MY father had no sooner returned than he fell seriously ill. I constituted myself his nurse. He was in a wing of the house separated from that of my mother, who seldom came to see him, as well because she was still weak as because she feared, perhaps, a relapse. Being alone with him, I had every opportunity of rendering him all the services I was capable of, and I gave him all the marks of affection he could desire of me. I have no doubt my attention was very agreeable to him, for as he loved me extremely, all I did was very pleasant to him. When he was not looking I used to go and empty his basins, seizing the time there were no valets there, as well to mortify myself as to honour what Jesus Christ says, that he had come to serve and not to be served. When he made me read to him, I read with so much devotion he was surprised. I still continued my prayer and the Office of the Virgin, which I had not missed saying since my first Communion. I remembered the instructions my sister had given me, and ejaculatory prayers she had taught me. She had taught me to praise you, O my God, in all your works. All that I saw instructed me to love you. If it rained, I wished all the drops of water were changed into love and into praise. My heart insensibly nourished itself with your love, and my mind was occupied with remembering you. I united myself to all the good that was done upon the earth, and I would have wished to have the heart of all mankind to love you. This habit rooted itself so strongly in me that I preserved it even in the midst of my greatest inconstancy.
My cousin was not a little useful in keeping me in these good sentiments; for as I was often with her and I loved her, and she took great care of me and treated me with much gentleness, my spirit became again gentle and reasonable. Perhaps I fell into an extreme, for I so strongly attached myself to her that I used to follow her through the house wherever she went, for I greatly liked to be treated with gentleness and reason. I thought myself in another world. It is true children should never have near them any but reasonable persons, who are in no way passionate. This attachment appeared to me very right for a person who had been given me for my guidance; for her fortune not being equal either to her birth or her virtue, she did with charity and affection that which her present condition imposed upon her. I did not think I was committing an excess, yet my mother thought, in loving my cousin so strongly, I should love her less. The Devil so well managed with his artifices that my mother, who previously trusted me much to myself, and even, when I passed days without entering her room except at bedtime, made no inquiries as to where I was, being satisfied I was in the house, wished me to remain always with her, and would hardly ever leave me with my cousin. My cousin fell ill, and my mother took the opportunity to send her back to her own house, which was for me a very serious blow, both for grace and for nature. Although my mother thus behaved, she was none the less very virtuous; but God permitted this to try me, for my mother was one of the most charitable women of her age. If there was an excess in this virtue, one might say hers was excessive. She used to give not only what was to spare, but even the necessaries of the house. No poor person was ever sent away by her, nor any destitute one ever applied to her without receiving help. She furnished poor artisans with the means of carrying on their work, and poor traders with the means of supplying their shops. I think it is from her I have inherited charity and love of the poor, for God gave me the grace to succeed her in this holy exercise. There was not in the town or its neighbourhood any one who did not benefit by her charity. She has sometimes even given the last pistole that was in the house, without losing or failing in confidence, in spite of the great establishment she had to maintain. Her faith was living, and she had a very great devotion to the Holy Virgin. She meditated every day during the time of a Mass. She never missed repeating the Office of the Virgin, and all she wanted was a director who would introduce her to the inner life, without which all virtues are weak and languishing. What caused me to have so much liberty as I have mentioned is that, when I was little, my mother relied too much on the care of the maids, and, when I was grown, she trusted too much to my own conduct, and, being assured I loved to be alone to read, she was satisfied at knowing I was in the house, without troubling herself further; for as to going out, she almost never gave me liberty, which is a great thing for a girl. The habit I had acquired of remaining at home was very useful to me after my marriage, as I shall tell in its proper place. My mother was not, then, so much at fault in leaving me to myself; the fault she committed was in not keeping me in her room with an honourable liberty, and not finding out more often the part of the house in which I was.
After the departure of my cousin I remained still for some time in the sentiments of piety of which I have spoken. One grace that God gave me was a great facility in pardoning injuries, which surprised my confessor; for, knowing some young ladies spoke of me unfavourably out of mere envy, I used to speak good of them when I had an opportunity. I fell ill of a double-tertian fever, which lasted four months, when I suffered considerably, as well from vomiting as from other troubles caused by the fever. I had sufficient moderation and piety during this fever, suffering with much patience. I continued the manner of life of which I have spoken above as long as I continued to pray. About a year or eleven months after, we went to spend some days in the country. My father took with us one of his relatives who was a very accomplished young gentleman. He had a great wish to marry me, but my father, who had resolved not to marry me to any of my relatives, owing to the difficulty of obtaining dispensation, unless false or frivolous reasons were alleged, opposed it. As this young gentleman was very devoted to the Holy Virgin, and used to say her Office every day, I said it with him, and, in order to have time, I gave up prayer, and this was the source of my troubles. I still for a time preserved the spirit of piety, for I used to go and look for the little shepherd-girls to instruct them and teach them to pray to you, O my God; but this remnant of piety was not nourished by prayer. I insensibly relaxed. I became cold to you. All my former faults came back, and I added a frightful vanity. The love I commenced to have for myself extinguished what remained in me of your love. I did not entirely give up prayer without asking my confessor. I told him I thought it better to say every day the Office of the Virgin than to pray; that, having time only for one and not for both, it appeared to me I ought to prefer the Office to prayer; and I did not see, O my God, it was a trick of your enemy and mine to withdraw me from you, and a means of involving me insensibly in the snares he was laying for me; for I could have had enough time for both, having no other occupation than what I chose for myself. My confessor, who was very easy and not a man of prayer, consented to it, to my ruin. O my God, if one knew the value of prayer, and the advantage the soul reaps from conversing with you, and its importance for salvation, everyone would be assiduous in it. It is a strong place, into which the enemy can never enter. He may, indeed, attack this place, besiege it, make much noise around its walls, but, provided one is faithful not to leave it, he cannot do us any ill. Children should be taught the necessity of prayer as they are taught the necessity of their salvation; but, alas! people are unfortunately content to tell them that there is a Paradise and a Hell, that they must endeavour to avoid the latter and aim at the possession of the former, and they are not taught the shortest and easiest road of arriving there. Prayer is nothing else than the pathway to Paradise, and the pathway to Paradise is prayer—but prayer of the heart, which everybody is capable of, and not of those reasonings which are a play of the intellect, a result of study, an exercise of the imagination, which, while filling the mind with vague things, rarely and only for moments fix it, and do not warm the heart, which remains still cold and languishing. Oh, ye poor people, intellects coarse and foolish, children without reason and without knowledge, dull minds which can retain nothing, come, practise prayer, and you will become wise! Strong men, clever and rich, have you not all, great as you are, a heart capable of loving what is suited to you, and hating what is contrary to you? Love, love the Sovereign Good, hate the sovereign evil, and you will become wise! When you love anyone, do you know the reasons of love and its definitions? Assuredly not. You love because your heart is made to love what it finds lovable. Is there anything more lovable than God? You know well enough that he is lovable; do not tell me, then, that you do not know him. You know he created you and died for you; but if these reasons are not enough, which of you has not some want, some ill, or some disgrace? Which of you cannot tell his ill and ask a remedy for it? Come, then, to this source of all good, and without amusing yourselves, complaining to feeble and powerless creatures who cannot comfort you, come to prayer, to open out to God your troubles, to ask from him his graces; and above all, come to love him. No one can escape from loving; for none can live without a heart, nor the heart without love. Why amuse yourselves with seeking reasons for loving Love itself? Let us love without reasoning about love, and we shall find ourselves filled with love before the rest have found the reasons that lead to love. Taste, and you shall see; taste love, and you will be more wise in love than the cleverest philosophers. In love, as in everything else, experience teaches better than reasoning. Come, drink at this source of living water, instead of amusing yourselves with the broken cisterns of the creature, which, far from quenching, augment your thirst! Oh, if you had drunk at this fountain, you would no more seek elsewhere the means of satisfying your thirst! for you would no more have thirst for the things of earth, provided you continue always to go and draw from this source. But if you quit it, alas! your enemy has the upper hand. He will give you his poisoned waters, which, while making you taste an apparent sweetness, will deprive you of life.
It is what I did when I gave up prayer. I left God. I became that vine exposed to pillage, whose broken-down hedges admit all the passers-by to ravage it. I commenced to seek in the creature what I had found in God. You abandoned me to myself, because I had first abandoned you, and, while permitting me to be plunged in the abyss, you wished to make me understand the need I had of drawing near to you by prayer. You say you will destroy those adulterous souls who separate themselves from you. Alas! their separation itself constitutes their destruction, since, in withdrawing from you, O Divine Sun, they enter into the religion of darkness, into the cold of death, whence they will never recover if you do not draw near to them, and if, by your divine light, you do not come to illumine gradually their darkness, and by your vivifying warmth to melt their deadly ice, and to restore life to them. I fell into the greatest of all misfortunes; for I still wandered from you, O my God, who are my light and my life, and you removed further from me. You withdrew yourself gradually from a heart which left you, and you are so good that it seems that you abandoned it only with regret; but when this heart consents to be converted, ah! you return to it with giant steps. It is an experience I have made, O my God, which will be for me an eternal witness of your goodness and my ingratitude. I became then yet more hasty than I had ever been, because my age gave more strength to my passions. I often lied. I felt my heart corrupted and vain. There was no longer any piety in my soul, but a state of lukewarmness and real undevoutness, although I still preserved the external with much care, and the habit I had acquired of behaving in church with modesty, made me appear other than I was. Vanity, which hitherto had left me at peace, seized upon my spirit. I began to spend a long time before the looking-glass. I found so much pleasure in seeing myself, that it seemed to me others were justified in finding it. This love of myself became so strong, that in my heart I had only scorn for all others of my sex. In place of making use, O my God, of that exterior you had given me as a means of loving you more, it was to me the source of vain complaisance. What ought to win my gratitude, furnished my ingratitude. I found that there was nothing but what was beautiful in my exterior, and I did not see that it covered a horrible dunghill. All this made me so vain, that I doubt if there ever was a person who interiorly carried vanity so far; for as to the exterior, I had an affected modesty which would have deceived anybody.
The esteem I entertained for myself made me discover faults in all the rest of my sex. I had eyes only to see my exterior good qualities, and to discern the weak points of others. I concealed my defects from myself, and, if I remarked any, they appeared to me very trifling in comparison with those I saw in others, and I even excused them in my mind, picturing them to myself as perfections. The whole idea I had of myself and of others was false. I loved reading madly: I employed day and night at it. Sometimes the next day dawned and I was still reading, so that for several months I had completely lost the habit of sleeping. The books I ordinarily read were Romances. I loved them to folly. I was eager to find out their conclusion, thinking there to discover something, but I found there nothing but a hunger for reading. These books are strange inventions to ruin youth, for though one should commit no other evil but to lose time, is not that too much? I believe this was the greatest fault I committed in it. I was not prevented; on the contrary, people have a foolish idea that they teach one to speak correctly. Yet, O my God, your extreme goodness led you to seek me from time to time. You were knocking at the door of my heart. I was often seized with sharp sorrow and abundance of tears. I was afflicted at a state so different from that I had found with you, O my God. But my tears were without effect, and my sorrow vain. I could not of myself withdraw from such a disastrous state. I would have wished that a hand as charitable as powerful had drawn me out of it; but for myself, I had not the strength to do it. Alas! if I had had a confessor who examined the cause of my ill, he would doubtless have applied the remedy, which was merely to make me betake myself again to prayer; but he was content to rebuke me severely, to give me some vocal prayer to repeat, and he did not remove the cause of the ill—he did not give me the true remedy. “I was,” said the prophet, “in a deep pit or mud, from which I could not get out.” They reprimanded me because I was in this pit, but no one stretched to me a hand to withdraw me from it, and when I tried to make vain efforts to get out, I sunk myself the deeper, and the trouble I had taken served only to make me see my powerlessness, and render me more miserable and more afflicted. Alas! how this sad experience has made me compassionate for sinners! and how it has shown me whence it comes there are so few who correct themselves and who emerge from that miserable state to which they are reduced, because people are content with crying out against their vices and terrifying them with menaces of future punishment! These cries and these menaces at the commencement make some impression on their minds, but a hand is not given them to come out from where they are. They make feeble efforts, but after having many times experienced their powerlessness and the inutility of their attempts, they gradually lose the will to make new efforts, which appear to them as fruitless as the first. Hence it comes that, in consequence of this, all one can say to them is without effect, though one should preach incessantly. We hear nothing else but outcry against sinners, yet no one is converted. If, when a sinner goes to confession, he was given the true remedy, which is prayer; if he was obliged every day to place himself before God in the condition of a criminal, to ask from him the strength to emerge from this condition, —he would soon be changed: that is the way to stretch forth a hand to a man, to drag him from the mud. But the Devil has falsely persuaded the doctors and wise men of the age that one must be perfectly converted in order to pray; and as prayer is the efficacious means for conversion, and they will not give it, this is the reason there is no durable and sincere conversion. It is only against prayer and those who practise it the Devil breaks forth, because he knows it is the true means of carrying off his prey from him. People may practise all the austerities they please, the Devil lets them practise them, and persecutes neither those who prescribe them nor those who practise them, but one no sooner speaks of prayer, one no sooner enters upon the life of the spirit, than one must be prepared for strange contradictions. Who says, “a life of prayer,” says, “a life of crosses.” If there is in the world a spiritual soul, it seems that all the crosses, all the persecutions, all the scorn, are reserved for her. If there is in a monastery a soul of great prayer, all the ill will is for her, all the humiliations are for her—at least when the prayer is profound and true. If a soul is reputed to be one of great prayer, and things should be otherwise, and she should be applauded and considered, I say either her prayer is not true, or, if it is, that she is little advanced in it; that they are persons who walk by light and striking gifts, and not by the narrow path of faith, of renunciation, of interior death, and of annihilation; and that the prayers of these persons are only in the powers and in the senses, and not in the centre. I sometimes wander, but as I give myself up to what carries me away, I am not particularly careful to pursue the narrative exactly.
Pitiable, then, as was the state to which I was reduced by my infidelities, and the little help I had from my confessor, I did not fail to say every day my vocal prayers, to make confession pretty often, and to communicate almost every fortnight. I was sometimes in church weeping and praying to the Holy Virgin to obtain my conversion. I loved to hear speak of you, O my God, and if Ihad found persons to speak to me, I should never have wearied of listening to them. When my father spoke thereof I was transported with joy, and when he went with my mother on some pilgrimage, and started very early, either I did not go to bed to avoid being surprised by sleep, or I gave all I had to the maids in order they should wake me up. My father always at that time spoke of you, my God, which gave me extreme pleasure. All other pleasures were then tasteless to me. I would have preferred this to everything. I was very charitable; I loved the poor; and yet I had all the defects of which I have spoken. O God, how reconcile things so opposed?
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MADAME GUYON 