Chapter 1-2

I WAS born, according to some accounts, on Easter Even, 13th April—although my baptism was not till 24th May—in the year 1648, of a father and mother who made profession of very great piety, particularly my father, who had inherited it from his ancestors; for one might count, from a very long time, almost as many saints in his family as there were persons who composed it. I was born, then, not at the full time, for my mother had such a terrible fright that she brought me into the world in the eighth month, when it is said to be almost impossible to live. I no sooner received life than I was on the point of losing it, and dying without baptism. They carried me to a nurse, and I was no sooner there than they came to tell my father I was dead. He was very distressed at it. Some time after they came to inform him I had given some sign of life. My father immediately took a priest, and brought him to me himself. But as soon as he came to the room where I was they told him that mark of life I had given was a last sigh, and that I was absolutely dead. It is true they could not observe in me any sign of life. The priest went away, and my father also, in extreme desolation. This state continued so long that were I to tell it, it could hardly be believed.

O my God, it seems to me that you have permitted so strange a course in my case only to make me better comprehend the greatness of your bounties to me, and how you willed I should be indebted to you alone for my salvation, and not to the industry of any creature. If I had died then I should never perhaps have either known or loved you, and this heart, created for you alone, would have been separated from you without having been one instant united to you. O God, who are the sovereign felicity, if at present I deserve your hatred, and if in the future I am a vessel prepared for perdition, there remains to me at least this consolation of having known you, of having loved you, of having sought you, of having followed you, and how willingly I accept, simply from love of your righteousness, the eternal decree it shall give against me. I will love it though it shall be more rigorous for me than for any other. O Love, I love your righteousness so, and your pure glory, that without regarding myself and my own interest, I place myself on its side against myself: I will strike where it will strike. But if I had died then, I had never loved it. I would perhaps have hated it instead of loving it, and although I should have had the advantage of never having actually offended you, the pleasure of immolating myself to you through love, and the happiness of having loved you, outweigh in my heart the trouble of having displeased you.

These alternations of life and death at the commencement of my life were fateful auguries of what was to happen to me one day; now dying by sin, now living by grace. Death and life had a struggle. Death was on the point of vanquishing and overcoming life, but life remained victorious. Oh, if it was permitted me to have that confidence, and I could believe at last that life will be for ever victorious over death! Doubtless it will be so if you alone live in me, O my God, who seem to be at present my only life, and my only love. At last they found a moment when the grace of baptism was conferred upon me. I ceased for a short time to be your enemy, O my God, but, Alas! how soon I lost so great a good, and how disastrous for me was my miserable reason, which appeared more advanced than in many others, since it only served me the sooner to lose your grace! As soon as I was baptized they sought the cause of these continual faintings. They saw I had at the bottom of the back a tumour of prodigious size. Incisions were made in it, and the wound was so great the surgeon could introduce his entire hand. So surprising an ailment at such a tender age ought to have deprived me of life; but, O my God, as you willed to make of me a subject of your greatest mercies, you did not permit it. This tumour, which discharged a frightful pus, was, methinks, the symbol that you should, O my Love, discharge the corruption that is in me and take away all its malignity. Hardly was this strange ailment cured, than, as they have told me, gangrene attacked one thigh, afterwards the other. My life was only a tissue of ills. At two and a half years, I was placed at the Ursulines, where I remained some time. Afterwards they took me away. My mother, who did not much love girls, neglected me a little, and abandoned me too much to the care of women who neglected me also; yet you, O my God, protected me, for accidents were incessantly happening to me, occasioned by my extreme vivacity, without any serious consequence. I even fell several times through a ventilator into a very deep cellar filled with wood. A number of other accidents happened, which I omit for brevity. I was then four years old, when Madame the Duchess of Montbason came to the Benedictines. As she had much friendship for my father, she asked him to place me in that house when she would be there, because I was a great diversion to her. I was always with her, for she much loved the exterior God had given me. I was continually dangerously ill. I do not remember to have committed any considerable faults in that house. I saw there only good examples, and as my natural disposition was towards good, I followed it when I found nobody to turn me aside from it. I loved to hear talk about God, to be at church, and to be dressed as a nun. One day I imagined that the terror they put me into of hell was only to intimidate me because I was very bright, and I had a little archness to which they gave the name of cleverness. At night, when sleeping, I saw a picture of hell so frightful that, though I was so young, I have never forgotten it. It appeared to me as a place of fearful gloom, where the souls were tormented. My place was shown to me there, which made me cry bitterly, and say to our Lord, “O my God, if you would be merciful to me, and give me some days of life, I would no more offend you.” You granted them to me, O my God, and you even gave me a courage to serve you beyond my age. I wished to go to confession without saying anything to anyone, but as I was very small, the mistress of the boarders carried me to confession and remained with me. They only listened to me. She was astonished to hear that I first accused myself of having had thoughts against the faith, and the confessor, beginning to laugh, asked me what they were. I told him that I had up to now been in doubt about hell: that I had imagined my mistress spoke to me of it only to make me good, but I no longer doubted. After my confession I felt an indescribable fervour, and even one time I experienced a desire to endure martyrdom. Those worthy girls, to divert themselves, and see how far my budding fervour would go, told me to prepare myself for it. Iprayed you, O my God, with ardour and sweetness, and I thought this ardour, as new as it was agreeable to me, an assurance of your love. This gave me boldness, and made me urgently demand that they should grant me martyrdom, because thereby I should go to see you, oh my God. But was there not in this some hypocrisy, and did I not perhaps persuade myself they would not put me to death, and that I would have the merit of death without suffering it? There must have been something of this nature, for these girls had no sooner placed me on my knees on a spread-out sheet, than seeing them raise behind me a great cutlass, which they had purposely taken to test how far my ardour would go, I cried out, ” It is not allowable for me to die without the permission of my father.” They said that I would not then be a martyr, and I said this only to save myself, and it was true. Yet I nevertheless continued much afflicted, and they could not console me. Something reproached me that it had only depended on myself to go to heaven, and I had not been willing.

In this house I was much loved, but you, O my God, who were unwilling to leave me a moment without some crosses proportioned to my age, permitted that as soon as I recovered from the illness, grown girls who were in this house, one in particular, played numerous tricks upon me through jealousy. They once accused me of a serious fault that I had not committed. I was very severely punished for it, which gave me a dislike to this house, whence I was withdrawn owing to my great and constant illnesses. As soon as I returned to my father’s, my mother left me, as before, to the charge of servants, because there was a maid there in whom she trusted. I cannot help here noting the fault mothers commit who, under pretext of devotion or occupation, neglect to keep their daughters with them; for it is not credible that my mother, so virtuous as she was, would have thus left me, if she had thought there was any harm in it. I must also condemn those unjust preferences that they show for one child over another, which produce division and the ruin of families, while equality unites the hearts and entertains charity. Why cannot I make fathers and mothers understand, and all persons who wish to guide youth, the evil they do, when they neglect the guidance of the children, when they lose sight of them for a long time and do not employ them?

This negligence is the ruin of almost all young girls. How many of them are there who would be angels, whom liberty and idleness turn into demons! What is more deplorable is that mothers otherwise devout ruin themselves by what ought to save them, they make their sin of what ought to constitute their good conduct, and because they have some taste for prayer, especially at the commencement, they fall into two extremes; the one of wishing to keep young children in church as long as themselves, which gives them a strong disgust for devotion, as I have seen in many persons, who when they are free avoid the church and piety like hell. This arises from their being surfeited with a food they could not relish, because their stomach was not suited for that nourishment, and for want of power of digestion they conceived such aversion to it that, where it would be suitable for them, they will no longer even try it. What also contributes to it is that these devout mothers keep them so shut up, giving them no liberty, like birds one keeps in a cage, who as soon as they find any opening fly away and never return; whereas to tame them when they are young, one should give them from time to time a fly, and as their wings are weak and one watches them flying, it is easy to catch them again when they escape, and this little flight accustoms them to return of themselves into their cage, which is for them become an agreeable prison. I believe we should do the same with young girls. A mother should never lose sight of them, and should give them an honourable liberty. They should keep them correct without affectation. They would soon see the fruit of this conduct.

The other extreme is still more dangerous. It is that these devout mothers (for I do not speak of those who are addicted to their own pleasures, the luxuries and the vain amusements of the age, whose presence is more hurtful for their daughters than their absence: I speak of those devotees who wish to serve God in their mode, not in his, and who, to pursue their style of devotion, disregard the will of God)—these mothers, I say, will be the whole day at church, while their daughters’ one thought is to offend God. The greatest glory they could render God would be to prevent his being offended. Of what kind is this sacrifice, which is an occasion of iniquity? Let them perform their devotions, and never separate their daughters from them. Let them treat them as sisters, and not as slaves. Let them make it appear to them that they are diverted at their diversions. This conduct will make them love the presence of their mothers, instead of avoiding it, and, finding much sweetness with them, they will not think of seeking it elsewhere. We must be careful to occupy their minds with useful and agreeable things, as it prevents them filling themselves with evil things. They should each day have a little good reading and some quarter of an hour of prayer—of the affections rather than of meditation. Oh, if one so treated them, one would soon put a stop to irregularities! There would be no longer wayward daughters nor bad mothers; for these girls, when mothers, would bring up their children as they themselves had been brought up.

There would also be no more division, no more scandal in families, when uniform conduct was observed to each. This would promote union, while the unjust preferences that are shown to children give rise to secret jealousy and hatred, which augment with time and last till death. How many children do we see the idol of their house, who play the sovereign, and treat their brothers as slaves, in imitation of their fathers and mothers! You would say that the one are the servants of the others. It ordinarily happens that this idolized child becomes the scourge of father and mother, and that poor neglected one becomes afterwards their whole consolation. If people lived as I have said, they would no longer think of forcing children into religion, and sacrificing the one in order to rear the others. By that the cloisters would be freed from disorder; for none would be there but persons called by God, and whose vocation was supported by him; while those persons who make the vocation of their children are cause of their despair and their damnation, through the irreconcilable hatred they preserve against their brothers and their sisters, the innocent causes of their misfortune both temporal and eternal. Oh, fathers and mothers, what reason have you to treat them so? ” That child,” you say, ” is ill favoured by nature.” For this very cause you ought to love it more and to pity it. It is you, perhaps, who are the cause of its misfortune; increase, then, your charity towards it. Or else it is, God gives it to you to be the object of your compassion and not of your hatred. Is it not sufficiently afflicted in seeing itself deprived of those natural advantages which the others possess, without your increasing its grief by your unjust and cruel procedure? This child which you despise will one day be a saint, and that other, perhaps, a demon.

My mother failed in these two points, for she left me all day at a distance from her, with servants who could only teach me evil and render it familiar to me. For I was so constituted that good examples attracted me in such a way that where I saw people doing good, I did it and never thought at all of ill; but I no sooner saw people doing ill, than I forgot the good. O God, what danger would I not then have run if my infancy had not been an obstacle to it! With an invisible hand, O my God, you put aside all the dangers. As my mother gave no sign of having any love except for my brother, and never showed any tenderness to me, I willingly kept away from her. It is true my brother was more amiable than I; but also the extreme love she had for him shut her eyes to my exterior qualities, so that she saw only my defects, which would have been of no consequence if care had been taken of me. I was often ill, and always exposed to a thousand dangers without, however, doing at that time, it appears to me, anything worse than saying many pretty things, as I thought, to divert. As my liberty increased each day, it went so far that one day I left the house and went into the street to play with other children at games which were not suited to my rank. You, O my God, who continually watched over a child who incessantly forgot you, permitted that my father came home and saw me. As he loved me very tenderly, he was so vexed that, without saying a word to anyone, he took me straight away to the Ursulines.