CHAPTER II.

Our Lord took pity on the lamentable condition of
my daughter, and so ordered it, that the Bishop of
Geneva wrote to Father La Combe, to come as speedily
as possible to see us, and to console us. As soon as I
saw that father, I was surprised to feel an interior
grace, which I may call Communication; and such as I
had never had before with any person. It seemed to
me that an influence of grace came from him to me,
through the innermost of the soul; and returned from
me to him, in such sort that he felt the same effect.
Like a tide of grace it caused a flux and reflux, flowing
on into the divine and invisible ocean. This is a pure
and holy union, which God alone operates, and which
has still subsisted, and even increased between us. It
is an union exempt from all weakness, and from all
self-interest, which causes those, who are blessed with
it, to rejoice in beholding themselves, as well as those
beloved, laden with crosses and afflictions; an union
which has no need of the presence of the body; which,
at certain times, absence makes not more absent, nor
presence more present; a union unknown to all men,
but such as are come to experience it; nor can it ever
be experienced, but between such souls as are united
to God. As I never before felt a union of this sort
with any one, it then appeared to me quite new, having
never heard of the like. I had no doubt of its being
from God; so far from turning the mind from him, it

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tended to draw it more deeply into him. It dissipated
all my pains, and established me in the most profound
peace.

God gave him at first much openness of mind
toward me. He related to me the mercies God had
shown him, and several extraordinary things, which
gave me at first some fear. I suspected some illusion,
especially in such things as flatter, in regard to the
future; little imagining then, that God would make use
of me to draw him from this state, and bring him into
that of naked faith. But the grace, which flowed from
him into my soul, recovered me from that fear, as I
saw that it was joined with extraordinary humility;
and that far from being elevated with the gifts which
God had liberally conferred upon him, or with his own
profound learning, no person could have a lower opin¬
ion of himself than he had. He told me “ As to my
daughter, it would be best for me to take her to Tonon,
where he thought she would be very well situated.”
And as to myself, after I had mentioned to him my
dislike to the manner of life of the New Catholics, he
told me, “that he did not think that it would be my
proper place to be long with them; but that it would
be best for me to stay there, free from all engage¬
ments, till God, by the guidance of his Providence,
should make known to me how he would dispose of
me, and draw my mind to the place whither he would
have me remove.” I had already begun to awake reg¬
ularly at midnight, in order to pray. At this time I
awoke with these -words suddenly put in my mind, “It
is written of me, I will do thy will, O my God.” This
was accompanied with the most pure, penetrating, and
powerful communication of grace that I had ever

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experienced. And here I may remark, that though the
state of my soul was already permanent in newness of
life; yet this new life was not in that immutability in
which it has since been. To speak properly, it was a
beginning life and a rising day, which goes on increas¬
ing unto the full meridian; a day never followed by
night; a life which fears death no more, not even in
death itself; because he who has suffered the first
death, shall no more be hurt of the second. From
midnight I continued on my knees till four o’clock in
the morning, in prayer, in a sweet intercourse with
God, and did the same also the night following.

The next day, after prayers, Father La Combe told
me, that he had a very great certainty, that I was a
stone which God designed for the foundation of some
great building. But what that building was he knew
no more than I. After whatever manner then it is to
be, whether his divine Majesty will make use of me in
this life, for some design known to himself only, or will
make me one of the stones of the new and heavenly
Jerusalem, it seems to me that such stone cannot be
polished, but by the strokes of the hammer; and that
our Lord has given to this soul of mine the qualities of
the stone, viz., firmness, resignation, insensibility, and
power to endure hardness under the operations of his
hand.

I carried my little daughter to the Ursulines at
Tonon. That poor child took a great fondness for
Father La Combe, saying, “ He is a good father, one
from God.” Here I found a hermit, whom they called
Anselm. He was a person of the most extraordinary
sanctity, that had appeared for some time. He was
from Geneva; and God had miraculously drawn him

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from thence, at twelve years of age. He had at nine¬
teen years of age taken the habit of hermit of St.
Augustine. He and another lived alone in a little her¬
mitage, where they saw nobody but such as came to
visit their chapel. He had lived twelve years in this
hut, never eating anything but pulse with salt, and
sometimes oil Three times a week he lived on bread
and water. He never drank wine, and generally made
but one meal in twenty-four hours. He wore for a
shirt a coarse hair cloth, and lodged on the bare
ground. He lived in a continual state of prayer, and
in the greatest humility. God had done by him many
signal miracles.

This good hermit had a great sense of the designs
of God on Father La Combe and me. But God showed
him at the same time that strange crosses were prepar¬
ing for us both, and that we were both destined for the
aid of souls. I did not find, as I expected, any suitable
place for my daughter at Tonon. In regard to her, I
thought myself like Abraham, when going to sacrifice
his son. Father La Combe, accosting me here, said,
“Welcome, daughter of Abraham!” I found little
encouragement to leave her there, and could not keep
her with myself, because we had no room; and the
little girls, whom they took to make Catholics, were all
mixed with us, and had contracted such habits as were
pernicious. To leave her there I thought not right.
The language of the country, where scarce anyone
understood French, and the food, which she could not
take, being so far different from ours, were great hard¬
ships. All my tenderness for her was awakened, and I
looked on myself as her destroyer. I experienced what
Hagar suffered when she put away her son Ishmael in

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the desert, that she might not be forced to see him
perish. I thought, that even if I had ventured to
expose myself, I ought at least to have spared my
daughter; as the loss of her education, and even of her
life, appeared to me inevitable. Everything looked
dark in regard to her.

I thought that, with her natural disposition and
fine qualities, she might have attracted admiration, if
educated in France, and been likely to have such offers
of marriage, as she could never hope to meet with in
this poor country; in which, if she should recover, she
would never be likely to be fit for anything. Here she
could eat nothing of what was offered her. All her
subsistence was a little unpleasant and disagreeable
broth, which I forced her to take against her will. I
seemed like a second Abraham, holding the knife over
her to destroy her. Our Lord would have me make a
sacrifice to him, without any consolation, and plunged
in sorrow, night was the time in which I gave vent to
it. He made me see, on one side, the grief of her
grandmother, if she should hear of her death, which
she would impute to my taking the child away from
her; and the great reproach, it would be accounted
am#ng all the family. The gifts of nature she was
endowed with were now like pointed darts which
pierced me. I believe that God so ordered it, to purify
me from too human an attachment, which was still in
me. For after I returned from the Ursulines at Tonon,
they changed her manner of diet, and gave her what
was suitable to her delicacy; whereby, in a short time
she recovered finely.

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