Chapter 2-15

I LEFT then the Ursulines, and a house at a distance from the lake was sought for me. The only empty one available had every appearance of the utmost poverty. There was no chimney except in the kitchen, through which we had to pass to reach the room. I took my daughter with me, and gave the largest room to her and the maid who attended her. I was placed in a little hole with some straw, which we went up to by a wooden ladder. As I had no furniture but our bedsteads, which were white, I bought some rush-seated chairs, with plates and dishes of earthenware and wood. Never have I tasted such contentment as I found in this little spot; it seemed to me so in harmony with Jesus Christ. I relished everything better on wood than on silver. I made all my little provisions, thinking to live there for a long time. But the Devil did not allow me to enjoy so sweet a peace. It would be difficult to tell the persecutions I was subjected to. Stones were thrown through my windows, falling at my feet. I had got the little garden put in order; at night people came, tore up everything, broke the trellis-work, and overturned everything, as if soldiers had been through it. All night long they came to the door and abused me, making a show of breaking in the door. These persons have since told who had set them on. Although from time to time I gave in charity at Gex, I was none the less persecuted. A lettre de cachet was offered to a person to compel Father La Combe to remain at Tonon, in the belief that it would be a support to me during the persecution; but we prevented it. I did not then know God’s designs, and that he would soon withdraw me from the place. I can say I have never tasted an equal pleasure to that in this poor and solitary little place where I lived; I was happier than kings. But, O my God, it was still a nest for me, and a place of repose, and you willed I should be like you. The Devil, as I have said, embittered my persecutors. I was requested to leave the diocese, and the good which you caused me to do there, O my Lord, was more condemned than the greatest crimes: the latter were tolerated; they could not endure me. During all this time I never felt grief or regret at what I had done in giving up all, nor even a trouble as to not having done your will; not that I was assured of having done it—that assurance would have been too much for me—but I was so lost that I could neither see nor regard anything, taking all equally as from the hand of God, who served out to me these crosses either through justice or mercy. The Marquise de Prunai, sister of the chief State Secretary and Minister of His Royal Highness, had sent an express from Turin during my illness, to invite me to go to her; that, being persecuted as I was in this diocese, I should find an asylum with her; that meantime things would soften down; and when people should be well disposed, she would return with me, and join me and my friend from Paris, who also wished to come to work there according to the will of God. I was not then able to carry out what she desired, and I made my account to remain at the Ursulines until things changed. She spoke no more of it. This lady is of the most extraordinary piety, having quitted the Court for retirement and to give herself to God. At twenty-two yeas of age, with good natural advantages, she remained a widow, and has refused all offers in order to consecrate herself to our Lord, whose she is without any reserve. When she knew I was obliged to quit the Ursulines, without knowing the manner in which I was treated, she obtained a lettre de cachet to oblige Father La Combe to go to Turin, and spend some weeks for his own business, and to bring me with him, where I should find a refuge. She did all this without our knowledge, and, as she has since said, a superior power made her do it without knowing the cause. If she had thought on the matter, being so prudent as she is, she perhaps would not have done it, for the persecutions, the Bishop of Geneva brought on us in that place caused her many humiliations. Our Lord has permitted him to pursue me in a surprising manner in all the places where I have been, without allowing me truce or respite, although I have never done him any ill; on the contrary, I would have given my blood for the good of his diocese.

As this was done without our participation, unhesitatingly we believed it was the will of God, and perhaps a means that he wished to use to withdraw us from disgrace and persecution, seeing that I was hunted away on the one side and sought for on the other; so that it was settled I should go to Turin, and that Father La Combe should escort me, and go thence to Verceil. I took in addition, in order to do things with perfect propriety, and deprive our enemies of all subject for talk, a monk, a man of merit, who for fourteen years was teaching theology. I further took with me a boy I had brought from France, who had learned the trade of tailor. They hired horses, and I had a litter for my daughter, my maid, and myself. But all these precautions are useless when it is God’s pleasure to crucify. Our adversaries wrote at once to Paris, and they invented a hundred ridiculous stories—pure fictions, and utterly false—about this journey. It was Father La Mothe who set all that going—perhaps he believed it true; even had it been so, out of charity he should have concealed it, but, being as false as it was, he was still more bound to do this. They said that I had gone alone with Father La Combe, running from province to province, and a thousand malicious fables. We suffered all in patience without justifying ourselves or complaining. If things were looked at without passion, could I have done better under the circumstances? and was it not honourable, and even advantageous, according to all rules of propriety, to be in the house with a lady of that rank and merit? Was it not enough to cut short slander? and when one is irregular, does one select houses of that character? But passion has no eyes, and calumny is a torrent which carries away everything. Hardly had we arrived at Turin when the Bishop of Geneva wrote against us. He persecuted us by his letters, being unable to do it any other way.

Father La Combe went to Verceil, and I remained at Turin, in the house of the Marquise de Prunai. What crosses had I not to endure from my family, the Bishop of Geneva, the Bernabites, and numberless persons? My elder son came to see me on the subject of my mother-in-law’s death, which was a very serious addition to my crosses; but after we had heard all his reasons—seeing without me they had sold all the movables, elected guardians, and settled everything independently of me—I was quite useless. It was not thought well for me to return, owing to the severity of the season. You alone, O my God, know what I suffered; for you did not make me know your will, and Father La Combe said he had no light to guide me. You know, my Lord, what this dependence has made me suffer; for he, who to everyone else was gentle, often had for me an extreme hardness. You were the author of all this, O my God; and you willed that he should so behave in order that I might remain without consolation; for those who applied to him he advised very correctly; but when it was a question of deciding me on any matter, he could not, telling me he had no light to guide me, that I must do what I could. The more he said these things to me the more I felt myself dependent on him, and unable to decide. We have been a real cross, the one to the other; we have truly experienced that our union was in faith and in cross, for the more we were crucified, the more were we united. It is fancied that our union was natural and human: you know, O my God, that we both found in it only cross, death, and destruction. How often did we say that if the union had been natural, we should not have preserved it a moment amidst so many crosses. I avow that the crosses which have come to me from this quarter have been the greatest of my life. You know the purity, the innocence, and the integrity of that union, and how it was all founded on you yourself; as you had the goodness to assure me. My dependence became greater every day; for I was like a little child who neither can nor knows how to do anything. When Father La Combe was where I was (which was seldom, since my departure from the Ursulines), I could not exist long without seeing him, as well owing to the strange ills which overwhelmed me suddenly, and reduced me to the point of death, as owing to my state of childhood. When he was absent, I was not troubled at it, and I had no need. I did not even think of him, and I had not the slightest desire to see him, for my need was not in my will, nor in my choice, nor even in any leaning to him or inclination; but you were the author of it, and as you were not contrary to yourself, you gave me no need of him when you took him away from me.

At the commencement of my stay at Turin, Father La Combe remained there some time waiting for a letter from the Bishop of Verceil; and he availed of the opportunity to pay a visit to his intimate friend the Bishop of Aosta, who was acquainted with my family. As he knew the bitter persecution which the Bishop of Geneva set on foot against us through the Court at Turin, he made me an offer to go into his diocese, and he sent me the kindest letters possible by Father La Combe. He wrote that previous to his acquaintance with St. Paulina, St. Jerome was a saint; but how was he spoken of afterwards? He wished me thereby to understand how Father La Combe had always passed for a saint before that persecution that I had innocently brought on him. At the same time he showed me that he preserved a very great esteem for him. He even desired, as he was very old, to give up the Bishopric in his favour. The Marquise de Prunai, who had so much wished for me, seeing the great crosses and the abjectness of my state, became disgusted with me: my childlike simplicity, which was the state God then kept me in, seemed to her mind stupidity  although in that state our Lord made me utter oracles; for when it was a question of helping anyone, or of anything our Lord wished of me, with the weakness of a child, which appeared only in the candour, he gave me a divine strength. Her heart remained closed for me all the time I was there. Our Lord, however, made me tell what would happen to them, and which, in fact, has happened, not only to her, but also to her daughter and the virtuous ecclesiastic who lived with her. She, nevertheless, towards the end, took to me with more friendship, and she saw that our Lord was in me. But it was the self-love and the fear of abjectness (seeing me so decried), which had shut her heart. Besides, she believed her state more advanced than it was, owing to the time she was without trials; yet she soon saw by experience that I had told her the truth. She was obliged for family reasons to quit Turin, and go to her estate. She strongly urged me to go with her, but the education of my daughter did not permit me. It was out of the question to remain at Turin without the Marquise de Prtmai, and the rather, as having lived very retired in that place, I had made no acquaintances. I knew not what to do. Father La Combe, as I said, lived at Verceil. The Bishop of Verceil had written to me most kindly, strongly urging me to go to Verceil and live near him, promising me his protection and assuring me of his esteem, adding that he would look upon me as his own sister, that from the account he had received of me he extremely desired to have me.

It was his sister, a nun of the Visitation at Turin, a great friend of mine, who had written to him about me; also a French gentleman he knew. But a certain point of honour prevented me. I did not wish that anyone could say that I had been running after Father La Combe, and that it was with a view to going there I had come to Turin. His reputation was also at stake, which would not allow him to consent to my going there, however strongly the Bishop of Verceil urged it. If, however, he and I had believed it was the will of God, we would have got over all other considerations. God kept us both in such a dependence on his orders that he did not let us know them; but the divine moment determined everything. This served much to annihilate Father La Combe, who had very long walked by certainties. God in his goodness deprived him of them all, for he willed him to die without reserve.

During all the time I was at Turin our Lord showed me very great favours, and I found myself every day more transformed into him, and I had still greater knowledge of the state of souls, without being mistaken, or deceiving myself therein, however they might try to persuade me of the contrary, and though I might myself have used all my efforts to entertain other thoughts; which has cost me not a little. For when I told Father La Combe, or wrote to him the state of some souls, which appeared to him more perfect and more advanced than what I was given to know of them, he attributed it to pride, got very indignant against me, and even conceived a repugnance to my state. My grief was not because he esteemed me less—by no means; for I was not even in a state to reflect whether he esteemed me or not—but it was that our Lord did not allow me to change my thoughts, and he obliged me to tell them to him. He could not reconcile—God so permitting it in order to destroy him more thoroughly, and take from him every support—he could not, I say, reconcile a miraculous obedience in a thousand things and a firmness which seemed to him then extraordinary, and even criminal in certain things. This made him even distrustful of my grace: for he was not yet established in his way, and did not enough understand that it in no way depended on me, the being of one manner or the other; and that if I had had any power, I would have reconciled myself to what he said, in order to spare myself the crosses which it caused me; or at least would have cleverly dissimulated. But I could do neither the one nor the other; and though everything should perish, I had to tell him matters as our Lord made me tell them. God has given me in this an inviolable fidelity to the end, without the crosses and griefs having made me for one moment fail in this fidelity. These things, then, which seemed obstinacy to him for want of light, and which God so permitted to deprive him of the support he would have found in the grace that was in me, set him in division from me; and although he told me nothing of it, and, on the contrary, tried with all his power to conceal it, however distant from me he might be, I could not be ignorant; for our Lord made me feel it in a strange way, as if I had been divided from myself. This I felt with more or less pain, according as the division was more or less strong; but as soon as it diminished or ended, my pain ceased, and I was set at large, and this at however great a distance I might be from him. On his side he experienced that when he was divided from me he was also from God, and many times he has said and written to me: “When I am well with God, I am well with you, and as soon as I am ill with God, I am ill with you.” These were his own words. He experienced that when God received him into his bosom, it was in uniting him with me, as if he did not want him except in this union. And our Lord made me very heavily pay for all his infidelities.

While he was at Turin a widow came to him to confession. She is a good servant of God, but all in illumination and sensibility. As she was in a state of sensibility she told him wonders. The Father was delighted, for he felt the sensible of her grace. I was at the other side of the confessional. After I had waited a long time, he said one or two words to me; then he sent me away, saying he had just found a soul which was devoted to God; that it was truly she who was so; that he was quite refreshed by her; that it would be a long time before he would find this in me; that I no longer produced anything in his soul but death. At first I was glad that he had found such a holy soul, for I am always, my Lord, greatly rejoiced to see you glorified. I returned home without giving it any more attention, but while returning our Lord made me see clearly the state of that soul, which was in truth very good, but which was only at the commencement, in a mixture of affection and a little silence, quite full of the sensible; that it was owing to this the Father felt sympathetically her state; that as for me, in whom our Lord had destroyed everything, I was very far from being able to communicate to him the sensible. Moreover, our Lord made me understand that, being in him, as I was, without anything of my own, he communicated to Father La Combe through me only what he communicated to him directly himself, which was death, nakedness, a stripping of everything; and that anything else would make him live his self-life and hinder his death; that if he stopped at sentiment, it would be hurtful to his interior. I had to write all this to him. On receiving my letter, he remarked in it at first a character of truth, but reflection having succeeded, he judged all I told him to be only pride, and this caused him some estrangement from me; for he had still in his mind the ordinary rules of humility, conceived and understood in our manner, and did not see that there could be no other rule for me but to do the will of my God. I thought no longer of humility nor of pride, but I let myself be led as a child who says and does without distinction all he is made to say or do. I easily understand that all persons who are not entered into self-annihilation will accuse me of pride in this, but in my state I cannot give it a thought. I allow myself to be led where I am led, high or low; all is for me equally good.

He wrote to me that at first he had found in my letter something which seemed to him true, and that he entered into it, but after having re-read it with attention he had found it full of pride, obstinacy, and a preference of my lights to others. I could not give a thought to all this, to find it in myself, nor, as formerly, to convince myself, believing it though I did not see it. That was no longer for me; I could not reflect on it. If he had thought, he might have seen that a person who has neither will nor inclination for anything, is far removed from obstinacy, and he would have therein recognized God. But our Lord did not then permit him. I wrote again to him to prove the truth of what I had advanced; but this only served to confirm him in the unfavourable sentiments he had conceived of me. He entered into division. I knew the moment he had opened my letter, and had entered into it, and I was thrown into my ordinary suffering. When the maid who went to him with that letter (and who was the same I have spoken of, whom our Lord had brought to me) had returned, I told her, and she said it was precisely at that hour he had read my letter. Our Lord did not give me any thought of writing to him again on this subject; but the following Sunday, when I went to confess, and was on my knees, he at once asked me if I still persisted in my sentiments of pride, and if I still believed the same thing. Up to this I had not made any reflection either upon what I had thought or what I had written to him; but at this moment having done so, it appeared to me pride, as he told me. I answered, “It is true, my Father, that I am proud, and that person is more devoted to God than I.” As soon as I had pronounced these words, I was cast out as if from Paradise to the depth of Hell. I have never suffered such torment; I was beside myself. My face changed suddenly, and I was like a person about to expire, whose reason is gone. I sank back. The Father at once perceived it, and was at the moment enlightened as to the little power I had in these things, and how I was obliged to say and do without discernment what the Master made me do. He said to me at once, “Believe what you before believed. I order you.” As soon as he said this to me I commenced gradually to breathe and to come to life; in proportion as he entered into what I had said to him my soul recovered her freedom, and I said as I turned away, “Let no one speak to me again of humility. The ideas people have of the virtues are not for me; there is but one single thing for me, which is to obey my God.” A little time after, from her manner of acting, he recognized that that person was very far from what he had thought. I relate a single example, but I could give many similar.