept telling me that I had not been well baptized. He painted so vividly in my imagination the consequences of this first defect Capital, that there was for me enough to lose my head, yes, in communion, J.-C. He himself would not have healed me, by ensuring

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that I had been well baptized, and that when I have not been baptized By water, I always had the baptism of desire to supply. It even seemed to me that to reassure me more, he made me see the image of the Most Holy Trinity engraved in the depths of my soul. Never since have I felt the slightest pain about it.

Another temptation than the Demon still kept in my mind for a long time, it was to believe, or at least to think, that the reprobate were condemned to hell through no fault of their own, and by virtue only of the decrees which predestine them to do so irrevocably. God, the devil told me, behaves to them as a tyrant jealous of his glory, and who is also honoured, and by the misfortune of the slaves who groan in the prisons, and by the happiness of courtiers and favorites whom he fills with his benefits, without there being more merit in some than fault in the others. You know, and you wrote it, that God made me see that this would be one of the last Heresies that must desolate the Holy Church by J.-C.

Thus, my Father, As you told me in one circumstance, I was then Jansenist, fatalistic, predestinianist. Sky! I shudder again; But you reassured me, adding that All this was only in my imagination, or rather in the suggestions of my enemy. I left it at that.

Constantly I am represented to myself as suspended by a thread on an awful precipice. That one suffers in this state, My father! There is enough to die of fear. I was at all about it. delivered by doing acts of hope and of resignation, and above all by a very important action. humiliating that I did by throwing myself at the feet of a nun against my natural repugnance, or rather against my special resentment. God willed to give me peace, in Consideration of this small victory over myself.

His Temptations against chastity.

Fights and temptations against my vow of chastity, who awoke in that time and became more furious than ever. Who could help you say, my Father, the bellows and insults I have received of the angel of Satan, of the enemy of purity, who armed himself with my natural weakness to whisper and humiliate me from all the Ways? You have to have been there to understand it. The day, night, awake or asleep, how often This impure spirit suggested to my imagination dirty and infamous representations! How many times he has disturbed my sleep by obscene illusions, by indecent ghosts, to excite in me revolts which, by the grace of my God, I do not believe I have consented, not even while sleeping (1)!

(1) Can she not say well, in effect, as the apostle: Ne magnitudo revelationum extollat me, datus est mihi stimulus carnis meae angelus Satanae, qui me colaphizet, propter quod ter Dominum rogavi ut discederet à me; and dixit mihi: sufficit tibi gratia mea, nam virtus in firmitate perficitur. (2 Cor. 12, 7).

Dream in which she is pursued by a monster, and receives a Read in his defense.

Since I don't owe anything hide you from what concerns the state of my soul, I will bring you, my Father, on this occasion, a dream that I have never yet made known to anyone. You will make use of it as you please. I dreamed a night I was being chased by some kind of man monstrous whose design was even more odious than the figure; I fled with all my strength to avoid his pursuing, and, as I fled, I had recourse to God, to the Blessed Virgin and to my good angel whom I implored. There you go that while running the foot slips me. O fright! But while in falling I was going to be seized by the monster, I see A handsome young man who receives me in his arms and prevents me to fall. At the same time he casts a glance at my enemy. menacing and terrible; the monster flees at its appearance, As we see a carnivorous beast enter The darkness of the forests at the sight of the shepherd Vigilant who appears at the moment when she was going to devour a sheep from his flock.

Fear not, said the young man looking at me with a confident face, laughing and graceful; Fear not: it may frighten you, but may also repress his efforts. He held in his hand a lily charming and of the sweetest smell. Keep it well, he said in giving it to me, J.-C. always carried it in her bosom. We'll see more tomorrow the sequel; That's enough, I think, to today.

At these words, my Father, I wake up charmed by the beautiful present, and transported at the same time of recognition for my benefactor, and indignation against the heinous monster that had disappeared almost without daring to appear since that time. I say almost, for he still appeared to me sometimes, but always from afar, and only to reproach me for a use I have taken, there is indeed years, and that is to sprinkle my bed every night with holy water, before going to bed, as well as making it the signs of the cross on myself.

This wicked spirit and jealous, who does not seem to accept it, would like Terrifying me with threats. He

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says that if I continue these practices, which he calls superstitious, ridiculous and despicable, He will find a way to take revenge, by still defeating the business we started. It doesn't take everything to made his threats despised, God made me see, and experience has taught me too much that they must be one more reason for me to be on my guard. I have often noticed that Threatening dreams are usually announcements of temptations serious on the part of my enemy, and too often from failures and falls on my part, of which sometimes I do not I don't even notice, because of the subtraction more or less sensitive to the graces of heaven; for, my Father, They are always my negligence and my faults more or less marked that formed the cloud between God and me; but, if you find it good, my Father, we will make an article apart from my pleasant or frightening dreams, of which I have Purpose to realize to you because of the report they have with my inner life, and the different states where I have been in relation to God; because my Father, asleep or awake, I will be always an inconceivable enigma for others and for myself.

Dream mysterious, in which she understands the difficulty of uprooting self-love.

I don't have to worry about repeat it, after so many tests of All the diseases of my soul, perhaps none has it exposed to so many perils as self-love, which was like the bottom of my character; None has been so difficult to uproot; No one has done any harm to him. wounds so deep and dangerous as this unfortunate passion, this domestic enemy that God allows us to carry within ourselves. This is what he made me understand by a dream mysterious, in which I was obliged to fight and fight against different monsters more or less hideous that represented sins capital. The one of all who seemed to me the most obstinate, and who was the most difficult for me to defeat and defeat, this was a certain little coquette, extremely clean, supple and Vigilant. I can tell you more about this in the article in my dreams.

Not content with Measured alone with me, she always came in. for something in the fight that I had to support against each of the others. She seemed to be reborn from her defeat, and, like a Proteus, continually returned to the charging in different forms. The spirit of

God made me hear that this monster, the least hideous of all, amiable even in appearance, was self-love, father of the superb, the the greatest enemy of God and men, and of whom I had the most to do challenge me, and against which I had to take the most of Precautions, if I wanted to put my salvation in safety, as I have experienced so many times in the course of my life.

Remedies which she employs in her temptations. Humiliations and macerations

To defend myself So of this mortal enemy, even more, if we can say so, than Impure temptations and other miseries of which I was Besieged, I felt the need for humiliation and Austerities; So I used macerations, fasts, vigils, disciplines and prayers, which were of great help. At that time, my confessor had allowed me to wear the iron belt; I Wore; but J.-C. told me that this means should not be used, and that he would provide me with a more effective one forever; that this belt I wanted to wear would be replaced by another, and that the suffering it would cause me would be all the more more pleasant, that it would be of his choice and not mine.

Reform which takes place in the Community by the order of God.

It was at this occasion, my Father, that God commanded me to say to Madam Abbess that the Sisters had to leave the linen shirts,

that they have been wearing since Some time, to take back the inner tunic of wool that they had left against the rule. What happened even by Order of the superior (1).

(1) This Reformed had place following the testimony of the other nuns, during a visit of Monseigneur the Bishop of Rennes; but I don't Remember not if it was then

M. de Girac or M. Desnos, his predecessor. It doesn't matter.

She asks Our Lord for diseases; it is answered. His long and cruel suffering.

To turn off everything at both this fire of impurity, and bring down this pride

secret hidden so to speak deep in my heart to my Unbeknownst, I prayed to J.-C. to be willing to send me forces, in humiliating me in the eyes of my Sisters and in my own. J.-C. knew my need better than myself, and his kindness did not fail to remedy it. Soon it would have been said that all

The infirmities of the bodies had come to melt upon me successively, and this in the time even of the great lights I have spoken of. This was apparently the circumstance in which I had the No more need. Quoniam acceptus eras Deo, necesse fuit ut tentatio PROBARET TE. (Tobias.)

First I was attacked a slow fever which, for several years, mina my strength to the point of fearing for my life. This fever continued to throw unbearable pain in my head. and very opinionated; the chest was affected in order to be treated for the pulmony. Some Soon after, a huge one happened to my left knee. fleshy lump that had to be amputated through an incision

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very Painful; but God, out of condescension to my weakness, willed Well make me experience in this moment a sample of What was happening in the martyrs who astonished the world by their constancy to suffer the torments whose idea only still makes you shudder. So he suspended in me the natural sensitivity; And so, when he wants, he elevate man above himself, and that, among his own, women, old men, ordinary children have far prevailed by their courage over all that Heroism itself has given birth to the most astonishing among pagans.

Instead of closing, the wound degenerated into a mood deposit cancer where paralysis threw itself. This member became I was reduced to being able to walk only at the help of two sticks. The doctor and surgeon who I could even see that I did not could never walk otherwise, since my leg being Gangrenous and pierced, it was impossible for me to do it use. However, my Father, I was not long in making myself aware of it. serve, despite their decision; so they were first to state and say highly that This healing was above their art, above even forces of nature, and quite Miraculous.

His Prompt healing after a Mass in honor of the Passion of Jesus Christ and the Sorrows of Mary.

I had only prayed The community to make a novena in honor of the saints martyrs, and it was during this novena that I experienced at my

knee a better so sensitive that I was surprised myself; but the perfect cure did not take place until the day when M. Audouin acquitted me a mass in honor of the passion of J.-C, and the pains of his Holy Mother at the foot of the cross; and that time was so short that it was not a true miracle, and the Noise soon spread. For me, who am not so bold in these kinds of matters, I dare not assure her, although I have no doubt that there was no help particular of heaven, and that the Blessed Virgin did not yet have here interposed his power by giving yet another proof of his good will for me.

Effort in the workplace, which causes him a very painful accident and incurable.

No happened, or Very few years, that I have not suffered a more or less serious illness, which almost always led to the gates of death; and to top it all along, work effort caused me an accident which for seventeen or Eighteen years is my heaviest cross, a cross that will be needed yet carry to the grave. This accident seemed to me at first a a passing evil to which I did not wish to pay the slightest attention; A thousand reasons prevented me, for six months, from doing so. declare to person; but the awful colic, the The sharp pains I felt at last forced me to come there. Our Mother consulted the doctors, who declared that with such an enemy every moment could be the last of my life. We wanted, in a way, oblige me to prevent it, by consenting to means from which I could not suffer the only idea. I replied to our Mother whom I preferred to die, if necessary; that besides, I put my trust in God alone who knew my reasons and my need, and that on this article I would never have a doctor other than him. Our Mother in charged my conscience; She even ordered me to do so on pain of disobedience, and here I am again embarrassed on that side; Because, what to do? What side to take between two disadvantages that I feared equally?

However, God allowed that good priests came here to my aid; they said to Madame l'Abbess, according to their theology, that on this Tricky point, it was not necessary to decide so quickly compared to me. They even wrote to Paris, and the response they received from a great deal of school, carried that a nun especially could, in conscience, preferring death and receiving it, rather than to suffer no operation in such a case. Here I am therefore comfortable; I was left to use a little precaution, and use a certain

bandage I look at like the belt God promised me to supplement the one I wanted to wear. It must be agreed, my Father, that By myself I might not have leaned towards this kind of suffering; but finally it must please me, since it is God who determined it. It is not ours, sinners, but for him to choose us our crosses; and this belt, all painful, painful and humiliating as she is, must be dear to me, since it is of J.-C.'s own choice. who promised it to me.

Everything turned against For me, everything contributed to making me suffer and to humiliating me by the most sensitive places. It is necessary, my Father, than pride is quite unbearable to God, since he pursues and pursues him strikes with so much rigor wherever he discovers the slightest trace; for I can say that he pursued it at my I have not Refrain from complaining about it. Against sorrows and adversities of which I was

besieged, I had only one friend to whom I opened my heart with trust, and at whose feet I was sure to find courage and of consolation, the only one that

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So far has been good entered into my views and those of God, whom he second always to the best of his ability. Who would have told me I must ever have had No other the same confidence, at least? Well ! my Father, this friend, alas! What didn't I get to suffer on occasion! because once again everything had to be there. contribute.

First, I had the pain to see some of my sorrows reflect on him, like you. have seen it; soon after it was taken from me when I needed his help the most... Poor M. Audouin died, and it was I again who was in charge of announcing to him his death from God. So I told him that I had seen him in the grip of suffering, and as attached to the cross of J.-C., where it was to expire; which was true a few days later...

What a blow for me!... That was doubtless to console me that God made me see it, little days after his death, coming out of purgatory, and sitting down among the blessed in an armchair adorned with flowers, fins and

Garlands. On insurance From his sorrow, I had greatly exhorted the nuns to join me in hastening His deliverance through our prayers: what they did with great zeal and fervor; and the announcement of his reception into heaven made them also lots of fun (1).

(1) I remember Perfectly that ladies superior and custodian told me about this anecdote about the delivery of the late Mr. Audouin, adding that on the announcement of the Sister the nuns had no doubt about it.

I cannot, on this occasion, omit a singular feature which came to me a few months after this one. It was precisely the moment when persecution was more ardent against me. The Party of the Devil triumphed, if I may say so.

I was appalled, And yet, if I have to admit, I was only making vain efforts to persuade myself that I had been The plaything of error. God, in spite of me, was being heard inside myself. My God, I sometimes said to him, Deign to instruct me, enlighten me, put an end to my trouble. Ah! if I still had Mr. Audouin, at least he would console me ! Who

will give me to know What does he think now? Formerly he was of my opinion, and if I was wrong, he was there too; but from what eye has he seen since he appeared before God? That, if I knew, would determine me; but it is in vain that I desire it, and God will not allow it to Sort out, to instruct me, from the depths of his tomb.

Thus, my Father, I reasoned to myself one night as I led me to bed. At sorrow I lay there, and our light extinguished, that I heard behind the curtain a very loud voice. distinct, which I recognize to be that of the late M. Audouin; so much so that I don't think it would have been possible to whomever it was, that one wants, against any appearance, presuppose to have entered our cell, of power, up to this point, to counterfeit or imitate its pronunciation.

The voice tells me, speaking low, and in the same tone as he took in court: My Sister, Follow the light of heaven that enlightens you, and do not Stop no stop at the vain speeches of those who do not hear nothing.

I was surprised at the last point, without being the least frightened; On the contrary I wish I had had a longer time with him conversation, though he would have said much to me in those few words. It was even the bottom of everything I wanted to know, and I only wish I had been a little more assured although I was not from the reality of the thing. God did not allow it, and I must only say what is arrived, according to the exact truth of the fact. Is it you

"M. Audouin," I exclaimed? I could speak and look in favor of the clear.

From the moon, I heard no nothing more, and saw no apparition; on what he It is not easy, in my view, to explain how, if my ears had been deceived, my eyes would not have been affected by the same illusion (1). Let's retrace our steps a bit.

It was here, indeed, or ever, the place and time to see or believe to see a glimpse of a ghost, if it were true that the imagination could produce, as one likes to repeat it so much.

M. The Married One, the new director, is warned against her. What she has to suffer.

Mr. Audouin had been replaced by M. The Groom, whom great care was taken to To warn against what was called my extravagances, my illusions, my daydreams. (2). M. Larticle, director of the Ursuline ladies, in whom I had a lot of confidence. I was followed and observed everywhere with the greater care, to the court of penance, where, if my confession had been longer that ordinarily they were not afraid to warn me to finish, wondering aloud if I was going to start my old ones again. mistakes, and return to my daydreams.

M. The Groom became rector of the parish of Balazé, near the town of Vitré. Driven out of the community, I went to see him; but I arrived at his house the same evening that he was forced to leave to escape prosecution. He seems that he must have felt then that the announcements of the Sister were not as imaginary as he had been persuaded. I do not know what became of this excellent rector.

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I remember, between other, that a boarder entered one day as far as the confessional, by apostrophizing me in a very brutal, calling me a false devotee, a madwoman, a beast, of foolishness, and other similar kindnesses, and that during that Mr. The Groom gave me absolution, which I received very-quietly. Out of there, I had almost Want to burst out laughing, thinking

that I had just been blessed and to absolve myself on one side, while on the other I do not received only insults and curses; But the thing was too serious to amuse me; I was content So to pray for her without saying anything to anyone.

M. The article tells her that she has been deceived, And she believes it.

God, for a time, does not made me see nothing; I didn't have to tell my confessors only ordinary things and human miseries. They then thought they had the right to insult me themselves, in representing to me that several had been deceived by the devil, that sooner or later error will occur discover, etc. Mr. Larticle once told me quite clearly that Mr. Audouin and I had been; that he had too much little experience for these kinds of things; that I had well risky to lose myself... I was told that I could have to give in the trap of a sect which was called the convulsionaries, and where I knew no more than to all their reasoning (1).

(1) All their reasoning and its principles lacked any basis and application. Besides, those who have read the Lives of the Saints, know that this is not the first that God has experienced In this way, by allowing for a time that their directors attributed to the daemon's operation this which was the effect of an extraordinary conduct of heaven; but God never allowed docile souls to have been abandoned by all their directors; it's still theirs remained enough to reassure them. The only life of Saint Teresa enough to verify everything I say.

All this, together with The fear I had of being deceived, came to I am persuaded of it; and in this, more deceived than ever, I thanked God for finally pulling me out of my mistake, while that he had only healed me of my pride. I'm wrong still, my Father, I wasn't quite there. Cured; but here is the blow that ended so to speak of Crushing it: the happy blow that finally made this old man die Apostem, that secret, poisonous ulcer that I was still nurturing, and that God was always working to purge and destroy in any way, and even without my knowledge. It is necessary, yes, it is necessary that this unfortunate pride is very unbearable to him, and that he was well rooted in my guilty heart, since it took blows if multiplied and so sensitive to extirpate it, if I may say so let it still be; But there has always been a great thing in me. difference in this respect, since the time Here it is.

She feels inclined to announce to Mr. Larticle the persecution of the Church. He calls her crazy or of heretic.

I felt very inclined to make known to the late Mr. Larticle what God had shown me about the persecution of the Church, usurpation of clergy property? Contempt for power of the pope, the persecution of ecclesiastics, and the danger of religion, by a proud power that I I saw myself advancing against her. I was like outside myself, and I talked to him

then without fully understanding me. Stand firm, my Father, I said to him, stand firm; I see the Holy Church shaking in The sight of this formidable power rising against she.... Several of its pillars fall I

trembles for her. Here you are firm, my Father; I say to everyone, stand firm.

To these expressions, whom he did not understand, M. Larticle thought that he ought to strive to extinguish in me until the memory of what he called my past illusions. What do you say there, sister, He cried abruptly? What do you claim to say? because I confess that I do not understand you at all.... You Prophet of Doom ? (It is good clear

today than it was only too much.) You tell us things sinister and contrary to faith. Luther also predicted the fall of the Church, but the Church must never fall. Take heed, Sister, or you are a heretic, Or you're crazy, there's no middle. For me, I don't Understand nothing (1). Yet there was a middle ground.

(1) For me, I don't understand it nothing. In my opinion, this is all that was true. in his reasoning, and in this case he should not have affirm so positively that there was heresy or extravagance in a thing where he understood nothing. We have already observed elsewhere that it was himself who was in error by fear alone to fall into it, and everything he says here serves only to confirm. It is very dangerous to decide hastily, and especially with prejudice, on these kinds of matters.

She submits to its decision, retracts its alleged mistakes, and made a general confession.

The only idea of heresy baffled me. By the word sinister he had used, I heard that he thought I was a Jansenist. Lord, my God, I cried, Jansenist! Ah! my Father, rather die than to be a heretic. I declare to you that I want to believe only what the Church believes. Well! My father since the Church condemns me, I retract and condemn with her all that my imagination has made me see. (We see here that the poor Sister had faith

so simple, that she took a priest for the Church, and a little vivacity on his part for a dogmatic decision. There are, however, all this well of the difference from one to the other.) I never want to stop at the illusions of my mind anymore; because since

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the Church decides, There is no longer any doubt. Yes, I had the misfortune to be the Demon's toy My God, don't make it a crime against me, or deign it for me.

forgive; especially preserve me from heresy, which I fear more than death. I only want to think about doing penance.

And I don't stop there, for I made a general and very general confession of it. ample, where I accused myself of all that had happened, at least as much as I thought I could; I do all my previous confessions, which I looked at as useless at the very least; I even cried like so many of crimes the visions and revelations that I did not have yet received only from heaven.

Thus, I repeat, for I am convinced of it now, more deceived than ever, I thanked God for healing me of the illusion of the devil, and he had healed me only of the illusion of my mind and the swelling of my heart.

I always had well reason to thank him, but I did not know the nature of the service he had rendered me; I counted everything lost on the side the design of publishing what he had made known to me, and yet he had only made me cleaner to the execution of this design. He had been working there for a long time in every way, by different humiliations; but he never quite abandoned me, his divine love made up for all privations, and could alone make up for me. to support in the midst of so much suffering and sorrow.

God The console in its sorrows, which she attributes to the greatness of his pride.

I was experiencing Inner consolations that it would be useless to want explain, I had intervals where God seemed to please Himself to compensate me for everything by lights and Extraordinary favors on different points of Our Saint religion, and this in the very time when it

wore the roughest blows to my pride. O my Father, how good God is, and that we are very wrong to complain about his rigors, since he strikes only those whom he loves, and let him hurt them only for the sake of them. heal! The more he lowered me on one side, the more he seemed to want to lift me up from the other; It seemed of a hand show me the rewards and crowns, and the other the battles and the crosses that could deserve them. He seemed to say to me by his conduct: Thou shalt not be victorious over thy foreign enemies only after having triumphed over yourself, trampling under your feet all the desires of nature. It is on its ruins that must be built the edifice of perfection. We must constantly work to crucify the old man in you, to give life to man New. Thus, my Father, surrounded by crosses, I was getting help from a charming worker whom God made me see in a dream, I mean divine love, which was occupied constantly making them light and bearable, by softening them by his work. I'll tell you about it elsewhere; That's a lot for today.

Great illness that leads her to death's door. Terrible attack of the demon.

"In the name of the Father, of the Son, etc. »

Before the most serious disease I have never experienced, J.-C. appeared to me under the shape of a beautiful sun, whose soft and temperate light made me understand that I had to be patient against attacks the devil; that for this I had to have the most submission humble and the most perfect to the divine will, surrender unreservedly for soul and body, and finally to be prepared to resign myself to all that God would seem to demand of me. What I did on time even, by willingly offering him the sacrifice of my life for when it would please him to dispose of it.

Therefore, my Father, This serious disease was declared and soon tried. Duty to be last: doctors are aware of it were explained; but he who had permitted it, and who is the sovereign master of life and death, did not judge Not like doctors: he had even ordered them otherwise, but I had to have gone through it again. to exhaust the chalice of bitterness to which he had given me The grace to resign myself. Equipped with the last sacraments, I had only a breath of life left; that we expected to see turn off at every moment. All my Sisters in prayers

Waiting to receive my last breath; The blessed candle was lit for this sad ceremony; I thought I was seeing under my Eyes The Shrine or Coffin Intended

to bury me. I am judged without knowledge. Alas! my Father, he does not tell me Too much remained for my tranquility!

When we had completed all the prayers of the recommendation of my soul, Seeing that I had not yet expired, the nuns withdrew. and left me almost alone. It was the moment when the devil was waiting for me, and where God allowed him to deliver a cruel attack, I saw at the end of my bed, and almost at my feet, two black spectres and a figure appalling that seemed to come from the bottom of an abyss ; They were armed with pitchforks, and they said in insulting me: We are waiting for your soul to seize it, we Sums intended to reward you in hell of your pride, hypocrisy and crimes Get out very quickly,

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unfortunate soul, and we are in our fires.

What would I have become, I asks you, my Father, if God had not stopped me on the abyss of despair, and if he had not me alone Sustained against this terrible assault he allowed? All I could do in the state of abandonment I was in, this was to turn to him with the most confidence I could possible, and to promise to do penance, if he restored health; after which the two spectra me seemed to return to the abyss from which they were. Out.

Scrapie and everything Frightened by this horrible vision, my mind was as humiliated as my body was slaughtered; and God, As you will see, has since worked at To maintain in me, by a completely new way, this disposition of humility which he had established there by means if expensive and so nature. Little by little I felt the strength return to me: the appetite announced the Restored health, and as soon as I was convalescent, I went to report on everything that had happened at M. Le Marié, who understood nothing of all this.

Change in the interior of the Sister. Sensitive graces and extraordinary cease. It enters into the knowledge of the Being divine and its nothingness.

Disgraces, persecutions had humiliated my spirit, diseases and the pains had brought down my body and suppressed the Revolts of the flesh. The

Slander no longer had a taken, and the demon himself seemed no longer daring to present; and it was, my Father, in this silence favorable of the senses and passions, in this truce on the part of of all my enemies, may God make himself heard to me for me driving by a brand new road that he intended for me.

The apparitions, the ecstasies, the lights in God, the sensible consolations are all the more dangerous for those to whom God grants them, that it is always easy for the demon to counterfeit them until a certain point, and to make it at least the food of pride, which always feeds on it, unless God grants at the same time time, as he did to the saints whom he favored, of proportionate graces, trials, Temptations, crosses capable of counterbalancing them, and of holding always with the spirit in humility, otherwise one could still fall like Satan, from heaven to hell.

So God hung in me, even stopped the lights altogether extraordinary, ecstasy, rapture, visions external, to replace them with impressions that the demon can only very rarely and very rarely difficult to counterfeit, because they have almost no connection with external senses; I mean, my Father, the knowledge of God and of myself, who is everyone's Consider the surest voice for salvation.

So God began by losing myself in the ever-present idea of his immensity, which took the place of all inner consolation. I saw God in everything and everywhere; All beings Me seemed absorbed and engulfed in its immensity: It was as many effects of his omnipotence, as many streams that started from his divine being and returned to their common source: He alone was great, mighty, eternal, unchanging. It was the necessary being and by excellence, since all the others existed only in him and by him, without having an existence of his own, so to speak. So everything, except God presented me with a horrible emptiness, a kind of of nothingness, in which I myself was immersed, or rather I myself was the awful emptiness that I found everywhere. I carried within me this pure nothingness of which I had horror.

It was there that God brought me in to see my misery and draw the provisions he required for the work to which we Let's work today you and me. This idea of my nothingness, by which he made me begin what you should write, He imprinted it so strongly in the depths of my soul and all my being, that it has sometimes seemed to me that she has finally desiccated to the root of pride. Please heaven! my Father. That's so, he once told me,

After my communion, that I now want to operate in you, without your help nor the mediation of the bodily senses.

All Her life seems to her a pile of faults, she makes a new general confession to M. Lesné.

In this short story disposition, my Father, all my past life appeared to me like a heap of countless faults, imperfections and sins considerable, the multitude of which chilled me with fright; To reassure myself a little and reassure me, I still wanted make a general confession, and it has been until then the most accurate and detailed of my life. I did it Mr. Lesné de Montaubert, who had just succeeded to M. The Married, became rector of the parish of Balazé. He helped me very much; and how I was frightened by the infinite number of my faults of all kinds, he said to me: My Sister, if God will tell you. gave full knowledge, you would see that you Maybe leave even more, to take your life generally.

He was not mistaken, and, to convince me of it, soon God put in the eyes of my soul the faithful mirror of my conscience. O heavens! What an aspect! I live a terrible multitude of failings, negligence, infidelities of any kind, that I recognized for

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be mine, but of which I had never thought to accuse myself in confession. As there had been no fault of my fault in this omission, I still lost my memory as soon as the The mirror was taken from me. So I contented myself with accusing myself of it. in general as I had seen them, and to be all the more willing to humiliate myself and annihilate me.

This great emptiness that I saw constantly out of myself and within myself, joined to this sight distressing and continual state of my consciousness, at last the intimate feeling of my miseries and of the greatness of God, carried me by themselves to the sweetest confidence in the goodness of my author. I threw myself whole. in him to find my support, my strength, and all my consolation. These ideas held me in my center, and should never have disturb me in nothing; However, I noticed that more than one times the demon tried to take advantage of it to sadden me at excess, and inspire me with defiance in the divine goodness.

She is terrified at the sight of her infidelities. J.-C. reassures her.

I felt born in I a certain excessive fear that God will forsake me, or had to abandon me one day for my infidelities. Perhaps this frightening prospect would have thrown me in a kind of fatal state, if J.-C. Had it not been for Still warned this cunning of the tempter. He appeared to me one day that I was more troubled about the great nothingness of creatures and myself.

That Do you fear, he said? Am I not enough to fill a heart? renounce all else, and you will find all in me; Surrender to my will, and I will know how to pay your Trust, I will know how to compensate you for the sacrifices you will have done me. I am everything for the one who no longer wants to nothing. "Behold, my daughter," he added, "what I want you to hear. by this new conduct.

This great emptiness of the universe, This nothingness of the creature, this death to yourself and to all objects created, is a figure striking of what happens to death. The soul, cleared of the senses by this separation from all sensible objects, falls in this perfect annihilation of the whole of nature. Everything has disappeared, everything has perished, everything is dead for her: the world no longer exists; She no longer sees, she only touches God; and from the very moment she sees herself immersed all in its immensity, like a drop of water that falls into the bosom of the Ocean, where it is immediately absorbed without losing its own existence.

This is where the void is perfectly fulfilled, because the created being is then finds in its center; He has achieved his goal, he enjoys his end last and its sovereign good. This is my girl, where I wait for you one day, and that's why I want prepare in advance; for there shall be no receipt in this Ocean of happiness than those who have immersed themselves in it during their lives, by giving up everything to surrender without reservation in the paternal bosom that created them for him. This is the source from which they departed, towards which they must strive incessantly, because it is the only center of their rest.

Misfortune of the soul that has placed its happiness in created things.

What a difference, my Father, between this fortunate soul and that of the sinner who will have placed his happiness and happiness In the creature, sensual pleasures and desires of corrupt nature! At the moment when the links that attached him to the life and enjoyment of this world deceptive, she will also feel the presence of God, but she will not will see him as an inflexible judge

and inexorable. Some impetuous movements will carry her towards him; She will also want to rush into her bosom; for it is the natural slope and necessary of every created mind; but she will be continually repulsed by an invisible force, a hand that will tear him out without mercy, a terrible judgment that it will never be able to relent, and that will always have its execution. A great voice will constantly resound at the Bottom of his criminal conscience these desperate words: Withdraw, you do not belong to me; I don't know you point.

It will therefore be eternally burdened under the weight of this nothingness which it will carry everywhere; Nothingness of itself and creatures in whom she had put her trust and happiness; Frighteningly empty, she will find reality only the illusion that deceives her, the sins she has committed, and who will never cease to torment her. What a fate for a soul Immortal! What a destiny for an eternity! Unfortunate sinners, were you to be born for a so great misfortune that you will not avoid, and to which you Don't even bother to think?

This knowledge of I, my Father, was therefore the disposition where God wanted me, and where He had been leading me ever since. for a long time, as he was kind enough to make known to me; But this was not the one the devil would have desired, So he never ceased to worry me about this point, as he had done on others, by representing me only if I had been truly inspired of God, I would have been delighted to the third heaven and all carried out of myself; well, all The impertinences I have given you back

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counts, and who caused the terrible fighting by which we began writing; for, as it redoubled his efforts, God reborn and redoubled in me the first impressions that had failed.

Sound powerlessness to open up with Mr. Lesné. Its great ease of doing this with the writer, who God had commanded him to repeat as a echoed all that he had made known to her.

I had a lot of trust in Mr. Lesné to make my confession to him Ordinary; But I must admit, I was loath to invincible to make him know my interior, in relation to what God was extraordinary about it. This repugnance was further strengthened by Some very laconic decisions and responses by which he knew how to evade all the discussions which would have seemed to be looking back on the past. Let this was to test me, or whether it was on his part a Some prevention that would have been his communicated, as I think one might conjecture; or finally that God would not have destined him for this, as one could still believe it, in whatever way the thing took place, but I was nevertheless obliged to concentrate my pain in myself without daring to open myself to anyone. So I decided to wait for the sky to explain itself. more by providing me with the time and means to carry out what he still seemed to demand.

Finally, my Father, this time and these means were not far off, the Divine Providence has led you here to remove my doubts, to fix my worry, tranquilize my mind, and replace all that which I had lost in the late M. Audouin, putting in, as I hope, the final stages of the work he had undertaken and begun. This hunch, my Father, I had of you, long before you ever saw you, and before we knew that you would be our director instead of Mr. Lesné. I tell you this, my Father, with the same naivety that I told you everything else (1). I had from the beginning a trust in you that has not been denied, and which, I hope, will never be denied. So I have said more than anyone else, and I can assure you that no director has known me as you know me. I want to Although you are the last, and you assist me in The hour of death to inspire me with confidence in this Last passage, which I have so much reason to apprehend at cause of the efforts which the devil will not fail to make, if God will give him permission.

(1) I can say that like the Sister, I wrote down everything she told me, in trying not to alter anything, and even what could have something to do with me, with the same naïve that I wrote the rest. God is the master to use whomever he wants, and the most weak are always the best in his hands, as I have said elsewhere.

This confidence I have put in you, my Father, was commanded to me, and Almost never did it cost me. Yes, I repeat, I have been ordered to make you write down everything that happened in me for places, times and others

circumstances. God has me recommended more than once to repeat yourself as an echo of what he had told me or made me see, because he was to derive his glory and good from his church. From your On the side, my Father, you have demanded that I you realize it; it is therefore to obey God and to you that I did it: also I started all my narrations by reminding me of the obligation where I was to obey. It is God again, my Father, who wants me to End the long story of my inner life, in you giving some general thoughts on different states where I found myself, and the different lights I received from heaven. But enough for today, it's time to rest. Farewell, my Father, pray for me.

Manner of which God has made known to her what she has made written.

"In the name of the Father, of the Son, etc. »

My Father, for this which concerns visions and how God made me know the different things I have for you nurtured, the Church and her persecutions, judgment, Heaven, hell, purgatory, etc., etc., I told you places where things seemed to be happening in front of me, sometimes one place, sometimes another, almost always on mountains. I told you that J.-C. had appeared to me there, As also in the Church, and even in our cell, in human form, and as he was during his life Deadly; sometimes he was heard, either by words, either by inner lights, without let it see.

I already have you explained all this as much as I was possible; but if you ask me, for example, how I was in the different places, I will answer you that I don't know. All I can attest to certain, it is that, when the presence of God was to me. manifested in a sensitive manner by this light, Immediately, and in the same moment, I found myself transported to the place where God wanted me, and who was to be the scene of the scenes of which he had stopped making me a spectator; and then, either that he approached me or that he approached the objects of me, what I cannot distinguish well, and what I Think

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It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. is certain that I saw them, at the very least, with the eyes of the mind. Although I spend a lot of time in consideration of the various objects that were shown to me, the The first movement that transported me there was always in a wink; which still happens sometimes although a little more rarely. I see, I touch, I hear, although the use of the senses interrupted in whole or in part, as I told you formerly.

To do it best for you understand, my Father, it will suffice to remind you again of this which happened in me while we were singing the prose of the dead, at All Saints' Day. I felt and saw myself suddenly transported to hell; But, like you know, I had nothing to worry about, since I was there with J.-C. There I saw, I examined all the frightening objects which I have spoken to you in the detail I have told you about. fact. While my mind was occupied with it, I could half hear the nuns singing to beside me; but their voices together did not form than a sound almost imperceptible and insensitive to my ears. Towards the end of the prose, I came out of this kind of lethargy, I resumed the use of the senses as a person who is awakens from a deep sleep, where she had believed hearing some noise that had troubled her a little.

These delights that Happened to me more frequently in the past, do not leave still happen to me at intervals; and then, let me meditate In the

chorus in my cell, or even during recess, I am much more where God carries my spirit, than in the place where my body remains. That's what makes me so fear of recess, as I told you elsewhere, because they are an embarrassment to me.

The The slightest negligence on his part hinders of God.

The slightest negligence On my part, the slightest fault always puts more or fewer obstacles to heaven's favor. A more serious fault can deprive me of it altogether, and if that fault went to the Deadly, she would put a wall of separation between God and me. He then withdraws his graces and withdraws himself; but in ordinary faults, it is Happy to reproach me more or less sharply: sometimes these are only reproaches of tenderness; you would say a spouse indignant who complains of the coldness of a wife always loved, and yet threatened with abandonment. That is sometimes only after absolution and several Communions that it appears to me to give me time to desire and the pain of having grieved him. I

fear his approach and his first looks; but I want them even more than I fear them.

Impressions of graces she received in revelations which God favored her. Strong impression of hatred of sin.

In these moments of appearance, I found myself struck by pleasant objects or terrible ones that came in turn to affect me with fear, of hope or love, and these impressions were relating to the different objects. Considering the torments of hell, for example, I felt impressions as salutary as they were vivid, which made me tremble about myself and uncertainty of my eternal fate. So it was with purgatory. by proportion.

Seeing the happiness of Saints, I felt inclined to try to do so. merit by good works; as when seeing the Misfortune and the torments of the reprobates, I felt strongly inclined to undertake everything to avoid them. These two extremes made me feel, and like touching the finger, by their frightening and inevitable alternative, all the Price of my soul and all the importance of its eternal fate. I understood then all the strength and all the truth of these words of the gospel: What use to man to have won the whole world, if he loses His soul? Who can ever compensate him for this irreparable loss?

That's the importance Salvation. I thus floated between the hope of heaven and the fear of hell, and I trembled over the uncertainty of my eternity; disposition that the demon never has gives birth, which he does not even attempt to counterfeit, and that he could never imitate well.

Whereas, between Other, some torments of the reprobates, I felt my conscience to tell me that I had deserved them. Which fright! I conceived at the time such a great hatred against the unfortunate sin that had made me worthy of such a punishment, that it surpassed the hatred I had against the demon that had carried me there, and until the Fear of this very torment: separation and loss of God, however unbearable it may be in itself, then seemed less so in a sense; Nothing was above of the fear I conceived of being eternally the subject of the monster that outrages him; to have eternally in the heart of crimes that would not be surrendered or forgiven, nor forgotten, and which would exist endlessly for misfortune

of a creature indestructible, which they would have forever made enemies of his God, and a God whom they would have forever armed against she.

I was then entering so much in God's irreconcilable hatred for this mortal enemy, that meaning the sentence

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which he pronounced against him at the general judgment of which he rendered to me witness, I said to him, Yes, O my God! if I ever have the Woe to be reprobated like these poor people unfortunate whom you condemn for having sin In my heart, I ratify in advance the same sentence that You carry against me, as you carry it against them. However frightful it may be, I receive it and ratify it; I condemns me myself to the torments of hell, that you may Revenge for the horrible outrages that the heinous monster has done to you. O My father! if men had a fair idea; if they knew its ugliness; if they knew what hatred he is due, as they would punish and destroy him in themselves by a salutary penance that would prevent the rigour of God's justice!

A soul, even if it is returned from the third heaven, like the apostle St. Paul himself, will she ever be able to think of boasting, when he has been made to see both his nothingness, and the enormity, and the ugliness of the sins she has committed or could commit, as well as the horrible torments they have earned him, and who may be waiting for him at the end of his career; because Who knows if it is worthy of love or hate? This man, far away to abuse the favors of heaven, reassuring themselves about the uncertainty of Will not his salvation be all the more disposed to Work on this great business with all the care that asks for its importance and necessity, in order to succeed to operate it with the fear and trembling that the Holy Spirit asks us through the mouth of the apostle that I Just named?

It is, my Father, the disposition where I am now, and which God has always asked of me, as he has always stained to give birth to it; But this happy disposition, he It must have come to me suddenly, or even from the beginning of my revelations. Have Grace had to have disposed me of it by all kinds of means, as you have seen, and by extraordinary means which are for me a new subject of trembling for the account that it I will have to give it back.

Yes, my Father, and As you know, I used to be far away from the point where, by the grace of God, I find myself today. He entered well imperfections in the little good I was doing; Nature is kept finding; The demon was putting his own everywhere. So, I repeat it again, and I speak as I am. affected, if all has been lacking in the past, this is little more than my pride and my evil What needs to be done: what would happen again infallibly if God had not paid all the costs by destroying all barriers; for, as far as I am concerned, I can, without having need for humility, to assure you that I am only capable of spoil God's work and harm His great ones Design: This is what I am as sure of as of my existence.

Danger extraordinary graces. In the saints, they are accompanied by great suffering and humiliation.

As for favours sensitive, and to the lights that produce ecstasies and raptures, or whose effect ends outside with apparitions and things visible and extraordinary, it is out of doubts that they are, in a very real sense, much more to be feared than to be desired, because it is always in favour of others that they are granted, and that they are dangerous to those in whom they happen, if they are counterbalanced by means which can effectively destroy what could harm virtue of the subject in which they are located.

Thus, my Father, God has made me know that whenever He has them. employed for the good of his church and the salvation of souls, He always granted to those who were souls instruments, humiliations, sufferings, graces finally of predilection that forced them, for so as to say, to go back into themselves, and always held them in their nothingness. So we see that those whom God has used for be the instruments of his mercies, in order to reminding men of their duty, have been Almost all of the saints of the most perfect mortification and more whole, as of the deepest humility.

Deep humility of men called to operate wonders in the Church.

Yes, my Father, these extraordinary men of great merit for the most part, These miracle saints, and to whom the wonders they operated of all kinds often gave the name of wonderworkers, God made me see that they were not in security, in the midst of the honours bestowed upon them, that as much as

that their passions were extinguished and dead in their hearts, as much as they acted only in the name of God, and without any return on themselves. Pride still presented itself: but in the most he found a heart inaccessible to his attacks, and passions that were no longer breathing. The devil and nature were defeated and forced to remain silent, and that is what was their safety.

Yes, my Father, I see that these holy characters lived only on the love of God, whose glory they sought in everything and everywhere; not using the creature that to rise to the

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Creator; in a word, They had died to themselves, to the world, and to the pleasures of the senses; they were only looking to answer His grace, to fight their passions, to conquer their temptations, and absolutely triumph over the old man. He has found, and there are still others that are not all in fact freed from the empire of the senses and the passions, which are still filled with feedback on themselves, imperfections and even defects. These people do not are not highly criminal, but they can become criminal and do not become criminal. become so all too often, or at least their attachment to the Creature provides them with too many opportunities for falls and infidelities. It is especially for them that the favors sensitive and extraordinary are dangerous, because like us have exposed, not only can the devil always counterfeit them to a certain extent to throw them into the illusion, but still he can use it to awaken a Ill-asleep pride and make them lose the beautiful virtue of humility without which an angel of lights is nevertheless only an angel of darkness, what a true demon in the eyes of God.

Manner whose pride God has protected the Sister from in Graces extraordinary which he communicated to her for salvation souls.

Also, my Father, in these extraordinary graces which he has communicated to me For the salvation of others, He made me see that His goodness has Much spared my weakness. My self-esteem was too sensitive, my passions too keen, and my pride too ready to ignite. He made me hear that I had

lost without resources, if had it not been for the graces he put into me for free and for others, by those he put only For me. Such is the clear view of its greatness, of my nothingness, of my sins, the fear of His judgments, as well as the perfect and complete forgetfulness of a thousand things he had done to me to know, and of which he reminded me only to make you write them, without me even being able to, the The next time, make no use of it. Good proof, at My opinion, that ideas do not come for me, since I can neither have them of myself, nor avoid them when God gives them to me, nor takes them back or keeps them when He keeps them to me. Take. Can we still retain pride when we have experienced so much helplessness and poverty, when we finally have so much Of subjects to humble myself that I have?

So God made me see, my Father, whom the devil can print, for example, in prayer, extraordinary lights, sweetness sensitive tastes, which, together with the persuasion of a humility that is only imaginary, like the rest, make believe to the souls who test them for their misfortune, let them are pleasing to God, and that there is nothing left to fear for them; trap all the more dangerous because it is much harder to avoid, and even to see it, although people more versed in the real spirituality and in the inner life know how to Defend yourself well. All they need is compare together the different pulses they feel at certain times to discern the illusion and unravel God's work from the work of the devil. But we will come back to it again if you deem it appropriate. So let us leave it at that for this morning; And tonight, after the recitation of your breviary, we will resume the detail of my poor inner life. God helping, us Let us finally try to put an end to it. Pray for me....

Illusions of the devil in some extraordinary things he can counterfeit. Their effect is always swelling of the heart.

"In the name of the Father, etc. »

My Father, the effect What does the illusion of the devil always produce, I can't know too much To repeat it consists in a vain satisfaction which comes from high self-esteem, heart swelling which always leads to believe oneself better than others. This impression, as I have already said, never souls really internal do not confuse it with that caused by the sight of God's presence, and there is no way to get there. deceive when once one has experienced both. One affects the interior of the soul, which it satisfies and tranquilizes by humiliating him; the other seizes the imagination and

sense, which she deceives in troubling. Only God can heal the human heart, as he alone can satisfy and fulfill it; he alone can restore it peace by destroying the passions that oppose it. The demon only produces the appearance by putting the ghost in place of truth; He fights a passion by another passion, a vice by another more hidden vice, and makes us avoid an abyss only to make us fall into another often deeper. Yes, my Father, When all vices had been destroyed, the devil would be always content, provided only that he could revive pride on their debris. Thus, we tossing from an excess in another, he foments all vices and passions, all the evil inclinations of corrupt nature, and prepares In the heart a more cruel war under the guise of the peace. It is a fire hidden under the ash that causes the fire, A deceptive calm that announces the storm and exposes to a loss irreparable the reckless who does not know how to avoid it.

I represent myself, my Father, the

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Battle of Moses and the Pharaoh's magicians. It is precisely God and the Demon struggling. By the artifice of the devil and their Trade with hell, the magicians overcome Counterfeiting, to a certain extent, what the saint does lawgiver of the Hebrews: they oppose prestige and from enchantments to true wonders; but there are At a point where they are forced to confess their powerlessness and defeat, as well as superiority of their antagonist, and it is this point where the Divinity was waiting for them to force them to recognize her at his operation, saying: God's finger is here. He was therefore not on their side.

Thus, in all The times the monkey of divinity wanted to meddle with his work; But it has never been only for the disfigure. That's why he opposed the oracles to prophecies, and the worship of false gods to that of true. It is he who, by the same means and for the same Finally, produced schisms and heresies, under Pretext for reform, and claimed to restore religion and the Church, when he worked on his complete destruction. How many traps does he not all set days of simplicity of faith and innocence, in his insidious productions where the snake hides under flowers, where

the poison is swallowed deadly in delicious liquors, and where the fake of Error disappears under the guise of truth !

Menstruation to discern the false lights that come from the devil.

But, my Father, It is especially in the kind of spirituality that this skillful

charlatan makes every effort to make the change take. This is it Especially since he goes about it in every way to deceive a soul, under the pretext of perfection, as I said. We have seen, my Father, it is always easy for souls versed in true spirituality, to discover its pitfalls and discerning its false lights; but for those to whom their experience has not given Such a delicate taste, such a sure discernment in the ways of God, they must apply themselves to consider, According to the principles of faith:

1° what the devil may and may not;

2° the manner in which which he operates, as opposed to that of God, as We have developed it strongly throughout to different times; finally, above all, the goal he proposes to himself, which is always to fight God's purposes, and to throw away or Holding souls into illusion, as if to strengthen the unfortunate king of Egypt in blindness from where God tried to remove it in every way. According to These rules seconded especially by light Divine, it will be clearly seen that in all the genres he wants to be. To mix, there is a point that the devil cannot counterfeit, or in which it is always easy to discern the truth counterfaction. This point, my Father, God owes it to His work, to His creature and to himself, and this touchstone must be within everyone's reach, so that no one may be tempted beyond his strength.

A good way to discover the error of his suggestions, when he comes to a soul is to admit nothing contrary to faith, to scripture or to the decisions of the Church. There you go again for the various suggestions taken in particular, The touchstone of truth. It is not possible that the Father of lies does not soon depart from it, and does not try to depart from it with him, since his purpose The main thing is to fight and destroy, as much as it is in he, our submission to the Church and our faith in the the truths she is charged with proposing to us; but, as I said, from what God makes of it to me knowing, it is not possible that the imposture does not contradicted, it must necessarily betray itself itself by some place.

Yes, my Father, and Take this for an indisputable truth: a few Beautiful knowledge that the devil claims to give us In spiritual subjects, it is impossible let him not warp into something about faith and obedience to the Church, which has always tormented its hatred and its

pride. But another way, and still very excellent, to discover the cunning From this spirit of error, it is to join in this dedication to faith a firm and constant will to follow in all the divine will and not to deviate from it in any way. This disposition, which pleases God infinitely, displeases, Do not doubt it, sovereignly to his enemy, and he is still impossible that a heart where it is is long the toy of error; the torch of faith that leads him through the way of obedience and love, will soon have dissipated This false light that makes him illusion.

Very different from this spiritual charlatanism, of this deceptive and momentary glow, which can only dazzle for a moment and disappear on Timing the bright and soft light that comes from J.-C, only makes increase and increase as this divine approaches Torch of faith. It is a fire added to another fire of the same nature, and which becomes all the more ardent by that meeting; instead of the prestige of the devil disappears like wildfires or phosphors of the night, before the star that illuminates the world by the force of its rays Beneficial. Hence it must be concluded that all these alleged

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Inspirations that come Of the world are, to take it well, only the tours of Pass of a skilful squadron who lives only at the expense of those whom he fools of his charlatanism; And yet, my Father, however gross the deceptions of this charlatan, God makes me know that I would have been infallibly fooled myself in many encounters, if he does not would have lent me a helping hand to withdraw me from The mistake or save me from falling into it.

One of the confessors of the Sister consults God on the way through which he was to drive. Answer from J.-C. to the Sister about it.

One of my confessors extraordinary had consulted God on the way in which He had to lead me (1). "My daughter," said J.-C., "say of my go to your confessor that I call you by way of the sufferings at union with your crucified God is the less prone to error; for," he added, "I am pleased to

(1) It was the late Mr. Beurier, great missionary of the Congregation of Eudists, very versed in the direction of souls, author of a book esteemed, Conferences on the Faith, died at last in smell of holiness. He had, like many others, been of opinion that the Sister would have had M. Audouin write, as we saw first.

Leading souls by different ways that are sometimes unknown even to their own director, as well as themselves. As the devil has his secret tricks and detours hidden, and the worldly their false maxims to deceive them and seduce them, I also have, to support and destroy them The wiles of the devil and the worldly, special means which human prudence and diabolism cannot comprehend. I very often allows their temptations and fights interiors, to counterbalance what is good in them, and to hold my graces covered with the self-esteem that does not seeks only to remove them. If it happens that the demon triumphs in something over their will, in the fights that I allow him to deliver to them, I then use his victory to fight him with more advantage, defeat him in my turn by piercing it with his own features. Thus, by a secret that the devil fears, and who is above what can be said, I oppose effect to cause, and I use the crimes committed to root out the pride that produced them. By this I crush the head of the snake on its own bite to make it one poultice that can cure it."

Grace of annihilation established by suffering in the heart of the Sister. His union with J.-C. suffering and annihilated, especially in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar.

How many times, my Father, Have I not had the pleasure of experiencing this charitable conduct? from my God! How many graces have I not to give him back for having restrained me with him by attaching me to the cross! He doubtless had his designs of mercy, in throwing me into the sea of humiliation and suffering. Ah! that he be eternally blessed! The demon had served the lights of God even to bring in pride in my mind; It was therefore necessary that, in order to outsmart his tricks, deceive his hopes and triumph over his successes, God acted by all unknown means to the malice of the demon as to all human prudence.

His enemy counted well having destroyed from top to bottom the project he had to fear, and this project had never been so close to succeed only at the moment when he applauded himself with his triumph, and where I myself believed

that everything was abortive. But, I repeat, I recognize that I would never have been so happily deceived that in the moment when I thanked God for pulling me of the error.

It was also in this time that a new grace and a new light began to bring me down into the abyss of my nothingness; faithful mirror where I draw at leisure the knowledge of God and myself. I see it as two opposite ends, the power on one side, the weakness of the other, and Satan as posted in between, Always on the lookout to harm one or the other gone, constantly studying himself to enjoy all the Occasions and at all times to lift, to arm the Passions against the infirmity of a nature that can do nothing without grace; But what is consoling, I also see in this mirror that God never refuses it if necessary to those especially who ask for it properly, and do what they can to profit.

I still have to tell you, my Father, that by the attraction of this grace of annihilation and union with my Savior, I find myself Constantly inclined to unite my crosses with the cross of J.-C., my humiliations to his humiliations, my sufferings to His sufferings, my death to his death and passion, to honor it painful circumstances, and do by this means penance for all my sins and those of all men, as prescribed to me as I have beenth it to you said elsewhere.

I still find myself, by This inner appeal, very strongly increased to unite myself with J.-C. to the Blessed Sacrament of the altar, through mystery of his life and death, and by his annihilations and opprobrium. I feel like a hunger and a thirst to lose myself In the Divine Sacrament, like a drop of water that is lost and lost confuses in the vast expanse of ocean where it fell.

It's my Father, what he engraved deeply in my depths of the soul in a circumstance of which I have given you an account, and where, complaining to me, and

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of my sins and of all men, he said to me, "My daughter, if you want to please me and make you worthy to accomplish my will, in carrying out the designs I have for you, it is to report to me every hour of the day the merits of my passion, according to the different mysteries that compose, and

This in union of the State of prayer and sacrifice where I am in the divine sacrament of my altars, which is the perpetual memorial of my passion, at the same time as it is the throne of my love. That, you know, is my

Father, the origin of practices whose vow you have allowed me to renew.

There would be many volumes to write on what J.-C. made me see and on this occasion, on the need where we are all to be united to Him in our sufferings, and on the uselessness of our merits without this union. "Watch, pray," he told me, "to resist. temptation; seek in everything only my pure glory and my pure love; Detach yourself from the creature and from yourself- even to attach you only to me, and I will be your Support and your light. It is only in me and through me that You can fight and deserve, etc., etc. »

Necessity to be united with J.-C. suffering, and always fighting Pride, which comes as much from the depths of our corrupt nature, as from the demon.

Besides, my Father, by making yourself, by obedience, know the attraction of This grace that leads me to the annihilation of All myself, I do not claim to be exempt for this of pride or of the other vices of human nature. Ah! I expect, on the contrary, that I will have them to fight more or less to the last breath. The first, above all, is a cunning enemy, who withdraws for a time only for the better surprise, returning to the charge at the moment when it is the least expected. Yes, I see in God only in the greatest Saints themselves this infernal monster can be reborn from its ashes and cause the loss of him who triumphed over his defeat. Ah! that it is terrible to always be struggling with a Enemy as subtle and as dangerous! That the devil is at fear for us, and that we must desire to be once out of reach!...

But, my Father, Why do I always attack the devil on my miseries? Why make him solely responsible for my vices, my pride? Alas! as long as I search my own heart, I feel that my nature having been infected and corrupted by original sin, I am by myself filled with vanity, pride, and falsehood; a compound of misery and sin more to fear For me, I would almost say that all men together. That could I become, if J.-C. did not provide me in the opening of his wounds an assured asylum against hell and against myself ? Also it is the quiet port, and as the term where he has me always called to avoid the

Unfortunate shipwreck which could render me useless and make me lose forever the fruit of so many graces and so many works.

Truth well frightening, my Father, and that he is still coming, so to speak, re-engraving myself in the mind in a very energetic way and well able to make a lasting impression. As it seems to me come here about, and that God no doubt had his reasons for Choose this circumstance to trace it to me, I will tell you Tell the story at the end.

Trait striking of a shipwreck, which God applies inwardly to the Sister. His humble feelings.

A nun reported One day, during recess, a trait she had read elsewhere or heard read in I do not know what public papers. It was a wealthy merchant or merchant who returned of a lugly and arduous journey, on a ship laden with immense and considerable wealth which was to ensure its fortune and the fate of his family.

Look forward to see him, and informed of the day he is to arrive, his wife, his children, all his friends had gone to the shore, where they seemed, by their shouts of joy, to hasten the too slow march, at their will, of the ship they discover in the open sea. This sight makes them enjoy happiness; but alas! It wasn't for long. This enjoyment premature gave them only a temporary happiness which was followed by many tears.

The longed-for ship approach, it arrives, we almost touch it. The master appears, recognizes his dear family, and greets them, albeit from a distance; and the next moment, before the eyes of the same Family The ship comes to run aground and sink, so that everything perishes without anything being saved. nor keep.

While with others nuns I listened attentively to the tragic story, which certainly had nothing but very specific to make us feel the inconstancy and obsolescence of false goods from here below, God immediately applied it to me much more striking again, and engraved it so deeply in my soul, that there is no fear that it can ever fade away....

"That's it, He said inwardly, to what a soul, is exposed until the last moment. After acquiring Large; spiritual riches, avoided all pitfalls salvation, escaped from all dangers, and even defeated all

enemies, she can Unfortunately sink as in view of the port and on the point of receiving the

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eternal reward of his noble labours. »

Ah, my Father, if a So deplorable fate, if such a sad outcome can to be that of a soul filled with merits and virtues laden with all kinds of good works as I understood it, that will not have to fear, I will not have to fear asks, the one who has done almost nothing but harm, and has made worthy than punishments? Scary thought for I, my Father; God made me see how far away I am of a perfect nun, and how much remains to be done for the future. It's high time I took advantage of what little I have left to live, to ensure my salvation as much as it depends on me, on afraid that I will find only punishments instead of rewards at the end of my career that I feel approaching day by day.

Recognition from the Sister to her director. Predictions and recommendations she makes to him.

You have unloaded me, my Father, of two heavy burdens;

(1) the account I had to give you back the lights that God has given me, and with which I now charge your conscience; it's a deposit which no longer belongs to me, and for which you will answer alone; for I see what God requires of you in this regard, and I have already made it known to you without it being need to repeat it here; In the second place you have me relieved of the weight of my sins, sins of all my life, by the absolution you have for me have given after general confession and very ample that I have made you of it, and of which, thanks to God, I am very happy. It will be, however, I hope, The last general confession of my life, for I am determined not to do any more henceforth, and to abandon everything to mercy divine, as you advise me.

May you, my Father, close my eyes, because, I repeat to you again, I Would be glad to die at your hands, and that you were my Last Director, as you are the last of the Community: but God alone knows what will happen; for, my Father, I repeats, and I announce it to you with tears in my eyes, I Predict an awful thunderstorm. The time is approaching when you will be forced to leave us and flee; You do not Can do otherwise, you have to submit to everything. God knows if we will ever see each other again; but I want it very much more than I hope.

Something that happens, my Father, I beseech you, do not forget me, for I will have Great need of the help of your prayers; So remember often of your poor Sister of the Nativity, who must both cause you pain and work. May God let us still enjoy life for a while, or deprive us of it By death, let us reciprocally promise not to forget; for on my side, my Father, I am determined, dead or alive, to pray for you; I You owe it for all sorts of reasons, and I never owe you. forget before God; Please promise me the same thing.

I will now, my Father, forget all the rest, to concern myself only with the salvation of my poor soul, and ways to sanctify it with grace to dispose of her to appear before her judge. For everything the rest, I abandon myself to the care of Divine Providence, and submit to all the events he pleases to order. Please, my Father, let us always be united In the sacred

heart by J.-C. during this short and unhappy life, in order to be A day in Blessed Eternity. This will be the case.

End of inner life of the Sister of the Nativity.

REFLECTIONS.

After all that We have seen, especially after reading these two or three Last sections, we will no doubt agree, I hope, that the details of this inner life, as they have been exposed to us, can only come of the very person who is the subject, or rather of the Same spirit that dictated the volume of its Revelations. This new production must therefore be received and regarded as new evidence that comes to Support

on the other, and which confirms At the same time that I was not wrong to look at this girl extraordinary as the phenomenon of his century, the wonder of the hand of the Almighty, of which it is impossible to to make reason only by admitting conduct towards him of God upon her, who draws her absolutely from the common order, and that also in favor of the community of the children of the Church; for, who sees only this happy ignorant has not been illuminated to this point at the source of the true lights, only to transmit them to others, and In turn, enlighten the entire church on His fate, and each of his children on the road and the conduct they must fit in the different states where they may be in relation to the big deal of their Hello.

If, however, he found any reader who, after this examination, was decided to keep his doubts on this subject, or even to refuse his acquiescence, I would declare to him that I have not no right yet to force one's opinion; but at the same time I the

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Please tell us if he has ever read any author in a genre of spirituality superior to it, and to name it. Let us names the ignorant who, with no other resource than her own lights spoke of God with such grandeur and sublimity, discussed such abstract subjects and also thorny with as much clarity, precision, accuracy and depth. Let him show us in general More order, wisdom, dignity, in a book whatever came out of the hands of men, and especially let him make us see in the author more of this spirit of faith and humility, More of this fear of being in the illusion, more of this blind submission to the decisions of the Church, more than this terror of God's judgments, finally more of all the great qualities that make the touchstone of truth and characterize the people God ordinarily uses to transmit his wishes to other men.

Yes, let him show us everything that, or that he is silent; But what do I say? if he is obliged to admit that he has nothing satisfactory to oppose us, that he therefore also confess with us that there is not the slightest appearance that one may ever suppose in the illusion of the devil a nun Exemplary that fights the

demon with so many success, and knows so well how to discover us his tricks for protect us from it. Let's finish with the collection of dreams she promised.

Dreams mysterious and prophetic of the Sister of the Nativity.

Si quis fuerit inter vos propheta Domini in visione apparebo ei, vel per visionem loqnar ad illum. (Num., 12.6.)

"In the name of the Father and of the Son, and "of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus and Mary I Do obedience. »

You remember without doubts, my Father, what J.-C. said to me one day while explaining to me the meaning of a certain passage of Scripture, which says that " Near the end times the spirit of prophecy" would be granted to all flesh; that young men and Young women would prophesy, some young men would have visions, and the old men mysterious dreams and prophetic (1). What is special is that it found in me alone the meaning of the letter taken in all its extent; for, as I say to you then, according to his explanation, one can easily recognize all this in me alone.

I'm old Today, but I was young, and even a child In the past, and it can be said that I still am in many ways respects, and in relation to many things that it does not is not to detail here; One can therefore find in me all alone, as God has made me hear, the accomplishment of the whole prophecy in question.

(1) Et erit in novissimis diebus, dicit Dominus, effundam de spiritu meo super omnem carnem, and Prophetabunt Filii Vesteri, and Filia Vestree, and Juvenes Vestri Visiones videbunt, et seniores vestri soninia somniabunt. (Act. 2,17.)

And indeed, my Father, Not only did I have actual revelations, and I announced future events, but still I had dreams that I think mysterious and prophetic, in all times and all epochs of my life, as you have seen. That's what it's all about us occupy a while longer, since you deem it appropriate. You Do not complain about me, for my obedience will be as perfect as it can be on everything that looks my interior and the account I owed you.

So I have often experienced, my Father, that my dreams had a great connection to this which had occupied my mind the most and struck me imagination.

Until then, without doubt, we will see nothing but very simple and very natural, and that is also what I think about it myself; but there is more than that, if I am not wrong about it. He seems that God has used it more than once for me. discover and the current state of my consciousness, and the Traps that the devil set for me, and all that I had to fear or hope for me or for the Other. My most violent temptations, and events that we do not could foresee, have almost always been preceded by more or less striking dreams who announced them, telling me the conduct I had to do hold to avoid dangers or to overcome obstacles. That seems to me to be noteworthy.

You assure me, moreover, my Father, and you have proved it to me since the beginning, by opposing formal texts to the objection that was doing me the devil on this article; You assure me, I say, May Sacred Scripture provide us with a great number of examples significant and prophetic dreams that contained such warnings from God. You add that we can Even today, without superstition or vain observance, add a certain belief in those who would be marked at some characters, and without

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some ways of thinking about all this. Well, my Father, I will therefore make you judge of these characters, it will be up to you to arrange yourself as you please with strong minds, who probably won't think like you about everything I tell you I said.

Convinced, that you I and I am very determined to admit and follow only what you believe to be in accordance with the judgment of the Holy Church, it is enough for me that my conscience be safe, and unwilling to mislead or expose No one, I declare that absolutely I give my dreams only for what they are, leaving everyone all the freedom to reject or admit them, according to whether he judges them more, or less in accordance with the rules of common sense and reason.

For me, I will everything just report to you, as much as I can, a portion of those that struck me more; because it would require volumes if we wanted to say everything with a certain detail. We Let us therefore limit ourselves to those who seem to have more follow-up and application. To put some order in them, I will reduce them to frightening dreams and pleasant dreams. Start by the former, observing for each other not to much to press on those of which it has already been has been mentioned in the past.

Dreams Scary.

Dreams of his childhood about his vocation to religious life. His sorrows and struggles.

From my childhood, to When I was five or six years old, I had dreams that, I believe, were clues of my vocation and graces that God had to make me, as well as fights that I would have to support. I believed a thousand times, while sleeping, to see myself surrounded enemies who pursued me to death with threats and Scary figures. I had to fight against them at all excesses and with all my strength; I did not escape them never but by the help of God, when I was careful to call him to my help. Sometimes my enemies prevailed against me, and made me fall into deep abysses that undoubtedly depicted sins which I have had the misfortune to commit since those happy times.

In this state, my Father, I cried out to God who was reaching out to me to take a step off the precipice, and then it seemed to me that I had received two wings with which I rose to a height that my enemies could not reach. I was then hovering in the tunes like a dove, and I always fell back slightly at the foot of the high altar of a community of girls, where I found a pleasure that cannot be expressed: once, especially, I found myself there all tall and dressed as I am, in nun urbanist, and this at an age when I had no idea either of the state or the costume religious; That's what I've done to you before. know. In the following, this facility to Rising in the air, in my dreams, increased or decreased to proportion of my loyalties or infidelities with regard to God; at last it ceased altogether. at certain times that I told you about in the I have given you an account of my inner life.

His Fighting in dreams against monsters that represented sins. More stubborn fight against self-love.

In a more age I have often thought, while sleeping, that I am battered with demons of different forms and ugliness. Once, among other things, I had to be measured in turn. with seven monsters, each of which represented, by emblems frightening and hideous, one of the seven deadly sins. I had infinite pain to overcome it; at had I struck down one, that it was necessary to start again with the other without interruption, and sometimes I had several set to tumble. By the grace of God I came out finally victorious; but the one of all who hurt me the most, this was that unfortunate little coquette of whom I spoke to you. I mean, this monster a little less ugly, and that carried the shape of a fairly well-dressed woman. Not content to fight alone against me, as I told you, she always entered for some Something in the different fights that I had to take turns deliver or support with each of the others; and when I believed having absolutely defeated it and put it out of action, immediately It seemed to be reborn from its defeat to return to The charge with more fury than ever, and most often under a new form. You know that God taught me on occasion of this dream, and which I understood by the explanation he gave me, that pride was of all my enemies the one I had most to fear, or at least the self-esteem represented by this stubborn coquette, all the more to be feared that she looked less.

Figure of the world. Leaning of a mountain.

I remember a dream that frightened me a lot: the world was represented to me there. in the form of the slope of a large mountain, at the bottom of which There was a deep and vast precipice. The whole valley, or leaning from the mountain, was covered with people of any sex, age and condition, mixed with demons with whom they had to fight without Stop. It was a continual struggle and agitation; Almost all people did more or

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less effort to Getting to the top of the mountain, and the demons were all their efforts to draw them down: I was myself forced to fight and fight.

What scared me More was the small number of those who advanced. towards its summit, or at least who stood firm in their posts, while an infinite number yielded after a few slight effort; Having reached the bottom of the valley, they were thrown full jump until the middle of the precipice, which amused the demons who there greatly amused them had thrown away. So, my Father, the unfortunate no longer had the strength or courage to defend themselves; I saw that they were put in irons on their hands and feet; Demons treated them as slaves, or rather animals, or walked on their heads and on all their bodies as on straw or manure.

But what a trance for I, my Father! What a redoubling of fears when I live there one of my close relatives! Alas! I only knew too much his attachment to vices and maxims than the gospel condemns as much as the world allows. Sky! She was going to fall into it like so many others, when I cried out mercy for her; I beseeched heaven to have compassion on it, and immediately my hand of the Lord stopped him on the edge of the abyss. God does not did not allow its loss, and indeed I learned soon after that my relative had converted, which I praised a lot and thanked the Lord. So many reflections to do, my Father? and that this dream, every dream that it is, has me appeared to conform to the truths of the gospel! It's also the meaning that God showed me there, as you will see soon; But let us continue, because we are not at the end of This dangerous and tragic scene.

The Sister tries to climb the mountain, avoids the precipice from hell, and finally arrives at the top. Description of the mountain of the rest and peace, and that of victory.

To escape from the Peril that surrounded me, I always made great efforts by fighting, to win the top side of the mountain, where I hoped to find safety and rest. I walked through a thousand ambushes and traps stretched out in my path, and by which the demons mattered at every moment stop and take hold of me; Finally my Father, I come to a narrow path, at the end from which was the opening of hell. So many steps

slippery and difficult it I had to cross to avoid it! I must tell you that this Awful spectacle had given me such a horror of the world and of its dangers, that I would have liked almost as much to fall all over Continuation in hell, than to return to this unfortunate war, make myself even more guilty of it, and deserve to be punished more after my death. So what can we do? What to become? Which Gone to take? I trembled waiting to perish.

While I'm floating in this cruel situation, a bird like a dove, Perched on a nearby tree, is heard and told me with strength: "My Sister, my Sister, this is the place to courage and resolve; You can't get out of there that by abandoning yourselves to God's mercy, and by doing violence to you. Do you see this mountain? it's the mountain of rest and peace, which is inhabited only by those who have defeated their passions, the world, and its dangers. That's the goal where you must tend."

Alas! My father It was also my greatest desire; but the means to get there and escape this bad step where I I found myself engaged! At last I made an effort on myself, and I abandoned myself forever in the paternal womb of mercy of my God whom I implored for my help.

Immediately I saw myself removed from the ground, and transported to a higher place which was part of the beautiful mountain of rest of peace, in the from which I could not yet arrive but by many fatigues and works.

Finally I get there and I begins to breathe and recover from my fears. The air was healthy and pure, everything announced a Perpetual spring and the true stay of happiness. The inhabitants of this happy stay were in very small number, but they pleased me infinitely by the purity of their morals, the liveliness of their faith, the sweetness of their character, their simple, honest and considerate, finally the righteousness of their intentions and the sincerity of their love for God and neighbor. All busy at praise and bless the author of their well-being, they did not seem to care much about their bodies, and did not seem to be thought of the world only to hate its maxims and pity the unfortunate slaves.

Next door There was another mountain a little less high, where the sun darted all its brightest rays; it communicated to the mountain of rest and peace, and it was there that you had to pass to get there.

Always weapons in hand, its inhabitants, strong, vigorous and fearless, seemed continually at war and in action; I was called the Mountain of Victory, and I was called said that it was necessary to be constantly busy with fight against vices to subjugate and destroy them, and especially that it

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Needed a lot of attention Challenge with superb. Here, I am told, at the end, by where you can get to the top of rest and peace.

Upon this, my Father, I awoke, and God made me understand at once that this a dream with which I had been so struck, were it not for not an effect of chance, but of an intelligent cause, and that it was filled with accuracy, mystery and truth. So I saw, in God's explanation of it, that The hill that served as a battlefield represented the natural the inclination of corrupt nature, which gives to the devil so much advantage, to drag men into the abyss; This makes it take so much strength, resolve and courage, and so much work to take the sky. I concluded that I had to arm myself with constancy and firmness more than ever against my evil inclinations, and I felt my shame increase Against the Suggestions of the Devil, Dangers and Corruption of the world, which I can no longer contemplate except with horror. That is, I think, what God was proposing.

The Sister pursued by thieves who represent the Passions and the enemies of salvation. Happy state of mind elevated above nature and the senses.

Another time, my Father, I thought I would be pursued by thieves and brigands, who resented both my innocence and my life; I then learned that these robbers and imaginary thieves were, however, the very true figure of the different passions, temptations and opportunities for sin, some of which pursue souls with criminal and murderous intent, while others ambush them to wait for them as they pass and give the blow of death.

To escape the pursuit of those thieves or robbers who frightened me so much, I had recourse to God, and I still felt transported On the same mountain I told you about in the dream previous. There, I heard the inhabitants crying out all together: "Let us rejoice! Let us rejoice! this is the Lord, this is the day which the Lord has made; more enemies, more than

fights, more than temptations, no more dangers, the time of trials is over, God alone is forever the reward and the end of our works."

I understood, by The explanation of these words that I saw in the light of Faith, which thieves and brigands represented in general all the enemies of the salvation of man, and that By the mountain of rest and peace one was not to mean so much a certain state of perfection to arrive at the happiness of heaven, that it could not also mean happiness even, which is the true term of our sufferings and the place of our eternal rest. Let us admit, however, that the state of a Perfect soul here on earth has a lot of part. I am referring to This happy renunciation of the world and oneself, where Everything comes together to pay tribute to the excellence of the divine being.

In this happy state From the annihilation of nature, the soul rises above herself, because she sees only God to which it must attach itself exclusively. All faculties are then deified by this divine union; that which puts it above all the attacks of the devil, of the world and flesh. The setbacks here below are nothing to her; at does she feel the needs of the body, that she worries Very little to satisfy, except the needs that are Essential; It then seems that the body only acts mechanically : he works, he walks, he drinks, he eats, he sleeps, etc. But The soul hardly participates in these animal functions and purely natural, it hovers, so to speak, above the flesh and senses, so much grace has given him empire on them.

Other dreams that depict the Sorrows and Struggles of the Sister.

God, my Father, has Sometimes, as you know, to make me feel something approaching. It happens often, especially after my communions, which I almost no longer hold to the senses or organs sensation. I find myself embarrassed to answer the simplest questions; God often has to suggest me himself the answers I must make, so that there is no Doesn't seem too much. I look like a fool, or, if you Love better, I look like a person who, for having fixed The sun, retains for a long time a certain glare, which prevents him from staring at any other object: my soul is in The world and in my body without being there, and it is from this situation that we look at everything that affects the senses and nature. One is on the mountain of rest, one enjoys peace in God, and one makes Always new discoveries by the help of the Enlightenment that it communicates. What will it be to see him himself, and without sailing, and uncovered!

What will it be like to own it without obstacle and without fear of ever losing it

!... But I'm coming back where I was; it is from there, my Father, that Parts most of the things I've made you write... Let's go back to the Continuation of my dreams (1).

(1) Thus, still similar to herself, the Sister returns, to every occasion, in the supernatural order that is like its element. His great soul is removed at every turn, and we takes with it even into the bosom of the Divinity, that inspires her and makes her speak. Everything else doesn't seem to him nothing; it takes advantage of everything to get back to that; it's his Centre and its sole purpose: therefore, on this point, it is always the even, and we can say that we find it all even in his dreams.

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Other dreams that depict the Sorrows and Struggles of the Sister.

Different times I I saw myself in unknown countries, sometimes falling to the bottom of a well, sometimes exposed on narrow boards and very weak who barely supported me on abysses where I was ready to fall, and I always needed help from above to get out. Lately I dreamed of being pursued by a A rider of appalling size and figure, he looked so terribly and menacingly that I had one failure; Seeing that he had not been able to reach me, he left with fury and traveled all over the country. I knew in my last communion, that it was the announcement of the efforts of the devil against us and the little work we meditate, and that it task and will try to fail again. Not Let us not neglect this warning, for, I repeat, We could be badly off.

But my Father, here is a spectacle well worthy of having a place among my frightening dreams.

Announcements of the end of the world.

One night that while sleeping I I imagined myself being on a mountain where I had just arrived in Fleeing the monster again, I first noticed a beautiful sky and

well starred; but soon after I saw signs Appalling on the side of the West, I saw a Huge space dotted with beers, shrines, heads and bones of the dead, candlesticks, funeral sentences; In a word, this whole space was like a big sheet mortuary.

On the side of the noon appeared the archangel St. Michael in an aspect, and covered with a formidable armor; a sparkling sword in the right hand, He held huge scales on the other, which he left behind. Descend to the earth, and I understood that it was the device and the preparations for the last judgment whose times Approach....

In another dream, where I thought I was still on the same mountain, I live in the firmament a large horizontal rainbow, whose circumference went as far as my sight could extend. Then appeared in The great circle of little pigeons and doves that flew sideways, never leaving the circular line that contained them. After that I live crows and other birds of prey melt on small pigeons and small doves, hunting and scattering them; Many rushed to the ground, where they were torn apart by birds of prey, despite the silver doves that came from heaven to their defense. The fight was tough Between the crows and the silver-winged doves, it lasted until the arrival of St. Michael, who determined victory in favour of pigeons and doves.'

Jesus Christ suffering and unknown.

Another time I live in The West A large painting where the saint was painted face of our Lord; She appeared alive and covered in blood Lively flowing and dripping from its divine crowned leader thorns. His eyes rose sadly to the sky, and I saw abundant tears fall. While I contemplating with compassion and tenderness, I heard a voice who said to me: You see the sun eclipsed.

Dreams who look at the French Revolution, the schism in the Church and its terrible aftermath. Order to flee the schismatics.

I must also, my Father, to put among my frightening dreams those who had to do with The sad revolution I was in charge of to announce. We cannot therefore dispense with adding Some of the main ones to the ones we already have spoke on occasions when they came more to

about, and where it was as indispensable to bring them in. For those, We will not recall them, or we will only do so very much. lightly.

I thought one night I saw several clerics dressed in their clothes priestly, they were headed by a bishop also in the functions of his ministry. Their stern air and haughty, their harsh words, their threatening looks seemed to demand the honours and respects of all; they forced the faithful to follow them, to listen to them and to obey them. God commands me to resist them in the face; They are no longer, he tells me, in right to speak in my name, nor worthy of the submission of the faithful, since they have betrayed the interests of my Church, and that they have been unfaithful to the faith. It is against my will, and in my indignation, that they exercise still functions of which they are no longer worthy; Far from me displease, you honor me by disobeying them; something they want to demand from you, don't listen to them Not, separate yourselves from it, which I did like many others. The The next dream is even more frightening.

About thirty or Forty years since France was represented to me like a vast desert, a dreadful solitude; each province was like a moor where passers-by plundered and ravaged everything they could encounter. Coming soon, at Displeasure of the true faithful, our pastors and their vicars, our preachers and directors, our missionaries disappeared, and new ministers were not knew no took its place, and

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pretended to practise the same functions and have the same rights. Imperceptibly there was such a great change in the way to do and think of my fellow citizens, whom I could only I hardly recognize my own country. However, it was necessary Although this change was total, I saw that diversity Opinions formed two parties there, which caused unrest and appalling disorders on all sides. But here is which frightened me more, and terrified me in this vision. nocturnal. I live deep in this awful desert different flocks of sheep mixed with goats and goats, monkeys, several other species of hideous animals

that I didn't know same; The shepherds who led them were so many monsters still more appalling by many; Demons, I think, have no other figures. Also, I live multitudes of peoples flee their approach, and hide with fear and rush not to be classified among their herds, of which they feared even the sight. All Frightened myself, I asked where were their pastors, the true leaders of these peoples Stray; I was told: They were Forced to flee, they are in exile.

Remember now, my Father, the visions by which I have made you said that God had so many times made me feel and like touching the finger a persecution that is all too real today, although it was then regarded as chimerical, and the announcements I made as pure extravagances, real illusions of imagination.

Remember I say, the various frightening scenes; Like what The vine ransacked by brigands, the two beautiful trees beaten by the tree that suddenly rose between the two; The dragon I saw break away from the storm cloud for devour all who were in the beautiful house, and You will have everything that, on the same object, has troubled the most my mind and frightened my imagination. It is good to tell you as well as in these different dreams, which had to do with Our revolution, I was sometimes transported zeal for catholicity, and sometimes horror for schism and heresy, which I foresaw and that I still foresee; Heaven that we can be left for fear!

But after Spoken of ominous dreams, it seems appropriate to expose now those whom I call pleasant, gracious and Consoling, because I have had all kinds. These at least will be more likely to enliven and console the reader, if However, there is never one who wants to take care of my dreams. It will be for tomorrow, God willing.

Dreams graceful.

Exhibition general of the dreams of the Sister, and of their effects, which it does not believe can be explained naturally.

The joy of a maid conscience, the means of sanctification, the happiness of being all to God and to possess him by love and desire, waiting for

Possess by the reality, the triumphs of the Holy Church, the glory of the saints, the adorable person of J.-C., the sight of his saint Mother and her true friends, the end of our evils, here is in abridged, my Father, what have been The most ordinary objects of what I call my dreams graceful or pleasant, and even most of my visions and apparitions. In the same way as the fear of sin, hell and God's judgments, the troubles and persecutions of the Church have made me always caused by opposites and in accordance with impressions of terror that frightening objects naturally carry. This analogy between the thoughts of the night, if we can speak thus, and those of the day which preceded them, seems very simple and natural to me. And yet this does not does not prevent me from saying that those who claimed to have need that of these natural dispositions of my mind or my imagination, to make reason for everything, I mean to explain and my revelations and my dreams, would be, to My opinion, in a very gross error that would make them confuse the effect with the cause. God, no doubt, can benefit of those provisions which he himself brought into being; but I have always felt, awakened as asleep, that these dispositions could not come from me, nor produce by themselves none of the effects they make me feel. Wanting therefore to explain my dreams as my revelations, in a word, all that I have seen in God by my natural dispositions, or by the tempering of my mind or my physical constitution, it would be as if we undertook to make reason for the wonderful order of the world by the movement of nature, to explain the ebb and flow of the sea by the agitation of the waves, or fever from the chill it makes. In All this, showing the effect was never explaining the cause, and The second causes will never be understood as long as we will go back to the root cause, without which others would not exist. Without this nothing was said, although we had a lot spoken, or, if you like better, we talked philosophy

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so much that you will please; but no reason was spoken. Let therefore dispute the philosophers, and come to my dreams graceful.

Glory of St. Francis. Poverty and humility, foundations of its order.

Being still on that high mountain where I told you I had seen the preparatory apparatus of the last judgment, I looked between the North and the Levant, and I saw a great troop of religious from our order that marched glorious and triumphant; to their Head seemed a grave and venerable character, dressed in a bright dress and all dotted with precious stones and immense riches. He wore in head a shiny crown, his feet and hands were pierced; Finally, I taken for J.-C. himself, and I was going to bow down to him to adore it. Take care, said a loud voice, this one is only a man, and he is your father St. Francis....

What!" I replied, our father St. Francis! Hey! How would it also be sparkling in the sky, the one who was always so humble on The earth, he who cherished abjection and poverty so much ? It is precisely, I was told,

which made it so glorious, and what must also one day make the glory of its children, if they are faithful to walk in his footsteps, Because poverty and humility are the testament that he left them; and the spirit of his order consists above all in the practice of these two virtues, which are the basis and the foundation of its building. It is therefore necessary to practice them to be worthy of being associated with it. This dream, my Father, gave much consolation and joy.

The Sister is in a dream in the little house of Nazareth. Touching description she makes. Lesson she receives.

Being quite young Again, I thought that wandering alone in a deserted countryside and solitary, I entered, as if by chance, a small wood, the Peaceful situation seemed to me very favorable to the meditation. This is where far away, from the tumult we are Happy, if there is happiness on earth, since one enjoys oneself and one's God, at whose sweet thought We are continually reminded by the view so charming of all the objects that surround us. It was by a beautiful On a spring day, the air was pure and serene, the silence of This pleasant solitude was interrupted only by the Birds perched on the green trees that shaded this peaceful living room. That everything is beautiful in the nature, I thought to myself! What will be the stay of the Blessed, if the sojourn of our exile is so attractive! that Will it be from that of our homeland! And if God is so good, so liberal and so beautiful for guilty to whom he owes only punishments On earth, what will he do for his friends, when he wants them? reward in God and in the full extent of his liberality, its magnificence and love?

So I reasoned in myself; and while reasoning thus, I followed between beautiful trees a small avenue at the end of which I saw a secluded house, or rather built alone at the bottom wood, like a kind of small cave or hut, which pleased much by its air and pleasant situation, and especially by the great silence that reigned there, because there is no heard no noise, except that sometimes made by a worker while working....

I enter this house to inform me of my whereabouts; I live when entering a good and venerable old man, who worked at polishing and shaping parts and boards of wood with great care and attention To the other

side of The apartment, I saw a young person who seemed to me to be his woman, and whose gentleness and modesty equaled beauty; Next to her appeared a young man of about ten to twelve years at most, but of such a gentle, good figure and so pleasant, that it was enough to see it for a moment to be in love.

Also, my Father, whatever interest I take in the good old man, and especially to his young wife, who I liked infinitely, I felt in my heart something much more vivid for the young man; My eyes could only leave him by short intervals and in moments of distraction.....

The three of them were busy in a peaceful silence that did not interrupt even their way Honest to receive me. I did not notice in their work and their manners, neither vivacity, nor eagerness, nor concern, nor any kind of discomfort or constraint; Everything heralded contentment, peace and happiness of a soul that enjoys itself and does not worry You're welcome. I sometimes didn't know what I should admire most, or parental care and attention, or obedience of the son who did everything possible to answer it with his thoughtfulness, trying to please them, and services which he gave back to them both. It was mutual affection, mutual tenderness, but also respectful that she seemed lively and sincere. I would have spent my days seeing them; but finally it was necessary To end this admirable spectacle: I therefore took leave of this lovely family; I left, albeit regretfully, from this nice cabin, and as I left I still turned my eyes to my young man, taking with him

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Me the desire well trained to see him again as soon as I could, as long as I could. That first interview had caused me pleasure.

The happy wife! the happy mother, that this young person, I said to myself, turning around !. What a venerable old man the master of this

puny house! What a beautiful and holy person his young wife is! But Above all, the amiable child that this handsome young man who seems belong well to them, and which shows so well that he is their son by his manners towards them! What modesty, What simplicity in their clothes! What sobriety in their meals! What a beautiful order, what cleanliness, what Peace, what union in this house! As everything breathes decency and the smell of all virtues! Do you have to have so much Waited to know her, this kind family! Ah! if the Happiness is not there, there is none on earth, nor in the world whole...

While walking Only I talked about this pleasant memory, I saw a good-looking man who seemed to me to be a local inhabitant; I inquired of him what it was that that little house I had entered in. You "should know her," he replied, "as well as those who inhabit it; You come out of the school of wisdom and Virtues. This is the school of Nazareth, it is the house where the Incarnate Word spent thirty years in the work, obedience and submission. It is, he added, this hidden, humble and laborious life of your God, may he wants you to offer yourself as a model, if you want him please and work for the success of your perfection. It's so that you must hide from the world, to live only from God and in God by J.-C. ; This is finally what marked you this silence that you have noticed in them. When we are always, like they are, in the sight and contemplation of God present, Do we need to spread outside through attention to Outer things and conversation with the creature? Do we not find in ourselves the source of the most perfect happiness? Meditate continuously, and strive to imitate what you have seen.

The Sister rich in her sleep, poor when she wakes up ; figure of the nothingness of human things.

One night, I imagined myself talking to a peddler who was flaunting his merchandise with a complacency that struck me; what was there Even more pleasant and more complacent in him, it is that he gave me everything that seemed to please me; He It was enough to show him my desire, for him to urged to receive the piece of goods which

I liked it. Surprise and Delighted with so much honesty, I did not know How can I show him my gratitude. You are he tells me, like people who attach themselves with disorder. to the false goods of the earth, and you are the very figure of it. Similar; Know that you are currently asleep, and that soon you will be, like them, fooled by your illusion. Now fortune favors you, the awakening will take you away everything you own, so you won't have any left nothing; And this alarm clock that will deceive you is the image of the death of those who had put their trust in objects earthly and in the false goods of this world.

At these words I wakes me up, and when I wake up I see disappear and vanish like smoke this fortune A lie that amused me for a moment. I then did The most serious reflections on emptiness and nothingness human things. I thought I was happy, I thought to myself, What do I have left now? Happy, O my God, he who confides in you alone! He is not deceived in his expectation; He finds you dead after you searched during life; You stay with him when everything else has disappeared; and you remain unto him, O my God, to make his happiness durable without him being afraid of ever losing you!

Jesus Christ seems laden with immense treasures, that no one does not want to receive.

I thought I once saw, in sleeping, J.- C. holding in both hands treasures Huge; He looked at me with a sad look, I asked him for the cause. My daughter, he said moaning, I come with my hands. Filled with gifts, I have immense riches that I Destined for my creatures, I come to enrich them by distributing them to them, and I can't find anyone asking for them, nor who desires them, nor who makes himself worthy to receive them. I don't know who to communicate my donations to, despite the need than we have. Judge of the sentence caused to me by such a guilty person indifference!

The child Jesus in Mary's arms, with a small cross.

I thought I saw again, in another circumstance, the Most Holy Virgin holding on her knees the Child Jesus, who seemed to be having fun with a little girl Cross a little long, which he held in his hands. To this view I prostrated myself at my good mother's feet, and asked her. In grace to leave me a little

moment to hold his divine Son. "I want to," she replied. I stretched out my arms to receive it; but instead of the child she only gave me her a cross I did not want; which she repeated to various covers; and as I complained to She herself that she was deceiving my hope, My daughter, she replied seriously, "if you want the Child, he You must first receive

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The cross that he will bring you Present by my hands, you cannot possess one without the other. At this moment passes our Father St. Francis following a banner where there was a large crucifix. Here, said the Blessed Virgin, showing it to me, This is the procession you must follow without leaving it never... With this I woke up.

Jesus Christ invites the Sister to follow him to Calvary, and makes him present of his Cross.

A few days before the accident I told you about, and which must have consequences Until my death, I dreamed that I was attending a procession for the indulgences of the Great Jubilee. While we walked in a straight and convenient path, I cast my eyes on a very narrow and rough path which was on our right, I saw J.-C. same who carried his cross to the mountain of Calvary. Come after I, he shouted after the procession, follow in my footsteps, it is Here the resort of great indulgences, come and help me all to Carry the cross I carry for all.

Seer that no one wanted to leave the easy road to follow him by the Scabrous path where he walked, I ran after him. He complained to me about indifference and harshness. men towards him, and told me of the pains of his passion in the most touching way.

In a circumstance At the same time, I heard his complaints, and I saw him still in my sleep all loaded and as if overwhelmed by His cross

: it was in our community. He called all the nuns to his Afterwards, I ran there and he refused me. It's not you, he said, go tell your Sisters

to come; for you, stay in your cell. What a sorrow! I obey with tears; but After some time he entered my cell with Madame La Superior: Here, my daughter," said he, "do not grieve, This is your portion and your sharing. The others have fled me, I will tell you leave my cross, never leave it. It was ornate of various relics of saints, and especially of martyrs. I prostrates me face down as he receives it, and J.-C. Disappears Very few

time after Dream, Madame l'Abbesse fell ill with the illness that led her at the tomb, and I had the accident which must also lead me there and accompany me there. God be blessed in everything.

The Sister is led to the bottom of a desert, and receives A little book to meditate.

I remember one night I thought I was traveling with my good angel, under the figure of a beautiful young man, such as apparently the one who led Tobias. He said he was going to take me where God would have me; path In doing so, he only entertained ways for me to become perfect and to do God's will in everything. We found in walking oratories or small private chapels, where I wanted to go to pray with others: Pass this on, me he said, they are lost sheep, virgins. So he led me to the depths of a desert. It's here, me he said then,

that God calls you, and that you must make your home; on this, He gave me a little book and disappeared. I open this book with eagerness, for it must have been my meditation ordinary; but I was very surprised, as I flipped through it, not to see and to read on each page only these two words: God alone.

Heart of the faithful soul, secret sanctuary where is locked up the divine Bridegroom.

After Long admired the small white flowers of the garden of The husband and wife I told you about Elsewhere, I saw in another dream a church whose sanctuary was locked as well as the Doors. A very modest and humble virgin appeared under the figure of a nun; she entered the church, which she closed within; entered the sanctuary, which she closed in on herself. At the same time, J.-C. makes herself seen to her in human form, she hands over the keys, saying: My Lord and my spouse, I give you the entry of My heart and of all

my powers, and that forever. J.-C. received his present with love and satisfaction, promising to be his share for eternity.

Exit from this church, I observed on the ridge the cross with all the instruments of the Savior's passion; There were in the vicinity of The church of the regiments of soldiers arranged in battle, but without any movement, while a stone's throw away saw around the sentries in continual agitation, in fear that the enemy did not approach the guard. Here is the mystical meaning of this Night vision:

The heart of the soul Faithful is the sanctuary where the divine spouse loves to close oneself with it to make oneself master of all her powers, of which she entrusts to him the custody: 1° this soul united with J.-C. must have first destroyed all its passions by the practice of the exercises of penance and mortification; (2) it must have closed, by a Continuous attention to itself all doors and avenues that could give entry to the enemy; 3° while the inner and outer senses are quiet, vigilance, as an active sentinel and tireless, must always be on the move to discover tricks and prevent enemy attacks, by the mortification and the sufferings represented by the cross and the instruments of passion,

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in a word, by the death of the old man whom God once commanded me to put to death, in me saying that the scapegoat should be driven far away, if I wanted to please him in the future.

Appearance of a young virgin who reproaches the Sister for her neglect and its lack of self-esteem.

Here's another one, my Father, who happened to me a short time ago, and who makes an impression as vivid as it is pleasant. I was thinking that in my cell I wanted to apply myself to God, and could not do so succeed, as I would have wished; I didn't know Where could this difficulty come from. While I'm at it Was

Wasted efforts, I see a fifteen-year-old girl come in and come to me or eighteen at most; I thought I recognized it because I already had it. seen in another circumstance that it would be too long to report. This young virgin, for she bore all the features, was In my opinion the most beautiful person it was possible to To see; a noble and graceful approach without affectation, charming features, the air of simplicity and candor that gives innocence, a laughing and modest face, eyes where sparkled the most beautiful fire; Finally, what else shall I tell you? I don't know what so amiable, that it was enough to see her to be in love. Also, my Father, I confess to you that I could not defend myself from it, and that I loved him at the first aspect.

She approaches me, takes my hand, and staring at me with an air of kindness and interest More eloquent than all that can be said, I come, my maid Friend, she told me, to make a small reproach to you, and then a proposal from J.-C.; for it is he himself who sends me to you. How happy you are, my good friend, he I replied, to know J.-C. and to belong to him! Ah! welcome, since you come to see me on his behalf; I will, have no doubt, listen to you with all my heart.

So here's what you need "You don't love him enough, you share your heart, and even you are unfaithful to it in many ways

things, you expose yourself very often to the deprivation of his graces and his Favors, you sometimes forget how much you are to him beholden. What he asks you through my mouth is to redouble your fervor, to study you to please him in everything, not to not to come out of his holy presence, to have him

continuously in the mind and in the heart, to act only by his impression, to live only for him; for, my good friend, he has given you everything, He wants to have it all. He is jealous of possessing your heart whole and without sharing; And believe me, my dear, a heart such as yours is not too much for a master such as he.

Persuasion flowed from His lips, his words had made so much impression on me. that I thought only of confessing guilt; and what is good to notice is that I felt no pain in the reprimands she gave me; but on the contrary, I found much pleasure, even more than compliments and to the most flattering praise. I would have liked to spend my life at to hear them, because she had been able to inspire me for herself the same love she showed me. Ah! how much J.-C. Resumes gently! Well, I said to him, crying, all you tell me. say is right, it is the very truth, I say it Recognize. So get me to be more faithful to the future, and to take advantage of your charitable warning, and I I will work on it with all my power for the sake of J.-C.

To these words, The kind Virgin throws herself into my arms, we hug each other closely; "Here," she said, kissing me, "like I want to unite you to J.-C., for I am his love for men; I take all means to win you to him O my Father, how happy I was!

As I had asked him the way to make myself more faithful to J.-C, I I looked for her eyes so that she would enlighten me more. On this point, when I saw him a few steps away prostrate, hands clasped together, in the most adoration profound and most fervent prayer; What I took as the means that she indicated to me....

Having then Awake, I reviewed the circumstances of this striking dream, and I found them all in accordance with my needs and to my situation. It had already been a few days since I had indulged in some dissipations which had caused me words at least useless, a few little gossip, a little mood and other faults of this nature, which had drawn me a little from my center, I mean, of God's presence. I had from cowardice to returning the distractions that had come in my prayers: my last communion had been less fervent, and also God did not I had said almost nothing to my heart. I just thought it was

The purpose from the embassy I received in my sleep, and I pray, my Father, to tell me what you think.

I already have you observed, my daughter," I replied to the Sister, that God can use the way of dreams to give to men salutary warnings. I see them in the Holy Scriptures evidence, which does not allow for doubt; I see by the way in yours events, propriety, such high probabilities,

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it seems to me hardly possible to refuse... But, my Sister, you I was told, if I remember correctly, that it was not Not the first time you had the opportunity to see this Nice person you just talked about in such good part. So please tell me now, in what other circumstance you had already done acquaintance with her? because

You made me curious to know her better, and I think there are would have much to gain for me, and for others Maybe.

This desire to hear speaking, my Father, is proof that you already know her, replied the Sister; But it is late today, and the It was quite a long session, not to have spoke only of dreams. If I entered the one you told me ask, it would last at least a quarter

of hour more, and I fear that you should be inconvenienced; thus, my Father, If you find it good, we will finish here the story of my Dreams. Not at all, my Sister, I want at least that one tonight; If it lasts a quarter of an hour, well, it will be A quarter of an hour more, I can even give you a good half an hour; Thus, if you are not inconvenienced by I will not speak; but if you don't Satisfied not tonight, it will be for tomorrow, choose, because I do not you do not leave the circumstance I ask of you.—My "Father," resumed the Sister, "do not doubt my disposition. to obey you; It is enough that it obliges you. I'm going to so continue for some time, and you will make use of all my stories that you will like it in your notebooks.

Jesus Christ makes him know the world.

Approximately the time when you have entered our house to direct us, J.-C. appeared to me in a dream, and said to me, "Follow me, I will teach you this that it is only the world. I am; and both walking with Amazing speed, we travel through countries Huge; Soon we arrive in the most common countries. further away. What was very convenient, is that We saw everything without being seen by anyone: everywhere J.-C. pointed out to me the opposition of the spirit and the maxims of the world with those of the Gospel. You see, me he said, that we find eager people at every step per thousand temporal affairs; but where are those who hasten for the business of their salvation?...

Here it's a wedding, there It is a fair or a market, further it is an event amusing or tragic... Attach a few other trifles of the same nature; This is what forms the circle of human life. The expensive enterprises, makeshift projects, intrigues of Cabinet occupy the court people and the great of the world; the Attacks and defenses, sieges and battles occupy the people of war; Formalities and trials occupy the bar members; ploughing, caring for cattle occupy country people; in-depth studies, Great speculations keep people busy

of letters and scholars policies: trade occupies merchants; but where are, Of all these, those who are adequately concerned with their conscience and their God? who are those who make at least one The principal and serious business of their salvation, which is the First and most important of all ?...

Childishness leads childhood, dissipation leads manly age, Interest drives middle age, avarice leads old age, and neither faith nor charity leads almost no time in life. The big ones are doomed and as sold to vanity, pride, and voluptuousness; The little ones are to the whisper, to ignorance, scoundrel and injustice. Where are those who are dedicated to humility, to mortification and the practice of virtues? We sing, we drink, laugh, or argue, rejoice, sad, but always for the temporal. Everyone seeks the interest of the body, almost no one seeks that of the soul; we work much for time, almost never for eternity; one does everything for oneself, nothing for God: this is the world....

So you see, continued J.-C., that all these people do not belong to me, they are all to their passions, not to me; they belong to the demon my enemy; This is not my kingdom nor my subjects; on the contrary, they are at war with me and mine. Of all the ones you see, hardly find who think of me and my gospel, to comply with their conduct; If they do it sometimes, it's if weakly, that their Christianity would rather be an opprobrium for me that a tribute to my divinity. How many are Is there none among them who go so far as to blush at my name? before men, and who, after a few acts of religion returned to propriety, run very quickly in the worldly circles retract and the vows of their baptism, and the promises they made to me at the foot of the altars

! Purity point of intention in marriages, point of fidelity in Trade, point of vocation in the States, point of justice among men; That's the world. Should we be surprised if it is condemned in the Gospel, as filled with scandals, injustices and sins?..

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He sends him to preach penance in a large city. She obeys with difficulty, and no longer finds J.-C. to its return.

While we speak like this, we arrived on a high mountain, whence he was easy to discover the whole country around; inter alia objects we saw nearby a large and tumultuous assembly; It was a fair that was held near a very commercial town... You see this city and this assembly, said J.-C.; This multitude of men is occupied only with temporal affairs and Most of them are iniquitous. The very large number of those that you see is immersed in crime habits, which makes their salvation very difficult, and all the more difficult as This is the only business they do not deal with, at which they don't even think about. What a sad blindness! Go, my daughter, go find them on my behalf, tell them that if they do penance, I will punish them in the most important way. terrible; that a pagan, worldly and libertine life is always followed by a fatal death and an eternity of Misfortunes; tell them that they are converted and stop sinning, so as not to put the height to their disapproval....

I shudder at This order, much less by the fear of the danger to which it exposed me, only by the fear of losing the one who gave it to me. I I did not dare to tell him of my embarrassment that he penetrated probably; I only begged him to expect me at the same place, where I proposed to join him in a little. I leave and run with all my strength; arrival at the place suitable to be within reach of me Hearing from this multitude, I shouted to them as loud as I could all I had orders to tell them; I added that it was J.-C. himself who had sent me to them, and I threatened with his wrath if they did not obey my voice, like the Ninevites to that of Jonah Some listened attentively to me and seemed touched of my words; but the very large number did not set out in sorrow. I saw me make a mockery of it, others get carried away with anger at me, and I don't know what would have happened, if, in order to evade their pursuit, I did not have quickly fled, to go find my guide at the place where I had left him. But, O desolation! He was no longer there, and what I had feared so much was When he arrived, he had disappeared. What to do? What to become in a country foreigner who already looked at me as a Enemy, for wanting to enlighten him about his true interests?

During that she is looking for J.-C. With pain, she meets a soul Sorry that she tries to console.

While, for the finding, I roamed with mortal anxiety the fields and the neighboring countryside, calling aloud to him and the Asking everyone I met, I heard everything at next to me, behind a

bush, screams lamentable, touching complaints; I approached the place, and I screwed lying on the ground a girl in her twenties, who lamented in a manner of pity; I had compassion on her, and I wanted to console her. Ah! she told me By crying, there is no more consolation for me, I lost the Sensitive presence of the bridegroom of my soul, I succumb to my sorrow; Tell me what has become of him, or else I I'm going to die of pain...

His sad situation began to make me forget mine; It seemed that she shared my sufferings by the resemblance of our sorrows; I therefore recognize myself by his portrait; and without wanting to me yet To make known to her, I undertook to console her, me who needed it more than she did. I tell him between other things that his too great sensitivity was not point based on the rules of true piety, that she could even displease h God, who asks for more of submission to his will. Its presence sensitive, I said, is a grace that he owes to no one, and whose deprivation must be known to suffer when he pleases, and far from displeasing him by that, we are much more pleasant by our submission, than if we felt this love of God present, this Sensibility which nature is constantly seeking, and which perhaps only satisfies self-esteem...

So, my good friend, he I said, beware of grieving to excess, Excess in everything is harmful. Believe me, my maid is God who is testing you; But the time of the test will end To make room for happier moments: presence sensitive to his love or his person is not what he requires of we; He wants the solidity of piety, which consists of especially in obedience and submission to His will saint....

While speaking thus, I looked from all sides to try to discover the one I myself sought with so much trepidation, fear and sorrow; as it is true that it is much easier to speak well than to act well, to console others, to console oneself; and yet, my Father, I felt that I had received some consolation, by speaking thus to this poor afflicted; for I said to myself inwardly that I perhaps needed good reviews much more than she did. that I gave her, and that I had to apply them to myself, as she did. Mêle herself made it clear in very few words, and as if to pay me for the charitable act I had performed in its regard.

She continues to look for J.-C., and she arrives at the mountain of Calvary, where she finds many crosses very rough and strong Heavy.

Finally, I leave her, and have Sometime away I find a high

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mountain at the bottom of which a man was seated; I ask him if he did not see J.-C.: Yes, he replied, he has just won the top of the mountain you see, and I believe he did there. stopped to wait for you, because that's where he is waiting for all his friends. At these words, I leave like lightning without asking for more, and I to run so quickly, that I arrived at the top out of breath; and after Stopped for a moment, I searched everywhere, I called for Loud; but I saw only a large cross planted straight At the top of the mountain, and around this cross some workers who were working to make others on the same model; I saw ten or twelve brand new ones of different sizes and different weights...

My good friends, I said to them, Sitting down a little to rest, what do you call this Sad mountain? You should know her, they replied, it is the mountain of Calvary, where you must make your remains until death. Hey! Please, for whom Do you make these different crosses? It's for yourself. I shuddered, and then went to try them; but I found them so rough and so heavy, that I could not lift them. Hey! My friends I cried me, do you not see that it will be impossible for me to Never wear a single one? You will wear them all at once, I was told; But they will have lost much of their heaviness and their harshness; for they are not yet finished, and However, we will do nothing more about it. As I did not understand the Meaning of these last words, I left these workers with their riddle to take care of the search for my divine driver; for I did not care about crosses, provided that I did. find...

She discovers a cave where she finds the young virgin whose She spoke, and who polished the crosses, and asked him for his name.

So I was going through this design every nook and cranny of the summit of the mountain, and All of a sudden, I enter a kind of cave or space between stones, and I see in the sinking a young virgin of a beauty delightful, precisely the one, my Father, who has you so much

more than yourself the first time I told you about it. So I was delighted and delighted from the first glance, And I think it is impossible to

HEART OF S'EN defend. Yes, it was precisely the same port, same size, same figure, Same features, the same air, the same speech, finally the Same person I've seen since, and of whom he has been made great mention in the previous dream.

Here, my Father, the plough in hand, she was busy with reduce and polish the crosses that the workers had made, and of which the cave was all filled. After you Diminished and polished, she still spread a certain anointing that made the harshness disappear, she worked with promptness, skill and grace amazing and wonderful. All those who had passed under his hand, had become soft and light, I hardly saw anything scary in it anymore. Instead of the horror I naturally had for the first crosses, I felt a certain ardor for them, and I felt that this ardor increased as I talked with the charming worker, to the point that when I finished I would have had the courage to take them and carry them all to the time.

I was surprised of such a sudden and unnatural change, and perhaps in Would I still have ignored the cause, if I had not I would like to ask the name of this kind person. Then To satisfy me, she looked at me with a laughing face and eyes. full of the purest fire; and showing me the cross that she She said graciously: "I am the love of He who wore it for you, and it is for your love and that of all the men I work. J.-C. wants all his Children walk in his footsteps carrying their cross, because It is the only way to eternal life and infinite happiness to whom he calls them and which he has earned them; but he wants them to wear them without being burdened by them. He wants Finally, let it be out of love, and not by compulsion, that they wear, that's why he charges me to give them back more soft and lighter, and for me it is a Very pleasant occupation, since it is impossible for me not to to love those whom J.-C. loved so much. »

After this speech, I woke up filled with the desire to wear all Crosses that the love of J.-C. would present to me, without fearing henceforth to find them never too heavy.

That's it, my Father, Since you absolutely wanted to know, the two circumstances of my dreams, where I saw this kind person, this charming worker to whom you seemed to me to take so much of interest. But since we are on this article, and that my story lasted a little less than I thought, I will finish, if you wish, with a vision that I will

recalls, and yet Happened to me, not in sleep, as the previous ones, But in my prayer, four or five years ago. The thing, to My opinion, still deserves attention.

Vision of the Sister during her prayer. The tree of love.

I found myself delighted in a light

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where our Lord appeared to me in human form, he led me into a vast garden all filled with trees and plants of different species; Among other things, I noticed a larger and more beautiful tree, the fruit was large and of a charming appearance, and the most beautiful that it is possible to imagine. Each of the fruits of this tree was white on one side, and vermeil on the other; The tree and its fruit was called the tree and the fruit of love, the tree of life, The tree of great love that brought about redemption of the human race. The other trees were, in comparison, like wildlings, who bear only missed fruit, and worm-eaten...

J.-C. was willing to explain to me the true meaning of this vision, by making me aware of it the application to myself. "How many times, I said he, failing to support you on the merits of my passion, Have you not borne crooked, spoiled fruit? and corrupt? On this occasion, he introduced me to that millions of souls were there, and did not did not produce solid and real fruit, precisely because they are by their voluntary disposal, only wildlings, which are not entered on the beautiful tree of the love of God, nor on the merits of the passion of the Saviour, Otherwise, however, everything that can be done is useless to heaven. But enough is enough, Father, it is time to finish. If you Make use of my dreams in your notebooks, sensible people and Christians who read them will find truths well solid, in a form contemptible in itself; but superficial readers who will not penetrate Point the bark, especially those who will seek only the Ways to satisfy an incredulous curiosity, ah! I fear for them that they will take the opportunity to despise everything what I told you. Pray for me.

End dreams.

--------------------

REFLECTIONS OF THE AUTHOR.

Was I mistaken, reader, in the favorable idea that I formed of the dreams I have just reported, and in the advantageous judgment that I had worn elsewhere? It's yours now to judge, and tell us if you have seen more application morality, more righteousness and truth in none Prediction of this kind that you may know.

Let us read the novels spiritual where one proposes to instruct the spirit and to forming the heart in Christian virtues by fun the imagination of the reader, and then let us be told if there is found, with a purer and more sublime morality, a matter More important, a keener interest, a narrative simpler and more naïve; Finally, more of that striking that removes and transports by the sequence of pleasant facts or Terrible. Has anything ever been written more in line with the spirit of the gospel, nor more favorable to the Perfection of the Christian? Therefore, what more fair and more real? What's more like inspiration itself, that which is the subject of its Different dreams, if we can give them that name?

Indeed, either the Holy Spirit acted on the spirit of this holy girl during her sleep, which he did to many others; or, as one might still think, that his brain would have still preserved the traces of the impulses that God had there do during the day; which will seem more natural, though insufficient, to justify the admirable order which there reigns, as well as the design that is shown everywhere; of some How these dreams took place, they are no less surprising in themselves, no less wonderful in the natural Stories, simplicity as well as truth figures, and this set followed so far from the inconsistency and weirdness of ordinary dreams.

What could be more surprising, One more blow, what could be more inconceivable than to see that a poor woman ignorant, lying on the bed of her cell, still had, all asleep as she is, more just ideas, and more morals, and more sublime than most of our beautiful minds in their books so vaunted and composed with so much art, of study and rescue! and if I may use Is not this expression singular that one of these good souls who has been so despised, has found a way to Better to dream while sleeping, than they usually do, although Wide awake, at the back of their office?

It is therefore, to my opinion, impossible to give reason for all this, without recourse to the words already quoted, and which are found in they alone fulfillment: Et erit in novissimis diebus, etc. Convinced at last, and as if overwhelmed by the enlightenment contained in a work of which all is admirable in every respect, at least we exclaim. with the Psalmist: Let the

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God's ways are incomprehensible, and that it is sovereignly admirable in his saints!

Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis. (Ps. 67, 36.)

----------------------------------------------

DECLARATION

AND CERTIFICATE OF THE TWO SUPERIORS

From the Sister of the Nativity.

We, the undersigned, religious of the community of Town Planners of the city of Ferns, let us attest to whom it will belong, 1° that our so-called sister of the Nativity had, a long time ago, years, makes announcements and predictions affecting A jolt and an upheaval that was to begin in a little France, and then cause great disturbances in the Church and in the States; that, despite the little appearance that is saw then, what the said Sister had announced had appeared so great and striking in the judgment of many good ecclesiasticals, than the priest who was in this At that time director of the house, was changed to write, and that he indeed wrote an essay that the contradictions and misunderstandings on the Sister's account had forced him to burn as if in spite of himself.

2° That said Sister of the Nativity had, in 1790, charged on behalf of God, Mr. Genet, last director of our house, to be resurrected the work that had been destroyed; that she had, for that purpose, communicated notes which he had to work in an exile that she announced to him as next; that Mr Genet had actually drawn those notes under The eyes and dictation of

Said Sister, and that he has since written them in this exile, by attaching to them those that we have passed to him ourselves from and at the request of the said Sister.

3° We certify that after having carefully read the complete collection of the Life and Revelations of the said Sister, which he presented to us on his return, we did not found nothing that we found unreliable and very In accordance with the truth of the facts that we Let us know, as far as we can judge. In faith of What we signed this act without swinging, even adding that there are still special circumstances on all this which he omitted, and which would be little less edifying in the truly extraordinary life of this dear and Venerable deceased, of whom we reserve to make death known to him, with the supplement which she has instructed us to give her, and which remains to her still to be written.

4° Finally we certify that without wanting to pronounce on the great things that God has done see to the said Sister, nor on her announcements which are only Too checked, we were very consoled, and even very firm in public opinion favourable than we had previously, by the reading of the very advantageous votes of the bishops, and other lights of the Holy Church than the writer consulted in exile.

In Fougères, on the twenty-sixth day of September one thousand eight hundred and two of Jesus Christ, and the year ten of the French Republic.

Marie-Louise LEBRETON, said in religion sister of Sainte-Madeleine, former depositary of the community, and superior at the time from 1790, and until that of our destruction.

Michelle-Pelagia BINEL, known in religion as Sister of the Seraphim, ex- Superior and depositary of the community to the time of 1790; without any changes.

COLLECTION

AUTHORITIES LIVING

AND SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS, CONCERNING LIFE AND REVELATIONS OF THE SISTER OF THE NATIVITY,

NUN AT THE CONVENT OF THE TOWN PLANNERS OF THE CITY OF FOUGÈRES, BISHOPRIC FROM RENNES, BRITTANY.

THE READERS.

Charissimi, omni nolite Spiritui credere, sed probate spiritus si ex Deo sint. (Joan, 4, 1.)

The Compendium that we tell you this has been read and reviewed in manuscript by a large number of competent and highly enlightened judges, whose judgments would take too long to set out in detail advantageous: that besides the nature of this production, really extraordinary, hardly allowed them to let publish, so as not to appear to prevent in any way the judgment of the Church on a point which she alone has the right to decide.

Just tell you than scarcely out of six or more bishops, to which I had the honour of presenting in London and in The different places of my exile, since 1792 inclusively (1); out of twenty or thirty vicars-general and canons from different dioceses, ten or twelve doctors or professors of theology at various universities; on several authors, well known from esteemed works, in matters of religion, and at least one hundred and fifty others clergy, vicars, parish priests or rectors of different provinces, both of the French clergy than that of England, all equally pious and learned; at sentence, I say, out of such a large number, could we name five or six individuals who would not have been favorable to him under all reports; And there is good reason to believe that this A small number suspended their judgment only out of prudence, not out of no ill will; rather to clarify facts only to contradict them or fight public opinion Predominant.

(1) Bishops consulted and who read the notebooks containing the collection in question, are among others, Archbishop of Aix, now Archbishop of Tours; Bishop of Tréguier, that of Troyes, that of Nantes, that of Montpellier, that of

Lescar, etc., etc. I don't Make point of mentioning the laity in large numbers and all the classes, who read them with great profit and edification; for, however enlightened many of them may be, they cannot be admitted as judges in these kinds of Materials. Thus their repeated praise are counted here for nothing.

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The work was therefore universally applauded by readers of all orders of the Church, I might add, of all classes of Citizens. We have it unanimously judged not only good and useful in itself, which was the main point, especially since all the real principles of dogma and morality appeared covered; but I can assure you that the vast majority of examiners and judges has constantly leaned towards him give the inspiration itself, which seemed to them indisputable: Digitus Dei is a problem, they repeated as in concert; And, what is good to note, this admission was made to me. made by theologians who had, before reading anything, began by confessing their repugnance to me, almost invincible, to admit any kind of New inspiration.

Thus, without claiming avail myself in no way of this unanimity of feelings in favour of a question which it is not for me to decide, and that I abandon entirely to the court where she It emerges, I can at least conclude that, in all respects, The compendium, as it stands, has unquestionably brought together the plurality of votes, in the examination made of it until now. To which I may add that, so far, all the lack of taste that we thought to find in my writing, and on which again I have seen so much opposition in the different ways of judging, that I have been as impossible to conclude; to a few opinions controversial in schools, and to some details or particular points that we had quite often misunderstandings, sometimes even taken the wrong way, as I was Easy to show it.

Moreover, I repeat, We would make a volume, if we had to collect all the praise here that it has been addressed to me, all the advantageous testimonials than I have

Received orally and in writing, from the most respectable people and the most capable of judging it well. Many of the most distinguished Among the readers, prelates themselves, have solicited copies, which they had properly bound, for Keep them, they told me, with great care. Some long What were my twelve notebooks, they were thus written seven or eight different times to my knowledge, and would have been even more so, if, for reasons of caution, I had not formally opposed it ; which did not prevent many truncated copies what was learned from it in secret (1). The work has even been translated into English. All seemed to desire publicity: Several have offered to subscribe and contribute to the costs of printing; which I have always refused, only by the fear of preventing moments marked by divine Providence.

(1) These different copies have spread the work far and wide. As I I have not read any of them, I guarantee them all the less, since I have known that Some copyists have allowed themselves to make the changes they have deemed appropriate, to promote their opinions specific policy or other objects.

I would like with all my I will leave it at that; but as it will be able to find readers for whom testimonials I am in somehow the guarantor alone will not seem to be enough, I will try to satisfy them with something a little less general and more precise. It will be a List of oral testimonies and extracts from letters bearing the names of the authors. I will attach a few letters even printed on the originals, which will be proof of all that I just moved forward. He's in order after all, he's fair to provide to the good faith that seeks to enlighten itself, sufficient authorities, grounds on which it can reasonably determine oneself. If there could be one who were willing to suspect sincerity of my quotations, I would only ask them to be careful that When I were supposed to be quite deceitful, there would be no appearance that I was clumsy enough to name such respectable names, and bring into play such well-known characters, and to whom he It would also be easy to deny me.

Extracts various letters and verbal statements addressed to the editor.

After the prelates of which we have just spoken, Father Barruel was one of the theologians to whom I most desired communicate my manuscript. No sooner had he examined it, that he urged me to grant him a copy, which he had printed

himself. Since this time, he never ceased to show me his gratitude in any case, nor to praise the work, without ever denying itself.

"The more I read it, He has often told me and written to me, the more edifying I find him? and admirable, and the more I discover something more than human. I see a thousand things I had not seen anywhere: So it touches me more than any other book. I do my the most ordinary meditation, and I hope God will. will serve for my conversion and spiritual advancement. Please to commend me to the prayers of your good nun. » Several others, and even bishops, have made me the same request.

Father Barruel continues in these terms:

"We will attack the work of this good soul, but it will not be annihilated Not: it is marked at a corner that will make it triumph over criticism. Let me know everything you can learn from that holy girl. Everything about her will interest me Always a lot. What he repeated, like many others, to different people and different occasions, without ever changing their opinion on this point. He has often said, along with many others, that "this book was able to make the happiest impressions, and produce in souls the most desirable fruits of conversion, advancement and salvation. »

This was constantly the judgment of an author accustomed to the Criticism of works and discussion of subjects Theological. Let's move on to others.

M. Pons, parish priest of Mazamet, in the diocese of Lavaur, doctor and professor of theology, took the same interest, and in made exactly the same judgment, after have read it very carefully. Here are the terms in which this Professor, justly famous, begins the little notebook notes I had asked him to make to me: "The work of the nun of Fougères seemed to me to contain a theology sublime, a gentle, pure morality, great principles of conduct and bright; and whatever judgment one makes on his inspiration, I think reading will be very useful to faithful, and will give them a great taste for virtue. »

To this praise Simple and precise, according to his way of saying the Things, Father Pons adds that: "To satisfy The request of the editor, he will hazard, on the whole book, Some remarks which he does not consider essential, and to which He does not attach much importance. Since that time, he has was one of those who most urged me to do print the work in London, so that, he said, he could Take a few copies to your country.

M. Douglas, Bishop of London, not knowing enough of the French language to well judged by himself, was, in a way, replaced by some of his priests, including the Reverend Mr. Milner, attached to the Catholics of Winchester; What I know procured with this famous writer a correspondence that honored me very much. Here's what he wrote to me in different meetings; I will quote his own expressions, which I will then translate, for the convenience of those who do not are not versed in his language. In its letter dated 13 September 1800, Mr. Milner said to me:

« The production upon the whole appears to me very wouderful for its

sublimity, energy, copiouness, learning, orthodoxy and piety. Hence I have no doubt of its producing great spiritual profit to many souls, whenever you shall think proper to give it to the public. I remain,

"Dr. Sir,

« Your obliged servant

"John Milner."

(310-314)

Here is Translation:

.... This production seems, in general, very surprising by its sublimity, its energy, the abundance of ideas and things, and the depth of theology that reigns there, her orthodoxy and the spirit of piety she breathes. That is why I have no doubt that it produces very great advantages and happy impressions on many souls, who will benefit from it when you judge about the give to the public. I live,

My dear sir,

Your Very humble and obedient servant. Jean Milner.

In the one he wrote to me On 15 November, he spoke as follows: "I cannot speak too much. highly of the sublimity and affecting piety of these revelations in general. »

That is

« To take These revelations in general, I do not know raise them too much, or say anything that surpasses the idea advantageous that I designed of their sublimity, nor of the

tender and affectionate piety which makes it like the background and the distinctive character. »

The same author, Writing to an English priest from his friends and mine, he says: "When you see our good friend Mr. G*., present my respectful compliments to him and tell him how desirous I was of seeing him when I was the other day at Sommerstown. It is impossible that you, or any gother person should have a greater veneration for the revelations of his spiritual daughter, than I have; or be more anxious to see them in print, for the edification of the good, and the conversion of the wicked. »

That is

"If you have, or when you have an opportunity to see our good friend Mr. G*., introduce him to my courtesies or respectful compliments. Tell him how much I I wanted to see him the last time I went to Sommerstown. It is impossible that you, or anyone else, can have a greater veneration than mine for revelations from his spiritual daughter. No one wants with more eagerness than I am to see them printed, for the consolation and edification of the good, as for the conversion of the wicked. »

Mr. Rayment, another priest English, very distinguished by his knowledge theological, in the province of York, has given itself the I was troubled to translate the work into English, and assured me that he would not give his translation for a library. M. Hodgson, vicar-general of Mgr. Douglas, appointed The collection An infused theology: Tlieologiu infuse. I could say the same about the Reverend Dom Charoc, Prior of the English Benedictine religious, and brother of The Most Reverend of Bath; by M. Lolimer, Benedictine English; of the Reverend Father Abbot of the Trappe, who had him copied for his religious, and many other men of this merit, who made the same cases, and have taken at least some fragments for their special use.

Fr. Bruning, Jesuit English, still seems to add to everything we have considering. Not only does it attest to me, as many others have done, that it has never read anything more important or more informative; but he goes so far as to say that if all the good books we ever have writings, with none of them, were lost, could find them all, and with advantage, in this one all alone: "May I add on the whole, were scripture no more and all the most valuable traces of instructive moral, doctrinal and theological science no more to be met with in other books; they might be all recovered in this one, and with interest beyond. »

Enough is enough, I think, to persuade every mind that pays for itself by reason, that I do not I am not the only one of my opinion, concerning the work in question, and that it is not on my faint lights, nor after My particular judgment, which must not be counted for nothing, that I determined to give it to the public (1). Without therefore wanting to multiply citations whose list would become boring by repeating the same Praise and the same ideas, I thought he It would suffice to add in their entirety some of the letters which have been addressed to me on this subject by Characters significant enough to deserve to be made Careful.

(1) The last once I saw Mgr. the Bishop of Tréguier, before His death, he reproached me for not proposing the subscription while that there were Frenchmen in England.

Letter from an engaged priest, refugee in Paderborn in Westphalia, addressed to the editor.

(Printed on the original.)

Sir

You will be surprised, without doubt, to receive a letter from a stranger; but the interesting book of which you are the editor, is more than enough to inspire me with the confidence with which I address myself directly to yourself. Having had the advantage of reading some notebooks of the revelations of the Sister of the Nativity, without hope of having others in the country where I live, I dare to flatter myself that you will favor the burning desire I have to own the entire book. However, I do not want to be dependent on you, in requesting from you a copy, that perhaps You could not get me so I pray to the Reverend Mother Augustin, trappist, refugee near London, to be willing to transcribe well, if it is possible, said work, by offering the payment of what will be asked, although I'm not rich, like most exiled priests. But lest this worthy religious cannot satisfy my wishes, or even procure I urge you to give him a copy of it. facilitate resources; and in the event that it cannot find suitable people to transcribe, I ask you in grace for employing yourselves to this good work, and I will pass on to you what should be paid to this effect.

Besides, sir, what Leads me to this approach is not a curiosity much less misplaced, much less the spirit of criticism, but the sincere desire to edify myself. What if, as I Believe it prudent, it should not be

communicate only to a Very small number of people chosen and perfectly known, I then promise to be in this respect of the most scrupulous reserve. I would like to be within reach give you even more positive assurances; but I cannot that you expose the purity of my religious motives, and what I am: French priest of the diocese of Rouen, Expatriate for the Catholic faith, refugee in Paderborn in Westphalia, for almost eight years, where I I am employed for the ecclesiastical affairs of the foreigners, and confessor of a community of Carmelites French.

I hope, however, and your zeal to procure the good to which you have so much On the other hand, inspires me confidence, which you will well accomplish my Wishes.

In this sweet wait, I have the honor to be with respect and veneration , Sir, your most humble and obedient servant

J.-F. Vallée,

Priest French, among the Benedictine Ladies of Gokirchen, à Paderborn.

Paderborn , in Westphalia, July 6, 1801.

Second letter of the same. (Printed on original.)

Sir

I have every reason to believe that my letter having been delivered to you, the reply with which you have deigned to honour me has been Intercepted; That's why I still take the freedom to write to you today to ask you to access my request, however, as far as you can; because despite the extreme desire I have to possess the precious work in question, I would not want you Engage in violating the rules of wise discretion. I feel that caution must prevail in the manifestation of a thing of this nature, and that it

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must use a great deal of effort reserve so as not to prevent or diminish the property that must result from this work in the designs of the divine Providence. But you are more within reach than no one to judge soundly the pros and cons; and since the communication you have made, at least to a few people, said work, seems to announce that the time has come to entrust to those to whom it can be useful, I Repeat my pleas, that you may have goodness to lend, if you can, a correct copy to the persons who will deliver or cause to be delivered this letter to you. I dare not ask you to have the transcript done yourself. and the correction of the work, ensuring that you are reimbursed of everything that will cost, as well as the safe shipment of the manuscript, through the respectable family of Spencer, as It is marked with the transcript to the persons requested.

I just add that you can be sure that I will religiously follow the rules which you will be kind enough to prescribe to me, and that it seems to me that I have right intentions in renewing you my petition. If you deign to welcome it, you will give me the greatest pleasure; and by testifying to you In advance my sincere gratitude, I have the honor to be with all the feelings of respect and veneration,

Sir, your very humble and very obedient servant,

J.-F. Vallée,

French priest, among the Benedictine Ladies of Gokirchen, in Paderborn, Westphalia

Paderborn, 25 August 1801.

Letter from Father de Cugnac, Vicar-General of the Diocese of Aire, addressed, on behalf of his bishop, to the editor of the compendium.

(Printed on the original.)

Paderborn, 16 July 1801.

Bishop d'Aire, Sir, had seen, last year, in a letter written from England, the advantageous account that one rendered of a manuscript that deals with the visions of a nun of Ferns. The eulogy which, according to this letter, had been given to the work by some bishops, as well as by the learned and judicious abbot Barruel, gave birth to to Monsignor the desire to

know a written word which, according to these testimonies, did not contain only extraordinary things made to pique a vain curiosity, but which offered entire treaties, as touching as sublime, of the great mysteries and the holy morals of our adorable religion.

So he learned with joy. which the Rev. P. Abbot de la Trappe had brought from England this interesting work, and already recommended by the authority of respectable people. He hastened to ask Father Abbot, who asked him lent the part which he had then had put on the net; that is, only half of the 2nd volume. That Few, caught in the middle of the book, could not, as you see, put Monsignor within reach of establishing a judgment on the whole; But reading this small part has Monsignor convinced that such a work, is by the importance of the materials it treats, either by the new form in which it is drawn up, either by the authority imposing on which one presses everything that one advances, deserved special attention required that it be read with reflection, and that it was not enough to take a reading of it unique and fast, as we make of these books whose interest consists in novelty and wonder.

Monsignor therefore desired have a copy taken from the copy of the R.

Fr. Abbot; but The latter did not want to allow it, for fear of failing to the confidence that had delivered him this manuscript to obtain a copy. This delicacy can be respectable; but Monsignor is convinced that the works of This kind are made to be in the hands of bishops, before any other class of faithful; and since this writing is already known, and was read here by several characters of various characters and states, before Monsignor, and even since the request he had made to the R. P. abbot to provide him with the reading, he thinks he can, He even believes he must have a copy of this written, in order to be within reach of reading it, of to read it again, to meditate on it with all the attention and the reflection it deserves, and to straighten out, in The occasion, the judgments that characters could make who are nothing less than theologians.

Bishop d'Aire therefore asks you, Sir, to authorize it, in a to lift all the scruples of Rev. Father de la Trappe, to take a copy from the copy that he brought of London.

Monsignor does not indicate this means that as the easiest and least expensive; for it would prefer if it were possible, and if the fees were not too considerable, to hold of yourself a more correct copy than that of the R.

Fr. Abbot, where The faults are multiplied, and sometimes of a nature to change the meaning or present none. Monsignor would put a great price to have a readable, revised and corrected by the author, or, to speak no doubt

fairer, by the editor. He does not, however, insist on this article, because that he is stopped by fear, 1° that it will not caused too much pain and loss of time; (2) that the costs, either of writing or of postage, were not too much expensive. He begs you to send him first, as soon as possible possible, the authorization he asks you, and to give him, in Your answer, an overview of what a copy and port to Hamburg. But the first of All the conditions is that this care is not too troublesome For you. Monsignor would like you to be able to give him A notice of the most peculiar facts to the Holy Girl Sister of the Nativity, and the revelations that she received. He expects to find in the body of the work, and especially in its life, the general features that will make it known; but if you knew a few which characterize it even better, and if they were of such a nature as to be able to add some degree of authenticity to the revelations of the saint religious and the authority of the work that makes them Monseigneur would learn them from you, Sir, with a great interest, and would only make the use of it that you would judge appropriate.

Couldn't you also assign to it, approximately the time when the Sister of the Nativity had known that should appear in the public the book you have written. One Religious arrival from London assures us that it is not so secret in this city, and that she has heard read several tatters.

Monsignor would like to know the precise time of the death of the Holy Daughter, which we said here to be, arrived not yet a year ago. If you were able to learn the circumstances that preceded it, accompanied and monitored, as well as the communications she might have had God's will since you finished the work of his Life and Revelations, and especially at the time of his death, you would oblige Monsignor to please let him know; and generally all that who looks at the holy servant of God, her visions, the work that reports them, and the respectable priest who wrote it, is for Monsignor of great interest, that he flatters himself that you will want to satisfy as much as you can. — He charges me to assure you of the feelings of his most true esteem.

I am with a high consideration and a great desire to know you, Sir

Your very humble and very obedient servant, The Abbot of Cugnac,

Vicar General d'Aire , at the college of Paderborn in Westphalia.

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Letter from Mr. Martin, Vicar General of Lisieux, to the Abbot Guillot, who had sent him the eighteen notebooks containing the first writing of the work, begging him to do so in Say your feelings. Mr. Martin was then at the head French priests who had been transferred at the common house of Heading, and that he had first been charged with presiding at Winchester Castle.

(Printed on the original.) Sir

The Eighteen notebooks that I am sending back to you have been communicated by Miss Magnarama. I would have liked that the author would have begun by reporting literally the notes of the Sister of the Nativity, good or bad written, not that I doubt their authenticity, nor do I doubt their authenticity, nor do they doubt them. the fidelity of the editor. Concerning the work considered in itself, at The exception of a few descriptions and some images that seem a little too poetic for such a subject, I finds goodness and beauty also Lovely. In general, it is very suitable for enlighten the mind, to elevate the soul, the touch and persuade her. In particular, it gives the most important ideas. most magnificent of divine and Church attributes Catholic. Without going into the details of the different materials it contains, there is none that is not there presented in a new, striking manner, and extremely interesting. In a word, it is, in my opinion, A rich and abundant fund, from which one can draw not only What to edify personally by reading and meditating, but still enough to contribute to the usefulness spiritual of the neighbor.

That, Sir, is my Overview based on the quick reading of these notebooks which have been communicated to me. It would be at wish that this writing was printed, for the most great glory of God and the good of many souls.

I am, with a Respectful consideration, Sir,

Your very humble and very obedient servant,

Martin, vic. Gen.

Reading, April 21, 1802.

I will allow myself a Reflection on this letter: it is that it was not the Sister of the Nativity who had provided me with notes, as Mr. Martin seems to assume; it was me, on the contrary, who had made notes on what she had told me. These notes, I I had made them only to help my memory, so as not to Nothing essential to be omitted, neither for order nor for the substance of the things. These notes, very insufficient in themselves, would have been absolutely unintelligible to readers.

Thus, to put it in passing and occasionally, I could not produce the first notes, which, however, many seemed to desire, without harming the common cause, and even for the benefit of the person who asked me to write and interpret it after hearing it well, and not copying it, less still to produce to the public what would not have been only an enigma for him. It was, after all, his meaning rather than his words, which I had to render.

As for the other Reproach, which falls on the style of the writing, I am well far from believing no defect; but finally, All this is a pure matter of taste, on which moreover I have seen so many contradictions among the readers of the Notebooks, that I didn't think I had to make many changes in my last writing.

OPINION OF THE PUBLISHER.

The fourth volume will perfectly meet Mr. Martin's wishes, since he is printed verbatim and without any changes on the copy dictated by the Sister herself, with the order and the titles it has also established itself.

COMMENTS

On Life and Revelations of the so-called Sister of the Nativity, conversing nun at the convent of the Urbanists of Fougères; followed by his inner life,

written from itself by the depositary of its revelations, and written in London, and in the various Places of his exile, 1800.

" Confiteor tibi, Pater, Domine coeli et terræ, qui à abstrcondisti hœc to sapientibus and prudentibus, and Revelasti ea parvulis. (Math. 11:25; Luc. 10, 21.) Quæ stulta Sunt mundi elegit Deus ut confundat sapientes. (1 Cor. 1, 27.)

Such is the fate of the Truth on earth, she walks everywhere accompanied by the error, from which sometimes it does not seem distant than one step, and often even with difficulty in the distinguish. Truth of experience of which the world physical and moral, of which religion itself provides us so much evidence, that it would be useless to dwell on it. Yes, you are God, for always adorable reasons, allowed the good grain to was mixed with tares in his field he gave us certain signs to discern one from the other, and his goodness cannot allow the righteous soul to be exposed to take the false for the true, and especially that it becomes Inevitably the plaything of error: probate spiritus si ex Deo sint.

Yes, that is the order and the The design of her providence, she comes to the aid of humanity weakness, but without ever detracting from the merit of faith. By a admirable conduct, God gives to everything only the degree of evidence which suffices for his purposes, and to that degree Obviously there is always enough to satisfy and reassure the righteous soul, who seeks the truth in good faith, How there is always enough to scandalize, blind and harden the one who wants to be. Qui quœrit legem, replebitur ab eâ, and who insidiosè acts scandalisabitur in eâ. (Eccl. 32:19). "There is in religion," says Pascal, " enough

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» Lights for those who only desire to see, and enough darkness for those who have a contrary provision. There is enough clarity to enlighten the elect, and enough darkness to humiliate them. There is enough darkness to blind the reprobate, and clear enough to condemn them and make them inexcusable. (Thoughts, ch. 18, p. 97.)

The Church of J.-C., and this is the remark of his historians (for example, M. de Bercastel), has never been shaken by no tremor whatsoever violent, which was not previously announced by some holy figures, including the virtues sustained by grace, and confirmed announcements by the event, have always formed a contrast remarkable with the licentious conduct and impostor language of the Deceitful who so many times have deceived the universe. Quoniam Multi pseudoprophetœ exierunt in mundum.

It is, we dare say, A help that in these critical circumstances kindness Divine owes to the faith of His persecuted children or about to be. The jolt it comes to feel, and still feel, this Church, was certainly no less astonishing in its principle, no less violent in its executions, no less disastrous in its sequels, than none of those who have it Preceded by. Also the sky, which allowed the latter plague, as he allowed all others, did he not miss to come here again to the aid of its elected representatives, by providing in advance, and courage against violence, and condoms against the present scandal and come, by well-circumstantial warnings on the specific details that the policy The most refined human could in no way foresee nor announce.

In the number of these people who, at different times, have spoken in a way that seems to be at the very least Hold inspiration, there is one, among others, whose stories, many prior to the event, have since long fixed the attention of all those who have had it knowledge, and have appeared to judicious and solid minds be capable of supporting all types of events suitable, and show the real characters that command respect.

Depositary of its confidences and responsible for transmitting them at the prescribed time, It is in a foreign land, as she had announced, which I addressed to the principal leaders of The Church, following her recommendation to me then, and on which she had insisted so much....

The work was therefore read and examined by a large number of competent judges and very enlightened of which it would be too long to detail here the votes. Several of them assured me that they had read it with the greatest pleasure and the greatest edification, and that they had been affected by it more than any other book or production. Several of them requested a copy, wrote it or had it written to serve as their ordinary meditation; others have taken it extracts, and all seemed to desire their publication, although the nature of this extraordinary production did not have them allowed to add the sanction of their authority by leaving publish their names following favourable judgments they have been praised, and praise repeated

that they have done so by themselves voice and in writing. Surely we can only applaud This wise circumspection, which fears to prevent in no way the decisions of the Church in the points on which it has only the right to pronounce, and we can do no better than to we adjust to this model that is traced to us by the most distinguished members of this Church, including The judgment seems as sound as their attachment to the faith is unwavering, and their exemplary conduct is worthy of admiration in all respects.

Accordingly although the very large number of examiners among the bishops themselves, seemed to lean towards recognize God's inspiration and finger in this collection, digitus Dei is hic, as they have so many times repeated, and that, what is good to observe, this Confession was made to me by prelates and others Doctors who had first confessed their repugnance to me almost invincible to admit any kind of news inspiration; although those of them, who appeared to be the least favourable, have only ever brought reasons that prove enough that deep down they did not think differently, and which they objected rather to clarify than to contest, however, to prevent nothing on this point Tricky, I also leave the judgment to the public, in waiting for the Church to have spoken, if it ever speaks fact: Probate spiritus si ex Deo sint.

I therefore confine myself to the universal, and unrestricted, approval that was given to the goodness of the work itself, which was deemed able to make the happiest impressions, and to produce in souls the most desirable fruits of conversion, advancement and salvation. It is there, at My opinion, the only point that matters to the public to be well insured, especially with a view to that on the side of dogma, as well as principles of morality, Everything seemed out of the wood.

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of achievement and in the most rigorous accuracy. "The work of the nun of Fougères, wrote me recently a famous doctor and professor of theology (1), seemed to me to contain a sublime theology, a gentle and pure morality, principles of Tall and luminous conduct, and sometimes the judgment that one pronounces on his inspiration; I think the reading will be very useful to the faithful and will give them a great taste for the virtue. »

(1) Father Pons, parish priest of Mazamet, diocese of Lavaur.

The judgment of a doctor particular is only the expression of that of all others, and it has been repeated to me to different times and in different ways by theologians the most versed in these kinds of materials (1); It is became like the public cry of all ecclesiastics, English and French, who read it. Let us recalls here the respectable authorities I have quoted in the previous collection.

(1) Among others by M. Father Barruel.

This universality of votes, this meeting of opinions on the crucial point gives a just confidence that a production so desired may one day, following its announcement, contribute in something to the glory of God and the salvation of souls for whom it seems destined. May the event To meet our expectations, and our hope not to be Not deceived!

It would therefore be yet another Coup point, there is no need to enter here into a long dissertation on the The degree of faith to be given to the inspiration of This extraordinary girl (1), on the reasons that can be brought For or against, as on the plus or minus probability for these reasons. The Holy Spirit, according to the author, will enlighten Better than anyone on all these points the souls of good will who will read, not out of curiosity for having read, still less to find criticism, but for the purpose of to learn, to edify, and to enjoy. Yes, we dare Hopefully, the simple reading of the book, made with the righteousness and purity of proper intention, will do more for such readers as anything that could be said about them; and those that This reading will not have persuaded would be even less by evidence which they would not fail to dispute, and to weaken in any way. For in this genus, and Especially in the century in which we live, it would be It is impossible to convince those who are determined to not to admit anything new in fact of revelations and particular prophecies.

(1) The certainty of a revelation particular can never produce a Catholic faith that requires a definition, but a particular faith for the soul where it is; This is the doctrine of all Theologians, based on writing and example of several saints of the old and new law. Abraham is Praised for believing in divine inspiration Particular. The father of St. John the Baptist was punished for not having given credence to the word of an angel, and we see that the risen Jesus Christ resumes strongly his disciples for not believing the testimony of the holy women who had seen him after his resurrection. Stulti et tardi corde ad credendum! (Luke 24, 25).

A Christian Reasonable and faithful must, however, consider that these Old prophecies announce new ones until the Last Times of the Church. It is a promise that God has given him made, and the gift of prophecy was bestowed upon him as that of miracles, for an unlimited time. It would therefore be up to at the very least insult to the former than to reject the others without examination. Divine power is not bound in any time: all that it once could, it still can; and Admittedly, we do not see why, when the same circumstances return, Divine Providence would not renew the prophecies and wonders of early times, when Before our eyes it renews in such an astonishing way all the constancy of the first confessors and all the courage and the fearlessness of the first martyrs of the faith. But there are to minds so warned, that they have irrevocably taken their party on all this; it would be impossible to deceive them, and perhaps dangerous to undertake it; It is better to let abound in their direction.

In any case, if the work in question comes from God, it can absolutely happen of the approval of men and he will support himself despite all this that could be done to destroy it; Because who can erase the indelible characters than the finger of the Lord Prints on everything he does? Who can stand in the way of his Will decided? It is therefore on him alone that he must rest from it, and that is what I am determined to, without wanting to command anyone's judgment, or worry many arbitrary opinions that it seems moreover if difficult to reconcile between them: In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus charitas; says a Father of the Church, St. Augustine.

It is true, and it is a objection which will no doubt be made to me, that in many places my Reflections detect my way of thinking on the article, and that the very title of the work, as well as the epigraph, etc., show enough that I am nothing less that indifferent, and that I look at the inspiration of the religious as of course.

I don't want to. hide; Hey! Why, after all, wouldn't I

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Point of Freedom which all his judges have granted me, and which I leave myself To each reader, to think what he wants? Everywhere, I Admittedly, I spoke from intimate persuasion where put me relationships where others didn't find each other in this regard; but as it is possible that I have deceived, and that I am wrong in this, I do not see how This persuasion, which is peculiar to me as well as others more skillful, and without which I would never have undertaken Such a task, may impose on the reader the obligation to think like me, if he doesn't see fit, and if he does not see any No sufficient reasons in what he will have read. All kinds Everyone has their own way of thinking and taking things, and they It is only natural that everyone should be persuaded by the reasons he has.

Thus, by giving the stories of the Sister for the result of her revelations, and under the eye of Nor do I pretend to determine divine inspiration the public's judgment on this issue that I do not claim warn that of the Church on the holiness of This good soul, and canonize it in advance, when I qualify it of Holy Daughter. These expressions, as we know, must not Take it in a pinch. What's of course is that I am not alone in my opinion on the point in question, and that it is far from the opposite opinion to have the same number of votes. It can hardly be said that there have been a few Opposing opinions among examiners.

Perhaps I will be blamed dissemination, too much length, especially in the preambles, rehearsals, etc. To this here is my answer, I desire that it may satisfy all spirits: 1° I have no doubt that my writing is full of flaws, that's about all I have Belongs; 2 ° it is necessary to put in the spirit that it does not This is not a book made to amuse the mind by Curious and scholarly dissertations, composed according to rules of taste. It is a kind of treaty dogmatic and moral, where one supposes, where one believes that God Himself instructs people by truths solid, accessible to all and willing in such a way as to be seized by all, to Guard against the mistakes and scandals of the last time, which are approaching and which may not be so far from we might imagine; a new Apocalypse, if one can say it, in which, on the occasion of the revolution French, J.-C. reveals, unveils to A privileged soul, and for the good of all, the Preludes and the aftermath of the reign of his greatest The enemy, and the whole series of persecutions and plagues that must agitate his Church to the last the duration of its duration; This is the framework that allows us to do so. is presented.

However, we feel quite that a Work of this nature can have nothing in common with a novel spiritual, made only for scholars, nor with

The rules academics, to which I have neither the talent nor the pretension to comply. When God does so much as to talk to men, it is their needs that he consults, and not their whims, their whims, their pleasures or their tastes. He expresses to them his willingness to the way he wants and that is most useful to them, without that they have the right to find fault with it, nor to want anything about it change.

Besides, if you want to Be careful, we will easily agree, as many have fact, that perhaps never needed more preliminaries to be well understood, and that, far from make it a crime to me, the reader curious to learn from the depths of the thing, can only be grateful to me for having put him under the eyes the only way to judge well.

In addition to the life of the Sister, which, however abridged it may be, had to necessarily occupy a certain amount of space, in addition to the Also unavoidable circumstances of the early writings which were made more than thirty years ago, I had, for the tranquilize, discuss and resolve all the difficulties of the Sister, or rather all the objections and quibbles by which the devil fumbled to disconcert her and divert her from her project, as we shall see.

It had to be abbreviated All this, shall we say? Very good. So we did it as much as we believed possible; but also it was necessary to be careful not to abbreviate too much, and we will agree if we want to put ourselves in my shoes for a while. and see it as it should be envisaged. Because, finally, or I had to keep quiet

Sister's objections, or of his enemy, which would have been an infidelity unforgivable; or I had to, in bringing them back, also report with the same accuracy the answers that were given, and the at least main reasons by which the spirit of the Sister was tranquilized. It is unlikely to be the only one. soul to whom the same objections will be suggested, and who could be arrested there, as it has appeared. by the reflections that were made to me, and which were not than repetitions; the reasons that decided it could perhaps also decide them, such as

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It happened more once to my knowledge.

So good judges have looked at all these preambles as the essential stone and fundamental of the whole edifice. They made a case at proportion

that they have made the work itself. I would agree, however, that it is necessary in all avoid excessive and tiring length, all that would be unnecessary or superfluous; But it's not by the number of pages, it's by the things they contain that must be judged. Speech Very long may still be too short, such as a very Short may still be too long. Regardless of the Way, the truth is always to tell things like they happened, not otherwise. Moreover, in a book like this, I don't see how a second or a Third reason, when it is good, could harm the first one we gave. This is an example that God himself provides us with saints in a thousand places Scriptures, where the same truths are presented to us so often and in so many ways Different.

That's not all, and I don't then finish this discussion before explaining a good Times, not to come back to it, how were taken the notes that make up the collection, and how I have them does the writing. With this simple and naïve presentation, I will warn a thousand questions that could be made, and a thousand false consequences that could be drawn; I will return the justice I owe to the truth that God knows, and I will put all the superiors clergymen and all well-meaning people within reach of judging soundly on a point as well essential to the thing. That's the goal I've always had for myself proposed.

I therefore declare, It takes a lot from the stories that make up this collection, have been dictated to me word for word like the theme of a schoolboy. All my care, like that of the Sister, was to make me enter into her sense, rather than in his expressions, which very often were not French.

You will always say better than me, as long as you understand me, she told me. frequently: so this is what we are especially for? We are both applied throughout our Interviews! and she testified to me more than once that I succeeded, to the point that no one, without even except for M. Audouin, he had not understood it so well. What I repeat only to reassure a little, if possible, shy souls that affect trembling at every step that I have strayed from the true meaning. prevention, no panic terror, no too much shyness. If it is the work of God, let us be sure that his Providence will have provided for everything.

It is true, however, that in Many things I had a lot to write under dictation of the Sister, so to speak. In addition to the expressions it employed as on behalf of God, and of which she enjoined me to Serve, I had to write a very large part, and as much as I could, of all these great details touching on divine attributes, creation, the Church, purgatory,

hell, the end of the world, The fate of little children, our revolution, and all the visions by which God had shown him the causes and the effects....

So I wrote, because I feel perfectly well that in all this, neither goodwill, Neither words could make up for the great things she told me, and I did not trust my memory enough. to dare to promise me not to omit anything essential. I needed therefore write; But, far from having amplified these even places, as we could perhaps imagine it, we would see, if we had heard the Sister herself, which I did little more than take the bottom and the quintessence of what she was telling me.

I have even more quintessencié what she made me write in the continuation by Madame la Supérieure (1), because this one Wanting to take upon herself only the pain, was obliged to write down everything the Sister said to do herself well hear to her, and put me within reach of the Appreciate well in my writing: what carried away Necessarily many words that I had to shorten. But the details of the Sister, although a little long Sometimes, have always seemed so interesting to me for the substance things, and sometimes even for the manner, that in Many points I would rather fear to have done too much than too much few entrenchments. Anyway, here is in general how everything happened, especially in relation to details that seemed to require less precision, in the first notes I drew myself.

(1) Isn't it a blow of Providence that I was not the only one to Take the first notes? God probably allowed it to provide at least one more witness to the truth fundamental to a work he foresaw to be attacked from the base itself. This is enough to lift the doubts of good faith; this is enough, and the goodness of God does not must nothing more.

The Sister spoke sometimes long enough without me doing anything other than Listen to her carefully as she recommended to me. Then, after six or eight minutes of doing so, that is, after the subject had been sufficiently developed in its own way, So, either I begged her to stop, or she asked me if I had it well

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understood: That's it, my Father, she told me, what God makes me see, so that you take the bottom of it. On this I wrote eight or ten lines in notes

abbreviated, that I then read slowly to the Sister, who listened to me with great care; she immediately reflected to me: Well, well, my Father, she would ordinarily tell me, You have spoken better than I did; But above all I see that you are in the true sense of the light that enlightens me and leads me... Stick to it Well, and don't get out of it when you're working on your notes....

Sometimes it is happened to tell me that I was not there yet at fact, and that she saw some difference between the true meaning and my way of rendering it; but I don't remember that she ever told me that I would have been in a sense directly opposed to his. Anyway, it was all often corrected by changing a single term, and I do not Let go only after she had approved me, telling myself that I was in the true sense that God was in him made it see. She also told me, at times, that this that she saw was exactly along the same lines as that that I had said on such and such a day in such and such a place in my instruction on such a subject, and that I could have benefited from the same ideas in my writing, etc....

Thus, everything consisted of between the Sister and me in a certain trade of thoughts on his side, and expressions of mine; in such a correspondence, I did not have to, I would not have wanted to think without her, and it seemed to me quite often that she could only have been very Hardly express his thoughts without me. Let it be taken as one would like, God probably had his reasons for ordaining it. Thus, if only to humiliate both. Yet he sometimes suggested to him the very expressions, and So there was no more research to do, it was necessary to stick to it at the prescribed term, which was always the cleanest and the better than could be used. Often she had the idea without the expression; But what is surprising is that it Sometimes she had the expression and the idea without have the convenience. That's exactly how they were. From the first notes that some readers have appeared to desire; But it is quite obvious that it would be it is useless to produce them, when they still exist; and the The reason is that it would be impossible to read them, let alone to read them. see a certain sequel, which can only be found in the writing. It would therefore be much easier to assume this. whatever we want, to believe nothing we could not even decipher. Certainly these leaves detached and without follow-up, these abbreviations indecipherable

could provide no kind of evidence, and the stubborn demand for it would make the effect of a precaution appear more ill-intentioned than judicious.

Now we have to imagine that the writing must have been done in the same way spirit and the same fear of deviating from the plan and the true ideas of the Sister; but if, in writing, I have sometimes drawn on the principles of theology, or even in my own background, enough to replace what she had told me and that I had not been able to write, in a word, what give his ideas the right breadth and necessary development that she charged me herself. Even to give them, always following the same meaning, I believe that I have done nothing but fulfill my task, far from it dismiss; and when all this would not be included in the idea even drafting, I'm sure, not doubt, that all this was included in the idea of the Whoever asked me to write it. Thus the compendium, such as that he is, presents the true thoughts of the Sister taken in their natural order, and presented in their true point of view, at least as far as I could; The first notes would only disfigure them.

There are, therefore, in fact Style and writing, three things to consider in the collection: (1) expressions attributed to God itself, or which are employed as coming from the part J.-C.; 2° the expressions of the Sister, to which I attach all that I have read to her, and that she has approved; 3° everything about me, I mean everything I thought was necessary to give the whole a certain order and a certain extended in the same direction; But all this is found so bound in the book, that in many things I would have I myself find it difficult to discern this, and I think that it would be even easier for anyone else to misunderstand. Those who noticed and objected that it was everywhere the same style and the same turn, did not make in this a great discovery, and we do not see what Unfavourable induction could be drawn from this. It's everywhere the Same style, this is quite natural and could hardly arrive differently; because indeed it is everywhere the same spirit that speaks through the same organ; It's the same everywhere man who writes, and there was no more reason to change of style than to change hands.

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The point would therefore be, for to say something, to show that I did not exactly grasp or returned his ideas, that in many encounters I had gone astray of his views and design. All this, without question, is very possible; But to show it you would first have to have heard it oneself: secondly, it would be necessary to prove that one would have better understood than I was able to; Until then common sense decides that we should stick to my

Testimonial as in that of the Sister, because the whole presumption is in favor of the one who was not only the only one to hear it, but still that has been within reach of her, and charged by herself to interpret it and to make it speak to posterity. We did not have So there is no other way to challenge his testimony than to show that he lends it a contradictory, opposite language to divine oracles, to the laws and decisions of the Church; unworthy finally of the one who makes it speak. That, I believe, is what what must naturally think the man of common sense who will desire to be instructed, not to incident.

It will almost follow, It may be said, that you had been inspired? yourself, or at least that you would have received a species of infallibility for this writing, as well as for your answers to the Nun. He

will follow all that is will want: for I do not want to enter into the reasoning that can be Nor in the consequences that can be drawn. I declare only that, far from having any kind of right, I acknowledges absolutely unworthy of such favours; but also, I would add with the same candor and naivety, that at worst, if once it is assumed that heaven has granted them to this good soul for the good of the Church, Why, for the same reasons, could it not be assumed that he would also have granted some assistance free of charge, in particular, to the puny work of the one he called to assist her? It seems to me at least to see some convenience; And when I think that the instruments the vilest, weakest and most despicable in they themselves are precisely those of whom God is usually serves in such cases, those he prefers to all the others, it seems to me then that we could well believe in me more than anyone. That's the only title I have in the thing, a title that it would be a great mistake to challenge me, and that one does not will not even envy me. That's my answer on this item.

I am aware, besides, what to announce a work as inspired by God, or at least as the result of the confidences of a soul that Heaven instructs and fosters, it is like committing to support all that that this title has imposing. As there is not, and there can be no have authority holier than God's, nor sanction more sacred than that which results from

This authority, it There is also none on which one is entitled to demand proof more rigorous before surrendering: there is none even on which one must be more wary against surprise; This is most likely what we will not miss, we This is to be expected, and indeed is expected, especially the share of a certain class of readers, who, without having much of religion perhaps, will nevertheless affect to believe the cause of God compromised by a production of this kind, and who will even carry blindness to the point of persuading themselves to fight for reason and faith, while they will not defend that the interests of irreligion and passions, which the work attacks and destroys in every way.

The first condition that will no doubt be required before believing in this inspiration, it will be a legal information, or procedure canonical, which observes its reality. At least that's the request made to me. To this I reply that never, in Such a case has not been used, which does not could prove nothing, since what happens between the soul and God cannot be the responsibility of external witness, nor the relationship of the bodily senses. Thus this ceremony would be very useless; Never have inspired men brought other authenticity of the truth of their words than their very words, nor any other guarantor of their prophecies that their fulfillment. It seems, in fact, that this is to which God Himself reduces all the evidence which we are entitled to demand. Propheta qui vaticinatus est pacem, cùm venerit verbum ejus, scietur propheta quem misit Dominus in veritate. (Jerem. 28. ) Examined now, and let us compare what is announced with what We have seen and what we see, I do not believe it is possible to better prove the point in question.

As for insurance that we will ask again, that the announcements in question have been made to me. done before I leave, I could hardly here bring only the testimony of the examiners to whom I am I am addressed in the first place of my exile, and who could attest that they read in Jersey these same announcements at the beginning of 1792; It was therefore necessary that they would have been made before. As for the rest, if the Providence does not allow me to find alive, nor the Sister, nor any of the persons who had

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Knowledge of the facts mentioned, there is everything to assume that you will have nothing more certain on this point than my testimony, which will always be as I tabled it. It will be at you to see if it is worthy, or not, of your attention, without you waiting, to take a side, for a new revelation, a personal revelation that God does not owe you point, and that most likely he will not grant you step.

Will you stay then, by that very much, without any motive capable of determining you, as if everything had to depend on a purely accessory, quite foreign to the truth of things, and who can bring no change? Think again, reader, and be persuaded that God, who has more than one means of strengthening his work, will be there. provided, by replacing the lack of authenticity extrinsic, by evidence from the thing herself. Yes, I dare assure you, if I have any idea, It is in the book itself that we will find this evidence independent of all external formalities, such evidence, which cannot be altered or counterfeited; I could to say this imprint of the Divinity, always sufficient to to fix a righteous mind, a righteous soul, who seeks the truth in good faith, and wants to decide only on grounds reasonable credibility. Rationabile obsequium vestrum. (Rom. 12:1.)

We already have it Said, any book that announces itself under the perilous sign of Inspiration, must at least, on pain of public contempt, provide support with evidence that sound reason can confess. Nothing is fairer than the demand we make of it: also, I repeat, I dare to assure that we will be satisfied with this On the other hand, by reading the book itself, especially if, instead of dwelling on a few details isolated, with a few meticulous circumstances and purely incidental, on which objections and answers would never end, it is considered in the circumstances and from the point of view from which it should be considered. If, blindfolded, we examine where these great things that are said there, and the term at which they end, What is the character of the person speaking, the temperament of Its virtue, the tone it takes, the framework it presents, the variety and elevation of the objects it embraces, the way she treats them, and above all the purpose that it proposes to do so, will it then seem natural and reasonable? Will it seem possible to suppose that such a production could be the result of designs inconsistent, necessarily inconsistent, weak, uncertain, and often contradictory, of ignorant abandoned to herself, and unable to find in itself no sufficient means, no proportionate cause to such an effect; Because finally, it is not a question of making Guesses in the air, nor to pay for insignificant words.

When this good soul would be as ambitious as it is modest and timid; when she would be as artificial as it is humble and remote any duplicity; Finally, when it would be possible to combine together, and in the same person, qualities and Provisions as irreconcilable and obviously contradictory as are those which should be assumed to him, I asks if this weird assembly, which perhaps we never have seen as an example, would give her knowledge that she cannot have, and a theological depth absolutely above his scope. Let us answer; Is it enough to have the will? to deceive the public to succeed at this point?

Can God allow it, And is there any evidence of that? Let us look among the imposters and the cunning people of whom the world has been fooled, someone who, without other human means, produced in the same genre a work that can be compared to this one, and a series of evidence that can enter in parallel... What is the certain, it is that I do not know any, and that the examiners have confessed to me more than once the impossibility of doing so. To find. These impostors, I agree, have, however, given themselves for God's envoys. So far nothing more easy, and everything is equal on both sides; but what Have they left us with evidence of their mission? There you go precisely the point that decides and that it We would have to examine, otherwise we would be fooled by deceivers. appearances by admitting a parallel that can never be support.

Will it be used to: explain the thing, to a tender and warmed heart by the juice of divine love, to a vivid and exalted imagination through deep meditation on great truths of religion?... But has it been thought through, when Was I made such an assumption? Or this exaltation comes from the forces of nature, either it comes from God, or it comes from the devil: no middle. If it comes from the forces of nature alone, we by supporting the insufficiency by the reasons already data. If it is the work of God that excites and excites her. conducted, that's pretty much the guess we Let's do it ourselves. If it comes from the devil, we pray those who think so tell us: 1° how God, who has never allowed error to prevail over truth to obscure it to the point of leaving no resources to the good faith, could

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allow this good soul has been constantly, and without any fault of His part, fooled by a damnable illusion and the plaything of an enemy too cruel than subtle; Would it not be the case to tell him here with a learned theologian: Lord, if I am wrong, it is you who put me there; Yes, my illusion comes from you, since you allowed it, knowing that by myself I could not do it Escape: Domine, si error est, à te decepti sumus.

2° We ask him to tell us how the devil, which has so much interest to deceive ourselves and hold us back into traps where he made us fall, took here precisely all the opposite of his ordinary walk, by indicating to us the The safest ways to discover the traps, protect us from its pitfalls and all the darkness and the subtlety of its designs. Wouldn't that be where work to destroy his work and overthrow his own empire, as J.-C. says. to the unbelieving Pharisees : Si Satanas Satanum ejecit adversùs se divisus est, Quomodò ergò stabit regnum ejus ? (Matt. 12:26.) Again, it's up to them to explain everything to us. that. For me, I admit that this explanation would be absolutely beyond my reach. Such discoveries require a genius effort that is neither of my kind nor of my power. But what completes to show the implausibility or rather the impossibility of an opinion that has not appeared admissible neither in itself nor in its consequences, which would be horrible, as we must have felt, it's the reflection that can be done on the different positions where found the Sister, and the different affections which she has experienced, and who all

Seem incompatible with this exaltation of the heart or imagination, which we would like to assume for him.

Because, 1° from the beginning of her interior life, the Sister testifies to us, and this according to J.-C. himself, that she had only two years and a half, a few more days, when it was favored of his first vision. However, it will not be said that at this age his understanding, nor any of his intellectual faculties were naturally susceptible to elevation or exaltation, since they did not yet exist and It was more a question of training them than of exalting them. The child, at This age, has only a confused idea of its own existence, he does not suspect even that of God: it is will suit easily.

2° It certifies to us that in many things she speaks without hearing each other, and even sees herself as if forced, to use expressions of which it does not understand Not the sense, although still the best. I ask again if Exaltation has never produced such an effect.

3° It declares us that several times she tried if by herself she could not have obtained such affections, by trying to mount its

heart or sound imagination, without his efforts having resulted only in him prove his helplessness.

4° God made him suddenly lose the memory of the things she owed forgetting, while things long forgotten him returned in order when they were written, as one See.

Let us join everything This is the admirable way she talks about the operation. of God over the faculties of the human soul, as of the way of discerning it from the vain efforts by which the demon sometimes tries to counterfeit it, and let us Say how all this may differ from an inspiration proper, and on what basis could those who would still persist in seeing in all this only the effect of an imagination

Exalted Or with a heart saintly fooled by his piety? It is Well, it is commendable, it is even necessary to be on guard against illusion; But we must not, under this pretext, give in an unreasonable pyrrhonism, which repels the Truth when it presents itself and is felt: pyrrhonism often ridiculous, including the subtleties, so as not to Say the quarrels, will satisfy no one, and are very likely to upset the just and upright mind that does not see it hardly a certain background of bad faith, always hideous in the eyes of fairness.

It is therefore also necessary to Take stock; and do not go, for fear of being too gullible on one point, give in the opposite excess, by embracing a more implausible assumption of many, including It would be impossible to get out of the way, and that would require even more Credulity than the opposite party.

Also, the very large Many of the examiners were so struck of all these considerations, which they thought, as I, that the book, taken as a whole, presented a Proof of divine assistance, infinitely stronger than would be all the attestations and authenticities that are could give it; for what weight the authority of men can it add to that of God, when it manifests itself? They therefore believed, as I did, 1° that we could not seriously compare the striking way and

Detailed with whom the Sister had announced our revolution and its sequels, more than

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twenty years before there were had no appearance, with the general conjectures and always hazardous, that human politics had been able to make on some indices drawn or the deficit of the financial, or the progress of irreligion and immorality. 2° They believed, like me, that we could not Seriously suppose that an ignorant woman speaking of herself, or according to some quotes without follow-up, saints Scriptures, which she would have heard and meditated at leisure, could have give, without the Rescue from above, a suite of applications as fair and also happy with the texts she did not even read, and this without fall into no deviation, including the most skillful commentators are not always exempt, and that would be too much to give to a girl, however learned she might be supposed. His work, they said, would be the most astonishing that would have still published in this genre.

(3) Finally they believed like me that I predicted and announced so much, and as long before the event, was a Title sufficient to be believed on events which it announces again by the same acquaintance, not being No more difficult to have seen the future in the present, than to have seen the present in the past... However, holding moreover of the work as a whole, not by a few Isolated details, they thought, like me, that the unique and luminous way including so many materials different, and all equally thorny than sublime, were treated by This ignorant woman could well form sufficient reason to believe in his inspiration, regardless of any other consideration; and many of them were not afraid to argue that it could not be without recklessness to persist in the reject. In a word, they saw in the collection, or the work of God, or an enigma.

And indeed, if the St. Bridget's revelations were regarded as true by several great popes (1) and a whole council, for having announced before the event the punishment of the Greeks by the Turks, can we not look carefully as true the verified announcement of another event of the same kind and importance? And if we believed Having to resort to divine assistance to justify the works of Madeleine de Pazzi, Catherine of Siena, Thérèse, Gertrude, etc., despite education Suppose that a poor ignorant woman could have produced something Even more admirable, without the help of above?... Enigma inexplicable, and they, like me, agreed to look at it as a new Apocalypse, and the author as a extraordinarily raised person of God to announce to the men the fate of the Church until the last days of his duration, and guard against errors and scandals of recent times. It's also pretty much the title I gave it in the first place.

(1) Gregory XI, Urban VI, the Council of Constance, and several other popes, cardinals and bishops.

I will say more, and It went so far that the one of them who had appeared there constantly the least favorable, and which above all, had begun by showing more opposition, could not help but Recognize a special competition, a grace very particular, by which he assumed that God would have high mind and all faculties intellectual of this good girl to a degree superior to the reach and forces of the mind human; And this not to confess the inspiration itself. But could we not ask whether this would not be confessing to Pretty much the same in slightly different terms? Many, at least, believed him and said it without a way; and I think, like them, that, in this supposition, the distinction between the Sister And really inspired men would be a bit metaphysical. We feel enough, moreover, that this would only be to postpone the difficulty and not solve it, than to attribute to any other that to this holy girl the work in question. Because finally, any other, its director, for example, will have no more than she in her Provision this special competition, this grace particular of God, that one is forced to recognize. Ah! when he could have succeeded in This point by itself, would it be a reason for the suppose? I understand that one can love and practice virtue for herself; But crime is something else, and I don't don't think it's ever happened before. However, I have no idea at all. What kind of interest could this director have find in the factory of a deceit worthy of the animadversion of all laws, and of which he can assure that, thanks to God, he doesn't feel capable. It would therefore only be a question of seeing which, of the Sister or of me, we would rather suppose to have was inspired; Let us choose.

Thus has already been verified to the letter, and in the place of my exile, this announcement of the Sister, that her work was to causing fighting

of opinions between scholars. But all that can be concluded from this opposition of feelings on the sole point of inspiration,

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It is, in my opinion, this fundamental truth, which God has enough Replaced on the one hand for what is missing On the other hand: I mean he strongly supported by intrinsic and substantive reasons, a work that he expected to lack of any kind authorization. Far from complaining about anyone, far from find fault with this conduct of the divine Providence, on the contrary, I find very worthy of him whose The works always support themselves, without having to need neither recommendations nor any human resources.

Besides, let me be allowed to repeat it at the end: I cannot taste the opinion of the examiners who tells me that every time that God did not push the evidence of the evidence to the point where she can go, it was that He did not want us to believe (1). Generality of this proposal has made me suspect, and even dangerous, in many respects that there is no need for detail here; for how many things we must believe and which, however, the evidence is not as far as far from going!

(1) And again, let him Need stronger evidence for a miraculous fact than for a other facts; that it is impossible to prove it, because it would be necessary to evidence of the same nature, etc., etc. The aftermath of all these Assertions are horrible.

I have always believed that in made of reasons of credibility, at least in the kind of faith particular, there could be more or less, and that the degree of evidence and certainty sufficient to Divine wisdom was to suffice for human wisdom. The reason is always ungrateful and insolent when she dares to ask its author more than he wants to grant it. That's what I already have proven, provided that it certainly has an effect which can be attributed to no other cause than God, without falling into a labyrinth of inconveniences of which one cannot shoot itself. Everything is proven by this. God can Having your reasons for not going any further, it's up to us to we stick to it. He then points one of his fingers to his eye. intelligent and docile; which is enough to recognize the hand whole, and to respect the stamp of its authority: Digitus Dei is hic. A single ray escaped of the cloud is enough to indicate the sun, without it being It is necessary that it should appear in all its brilliance and in all its splendour.

But with all this, It will be said again, the ungodly will never believe anything.

The ungodly! Good God! What people do you name me there? But are they

Facts to believe some Something like that, and is such a book made for them? Do they only believe that there is a God, the ungodly? Will it be necessary

that God no longer works miracles, because He does not please the ungodly of y

believe or receive them? and will wait, to determine, to see

The revelations of a poor ignorant and, what is worse, religious girl, followed and accredited among men who have never been able to believe in miracles or the resurrection of J. C.?

No, you don't will not wait, judicious and Christian reader; I'd do you insult to think so. Everything is a sure guarantee that you Let the ungodly take his side, and let you take yours. Combining prudence with simplicity, following the counsel of the Gospel, you will agree to the reading of These accounts the degree of belief proportionate to the impression you have received, and always subordinate to the living authority which alone has the right to regulate your faith. This is the march you will hold, without wanting to prevent or command the judgment of others.

You are afraid to give In error: you are right. It's also because I fear it for you and for me, that pending the decision of the court infallible, I would like to be able to answer in advance to all the false reasoning by which we have always fought the work of God, and by which I foresee that one must still attacking this one. It's because I'm looking for your greatest interest that I address to you, in closing, this opinion important of the Holy Spirit: Blessed is he who reads and hears the words of this prophecy, and who faithfully observes what is written there, because time is short, and we Let's touch on fulfillment. Beatus who legit and audit

verba Prophetiœ hujus, et servat ea quœ in ea scripta sunt; Tempus enim propè est. (Rev. 1, 3.)

For any summary :

I heard the person extraordinary that I have reason to believe God uses for you to instruct, and whose confidences and stories I offer you : I thought I understood it enough not to depart from it. She told me that God was charging me with this task; I worked on it to the best of my ability, and as if I had to make it account. Finally, I consulted with the pastors of the Church. as I was instructed to do so; and for Failing nothing about you, I just came from you to state the votes I have faithfully received. It is at you now

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to see and examine what Judgment you must make, and what conduct you must hold: for this conduct of God is not without design, and very Presumably the consequences will be more important for you that we cannot imagine.

END.

THE LAST EIGHT YEARS

FROM THE SISTER OF THE NATIVITY.

Religious Urbanist of Ferns

To serve as Supplement to his Lives and Revelations. (By the same editor, 18o3.)

« Deus docuisti me à juventute mea, et nunc pronunciabo Mirabilia kills.

(Ps. 70. 18. )

QUALIS VITA, TALIS MORS.

INTRODUCTION.

We saw in the notes additional by which I ended the collection of Life and Revelations of the So-called Sister of the Nativity, than the death of this holy girl, whose life I had written until my departure, I had been told in London towards the end of 1800, or the beginning of 1801, by a letter

that a person of Saint-James, in Normandy, wrote to the parish priest of the same town, then residing in Chelsé, near the capital of England.

There were then several years since I received no more news from the nuns of the community of Fougères, of which I had been laden. This disturbing silence, after so much letters from me, made me fear especially that the two who had entered the Sister's secret had not been added to the list of those of which I had learned of death since I left, and that, by this, I would not have been, forever, deprived of the Testimony of the two people who alone could well attest to the public and the truth of the facts I had advanced in the collection, and all that, of their consent and to their prayers, had passed between the Sister and me.

My fear was all the better founded, as the health of these two nuns had always seemed very weak to me even before that they would have had to devour setbacks and sorrows that could only weaken him still, and presumably destroy it altogether. In this position It only remained for me, praying for them, to wait in peace that God himself would have made up for Somehow to this most natural means to authenticate a cause that I had always believed his, and especially since such advantageous votes and in such large numbers had so strongly confirmed me in my first opinion.

Finally, towards the end of February 1802, I received from Madame la Supérieure the following letter, which made me understand that God, whose Providence watches over

Constantly to all events and the smallest details of sound work, had probably had its reasons for keeping me the The most educated nuns in the whole affair, and especially the Two witnesses whom the readers of the book had judged the most essential. Here is the summary of this letter, which was read, and even copied by a good number between the Admirers of the collection:

Fougères, January 29 1802.

"Sir,

I have finally received of your positive news by one of your confreres who arrives of the country where you live, and who was responsible for making you Switch from ours as you wish. I seize with eagerly this opportunity to write to you by sure hand, and I would have looked for some earlier, if I had not feared to tell you the death of someone to whom I know you are interested in a very special way; I am referring to the poor Sister of the Nativity.

This holy girl died on her own day of the Assumption 1798, at noon. She knew him until the last moment, and Many things make me believe that she had revelation of the day and time of his death. The last weeks of his life God commanded him to say, of his

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share, with several people, particular things affecting their consciences, and these people have benefited from it. She gave me also said to myself, with the most knowledgeable intimate and which could only come from God. You can't imagine the impression she made on me. She predicts me in particular Several things, some of which have already been accomplished in The letter and makes me hope for the rest in its time. I can make sure that what she told me gave me a great satisfaction and peace at heart.

» Before you stay Sick she had written a lot. The last days From her illness she eagerly asked for all her papers that she had placed in the hands of a clergyman whom God had put in him indicated to lead her in her extraordinary ways. That Monsieur had promised to pass them to you, and for lack of opportunity Sure, he had always kept them. She sent them, in Last place, by a secular to her confessor. I don't know which one made them run without being worked and put in better order. What's in it sure is that they have been read as they are by a large number of people, and even different Provinces. By this these last writings have spread very far away, as well as the sound of His holiness.

So I was told Many asked for something of the small effects that have Belonged. Thinking you'd be just as glad to have some, I You kept her covenant with which she died. I don't send it to you not, lest it should be lost; but as soon as that I shall have the honour and pleasure of seeing you again, I will have it to you will put back, along with a few more such things that could please you (1).

(1) Madam Superior added her veil of communion, with a little of her hair, etc. I also received a small book of piety which she used to instruct her nephews during the stay which she did at her brother's, as we

Let's say: it's a small Volume quite old, containing the epistles and gospels of the year, in French, with prayers. I I will keep everything preciously.

I also beg you to procure for me his work and yours, if possible; our Sisters also hope for the same favor. If it is printed, and may the Church allow it to be read, you Do well to bring plenty of copies by passing back here; he Surely there will be a lot of credit. Come back as soon as possible possible, we all want it....

P. S. I forgot to mark you that the Sister tells me many times, in her Last moments, that she died with the sorrow of not being able to tell no one of things very consoling for the Church.

» I have the honour to be, etc. »

This letter, which seemed to come in support of that of Normandy, could not arrive more timely to defend the collection and me support myself against a kind of cabal that was beginning to erupt in the place of my exile. Among the large number of admirers of the notebooks, he found himself at London, some people who did not take the same thing side.

After objections general which apparently did not have all the success that we had promised each other, we tried to give birth to doubts about the sincerity of my reports; we went to say that the Sister of the Nativity was that a supposed character, to whom I made say all that that I liked him; that, to amuse the leisure of my retirement, I had composed a spiritual novel using the name of a a nun who perhaps never existed.

The assumption was as clumsy as the trap would have been that I would have tended to the gullibility of the public; and as it would have taken only a short trip to France to Discovering the fraud of the trap, we should have also think that the same trip, with a check local, could be enough to justify my conduct and take revenge fully of the prosecution. So this accusation seemed too much. revolting to deserve no credit from sensible and honest people; but also I have to to confess that there was then an opponent of the work who, without evil design and believing to do well (1), seemed to put to its spread an otherwise serious obstacle, and that I must not be ignored, for the reasons we will see.

(1) Believing he is doing the right thing. He The truth must be fought, because it must be proven. Works of this kind do not can be received without examination, and I admit that superiors, especially, cannot pay too much attention to it.

Father de Fajole, Vicar General of the Diocese of Rennes, had been One of the first to read my notebooks. I had the honour of introduce them to him (it was then my first writing) on the island of Jersey, 1792; at A few remarks, he had found everything admirable; He even urged me to keep for the rest of the time; but it has appeared since it had totally changed his mind on this article, without being able to Guess why.

Towards the end of 1799, Mr. The Abbot left

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from Scarborow, where he had been transported, to London; When he arrived in this capital, I believed oblige him by offering him the handwritten collection of the votes of the prelates and other theologians whom I had consulted on the place, during the stay I had made there. I don't hardly expected what happened, and perhaps never. Surprise was not greater than the one I was in, when I heard Father de Fajole declare to me that, based on his reflections, research and advice that he had received, etc., he had absolutely changed opinion on the point in question; that I had been very wrong to show no one notebooks that he had ordered me to keep hidden; that they would never be approved of the bishop of Rennes, while it would be Vicar-General; finally, that they had to be thrown away at the fire, which he repeated to me and made me advise by a priest of my friends whom I had consulted.

I merely replied to both whom I would give myself well of guard to obey an order that seemed to me unfounded on no ground capable of determining me; that I respected too much enlightenment and the authority of those who had it judged differently, and who also deserved to be Listened; that

Mr. de Fajole had never had the right to defend myself from communicating a work whose bishops alone are born judges, and whom I I was in charge of showing them; So I couldn't give the promise that I was supposed to have given, without me make unfaithful to my word and betray the cause and the deposit that I had been entrusted with. Such were already the case in my resolutions and answers, which were considerably strengthened by the advice of doctors consulted who had read the Sister's production.

It must be admitted though, I received much sorrow and sorrow from this setback. which I had not expected, and it was doubtless for strengthen me still and extricate me from embarrassment, than divine Providence allowed that I received, precisely at this The time, the letters of which I have reported, and which taught me what to think about prejudice adverse or fake news on which one had no doubt relied on it.

I admired in myself the conduct of this truly admirable Providence with regard to of those who abandon themselves to his care. What, then, would be the fate of the poor sister of the Nativity, I thought? Should it always be burned by The opinion of one man against all? The one who first had reduced in ashes his production, repented keenly of his haste and in the opinion of his colleague; Could I, myself, on The opinion of one man, expose me again to the same pain, after the fulfillment, too visible, of all that that she had announced? It will not be so, I hope, or at least the Church alone will decide, for it is up to the she alone that I appeal.

So I reasoned in myself, and I felt ever more strengthened by the Reading the same notebooks whose sacrifice was demanded. He I just had to look at it for a moment, to feel something who said to me inwardly: Take care, this is not not made to be burned... So I took the side firm and determined to wait for all the success of this enterprise of the only one who has always seemed to me the author.

Will we believe it now that the Sister of the Nativity had an acquaintance anticipated all that we have just said, and that it had announced it nearly three years before the event, to the point of appointing, in full, the principal actor, that she had never seen or known?

She had written by two nuns, in 1797, the warning she had received. This letter was addressed to M. Leroi, Dean of the Pellerine, diocese of Maine, then its director, who gave it to me handed over in 1802, and who was as surprised as I was when he heard from me the story that gave him the explanation. We will speak, in the following, of this writing, who finishes persuading me that I was right to stand firm against an order which would have caused me much repentance, if I had the simplicity to comply with it.

That's definitely it. a blow of the way of this extraordinary girl, or rather of the one who used it for our advantage. This is so, When he wants, let him thwart everything that opposes his design and its work, communicating to those that it makes speak of the enlightenment to which human politics cannot reach, to which even it cannot replicate anything.

That a poor girl, absolutely alien to everything that happens in Le Monde, a poor ignorant woman who thinks only of prepare for death,

yet know what is happening passes, or rather must do without relative to its Work, beyond the seas and in a distant kingdom where she has no relationship; that he be notified of the judgment that will be worn by a man whom she names without knowing him, and who is located in London or Scarborow; that she announces it years before, without fear of being denied, and

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The event responds to the warning it receives, Reader, what do you think? How disbelief gets Will she shoot? and will we be wrong to look at this circumstance as new evidence that completes the demonstration of the Truth of His inspiration?....

Arrived at Fougères about the beginning of August 1802, I began by reading and having read the work in question to all that remained of nuns Urbanists, and after this reading they gave me, on all the facts mentioned therein, the attestation that was read. They then handed me two big ones.

Notebooks supplements that have yet to be written, and that the Sister had had written to be given to me when I return.

Before we get to that, It seemed appropriate to me to present the latest years of the author, for the satisfaction of all those who are there are of interest, and even more so for the construction of the public. I will do so as briefly as possible, speaking again according to the well-notified testimony of the people who have lived through or had any special relationship with her, nuns who assisted her in her last moments, and the respectable family in which She finished her career. There is no need to warn that I write before their eyes only after they have been on the scene and have exactly collected and confronted their voice on each object. That said, here is the plan I have for myself. trace to walk with more order.

PLAN.

The nuns who were urban planners remained about two years in their

community, after that I had been driven out. After their out, the Sister of the Nativity stayed a little over a year in the town of Fougères; from there it was transported at her brother's home in La Chapelle-Janson, where she stayed a little

less than two years; finally she was brought back to Fougères, where she lived another three years and a few months. It is in these four circumstances that we will now follow and consider, to present the results of the last eight years of his life, which have passed since the time of my departure until the day of mid-August 1798, time of his death. The faithful picture that will result from this all-natural plan, will offer almost nothing of interest to those who judge people only by events; but it will be of interest to Surely all those who judge events by the people who are the subject.

FIRST EPOCH.

The Sister still in the community.

It was, as I said, elsewhere, between Ascension and Pentecost 1790, that I had was forced to flee my nuns on leaving their house, and it was on September 27, 1792 that they were themselves hunted, to be decoated the following year. During the two years that the Sister still passed through her community, she did not appear at all. different from itself, except perhaps by A redoubling of the inner spirit, of recollection, of Silence and submission, which is the soul of the state religious, and which was like the background of his character particular.

After the favors whose sky had filled her, especially after the knowledge he had given her of the things he was hiding To the rest of the mortals, it may well be argued that no one had less place that she to be surprised by the events that take place then passed, as one of those she still foresaw, that she was constantly announcing, and that she had announced since so long: so she seemed neither surprised nor shaken. Very different from these souls so easy to scandalize that they are weak in faith, or rather who do not are ready to whisper of anything that upsets them, that because they never see all things and do not enter Never in the big ones

Designs of a Providence that they should love. The Sister of the Nativity was far above these small human views that are limited to selfishness and relate everything to self-interest.

The one who settles the world and holds in hand the chain of major events which make up its history, had shown him, as early as Childhood, the French Revolution in its causes more secret, in its most terrible effects,

and in its most Remote. It was from this point of view, which embraced his great soul, that the Sister contemplated all that was was still passing and preparing around her. Also maybe Has there ever been a more humble, more penitent soul, more submissive, nor more resigned to all that he pleased God to order or allow. She didn't talk about it Never but with this truly religious fear, which reports everything to a supernatural cause, fears even in the shadow of the murmur or insubordination. Let's say better, she was talking about it much to God, almost never to men; or if sometimes She was forced to do so, she always did it with the most Great respect, the utmost circumspection. Struck more than any other of this

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idea so true, that Our evils are almost never more than the continuation and punishment of our crimes, she saw those whom she mourned without interruption, only like the salutary blows of a God who sought in thirty million guilty forgetting and contempt for his saints Laws. In this persuasion, she looked at herself only as a victim devoted to anger celestial, of whom she alone would have wished to exhaust all the traits to exempt his brothers.

Vulgar souls and without virtues do not wait for resources, when misfortune pursues them, than of a death that they regard as the term; and the false and deceptive philosophy still honors itself with this contempt brutal and senseless of a life she no longer has the courage to endure. This is not the case with the true servants of God; Full sublime lessons they learned from school From their divine master, they rise, by faith, to the love of sufferings which nature abhors, and this is only by the purest motives that they know how to despise Death.

Such appeared the Sister of the Nativity throughout the course of his life, and this sublime disposition where she had always lived, may, we must even believe that it only increased and purify itself as it nears its end. Far be it from complaining about this that heaven made him suffer, she always asked him to New sufferings, such as more signaled graces than all the favors she had received. Like this Another Christian heroine who deserves to to be compared to her, since she was also the prodigy of sound

century, Our Saint contemporary asked her divine husband a lot less to die to finish his evils, than to live again for suffer more and more; Much less to leave the Earth for to reunite to him, than to remain there again to deserve always more such happiness: Non mori, sed pati.

Let us not take this like the pious exaggeration of a panegyrist writer; Here his own works are authentic and deserve to be Raw. So many times this humble penitent, this worthy girl of St. Francis, had asked for sufferings to his God, who can only be doubted that all those who have filled and ended his life, were it not for the effect of his prayer and his ardent desires. It is only in the crucible of the tribulation that is purified and

Perfects the virtue of the just; That's where his heart takes this happy form that makes him so pleasing in the eyes of his God. The disciple of J.-C. must resemble his master in everything; Its predestination is all based on this resemblance; and as he has no right to heaven except by the cross of his Redeemer, it is also on the cross that must be consumed the great work of His redemption.

Truth fundamental of Christianity that the Sister had perfectly Understood. That's all she aspired to, what she was aiming for. expected, what she was asking for with urging, and what she tested to the end of a life that was not a series of sufferings and crosses; to the point that all that we Go and see is only the perfection of this great work, and does not than bid on everything you've seen. A reflection that we must not forget here, it is that the God who had granted him so much suffering, and who, especially towards the end of his life, exposed him to so many privations, so many contradictions, and so many trials, had also always consoled her, and Supported by such extraordinary favors, and above all he had spared for the end of the consolations so surprising and so unexpected, that she herself was in the admiration and penetration of the most vivid recognition, as she has admitted more than once, to the report of his Superior and other nuns who lived with her. I quote here the own words of the letters that are wrote to me about it at different times. In spite of The obstacles that ever more stormy scenes seemed to put

the execution of sound The Sister never lost sight of it. Better persuaded that no one, that God, when he wills, knows how to take advantage of everything to get his way; supported by the care of a Providence who watches over the smallest details of his work, She was not, or faintly, disturbed by Setbacks that would have baffled any other than her.

Not only heaven had made known in bulk and in detail the great Events she had been announcing for so long for a long time, and that politics

human could not foresee, He had also discovered to her in particular the different Means which the devil was to use to try to make everything fail, sometimes using cunning, and sometimes open force; sometimes haste, good or ill-intentioned, of some people, and probably also the carelessness and impropriety of the writer himself; but also he had let her see, of his part, a will greater than everything, which can take advantage of everything; who, by counter-marches than his enemy ignores, knows how to avoid its traps most skillfully tense, and take the devil himself into his own Nets.

This was according to These inner lights

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that she worked without ceases to the success of a business where nothing could no longer divert it since the time when she thought she was quite sure of God's will. She had enjoyed all my free time, while I was with her, to make me enter into her views, in exposing to me his plan and means to carry it out. At Had she learned that I was safe with his notes, and that I took care of them beyond the seas, as She had predicted it to me at first, that she took advantage of all the moments she still spent in the community, and Goodwill of the two nuns she had put in his secret, to make me pass successively the writings whose writing provides the entire second part of its work, as we know.

All These notebooks were given to me each in his own time, at the exception of only one that is missing from the collection, without knowing what it has become.

This lost notebook, of which I do not then make use, contained, among other things, A rather striking feature, and which I think I must recall, to cause of the special knowledge that the religious, and the more marked memory of the one who had written it.

The Sister told that at a certain time in his life God had made him see the diocese of Rennes, with its clergy, under the shape of a beautiful orchard planted with fertile trees of different sizes and sizes. She noticed, among other things, two old men trees, very close to each other, which seemed to him bent under the weight of their fruit as much as under that some

years. She admired both, when the same gust of wind suddenly uprooted before his eyes, and overthrew them by earth, much to his displeasure.

Presumably she did not know the meaning of this vision; but soon after, a striking event came to give him the explanation; It was the death of two former priests of the same diocese. of Rennes, one of whom had long been director of the Urban planners of Fougères. They had always been very friends, and almost always united by the works of their ministry. They were Mr. Duclos and Mr. Pothin. They died, as if suddenly, on the same day; The first was rector of the parish of Parigné, two places from Ferns; the second, former director of the Ladies Hospitallers, former rector of the Saint-Aubert chapel, which is hardly one further away. The Sister herself lives in this event the accomplishment of the reported vision, and of which she had more than once spoken to her Sisters. I do not mention everything that does not seem to me to be supported than on reminiscences too weak to merit credit.

SECOND EPOCH.

The Sister outside the Community.

Thus were spent the first two years since my exit, which were the two before that of the Sister. Prayer, meditation, recollection, penance, had shared all the moments that his dictations had still left, and his perfect resignation left him enough freedom to be able to contemplate, with all the The tranquility that religion provides to souls that the Heaven is experiencing the inevitable separation of which the nuns had been threatened for so long, and that she had made them foresee for much longer again.

Finally, he arrived the day fatal and all too memorable where, according to the plan and The decrees of the Constituent Assembly, the second or third legislation gave to Europe whole, and to the whole Christian world, one A spectacle as heartbreaking for pious souls as it is was pleasing to all enemies of order, of the justice, religion and humanity, that of more than one hundred thousand nuns torn from their cells and forced to return to a world to which they had said a Eternal farewell. What a blow! I say that such a spectacle was pleasing to the men I have portrayed; but, for little Let us be careful, we will agree that basically their triumph does not must not have seemed very glorious to themselves, and than their soul, if it retained

Some more ideas of the truth, there was little reason to applaud oneself internally.

People have long been of this caliber had prided themselves on the success of the more complete on religious vows. They had tried, in every way, to show the cloisters and monasteries like so many public prisons and houses of force, filled with unfortunate victims of zeal indiscreet and of superstitious tyranny, also opposite, they said, for the good of society than for the good of the of nature. They had, therefore, written and tried to persuade that, if one had Only half-opened these forced retreats, we would have seen The nuns escaped in great waves. Which setback, then, and what a secret, when, after having uselessly tried all means, they were obliged to to resort to equally shameful violence, and outraged, to obtain what neither persuasion nor promises had never been able to win! Let it be said to

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Which side is finds victory or defeat, and which of the two parties had reason to triumph!

As early as 1790, the municipalities had signified to them the wish of The Assembly to give them back a freedom that they are supposed to regret bitterly.

Slanderous assumption; so the proposal made to them was universally taken and received as an insult, and the general response of the nuns of France was so negative and firm, that she avenged them fully for the calumny, and made the most policies of the assembly than the nuns were not what had been believed, and that their constancy, joined to the resistance of priests refractory to the oath, and to the civil constitution of the clergy, could soon or later deal a mortal blow to all operations of the day, and overthrow the whole plan of the revolution. In As a result, hoping for nothing else by relationship to nuns or priests, they stopped sticking to the ways of rigor, The only way to succeed and triumph.

So it was September 27. 1792 that this destructive decree was executed for the urban nuns of Fougères. To the First announcement

that had been made to them, they had all, animated above all by the opinion of the Sister of the Nativity, which spoke on behalf of God, protested of their invincible reluctance to comply never to a law so contrary to their wishes and at their disposal; and, at the time of execution, they all went, young and old, to join the choir, each in her usual place, praying that they would be killed rather in the place where they wanted to die. The enraged themselves were affected until the tears; The people sent replied that they were not would do no harm; but that we would, willingly or by force, drive all to the cars waiting for them in the yard to drive them to their destination. So it was no longer in the Chorus that sighs, tears, sobs, cries and moans. Each one, having become shy, as one can well imagine, a religious especially can be for less, fears nothing as long as being seized, and perhaps brutalized by men whom no consideration can be stopped; he It was therefore necessary to decide and take the decision to obey strength.

They rise up more dead than alive, and at the call, as in the example of Their superior, they went sobbing. cars. All this had happened in the interior of the house, so that the crowd of people who filled The Court had neither seen nor heard of it. It was appropriate for the glory of J.-C. that witnesses to the abduction of his wives were also the case from the violence that was done in their true feelings. Arrivals at the carriage gate by which they were taken out, the Sister of the Nativity who followed in silence, turned to the guards and the municipals. by asking them permission from God to speak: he made a great silence around her; then, Sister them looking, said aloud and intelligible to them, speaking to the names of all the nuns: "Gentlemen, God charges me to notify you that we would choose to die rather than to breach our fence, nor any of our holy commitments; but since we must at last obey you outwardly, We protest against the violence we are being done, and we will tell you let us declare that we take Heaven as witness. All heard him, many wept, and no one replied.

After these shorts, but energetic words, spoken in that firm tone, and decided that, despite her age, the Sister knew how to take if necessary, she pushes away the arm offered to her, and enters the car that was to take her to Mr. Binel de la Jannière, who, on his reputation, had asked and obtained to lodge her with his two sisters, nuns from the same community.

Madam the superior was taken to M. Bochin, her brother-in-law, and others, or with their parents, or with some citizens who were willing to do it until a new order had decided their fate; because

Before any arrangement, one had deemed it appropriate to temporarily remove them from their homes them, to put them on the pavement. Before generosity of the nation would have advised the means of providing for their subsistence, it was thought appropriate to take away from them the roof, bread, and soon after until their clothing.

Great way to cut foot to all difficulties.

Arrivals at the Mr. Binel's house, the three nuns were led by the family, rejoicing and grieving all at the Sometimes, to the apartment intended for them. There, prostrate before a crucifix displayed on purpose On a table they prayed for a long time, and with great tears and sobs, the savior God to accept the sacrifice that he demanded of them, and that they united to him whom he did himself on the cross for the salvation of mankind. All those who witnessed such a striking scene in were touched and tenderized to the point of mixing their tears to those they saw shedd. All the City was in trouble; all good hearts

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were sensitive, all Pious souls felt consternation and dismay. pain. Tribute due to the heroism of virtue that we oppress. This impression seemed so just and so natural, that it was approved by the momentary silence of the wicked themselves, who appeared in some way Share it.

So here it is at last, This soul so religious, this girl so extraordinary, drawn of that dear solitude for which she had so longed ! Here she is, like all her sisters, chased away and excluded forever from a house for which, from childhood, God had given him such a decided taste, Such a lively attraction, a vocation so well marked! It is therefore accomplished on itself

This prediction for which she had had so much to suffer! Like Jeremiah, the Sister of the Nativity is today a victim of woes she had announced. Incredulous, what Proof, after that, ask yourself about his inspiration?

When God allows his predestined are exposed to tests Extraordinary, he at the same time destines graces for them. proportionate and capable, at the very least, of counterbalance temptation. He owes it to the

weakness of his creature, to the fear she has of displeasing him, even more to the fidelity of his promise, and to this goodness essential that cannot allow anyone to be tempted beyond his strength. This is the doctrine of St. Paul: Fidelis est Deus qui non patietur vos tentari suprà id quod poteslis. (1 Cor. 10,13.) He will go further, he says, especially to for its elected representatives, because it will benefit from the temptation even to make them overcome the tempter, and to the test to make them advance in the perfection of their State: sed faciet eum tentatione proventum. (Ibid.) It's What All the Saints Felt in Proportion their fidelity to grace; It is also what the Sister of the Nativity experienced in all the moments of his life, but especially in the most critics for his virtue, and the stormiest for his constancy, following the admission that she has done more than once, as we have seen.

Hey! comment Dieu could he, I do not say give up, but neglect a soul as submissive to all his orders, as faithful to all his duties, as constant in the practice of all Virtues? A soul who knows how to withstand the trial with so much of courage, and is also firm in the height of adversity and disgraces, that she was humble and fearful at the height of Favors; Let's say even better, a soul who always looked at the favors as trials, and trials as trials. Favors. Such always appeared this true strong woman, and She never looked better than in recent years. of a life that was only a continual proof of what we Move forward.

Far away of these loose, lukewarm and imperfect, of those wives who could be called unfaithful and adulterers, who would have looked the state in which they were reduced as an exemption tacit of their first

commitments, the Sister of the Nativity does not live there, on the contrary, for her and others, than a more pressing reason, a more compelling reason to do so. make more faithful than ever; She believed that a nun Leaving his cloister by the misfortune of the times must be more active than ever in fulfilling his vows and statutes, as far as circumstances permit. No longer defended by the walls that separated it of the world, it must replace them with His circumspection, redoubling the guard of his senses in reason and proportion of scandals and dangers surrounding it, so as not to not exposing oneself to prostitute oneself to the mind of the world a heart dedicated to J.-C., and which must burn only for he. Finally, although over sixty-five years old, She believed that the most exact vigilance alone could defend her. of the contagion of the

bad example and corruption of morals.

This was to comply with These great principles of Christian morality, to these Rules of monastic life that she had drawn as much at the school of J.-C.

than in the practice of its duties, that the Sister of the Nativity, not content with repeating to others at every moment, applied in all ways to be replaced internally and outwardly the solitude of which she had just been deprived. She locked herself in a small garret from which she did not come out. than when there was no other way. This narrow The room, of which she made her cell, then took the place of the one she had left, and became, so to speak, her tomb, since it was there that she came to die, a few years after, as we will say. This is where, clothed and wrapped in the remains of her poor religious clothes, She divided all her time between prayer, meditation, the reading of devotional books, the opinions that came ask her, and the small services she could render by elsewhere in his sisters or the pious family who provided him with his food and accommodation.

"You're afraid of have no place to stay,

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had once told him J.-C., announcing his exit, come into my heart and I will take you in place of everything I am all to him for whom all is nothing, and

who gives up everything for me To find; My providence never forsake him who does not put that in me his trust, etc. Is it any wonder that the Sister was so resigned, and even though Happy in her new state? Is it any wonder if She believed she lacked nothing where so many others would have believed lack of everything; if she was bothered in the least Attention we took from everything that concerned her? At To hear her, we always did too much for her, and she never seemed as comfortable as with people who did not made no case. Anything that seemed like consideration to him was grieving; The slightest compliment mortified her, and the most sure way to have preference in his friendship was to appear to despise her; She was known enough to employ a means so little used with regard to others.

For example, and on the traces of so many saints who, to appease the wrath of God, as much as to prevent their own weakness, have redoubled their penances and austerities in times of trials and persecutions when the Church was exposed, the Sister of the Nativity entered into the same views, and felt always animated by the same spirit. A long time ago

that she prayed and worked to prevent the misfortunes she had Predicted; It can even be said that all his life had been there employee; but at the moment she lives The accomplishment is realized on itself, it resolved more than ever to sacrifice the rest of his days, dedicating his spirit to humility, his heart to pain, and one's whole body to suffering, without Never complain about anything.

Coming out of his community, she undertook, by the command of God, who demanded the approval of his superior, one year of fasting at bread and water, and she persevered, some something that could be said or done to prevent it. He Had to fool her to put a little butter in the soup that we allowed him and which he was compelled to take, which, moreover, was not composed only of water with a little vegetable and salt. When she noticed the deception, she complained about it in saying that they wanted to spoil her and that she feared the Suites. They were perhaps more to be feared for us than one would think. Who knows what we don't owe to Such a mortified life? This is usually because of souls of that character that God makes thanks to so many others, to cities, to kingdoms, to the whole world. Could it be To say too much, would it be reckless, to suggest that It has probably contributed more than any other to we finally get those happier times she didn't enjoy, but that she had told us so many times on behalf of the sky?... If heaven had granted him so much knowledge For us, will he have granted nothing in our favour to the Tears, prayers and continual penances of a soul who was so pleasing to him, and for whom the evils of the Church and her homeland were a burden more damning than that of the years joined to all his infirmities?

Some serious and Thoughtful as she has always been, she knew how to lend itself to circumstances, as we already have considering; She sympathized with the needs of others, and her virtue was not hardly severe than for herself. Without being Never dissipated, his recreations were sometimes very amusing for pious souls with who she lived. It is true that in her conversations she reminded all of his great ideas of God and the virtue; but, as

She naturally had the mind as just as his heart was good and virtuous, She put in everything she said a correctness and a righteousness which aroused the keenest interest. Whatever it was A little long in his way of narrating, we always wanted to hear him to the end, and he was usually asked a lot more than she wanted to say.

Since the release of nuns, his talks rolled little more than on the How a nun should behave in the world for y

Put his salvation and his wishes for safety, and this concern does not ends only with his life. A thousand times she repeated to them that it would be the conduct they would hold

after their expulsion, that J.-C. would one day recognize his real wives of those who would have had only the habit. She came back without ceases to this matter, which it turned in a thousand ways, especially as they approach their decostumation, which arrived on September 14, 1793, she did not cease to speak of it, nor of prescribe to nuns how they should clothe. It is not that she was unaware that it is neither the place or the habit that makes the nun; but she claimed that a disappointed nun must still, as much as he is in it, to appear what it is, and to avoid, with all the care possible, any way of putting oneself that could to confuse it with the people of the world.

One day, among others, she spent more than a good time paraphrasing them, at his Way, the parable of the virgins

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Fools and virgins wise, and tells them amazing things about it, and striking at the last point. Another time, she said to Madame the superior that there would soon be a clash from which she would receive much sorrow; what was verified by some defections among the nuns themselves. She often told him that she would have a lot of trouble. body and mind; but that God reserved for him as well Consolations. On other occasions, it made announcements similar to many others who have felt it truth.

THIRD EPOCH.

The Sister at her brother's house.

Shortly after that the nuns had been expelled from their community, they were forced, by a law, to leave their religious dress; Then soon appeared another law which forced them to return to their families and live in the place of their birth. Thus the Sister of the Nativity, forced to obey, like the others, this new order, separated With the pain of the two nuns who, on leaving their community, had

removed with it in their brother's house at Fougères, and left with regret the respectable family of Mr. Binel, to surrender at Guillaume le Royer, his brother, who then ran the farm de Montigny, located in La Chapelle-Janson, quite close the village of La Pellerine, parish of Maine. He was led there; but she shed many tears as she left her Sisters, who were to be soon to contain, as she had them foreseen. She even confessed to them that this separation cost her. as much, to say the least, as their exit from the community. One will no doubt perceive God's purposes in this translation of the Sister in her native country, when we have seen the services which she rendered to her own brother, and of what use She was to her family in such a critical circumstance, in such stormy weather.

The Awful Troubled that had started the previous year and did not subside until the following year, were then almost at their height at Fougères, as in almost every other city. It was then the reign terror: requisitions, hostages, denunciations, Proscriptions, imprisonments, executions, all the laws of Blood, all the inhumane arrestees were at the agenda; ten, twelve, fifteen, and up to nineteen citizens, passed daily under the awful instrument of death whose name alone still makes humanity shudder. He It was enough to have some possession, to be attached to his principles, or to have some secret enemy, to be denounced, and it was enough to be denounced To be guilty: from there to the guillotine there is no had only one step.

Is there a need to be surprised that such horrors have caused Insurgencies in so many provinces? Fougères became the Unfortunate theatre, like many other cities. She was successively taken and taken over by the Vendéens, by the Blues and by the Chouans: we were even, more than once, on the point of setting it on fire. We could see the flag flying there white, and sometimes the tricolor; we could hear shouting sometimes "Long live the King! and sometimes Long live the Sans-Culottes! and All this, according to the success of the moment for each party: in one In a word, we saw all the horrors of civil wars. Blood human was trickling down from all sides. In a few places especially, The streets there were so strewn with corpses that he was It is impossible to go through it without trampling them underfoot.

The evil that has long been had won all orders had spread in campaigns, where he continually committed atrocities that are hard to describe. Priests of the two parties were reciprocally confronted with blows of the party that was opposed to them. Those of the right party especially were all the more exposed as having against They were the dominant force, they were the

only of which the people required the ministry: so both parties searched day and night, but with very different intentions (1).

(1) Good priests were obliged to hide underground, in the middle of fields or moors, from where they only came out at night, to go to the sick. Rarely did they return without having been shot a few times, received a few bullets, or ran some danger.

The others, protected by the dominant force, had no other care but to do well hiding insurgents. Those who were everywhere called Catholics and good priests, were without cease sought and massacred without mercy by the Blues, who very often did not spare the Constitutional. These were sought by the Chouans, who did not make them a better party wherever they could find them (1).

(1) Mr Duval, Rector of Laignelet, and M. Sorette, parish priest of Chatellier, two excellent subjects, were, almost in their functions, massacred by the Blues. M. de Lesquin, rector of Bazonge, M. Porée, parish priest of Silly, M. Larcher, constitutional rector of Mellé, were by the Chouans. I cite only these examples of fury of both parties, and I quote them because they happened in the vicinity of Fougères, and that they have more to do with the facts I have to report.

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All the difference, it is that the good people regretted the first, blessed their memory, preciously preserved their spoils. No one thought of the latter (1).

(1) Heaven which, for Reasons we must worship, allowed such atrocities, also sometimes seemed to be indignant. One would make volumes, if one wanted to collect the striking features of This visible indignation, I do not say only to everything a sensible Christian who has not lost his faith, but still to anyone who has no interest in blinding himself. I I would mention two or three that have had enough notoriety so that they cannot be revoked in doubt.

The day after M. Duval, rector of Laignelet, would have been assassinated in the vicinity of Fougères, the fire of heaven fell on the bell tower of St.-Léonard of the same city, and this event was accompanied by thunder, lightning, hail, of ice and fog, at last of circumstances so violent and even if contradictory, that the most intrepid in were frightened, and that they were attributed only to a punishment from God. This is a fact that the whole city realizes. testimony.

Shortly after this Event The intruder of the same parish died in shouting that he was falling into the abyss. It is true that few Shortly before he died, he testified again that he would die. in revolutionary principles; but it is also true that he began again, the next moment, to cry out again : Remove me from the abyss! Preserve me from the abyss! I fall into the abyss! and that he continued in this way, without The people who assisted him could dissuade him.

The bell tower and the church of St.-Aubin-Tergate, in Normandy, were also consumed by the fire of heaven, while they were in the possession of the intruder. I am not talking about all those that have been burned by the Chouans, to the same opportunity.

In another parish near Fougères, the same whirlpool knocked down the chimneys of two houses of revolutionaries, and do not did no harm to that of a royalist Christian who found in between.

An ungodly from the land of Vitré greased his boots with the consecrated oils: but no sooner had he taken them, than he became pierced by both. legs. The following fact did not make any less noise; I got him from a respectable family who came from the place and brought me back the main circumstances. It was in Brest that the thing had place:

Then where the riches of the churches were seized, a unfortunate who had been a congregation among the Jesuits carrying on his shoulders, with many of imprecations and blasphemies, that same image of silver from the Mother of God, which he had once worn on stretchers with great respect and veneration. One of his comrades who heard him reminded him of those early days. This memory, which should have moderated, at least its outbursts and its impieties, served only to augment. He pronounced horrors against this same Virgin whom his first masters had taught him to sing the praises. Just now, to the great astonishment From the spectators, his mouth turned crookedly, his face became horrible, he frightened himself; and I was assured that hitherto he had been unable to find any other remedy for his hideous situation, than to banish oneself from society. He retired to his country house, a few minutes from leagues from Brest, where he sees only the least he is possible, but still enough to provide witnesses not suspicious and in competent numbers.

Here's another one that is no less certain, although he may have had a little Less advertising. At the time when publicly sold the ornaments of the altars, where used the screeds, the chasubles, to make covers to horses, where dresses were changed for courtesans more beautiful dawns and other ornaments of the priests; Finally where the holiest things were made to serve the uses the most profane, there were in the town of Fougères, at the place of the Fork, or the Quatre-Moulins, a madman who, by a refinement of impiety and fury, became aware to dress his big dog as a priest who says Mass. It does not Nothing was missing from the awful accoutrement he had made for her make a mockery of the most respectable of religion.

In this state, he produced it. in front of his door, shouting to passers-by to come to the mass of his calotin, to whom he made the movements to which he had drawn it up. Despite the fury irreligious, most of whom were then transported, This spectacle seemed to hurt the eyes, and many were revolted. Jacobins warned him to

pick up your pet, saying that this amusement was out of place, nor suitable. So he had to go there; but the one of which we do not mocks with impunity, had a more serious warning to give him.

The same day he fell into a terrible frenzy, which turned into a rage for which no remedy could be brought. He screamed terribly; His very figure had some dog thing; Finally, at the end of twenty-four hours, the unfortunate perished in convulsions and bowel pains that he is impossible to render. I get it from people who have seen it all, and the testimony I sought on the spot itself did not contradict in any way what I have just reported.

REFLECTION.

We ask every day how he it may be that God has suffered so many iniquities, so many scandals, so many sacrileges, so many horrors by which We have it so openly outraged, without giving any proof of this power that is dared to challenge. There even seems to be outrage at this silence of the Godhead. You would say that the faith of some souls become weaker, and than the demon of Irreligion takes the place of triumph.

It's easy though to destroy this scandal by answering three things that here is

: 1° God is not obliged to work miracles whenever an ungodly person seems to challenge him. Sovereign wisdom only disturbs the established order for reasons capable of determining it. Being necessary which has for him Eternity, has no Reason to respond immediately to a small being who dares to challenge him. Patiens est quia œternus.

2° It is neither to Nor in order, that God do miracles as soon as men desire them. Such conduct, in addition to would deprive some of the merit of faith, would harm the freedom from the wicked. If all the ungodly and Sinners were punished as soon as they deserved it, What would become of this freedom to do good or evil? He must be given time to make themselves worthy of rewards or punishment.

3° It is sufficient to the goodness of God than souls of good will from time to time receive sensitive evidence from truths they believe, and God's assistance in who they hope for, and who supports them. However, there are so many This species, which no one has the right to be outraged by the conduct of the patient God, who acts only with weight and measure, and whose Providence leads everything to an end worthy of him, by Ways hidden from us.

Broom

serving Saint-Sauveur-des-Landes.

November 5, 1803.

While also horrible scenes were happening around her, the Sister, retired to his brother's house at the small farm of Montigny, led a life there more

penitent still than in Fougères or in her community: she spent in prayer the days and part of the nights. The priest, parish priest of La Chapelle-Janson, who was taking out a times or twice the week of her underground to come and receive communion (M. Jambin), led me to the room she occupied, and Pointing to a small spot next to his bed: This, he told me, was the place where I found her, in an hour or two in the morning, getting ready, on his knees, for to confess and to receive Holy Communion that I Him Brought. After her thanksgiving, she went to bed to rest a little...

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Entering his brother's house, the Sister took up the religious costume as much as she was. possible. She made a small enclosure around the house much more. narrow than the garden, to get some fresh air for an hour. She only ever went out to Holy Mass on more often than she could, despite her infirmities which made this journey of foot always very painful for him. His evenings and his after-dinners were ordinarily employed in the education of children of village, especially of her nieces and nephews, to whom she had their catechism and prayers recited, which she explained to them by attaching the gospel of each Sunday, and putting themselves within their reach in all that that she told them.

Entering his brother's house, She had decided to take advantage of the ascendant only him. ensured the love and respect of all this poor and honest family, only to prohibit them from any kind of expense on occasion. The big and black bread of the countryside, the soup as eaten by the workers, the buckwheat cake made in the manner of growers, roots or vegetables, with almost no seasoning, here is his food of choice and predilection, which she ate from a very good appetite. She scolded her brother, when he happened to have something a little less ordinary, saying that she was only too happy to live like them, and that there were had many better than her who did not have so many; that he had to think about doing penance, and that the saints were not so delicate on that side. When they had cider, she drank a little at her meal. By taste, she preferred it to any other drink, but by religion she gave water the

preference over any other liquor. It was always the same genre of life, and his pension was no more expensive in disease than in health. We didn't even dare to do any to him. representation.

What will say those whose everything The art of cooks cannot succeed in satisfying the sensuality, seeing a girl thus increase on the mortification even of those whose days of joy and good Would they be an unbearable penance? That such a parallel must seem humiliating to them, if they are still Christians!...

It wasn't only to remove it from the troubles and dangers of the city, that Providence had granted him a retirement at the campaign. The great services she rendered to her family make enough of another design in one who knows how to take advantage of the less events. The Sister's brother of the Nativity was, in spite of himself, aggregated to the municipal body of his parish, a dangerous position at that time for a man whose probity could neither forget his first principles, nor lend themselves to all that the circumstances seemed to be demanding. Le Royer had done so made enemies in both parties, that he would have wanted conciliate, and enemies powerful enough or scoundrel enough, so that there was reason to fear everything on their part, especially in A time when we could dare everything, and when the license against the refractory party was sure to impunity. Most likely it would have been victim, like so many others, if God had not spared him, in her Sister, a resource that no one could distrust, a defensive weapon against which all came to break their efforts. It could not have happened more timely than at time when she came to take up residence with this good farmer.

Le Royer's house was as the warehouse of the two opposing parties, including the Companies prowled successively throughout the canton. The Blues regarded him as an aristocrat in disguise and a receiver of chouans; and these took him for a mixed Jacobin, A traitor to their party: so both almost resented him as well. The Sister of the Nativity, who feared the consequences, forbade him to to be with them, and took it upon herself to work by herself to make them hear reason to each other, and to Make peace with them of his brother without compromising him. She worked it in all encounters and finally succeeded in reconcile.

To succeed, she exposed herself more than once; but she always showed so much indifference to her own life, which she made appear zeal for the one she had undertaken to protect. The chief of the Chouans was a young gentleman of the country (1); She approached him in the midst of her company, and spoke to him with so many zeal, of interest and common sense, which he entered into all its

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reasons, and promised him, faith an honest man, that his brother would never have anything to do. suffering at the hands of none of those he commanded; He held to her word.

Among the Blues who wanted Le Royer, and that his sister was obliged to prevent and win, there was one, among others, who accused him of having denounced one of his friends who was had just executed for his high deeds.

The charge was false, but Beux-neux (that was his name) was not no less furious with the accused. He had sworn his loss, and promised that he would never die except by his hands. The promise was all the more to be feared, since His execution would not have been the blow of the one who made it. He was known in the country, and unfortunately we knew only too well what it was able. Since that time he has been spying on the opportunity favorable to his design; but the Sister, by a very contrary feeling, does not lost sight of him no more than he himself lost sight of the whom he regarded as his enemy.

A day Beux-neux between at Le Royer, asks if he is there, having weapons in hand, Anger in the eyes and imprecations at the mouth. The Sister, who had seen him in the area, had warned by forcing his brother to climb into his cell: she presents herself alone to the assassin, he represents with boldness the harm he does to himself by pursuing a man who never meant him or did him any harm; that His brother is innocent of what he reproaches him for. Then she throws himself on his knees before him, conjuring him, if he wills

override it, take it herself for victim, and which is very willing to forgive him for his death The furious wants to raise her, saying

that it is not to she that he wants it: the courageous Sister protests to him that she will do nothing about it, and that it is necessary on the spot, or that he takes away the life, or that he grants it that of his Brother. While talking to him like this, she threatens him with the

revenge Celestial in such a firm manner that weapons fall from the hands. He becomes confused, becomes sensitive and feels, as in spite of himself, to revive the fear of God in a heart which had perhaps extinguished until the idea of its existence. "Get up, good nun," he said, " and stay quiet ;

You can insure your brother that he has nothing to fear from me. I don't give him

I will never do any harm. » That said, it comes out and has never reappeared. This was a favourable timing for conversion; happy if he took advantage of it, for it is assured that he paid by his death for the blood he had spread, and that it was finally struck by the iron of which he had struck so many others. He's not the only one example that could be cited: Who percusserit gladio, gladio peribit.

This amazing courage in a girl, that fearlessness of which many men, would not be able to, the Sister of the Nativity gave the least equivocal evidence, in good other special circumstances,

during his stay at Montigny, which, as I said, was constantly filled sometimes by detachments of Blues, sometimes by companies of Chouans, who gave themselves mutually hunting. One day she threw herself between her brother and the rifle of a blue that threatened him; She saw herself daily struggling with so many ferocious beasts, that it would have been necessary to humanize them by sparing them before think about converting them. They came around on purpose of her to see and listen to her. They were making him Captivating questions to probe her on the affairs of the time or on religion. The Sister responded to everything with gentleness and caution, but always with so much firmness on the point of the ancient principles in fact of religion, let her there reminded them without them noticing: we even ensure that she converted some of them. They objected to him. against faith, to which she responded by making them know the Gospel passages to themselves who condemned them.

Often they confessed to their defeat.

It rose sometimes disputes between them on his occasion, some taking for, and others against her. "He's a spy, some said, she is an old aristocrat who must be undo; She's a crazy old woman, a gossip, who doesn't know. what she says; If we let her speak she will seduce the other shut up, replied the others, you would be too much happy with the

be worth; It is better than us as long as we are, we are only ignorant of of her. Quidam enim dicebant : quia bonus est. Alii

Dicebant: No, SED SEDUCIT TURBAS. (Joan. 7,12).

"I want to, said one, to send her to the other world to make the theologian, and teach catechism to children. If you are bold enough, took another, to make him the slightest insult, you will have to deal with it to me, I teach you to respect honest people Impertinent! You'd do well

better to listen to it and enjoy it, because you need it so much, you never knew a word of your religion !. »

The Sister saw and listened to all this with an air of peace and tranquility who imposed it on them, whatever they had, by showing them that she was neither

terrified by their threats, nor flattered by their compliments, and that they did not excite

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in her only compassion and pity for the state in which she saw them.

After you moderated by the sweetness of its representations, and the common sense she put into her reprimands, she skilfully took advantage of the moment when reason was at home. they quieter, to reproach them for their blasphemies and their bad dispositions. She was not afraid to threaten them. of divine wrath, telling them that, if they do not converted, they had everything to fear of falling into hell; that God's judgments would be terrible upon them; that she would not have wanted to be in their place. They were sometimes so struck by what she told them, that Several of them were looking for ways to appease him by promising him. that they would sooner or later convert and follow his advice.

One of the most mutineers adjusted it One day with her weapon, saying she was just a chouan Disguised, a spy of their party, who had to be killed: It is believed that he was acting very seriously; but Had he only been joking, a gun between the hands of a man of this character, who puts himself in the Disposition to unload it, has enough to scare the one to whom the mouth is directed. The Sister, however, Sick and lying down as she was then, looked at him. staringly, telling him that he could shoot if he wanted, and that his life was in God's hands. It is not known on what grounds he was content with this answer, doing nothing more than to adjust. The Sister was more than once in the case of repeating the same thing, and we can well to say of her what St. Cyprian says of the confessors of whom he makes of So high praise, that it was not she who failed the martyrdom, but that it is martyrdom that he lacked....

Such appeared the Sister of the Nativity all the time she stayed with her brother; She showed, as everywhere else, a hero's soul. in a girl's body. That is too little to say; in a health which barely existed, it deployed, according to the circumstances, all that the perfection of charity, all What more can the heroism of virtue inspire Magnanimous to souls

truly Christian. They will not believe it, no doubt, those who persist in seeing in the devotees only hearts low and pusillanimous, and whose eternal refrain is to repeat that the nuns especially are good for nothing. I tell them I will only ask how they would have supported such hardship; for, if it is permissible to judge by those of their like who have been there, there is much to believe that their big hearts would have been denied. The lyrics do not are nothing; it is the conduct that proves everything: the Sister proved anyway. The only circumstance where the fear that he had failed, when she stood between her brother and the gun that threatened him ; It can be said that it was not for herself that she Feared; Those who caused him this fright were the first to support it.

When his brother He himself gave me, in front of all his family, the details of which I have just made the specify, it extended a lot on the virtues and good qualities that had shone in her from childhood, always growing with her. His prudence in advice, her gentleness in conduct, made her like the oracle and the head of the family. Father and mother were related to her on all points, and all other children, of whom she was the eldest, he obeyed as easily and often more easily than the father and to the mother, especially since her government was very gentle, and that she wore them much more by acting that by speaking, to, return obedience to their parents and the respect they owed them. Jeannette, he told me, was always consulted; She was the one who decided On all points, and very often our parents referred to her: we feared as much and more of him displease only themselves.

While this saint girl has been to my house, Le Royer continued, it seems that she drew God's blessing upon my family, to the point that everything, up to the events more fatal, turned in my favor. Yes

he added, if the sad circumstances through which I have passed have not Not ruined from top to bottom, it is to his saints prayers I owe; Nothing can dissuade me. On this, He quoted me various traits, of which I will take only one that he reported to me in this way:

The losses I had wiped during the unfortunate years that have passed, had forced me to leave the farm of Montigny (in indeed, he had not been there long when I spoke to him; He was then living in a village closer to the village of La Pellerine) and to sell two of my oxen for to acquit me, so that I had only one pair left, which still remains today; Well, sir, this is what happened: a day I

Charroyais with my two oxen, I came to a descent so fast as the oxen could not restrain the cart, which passed over the one of the two who had

flinched while walking : I heard, with both ears, the wire of the wheel doing the same noise only if it had passed over

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a rack of which she would have broke the bars. This crunch made me believe that my beef had broken ribs and a whole ground body; And me to lament: "My God," I cried out! Here I am ruined Resourceless: what will become of me after this sad accident?....

So what was my Surprised, sir, when, after my lamentations, I turned his eyes back on my poor animal, which I thought was in pieces, and that I saw him rise of himself, without there being any Never published anything! Amazing, and that I would not believe Never, if I had not witnessed it! There is no had nothing broken, not even the strap that bound the yoke with the horns of the ox: she had loosened, I do not know how, at the time of the fall, to clear the animal, which was placed between the two wheels, without me may understand how this was done, nor where the crack I had heard We'll think what we want, but I Gage that on a hundred shots

we wouldn't make one similar. I leave it to whoever wants to test it.

The Sister wiped from great and frequent infirmities in his brother.

The one she was usually afflicted, caused him great colic which often forced him to keep the bed; dysentery that came along, threw her into a serious illness, of which she had struggles to get out of it. However, she did not resort to remedies. than by force; it did not complain, nor did it allow the people of the house to interrupt their work to rescue her: he It was enough for him that before leaving they put aside. of her what she could need. A charitable lady who had come to see her from the part of M. le doyen de la Pellerine, found it one day in this state; and as she complained about punishment and abandonment where she saw it: You

Have "too much charity, my good lady," replied the Sister; I am not to be complained; I lack nothing, I have everything I need: a hundred people around me don't would not prevent me from having my cross to bear, and you See that everything has been provided, by giving me all that I have. need. The damsel looked beside her, and lives on a chair a piece of large dry bread with a little pure water in a bowl of earth: it was his treat

ordinary, and voilace what she called lacking nothing. Would we find in the Hospitals the poorest many sick as easy to satisfy?...

At last nature took again the above, and the one who wanted to use it again for his glory, the gave back to the state it needed for its Designs.

For several months now, nuns Urbanistes had been released, and the Sister of the Nativity had been longing, for more than a long time still, after the moment of being returned to them, to have the consolation of dying in their arms: she spoke of it about everything. That longed-for moment arrived. She said, crying, goodbye forever to her family, trembling fever, looking more like a skeleton than a living person. She mounted a cart (1), which returned to M. de la Jannière, where she took her Last lodging, and where we were at the height of the joy of the review after a year that had seemed very long and very boring.

(1) It was despite his brother's opposition that the Chouans provided her with the cart which returned her to the nuns who had been asking for her again for a long time.

FOURTH AND LAST ERA.

The last works and the Death of the Sister.

After completing to the best of his ability, and as we have seen, the task that God has for him had imposed, the Sister had thought only of herself, and had rejoiced that she had no more seen that the great business of his salvation, in preparing for a death she had long predicted should not be very remote.

Finishing my surrender Her accounts, she told me, as we know, that he did not All that remained was to recommend myself to my prayers, as to those of all the readers of his collection, renouncing moreover to any claim on esteem or the admiration of the public, which she did not deserve. « All I had left, she said, was to mourn my infidelities. continuous, my sins without number, and to me throw headlong into the mercy of a God too much good to want eternal loss, or even allow the unintentional error of a poor creature who, after Everything, has never sought only to know his holy will and to conform to it. »

Such were, in effect, its provisions; but God, who delights in seeing, In privileged souls the feelings of fear and love that he makes there To be born, is not obliged, for this, to conform in All to the rules that their humility, always shy seems to want to prescribe to himself.

Independently Of all this, his will must prevail over the our, and that the instrument he wishes to use obeys the hand he uses. Moses and Jeremiah are beautiful apologizing for their inability, but Jonah may flee;

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The holiest characters of the Church may have avoided dignities, but Charges and the honors that awaited them, it was necessary to give in to the order that called them; Nothing could take them away: it is necessary, willy-nilly, that Moses delivers its people; let Jeremiah call him back, weeping over his evils, and that Jonah announces to Nineveh his crimes, for him avoid punishment.

According to this rule, it is in vain that the Sister of the Nativity seeks to To bury oneself alive in the depths of one's nothingness, one must Absolutely that the echo resonates, while the voice will make hear, and that he repeat what she will have pronounced: Deus, docuisti me à juventute meâ, and usque nunc pronuntiabo mirabilia tua. (Ps. 70:17.) This is his destination.

From childhood, she had, like Isaiah, heard this command from heaven: " Prophet, never ceases to shout; Let your voice rise continually like that of a trumpet, to reproach My people their iniquities, and their crimes in the house of Jacob. Clama, ne cesses; quasi tuba exalta vocem tuam, et annuntia populo meo scelera eorum, et domui Jacob peccata eorum. (Isaiah,58,1.) That is why, always faithful to its mission, She showed so much zeal against disorder who offended his God and caused the loss of his homeland. » She did not hold the truth captive; if it did not always write, she never ceased to invective against the vice; she did so by word and example to the last breath, and it can be said of her as of the one whom St. Paul makes such a beautiful Praise: Not only did she speak until her death; but, dead as she is, she still speaks, and will speak while his immortal works shall remain: et defunctus adhuc Loquitur. (Heb., 11:4.)

Barely made to her Sisters, she felt strongly inclined to ask permission to go to England to find the Director, to whom she

declared to various repeats, which he still had to say many things she could not say to anyone but to he. His old age, and even more so his infirmities constantly refused the pardon she asked for with a lot of instance; Seeing that she could not succeed in this A project, she easily obtained to replace it as best she could in still writing a supplement for me recovered, repeating that she feared that we had opposed to the will of God; what she did put in his supplement, and what I have assured, in particular, persons who had been responsible for it on his part.

The Sister of the Nativity therefore took up the pen again before dying, I mean she took advantage of what little she had left to live, to dictate to the two nuns who were always in her Secret, the last book we have left to write. It is a kind of deuteronomy, in two notebooks, where She irons a lot of things she already had I shall therefore be obliged to abbreviate A lot, while retaining the new ideas with the developments that seemed to me the most worthy of being Kept. These two notebooks were to be given to me after her death, for I have reason to believe that for a long time she has not was more expecting to see me again. His conduct hardly allows to doubt it.

The care he receives This new enterprise, far from slowing down its fervor, did not did, on the contrary, increase it day by day; His exercises of piety became all the more frequent, and longer, his zeal more ardent, his devotion more tender. Far from reducing anything of her penances, she did not What to add, despite infirmities that the weight of Age and sorrows always made it increase. Finally, following the example of all the saints whom God has favored In a very special way, she showed that she had not put so much interest in her continued so steadfastly, that by apprehension where she was the account she owed to God.

A few months ago that she had finished her last dictations, when she had this last vision, of which I will now render the account that I promised, because he comes here naturally, and he finds its place, following the order of times. She had it written This night vision, as if to put the finishing touches to everything she had said, providing evidence of a nature to Close your mouth to all his opponents. The letter which she sent to the dean of the parish of the Pellerine, and that he gave me (we know that there was some time its director), this letter, the original of which I preserve, certifies by the said Dean; this same letter, I say, Providence allowed that it was begun by the Superior, and finished by Madam Custodian, under the dictation of the Sister, as for

unite in the same acts the two witnesses and the two hands who had seen everything and everything written. The contents of that letter are as follows; I won't change it Nothing essential, but I will add a few small comments to the Text, in different letters:

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Fougères, the 16th October 1797.

My father

I'll let you know of a meaningful dream that God has permitted with regard to my writings. I think the demon appeared to me under the form of a deceased nun whom I had known, and who said she was in purgatory where she suffered from extreme penalties; which excited me to great pity and compassion. At his request, I promised to pray to God for the deliver, and asked her that when she was in paradise, if she knew that there was something in me that was contrary to my salvation, she prayed to God that he willed make it well known to me, so that I correct myself before than to appear to his judgment. She replied. that, even now, it saw a great obstacle to My salvation, that it was for this subject that it appeared to me. (So it was no longer to seek prayers.) She added that although she appeared to me in a dream, I did not should not take what she would tell me for a daydream, and that the case was consequential. Hey! What? he I asked.

It is, replied it, with regard to the writings you have done do, and that it is a matter of having deleted and cancelled. The thing takes A very bad turn. (This was the time when The bishops gave me their approval...

) An express letter must be sent to Mr de Fajole, with your retraction, so that everything you have said (1) is regarded as null and quite annihilated. I pointed out to him that I had done in all this only as God had commanded me. No, God did not ask that of you, she replied. with a very angry look at me. (Souls from purgatory do not get angry.) She told me I was deceived for obeying my confessors This Soul of Purgatory was here only repeating this that the

demon had told the Sister to prevent her from writing; There you go already many traits of resemblance to the spirit which, To better delude himself, transfigures himself into an angel of light (2); But let's move on.)

Why to Mr. de Fajole? Which right to annul, the one who is not entitled to know?

Fortunately, the Sister was not Not a novice in, the art of fighting it and guess.

At these words I recognized that it was the devil who used this ruse to disturb my mind and disturb my conscience; and in the moment I lifted my heart to God, praying to Him that he would have mercy on me; and animated of the Holy Spirit, I answered the specter that I was all fire. and flame as soon as it was a question of obeying God by providing His glory. My agreement was that when I had obeyed those who hold me the place of God, I thought I had obeyed God Himself. At the same time, I made the sign of the cross upon myself. To this sign that he Displeased, the so-called nun fled; but the spirit of God made me run after her, I made her run after her. pursued, arrested her, and took her by her veil: If thou shalt come from God, I said to him, if it is he who makes you Speak, make the sign of the cross with me, and pay this homage to the one who sends you; Give glory to the adorable Trinity... I could exhort him to do so and give him an example; while I was repeating my sign of the cross the ghost disappeared and vanished in my hands, like a black vapor and infects, without me being able to say whether it entered the earth or this which he became.

Upon this, my Father, I would like to make a few comments. When this alleged nun began to tell me about my writing, without me having yet had time to suspect his intention, I asked her if the writing she was telling me about would succeed. She replied that yes with spite, and it was there that she added, with an angry air, that it was taking a bad turn; but this did not worry me. more, as soon as I recognized the demon's stratagem. What surprised me the most was to hear him tell me that I had to to report to M. de Fajole, and to address him for to have the work destroyed: for I can assure you that I never knew the name or the person of this M. de Fajole, and did not know whether he was a priest or a secular. So I did not bother to inform myself, well resolved. to ignore the advice I was given.

I will tell you again, my Father, that when I ran after the ghost, and that I stopped him, the Spirit of the Lord made me known more clearly that it was the devil, and that it was necessary renounce everything that this father of the

lie, and keep no one No account in my mind. The Sister went on to change her subject.

My Father, I am Concerned if you have received the letter where our Reverend Mother let you know from me, there is like a month, that it was necessary to pass, the earliest possible, to Mr. Genêt, all the writings that you Know. You will infinitely oblige me to tell me if they have passed, or if you plan to find safe ways for him make hold to his residence....

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(These writings of which Sister have not been sent to me in England; But they were given to me here four years after his death.)

I will also tell you, my Father, may the good Lord grant me the grace not to leave me point without cross; The unfortunate thing is that I don't wear it well. The nature and the devil, who always take it by a piece or by the other, constantly try to snatch it from me by making it fall to the ground, and often make me carry it askew. You can no doubt hear me, my Father; I want to go by that make you understand that the devil and corrupt nature me make war continuously, sometimes in a way, sometimes of another, and particularly in the time of disease. I am still currently reduced on the bed with continuous fever; but the sufferings of the body do not me are nothing, provided that the good Lord has mercy on my poor soul, and that he delivers her from the clutches of the infernal dragon. It is for this subject, my Father, which I humbly beg you to remember me before the Lord; I also ask him to your preservation; but I need your prayers much more, than you have mine.

Don't be surprised, my Father, if you see two hands of writing in this letter; it is that our Mother, who had begun it, could not finish it at

cause of his affairs; the Sister des Séraphins made up for it. They both assure of their deep respect, as well as St. Elizabeth. For me, my Father, I am, with a deep respect and perfect submission, your very humble and obedient servant.

Sister of La Nativity.

The original of this piece extraordinary, which I keep, bear these words written by hand of the first custodian: "I received as she is, and at the time of its date, the present letter from the Sister of the Nativity, nun Town planner of Fougères, and I handed it over, in 1802, to the director" of this community. »

Signed Leroy, serving de la Pellerine

It was July 6, 18o3, that M. Leroy gave me this certificate at his home; and the 27th of the same month and of the same year, the two nuns who had written it signed me the following certificate, Concerning the copy we have just seen:

We, the undersigned, let us certify to whom it will belong, that Mr. Genet has faithfully copied the letter we had written, in 1797, to Mr. Dean of La Pellerine, on behalf of our dear and respectable late Sister of the Nativity. All the change we noticed, comparing one to the other consists in making certain sentences French who were not. The meaning is the same everywhere, so than the order of things.

Marie L. The Breton sister Sainte-Magdeleine, Sup., Michelle Pél. Binel des Séraphins, deposit., Blanche Binel de Sainte-Elisabeth.

Let me be allowed Now some reflections on this last written by the Sister, whom we have just seen. I will not repeat Point here what I have said elsewhere about mysterious dreams and significant which the Holy Scriptures provide us with. so many striking examples. Suffice it to say that I seems impossible to revoke seriously in doubts the reality of the apparition in the dream that one just reported. Because finally, besides a purely ghost imaginary could not have given him a name and a person whose She had no knowledge, how a dream in the air, and who could not then have any kind of application, Does it fit so perfectly with the name, the opinion? and the words of the person indicated, and this in a way that by bringing together the epochs and dates, it is impossible to assume any kind of collusion between the Sister and me, nor even any mistrust or suspicion of the Sister, compared to a man she had no knowledge of. Idea? Pure chance, or the weirdness of a dream ordinary, have they ever produced such effects? That's what that it would have to be proved, if you want to say something worthwhile; because Nothing will ever be advanced by meaningless words.

Secondly, I would be very curious to know how and by what means Father de Fajole had received the secret intelligence and special knowledge on which he ordered me, to London, in 1800, to burn notebooks he had admired in the island of Jersey in 1792. Either The suspicions that had been inspired to him since would have fell on the work, on the Sister, or on me, I also believe false; But where did they come to him? That is the problem I cannot solve. The alleged nun who, while wrathful, ordered to the Sister, as on behalf of God, to send him an express one so that he would have destroyed the work, do not Would she have pointed out,

the Sister's refusal, In charge of the Commission itself? It would be to M. l'abbé to instruct us; what is safe, it is that he spoke to me in almost the same terms as the An alleged nun had done so to the Sister. In this supposition, perhaps the Abbot should have to experience it as she does, by the will of God, the decision of superiors in the Church and the Sign of the Cross: Then

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may believe that he would have seen also vanish in black smoke, and with it all His suspicions would have disappeared.

What's good Certainly, it is that the father of lies operates well Manners in the world: it has many agents always ready to promote its illusions and pitfalls. M. the abbot of Fajole, whom I respect, never had in this that good views, I am very sure; but it does not would not be the first good man in place who would have been duped on many points by the maneuvers of the one who Here dressed as a nun to better surprise piety of a saint, against whom he had failed so many time. Father of the Abbot, who seeks only the truth, can in no way so that it is evil that a man, charged with the cause of a girl that everything canonizes, now uses a play authentic that she puts in his hands to destroy the disadvantageous effect that could have produced against it the authority of his opinion. He thought, no doubt, to make his own To have to; in this I cannot disapprove of him; but also I have I thought I was still doing mine, and I expect the same justice from him.

Back to the Sister of the Nativity.

After the latter writes, which is not the least interesting, the Sister finally thought he was relieved of what God asked of her. She thought only of asking him to succeed, by preparing more than ever for a death that she looked like very soon, and to the account she owed give back of his life and all his writings. Discharged of her task, she applied herself only to putting in place regulates his conscience and his soul, by a redoubling of prayers, penance and fervor. His infirmities were also repeating day by day, so that she could no longer walk only bent, because of the pain she Felt. It only went out for the public office on the days of Sundays as soon as it began to be celebrated for Catholics; but she wasted no opportunity to to receive the sacraments, and to hear Mass whenever Some hidden priest could give him this happiness. in the house she lived in.

She had Conversations quite frequent and sometimes very long with nuns and people of the world, who came consult it on various difficulties that the circumstances were giving rise at every moment. She was terrible and inexorable for both on all that concerned faith and morals. She forbade without mercy and without distinction any spiritual communication with schismatics, jurors and intruder, until the Church had uttered one; for no one was more subject to all that the Church had decided. It is, she said, the compass of the true Christian is the infallible rule that God has for him gives, he cannot go astray by following her. The one who follows it does not answers for nothing; He who deviates from it makes himself accountable Everything. Hey! What an account, what a blindness to think oneself wiser than the guides that J.-C. gives us, and to prefer its judgment particular to that of the judges who must drive!.....

As for morality, She claimed that a nun, outside her cloister, must appear what it is to the world, by its maid conduct, his modest restraint, and even by the form of his clothes, which she prescribed to them with great care and of accuracy, sometimes invective against those who marked of the distance, threatening them with the wrath of A.D., etc., etc.

His morality was not no less severe, compared to the people of the world, on everything about their commitments. If they are not required to The wishes of the religious, she said, are none the less obliged to those of their baptism, under penalty of damnation. Anything that keeps them out of it owes them appear suspicious and dangerous. On this, it condemned, as the work of the devil not only the ball, the dance, the game, comedy, shows, reading novels, flies, the blush, and all the paraphernalia of coquetry,

but still all that, in the received modes, seemed to approach it. They do not allow ladies and damsels to wear scythes hair, saying that, very different from men obliged to be often discovered, their hairstyles could always compensate for the defect of natural hair, and that, in relation to them, art could only serve to satisfy the desire to please men, not God, by Noting a beauty already too seductive. It was, according to her, an infidelity to the vows Baptism, a kind of apostasy that owes much displease God. She wanted us to place the pin of the handkerchief so as to avoid these planned and thoughtful negligences, as common as they are contrary to true modesty. I do not know how some people will take his morality, which is only that of the Fathers of the Church; but I know she has makes tremble especially this, until they make them give it up for always.

When the Saints enter discourse on the great objects of the Faith,

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acknowledges to their language that they feel all the importance and the truth. They usually have to talk about it, not only expressions and turns of phrase of their own, but still a tone that is not not common, an energy of feeling that says much more than the lyrics. That's where it comes from It comes that they exaggerate their slightest faults so much. Such especially towards the end of her life, the Sister of the Nativity. When she spoke of God, salvation, vice, or Virtue, she did it with strength and dignity suitable for these broad subjects; and despite the simplicity of his expressions, which would often have seemed laughable in any case. Other mouth than hers, she knew how to put the greatest interest in everything she said, to the point that the most educated came to consult her and listened to her with a Great attention. No one was cleaner than her at give importance to the great truths of the religion. It is that these truths, that she felt. perfectly, are great in themselves, and that the Holy Spirit who made her speak is independent of all the ornaments of speech.

Finally, the Sister of the Nativity was approaching the happy end of his career. Weakened by age, exhausted by diseases, sorrows of every kind, austerities and the sufferings with which his poor life had been traversed, it does not

supported more than by miracle; It was now just an animated skeleton. Disgusted with a world she had never had seen that subjects of affliction and tears, and where she saw more than ever before, his soul for a long time seemed to float between the love that wants to leave life to reunite with his God, and submission that wants to suffer again to deserve all the more this happiness. Non mori sed Pati.

There were only very A short time she had just wiped away, after many others, a serious illness which was judged not to be escape. It was a species of dropsy of brisket, from which it was finally drawn by the use of stislitic wine (x) very bitter and very detestable in taste. His convalescence was not long-lasting, and the Sister was there. was waiting. True or false dropsy of which or thought it had healed, soon degenerated into one liver ulcer, which prevailed after six or seven weeks of medication, which were used at most only to prolong his suffering a little, and perhaps to make much more vivid and more meritorious.

silicic (?)

During this time she received Many times Holy Communion with faith and devotion that was expected of her. Despite the violence of his pain, She lay down only as little as she could, and still did not Did she want to be watched only the last two or three? nights, keeping his mind healthy and whole until the last moment, and often conserving with great judgment and presence of spirit with the people who assisted him. We came to visit it (1); His conversations usually proceeded on subjects of piety. She always put a soul in it that gave it to others, and had often gone so far as to weaken it herself, without her having noticed it, so much She was used to it. She even spoke with A lot of fire, in a circumstance, to a person she wanted to remind of his duty. Seeing that this person Stubbornly still wanted to return to the charge, she had her caretaker say that she had told him everything: I have, She said, pushing the pin down to her head. If she didn't feel anything, she wouldn't do it when I I would talk to him again.

A lady from the city came to him one day ask for her prayers and blessing for her and for her grandchild, whom she introduced to him: "Ah! "My good lady," said the Sister, what can my poor prayers do? It is at the Holy Church to bless your children. » However, she blesses them and wishes them the blessing. from the sky.

Although she never had positively stated that she would have had a revelation of the time and time of his death, there is good reason to think that she had a very strong feeling about it, to say nothing In addition. She had often

asked to God to die on the day and hour she had made her first vow of continence, consecrating oneself to the Saint Virgin in front of the image of Our Lady of the Marshes. (It was around noon on the day of the Assumption.) From the beginning of its Last disease she had her hair cut very low and even his nails, and this is where those that we have of it are very short: since the first of the month In August, she repeatedly asked for the calendar of this month; when once we had told him that we were on the eleventh of the month, she answered: "Still, the eleven! That this is long! When he was told that there were eight hours, on the day of the Assumption, she answered in a manner to make it clear that she would have wished that he would have been late. And the fifteenth, which was the day of his dead, she often inquired of the time, testifying that she desired half the day, without saying more. He was looking forward to When you arrived, you would have said that she accused the sun of prolonging by its slowness one day that it was not to end, or rather that must have been for her the dawn of an endless day, in him

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opening the door to the Great and blessed eternity.

Since, especially, that its chest was charged with those ulcerative humors which suffocated her, she frequently made them smell alone was unbearable to all the assistants; Those humors, which announced the dissolution of his body, overwhelmed him, as much by their acre fetidity as by the effort he had to make to expectorate them; it does not could sometimes help but desire the end, though she did not complain about it. My Sister, said a Day the nun who assisted her, it is now that the divine Master makes you drink from his cup of bitterness. Ah! my mother," resumed the Sister, "I think that the fiel and the vinegar would be less bad;... but it is necessary and I bless it God...

In the intervals of its illness, she had given to different People of the world and the cloister of salutary warnings and from which many have benefited. These warnings were rolling on the state of their consciousness and the order they had to do there. put to remedy what God reproached them; She told a nun that she needed a magazine of conscience, explained to him why and since when; told him the Director to whom she

would address, and up to, the penance she would receive; what happened True in all points. She tells two others that they had to be very fearful and to apply themselves to rectify their vocation. She warned the Superior that she would have much to suffer; that God reserved crosses for him of iron, but that the end of the troubles would give him much Consolations.

Seeing that its end approaching, she prepared herself as best she could to receive the the last sacraments of the Church, and to better dispose of oneself there. She prayed that only the priests, nuns and people of the house, including She might have needed. She received, with a repetition of fervor Holy Viaticum, Extreme Unction, and Indulgence of the good death granted to the order of religious Franciscan. She exhorted herself, and pronounced in this circumstance, inter alia, an act of contrition of which All the attendees were touched to tears. The The priest who administered it left more convinced than ever. of what he had already said when talking about her: it is a saint. He had said it in a whisper to people who had not No less reason than he to be persuaded of it.

After this act of Religion, she thanked everyone, and prayed that she would be left alone with her God, whom she had just received for the last time. Her thanksgiving over, she says that henceforth We could let in all those who would like to, since the view of a dying woman could have good effects: "The spectacle of Death and our last ends, she said, is always salutary to the living. It doesn't seem that the devil worried her as she neared her end: it was the hope I had made her conceive, by reassuring her against the threats he once made to prevent him to have me write down what God had communicated to him (1). She was only watched three nights for everything, and again the She was suffering with difficulty. She liked to be told about God, that the deeds of the virtues were often recited to him theological, or some places of the recommendation of the soul, which she repeated as best she could.

(1) It may be believed that God has granted what she had asked him so many times by These words: It would please heaven that the end of my life should also be quiet that the beginning and the rest were few!

Finally, the fifteenth of August, 1798, the day of the Assumption of his great protector, Happens. This is the day she expects to share the triumph of the one by whom she has already triumphed so many times of his enemies. The Sister of the Nativity rejoices; but it makes almost nothing known about it, so much it is

mistress of herself, and so afraid is she to leave no idea which was advantageous to him. She asks what time it is from in the morning, then talk about God to different people, and speaks to them about it with a face and tone that announced contentment. His sister-in-law was then brought in, who had come to see her: she had a conversation with her peculiar and which lasted long enough. On permission that she had obtained some, she disposed in her favour of her spinning wheel and of some other small effects, and this good farmer the left with tears in his eyes.

The Sister of the Nativity spoke then with more difficulty than Never, and it was hard to hear him, so much his chest was oppressed. It was around ten or eleven o'clock, and everything announced in it the effect, ordinary of Fluxion, a total extinction: it was well expected that its position could not last long, and she expected it more than No one. Lying on her bed of pain, having in front of her the image of his dying God, on it the formula of his vows, and next to the holy water of which it often wanted to be sprayed; retaining all sound spirit and all the serenity of his soul, she

stared at the death of one eye assured, she gazed at her with a quiet air,

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and saw it coming without the less fear. Yes, sure of her reward, she saw with joy approaching the happy end of his labors, and seemed to challenge, by its firm confidence, all that the idea of Eternity can offer more frightening to the rest of the world. Mortals.

At eleven o'clock and half, she had only one breath, that it was impossible to hear; but the movement of his lips, the air of his face and the signs she was still making, said, while dying, that she had all her mind present. His eyes, sometimes raised to the sky, and sometimes fixed on his crucifix, pointed to both and the purpose where she tended, and the object of her love, and the motive of her hope. At his request, his hand was often taken to help him make the sure sign of the cross herself, or make her kiss the feet of her crucifix. She was still trying to repeat the holy names of Jesus and Mary, or some acts of faith, hope or love, which she was pronounced, and which she loved so much to hear. The last time she asked for the sign of the Cross to the nun who gave him the most

Often these piety, the latter, instead of taking his hand, made herself on the figure the sacred sign with holy water, and the sister of the Nativity showed his gratitude by a very graceful mouse Twice repeated with great intelligence. Noon was then knocking on the city clock. A few minutes after, those who had remained around her found that she no longer gave them any mark of knowledge, and that his face was experiencing some alteration. They knelt down, and it was while they prayed. for her, that this holy girl peacefully gave up the soul to his God. Sic moritur justus. The afternoon shift struck five or six minutes after his death.

Thus died, on his sixty-eighth year, this extraordinary girl, which may rightly be regarded as the prodigy of his century, worthy in all respects of being compared to all that the Church honors greatest and most extraordinary among people of her sex, to whom she does not yields in no way on the side of virtues, nor of austerity of morals; all the more astonishing, that, without letters, without education, without almost power express oneself, obliged to use a foreign hand, it equalled, perhaps even surpassed, In his writings, all that others had done more admirable in kind of inspiration or spirituality. If its work, as it is, has appeared to several learned duty prevail over everything that St. Teresa wrote More strikingly, what would it be if, with the spirit and culture of it, it could have developed by itself and present his great ideas, that his editor will have only weakened considerably? Let's say it without

fear the Sister of the Nativity was raised up from our days to show, in his person, that the arm of God is not shortened point, and that he can, towards the end of the centuries, to arouse in his Church wonders worthy of those which have pointed out the beginnings, and that the sects do not will ever be able to cite in their favour.

Hardly had she expired, that the public voice canonized her by qualifications which belong strictly to those whose the Church has recognized and declared holiness. The holy nun has just died, it was said. We ran in crowds, asking to see the body of the saint. She was long exposed, dressed in her habit of religion, having their face, hands and feet uncovered, for satisfy the eagerness of those who had the devotion of pay him the homage due to the virtue of the great servants of God. His bed was soon covered with books, rosaries, relics and other instruments of piety that are wanted to touch it. We asked with authority, we shared with eagerness the smallest things that may have belonged to him. We wanted to have his hair, his

sail, its cord, grains of his rosary; until his poor rags were Divided. His prayers were highly recommended, And even today, nothing more common in cities and neighboring countryside, than to pray and make vows in honor of the Holy Nativity.

She had asked M. Duval, rector of Laignelet, to be buried in the parish cemetery. Far from opposing it, Mr. Duval had thanked her for her preference granted, adding that his relics would attract blessing of God upon him and his parishioners. The Sister had taken this addition as a joke on his part, to which She had not wanted to reply anything, out of respect for the good priest; But after he came out, she told the nuns that the rector had wanted to make fun of her. He had, however, spoken very seriously, and did not did not expect, speaking to him thus, that he must be so soon Buried himself at his side, after having been inhumanly massacred almost in its functions by the enemies of order and religion.

(485-489)

The Sister of the Nativity was buried in her cemetery, in front of the great door of the church, and, to what believes, on the side of the noon; Madame Sainte-Reine, also religious urbanist, holds the opposite side of the same door, and

M. Duval lies somewhere in between. Some veneration Let us have for his memory, as well as for that of Madame Sainte-Reine, however, has always distinguished that of the Sister of the Nativity. His tomb alone became famous. We go there frequently to recommend each other to his prayers. This Occasion of extraordinary facts of which it is not for me to judge. Let us think what we will; For me, I don't need God does new miracles to believe, at least temporarily, to the happiness of a soul whose virtues, writings, life and death seem to me a series of facts miraculous which, pulling it from the common order, do not allow me to doubt for a moment of his holiness.

Thus, always admirable in his saints, God allows them to be tested; he experiences them He himself during their lifetime, and glorifies them doubly after their death. Not content with giving them the reward in heaven Promised to their fidelity, he compensates them still on earth by making them live

eternally in the memory of men, without them being able to have henceforth nothing to fear from the slander of the wicked: In Memoria œterna erit justus, ab auditione mala non timebit. (Ps. 111, 8,7.) During their lives, the world despises and despises them. persecutes, because he cannot suffer secret censorship that they do of his conduct; But they did not rather disappear in his eyes, which, by an involuntary tribute, he renders, in spite of he, justice to the virtue he had at first despised, and yet he secretly admires. He speaks only with praise of these extraordinary people whom he does not have the courage to follow examples nor to imitate virtues.

Thus, while the reputation of the so-called sages of the century, while that of kings and conquerors disappears like the dust that the wind dissipates; while their name falls with crashes into oblivion, and buries himself with them in the same Tomb, the righteous, conqueror of envy and time, has nothing left to fear of persecution. He is praised for his enemies themselves, and lives eternally in memory men: In memoria

œterna erit justus. Its name is strengthened by the centuries, and its Glory usually begins where that of his enemies is customary. to finish.

After reading the relationship of the last eight years of the late Sister of the Nativity, written by M. Genet, we have nothing about it which did not seem to us to be very consistent with all that We know it from having witnessed it in Fougères. July 27, 1803. Marie Louise Le Breton, Sister Sainte-Madeleine, supér.; Michelle Pel. Binel des Seraphim, deposit.; Blanche Binel of Saint Elizabeth; L. Binel, Mayor; Catherine Prime Binel; Louise Binel; Anne Binel; Blanche Binel Hallmark.

LETTERS

AND EXCERPTS FROM LETTERS

Addressed to the Publisher at the time of the first edition of this book, and since.

To Mr. Beaucé, Bookseller.

Sir

When I wrote to Father Genet to testify to him satisfaction that I had obtained from reading her book on the Sister of the Nativity, I did not expect that he could tie at this vote a large enough price to make it public, with all the approvals he received from various bishops and several ecclesiastics or doctors of merit very distinguished. I am far from nothing, however. retract everything I told him about this production, which could, it is true, experience many contradictions, but which fits no less well with my own feelings about the great cause of all the disasters of our revolution, that is, over all the impiety of a century unleashed, in a way, against the religion of Jesus Christ; of this God of whom she gives us so great, Such noble, so just ideas.

(490-494)

Please only to add to what Father Genet wanted to transcribe From my letter I had made some observations to him on certain things, which he promised to remove or change; that that he will no doubt have done in the copy you have. Knowing moreover very well that it is not up to me to erect myself judging by the revelations and predictions contained in this work, I took advantage of the arrival of Pius VII at Paris, to give His Holiness the copy that I had received on deposit from Mr. Genet himself. I hoped then that this book would not be printed only after being examined by the most competent of all judges. I know it was there the vow of the Sister of the Nativity, the most Great fear was to move away from the slightest from the faith of the Church. As circumstances have changed, I I will not blame those who thought they could get ahead of this review by delivering you the manuscript on which your edition will be made : on the contrary, I look forward to the end of this edition, to adorn my library with a book of which I esteem and Infinitely respects the author and the editor.

I have the honor to be,

Your servant, the Abbot Barruel.

This February 10, 1818.

Extracts of letters from Madame Le Breton, dite de Sainte-Madeleine, superior of the Sister of the Nativity.

Sir

Having learned that you do not could find the supplement (1), I decided to have it copied to send it to you. The task was strong and painful; for I believe it will contain a whole volume...; but, Sir, before printing it, it is absolutely necessary that it be written by a very important clergyman. educated; for now it seems to me that all these beautiful things are like diamonds embedded in lead. There are A multitude of repetitions... I can assure you that nothing has been changed or added. It is such that we have found it, offering us only the glory of God and the Salvation of souls...

(1) The supplement of which Madame la Superior speaks here, and which I had for her requested, contains all that the Sister of the Nativity had dictated shortly before his death; These notebooks make the Material of the fourth volume. They were for me delivered by Mr. Genet's heir.

Le Breton, known as Sainte-Magdeleine.

Saint-James, May 13, 1818.

Note. The nuns who remained from the community de Fougères, retired to Saint-James, with their superior.

Sir

Receive my thanks of the three copies you were kind enough to send me by my nieces. As soon as I got them, I took them reading, to share with you what I believe is not Quite right; But it must be admitted that it is very little thing. I will make you a note of it, and give you the names which are not well written: Alas! Everything she told me still has to be written!... However, there is plenty to enjoy for all states. I am pleased to see that people who had marked me from The opposition to this work, now desire the reading. Taking it without prejudice, I have no doubt that it is not very tasted, and

That's all I want for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, and for your advantage. You must have received the supplement you give me

asked. interesting that the whole book, that I never get tired

no reading, and let me be asks so much to borrow, that I can hardly satisfy Everybody. This, I hope, will provide a greater one. throughput, especially of the second edition which will be more correct, and who will have the portrait of this holy Girl. Receive from new, the assurance of my gratitude and the respect with which I have the honor of being, in the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary,

Sir

Your most humble servant, Le Breton, known as Sainte-Magdeleine.

St. James, June 20, 1818.

Sir

You now have everything what the Sister of the Nativity dictated. She has always kept secret all that was extraordinary, of so that the greatest number of the nuns who lived with her had no knowledge of it. Others suspected it. only; but she told me many times that she would have preferred declare all one's sins rather than confess the slightest thing. She often asked me to belittlement in the minds of people who would appear esteem it; She even suggested that she was fell into childhood after a great illness, for destroy the favourable opinion shown to him. If She gave me complete confidence, it was not than in the absence of Mr. Genet. Being then Superior, she told me what our Lord made known to her, before having it written, to find out if I would find it at I have always approved of it, not being able to write myself, in fear of being seen. Madam Michelle Pélagie Binel, known as the Seraphim, alone in Le Secret avec moi, and died in 1817, was commissioned to write. All other nuns could only have fragments of this that you have, but, mowing would tell you that they have been edified of his conduct in all respects, so that the people of the world with whom she lived the last years of his life. The nun who had listened to her in the confessional, and who seemed opposed to him, told me that he was not have never seen a voluntary venial fault made. It is decelerated (x) only by speaking of divine love. His figure came alive, and the word of God, enunciated by She penetrated to the depths of the soul: never No one made so much impression on me; others have experienced it Like me. However good his writings are, they have much less strength than from his mouth.

(x) detected (???) detected (?)

It was lost on sea a very interesting shipment, of which we had not kept any fragments. She always told us that God forbade him. According to this we have none. preserved. The supplement I sent you was, at his death, in the hands of M. le Saunier, former parish priest of Parcé, his confessor then having done it examined by M. Vafral, priest and vicar general, residing at St. James, distinguished by his science and virtue. The latter entrusted it to Mademoiselle Beaumond, a merchant in the same place, who made the unwritten copy, on which I transcribed it, this damsel not wanting to divest These two gentlemen died several years ago.

years; and the Sister of the Nativity died four years before the start of the school year Mr. Genet in France. For a long time I had been far away of him. I do not know how it was done that after worked these last papers, he lost them; I have only heard, he had lent them for copying, and that they were scrambled, I don't know where. These alone had been written In France: everything you printed was printed in England. Some desires that would have

M. Genet to have this book printed, he always presented himself barriers.

That's it, sir, All the information I can give you, may it be Sufficants

(495-499)

to improve The work and prove my good will.

Receive assurance from the respect with which I have the honor to be in the sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

Dear Sir, Your very humble servant, Of Saint Magdelaine.

St. James, June 28, 1818.

P. S. She didn't write to no one but to the Dean of the Pellerine and

Mr. Genet. You have its letters.

Extracts of letters from Miss Louise Binel.

(Miss Louise Binel, daughter of Mr. Binel, mayor of Fougères, and niece of both Religious Planners confidants of the Sister of the Nativity; know: Madame des Séraphins (Michelle-Pélagie Binel), and Madame de Sainte-Elisabeth (Blanche Binel), had relations particular and very intimate with the Sister of the Nativity. Her two aunts, forced to return to their family leaving their community, had collected with them this holy Converse, and it is within that respectable family she died.)

Fougères, June 12 1818.

Sir

... Thank you very much from what you tell me there will be a second edition; Because no matter how much I browse the first one, I did not find it the supplement that Mr. Genet alone possessed. It contained two hundred pages, and was entirely of the writing of my aunt of the Seraphim. Mr. Genet had written it shortly before his death. I had plans to send him a Small note of an article, which does not comply with the event. I learned in the past that we had just lose it.

I address it to you, therefore, Sir....

Louise Binel.

Ferns, 5 July 1818.

Sir

.... To get started Place to make sure if you have the notes

true, written under the dictation of the Sister of the Nativity by Madame des Séraphins, who is my own aunt, I thought, Sir, that I could do no better than to pass you from his writing. You will therefore find here attached a letter she wrote to me the year before her death; Because I had the pain of losing it a year ago, at Easter. I can also tell you that she was a saint, and his sister Madame de Sainte-Élisabeth. The Sister of the Nativity made a great deal of it. It would have been A great consolation for my aunts to see his works printed. We were fortunate to own all three of them since the exit from their community. They have not left us that several years after the death of the Sister, to enter a new community, established in Saint-James, where Madame still exists

of Sainte-Magdeleine, which was their abbess, and that to go out of the world and die in a cloister. Sorry, sir, I stepped aside a little of my subject. I chose this letter from my aunt, because she talks about our

dear Sister, and that she informs me that Father Barruel has passed a copy of his writings to our holy father the Pope. As my aunt was already sick when she wrote it, its writing is a little altered. However I think you will see if the notebooks you have are of her; And if they are, you can be sure that they are not written by M. Genet, who, being died suddenly, could not have worked there; for if he had written them, He would not have kept the notes of my aunt, who did not should not appear as they are, but written and worked by M. Genet, or, if he no longer lived, by like-minded ecclesiastics, as well as you will see it by the last will of the Sister, which I have been fortunate enough to obtain, and which you will find attached (1).

(1) They can be found at beginning of the fourth volume, in the warning.

My aunt of the Seraphim was the depositary of these notebooks, as well as one of the my friends who had the confidence of our dear Sister, to Cause of his virtue, discretion and important services which she had returned to him. This good lady had even exposed to keep these notebooks in the most time horrible of the revolution, the government even made it research because of a trunk that came from England, belonging to clergymen who were ironing Secretly: it was seized, some notebooks were found there. copied from those of Mr. Genet, then in London. As he It was about the revolution, Research to try to discover the rest. When Mr. Genet had returned, my friend and aunt returned the notebooks to him, in informing him of the Sister's last wishes. I do not understand, from that, how Mr. Genet neglected this drafting; for these notebooks do not must not look at all as they are. Both Confidant nuns did not worry about it, the whole being in the hands of the editor, well persuaded that everything was written, and, in case of death, given to someone you trust. Finally, sir, all I can To assure you is that Mr. Genet alone owned the work complete. There are copies, but none contain the my aunt's notebooks; neither she nor the others nuns have not kept any copies of the mailings that were made....

That's it, sir, all the information I can give you; happy if I may contribute in something to the good that this

precious work, Even happier if I enjoy it myself, as well as Charitable advice that this holy girl gave me herself from God; for only he had been able to give him knowledge of what was going on in me, as she told me, shortly before her dead, as well as to my dad, mom and younger sister. This poor Sister loved me dearly, I gave her back the Such....

Sorry, sir, from the length of letter; if I sometimes deviated of my subject, you must attribute it only to my great Tenderness for our holy daughter, who knows that I forget myself when I talk about her.

I have the honor of being with respect, Sir,

Your most humble servant, Louise Binel.

We will attach here a Letter from M. Le Roy, Dean of La Pellerine, Confessor of the Sister of the Nativity during M. Genet's absence.

Here's what he wrote to one of his confreres in 1799; This letter contains A very effective devotional practice for the relief of souls in Purgatory.

Sir

There are things admirable to say about the Sister of the Nativity, who do not allow to doubt his happiness, and announce that it is great before God. Since the age of two and a half until you know she died, God, of From time to time, spoke to him, especially since the beginning of revolution; He revealed a lot to her things that have already happened, especially the death of Louis XVI, his coronation in Heaven, the destruction Communities, the new persecution that we test, etc.; For the future, the end of the misfortunes of the France, the triumph of the Church, the restoration of religion, the creation of new communities, a part of the persecutions that the Church must suffer until End of centuries. God also revealed to him the precise time of the

(500-503)

Resurrection of J.-C., the celestial spirits who witnessed it.

He introduced her to that a way to relieve the souls of Purgatory, well effective, and to him very pleasant, is to offer him to This intention, separately, the different torments that J.-C. suffered during the course of his painful passion.

Bless a thousand times, Sir, and let us constantly thank the author of all the extraordinary graces which he has granted to this simple soul, and consider with astonishment as He likes to use the weakest instruments for the greatest things, and the wonders of his grace and of his infinite mercy for men; because it is not for her, but for us that He has given her so many lights. So let's try to profile them, and especially to deserve to be gathered one day to this holy Girl in eternity.

I have the honor to be,

Sir, your very humble servant, Le Roy, dean of La Pellerine.

We see by this letter that Mr. Le Roy, as confessor of the Sister of the Nativity, had been acquainted with his last writings, which will make the material of the next volume.

End of the third volume.

TABLE MATERIALS

Contained in the third volume.

Introduction Pag. 1

Inner life of The Sister of the Nativity 6

Reflections 228

Dreams mysterious and prophetic of the Sister of the Nativity

.......................................................................................... 231

Scary Dreams 236

Gracious Dreams 257

Reflections by the author 297