SOME days after, having consulted with Monsieur Charon, the Official, they discovered the means of ruining Father La Combe. Since I had been unwilling to fly, it was what seemed the most hopeful. They caused His Majesty to be informed that Father La Combe was a friend of Molinos, and of the same opinions, pretending even, on the evidence of the scribe and his wife, that he had committed crimes which he had never done; whereupon His Majesty, believing the thing true, with as much justness as kindness, ordered that Father La Combe should not leave his convent, and that the Official should go and inform himself as to his opinions and his doctrines. There was never an order more equitable than this, but it did not suit the enemies of Father La Combe, who well knew it would be very easy for him to defend himself against matters so false. They concerted a means of withdrawing the affair from the cognizance of the General, and interesting His Majesty in it. The only one they found was to make him appear disobedient to the commands of the King, and, in order to succeed (for they well knew the obedience of Father La Combe was such that if he knew the order of the King he would not contravene it, and their designs would come to nothing), they resolved to conceal the order from Father La Combe; so that, going out for some exercise of charity or obedience, he should appear rebellious. Father La Combe preached and heard confession as usual, and even gave two sermons, one at the Grand Cordeliers at St. Bonaventura, and another at St. Thomas de Villeneuve at the Grand Augustinians—sermons which carried away everybody. They carefully concealed from him, I say, the orders of the King, and plotted with the Official in all that they did; for they could avail nothing in this matter unless they were in concert.
Some days previously Father La Mothe told me that the Official was his intimate friend, and in this business would not do anything but what was pleasing to him. He pretended to make a spiritual retreat in order not to absent himself from the House, and the better to accomplish his business, and also to have a pretext for declining to serve Father La Combe, and take him to the Archbishop. One afternoon news was brought to Father La Combe that a horse had passed over the body of one of his penitents, and that he must go and take her confession. Without delay the Father asked permission from Father La Mothe to go and take the woman’s confession: it was willingly given. Hardly had he set out, when the Official arrived. He drew up his proces verbal that he had not found Father La Combe; that he was disobedient to the orders of the King (which were never told to him). Quite openly they told the Official he was at my house, although they well knew the contrary, and that it was more than six weeks since he had been there. They informed the Archbishop that he was constantly at my house; but, as a single exit by the order of his Superior was not sufficient to make Father La Combe appear as black to His Majesty as they desired to make him appear, it was necessary to have other instances. However, Father La Combe, having learned that during his absence the Official had come to speak to him, resolved on no account to go out. This slightly embarrassed them: so they made the Official come one morning, and, as soon as he entered, they told Father La Combe, who knew not that he was there, to go and say Mass. He was surprised, because it was not his turn. No sooner had he finished the Mass, than he saw the Official leaving. He went to his Superior, and said to him, “My Father, is it that they wish to entrap me? I have just seen Monsieur Charon, the Official, leaving.” The Superior said to him, “He wished to speak to me. I asked him if he wished to speak to you; he said ‘No.’ ” Yet that very morning there had been drawn up a second proces verbal that Father La Combe was not present, that he was again disobedient to the orders of the King. The Official came a third time. Father La Combe saw him from the window, and asked to speak to him. He was not allowed to appear, on the ground that the business was with the Superior, and that he had not come for Father La Combe. The latter came to see me at his confessional, where I was waiting, and told me that he much feared a snare; that the Official was there, and they would not let him speak to him. A third proces verbal was drawn up, that Father La Combe was for a third time disobedient to the orders of His Majesty.
I asked for Father La Mothe, and I said to him that I begged him not to behave thus; that he had told me he was very much the friend of the Official, and that assuredly they were trying to use stratagem. He said to me coldly, “He did not wish to see Father La Combe; he had not come for that.” I advised Father La Combe to write to the Official, and to beg him not to refuse him the favour which is not refused to the most guilty—that of hearing them; to do him the kindness to come and ask for him. I myself sent the letter by an unknown person. The Official said he would go in the afternoon without fail. Father La Combe was somewhat troubled at having written this letter without the permission of his Superior, for he could not believe things were at the point they were: he went and told him. As soon as he knew it, he sent two monks to the Official, to request him not to come, as the event proved. As I passed by, on my way to a house I had hired, I met these two monks. I had a suspicion of the fact (for our Lord willed I should be witness of all): I had them followed. They went to the house of the Official. I felt certain Father La Combe had confided to Father La Mothe the letter he had written. I went to see Father La Combe, and asked him. He admitted it to me. I told him I had met these two monks on the road, and had had them followed. We were still speaking when Father La Mothe came to say the Official would not come, that things were changed. Father La Combe from this saw clearly that the affair would be one of simple trickery.
However, Father La Mothe pretended to be anxious to serve him. He said to him, “My Father, I know you have attestations of your doctrine from the Inquisition and the Sacred Congregation of Rites and the approbation of Cardinals for your security. These documents are beyond reply, and, since you are approved at Rome, a mere Official has nothing to say to you on the subject of doctrine.” I was still at the Bernabites when Father La Combe went to look for those documents, and to draw up a memorial. Believing that Father La Mothe was acting in as good faith, as he protested, and seeing that he assured me that the Official would only do what he pleased, that he was his friend, and that he wished to serve Father La Combe, that Father in his simplicity believed him, and brought him his papers, which were unanswerable on the point of doctrine—as to morals, that was not within the province of the Official. After Father La Combe had given these necessary papers, they were suppressed, and in vain did the poor Father ask them back again. Father La Mothe said he had sent them to the Official. The Official said he had not received them. They were no more heard of.
On St. Michael’s Day, five days before the imprisonment of Father La Combe, I was at his confessional. He could only say these words to me: “I have so great a hunger for disgrace and ignominy I am quite languishing from it. I am going to say the Mass: listen to it, and sacrifice me to God, as I myself am going to immolate myself to Him.” I said to him, “My Father, you will be satiated with them.” And, in fact, on October 3, 1687, the Eve of St. Francis his patron, when at dinner, they came to carry him off, to place him with the Fathers of Christian Doctrine. During this time his enemies piled falsehood upon falsehood, and the Provincial sent for the Abbe who had been Grand-Vicar to the Bishop of Verceil and dismissed by him. He came express to Paris to make false depositions against Father La Combe; but this was cut short, and served merely as a pretext for putting him into the Bastille. The Provincial had brought some unsigned reports from Savoy, and boasted everywhere that he had the means of putting Father La Combe in the Bastille. In fact, two days afterwards, he was put in the Bastille, and although he was found perfectly innocent, and they have been unable to support any judgment, they have been able to persuade His Majesty that he is a dangerous spirit; therefore, without judging him, he has been shut up in a fortress for his life. And when his enemies learned that in the first fortress the officers esteemed him and treated him kindly, not content with having shut up such a servant of God, they have had him removed to a place where they believed he would have more to suffer. God, who sees all, will render to each according to his works. I know by the spirit communication that he is very content and abandoned to God.
After Father La Combe was arrested, Father La Mothe was more eager than ever to make me fly. He urged it upon all my friends; he urged it upon me myself, assuring me that, if I went to Montargis, I should not be involved in this business: if I did not go, I should be involved in it. He then conceived the notion that, to dispose of me and the little that remained to me, and to exculpate himself in the eyes of men for thus having handed over Father La Combe, it was necessary that he should be my director. He skillfully proposed it to me, at the same time holding out threats. He added, “You have no confidence in me, all Paris knows.” I admit this stirred my pity. Some of his intimate friends came to see me, and said that, if I consented to put myself under his direction, I should keep out of the trouble. Not content with this, he wrote in all directions and to his brothers to lower me in their esteem. He so well succeeded that they wrote me the most outrageous letters imaginable, and especially that I should be ruined if I did not place myself under Father La Mothe. I still have the letters. There is a Father who prayed me to make a virtue of necessity; that if I did not put myself under his direction I should expect nothing but utter discomfiture. There were even some of my friends weak enough to advise me to pretend to accept his direction, and to deceive him. O God, you know how far I am from evasions and disguises, and trickery, especially in this matter. I replied that I was incapable of treating direction as a farce, that my central depth rejected this with a fearful force. I bore all this with extreme tranquillity, without care or anxiety to justify or defend myself, leaving to my God to appoint for me what he should please. He augmented my peace in proportion as Father La Mothe exerted himself to decry me, and this to such a degree I dared not show myself; everyone cried out against me, and regarded me as an infamous character. I bore it all with joy, and I said to you, O my God, “It is for love of you I suffer these reproaches, and that my visage is covered with confusion” (Ps. xliii. 16). Everyone without exception cried out against me, save those who were personally acquainted with me, who knew how far removed I was from these things; but the others accused me of heresy, sacrilege, infamies of every kind, the nature of which I am even ignorant of, of hypocrisy, knavery. When I was at church I heard people behind me ridiculing me, and once I heard priests say that I ought to be thrown out of the church. I cannot express how content I was inwardly, leaving myself entirely without reserve to God, quite ready to suffer the last penalty if such was his will.
I did not take a step, leaving myself to my God, yet Father La Mothe wrote everywhere that I was ruining myself through my solicitations for Father La Combe. I have never, either for him or for myself, made any solicitation. O my Love, you know that I wish to owe everything to you, and that I expect nothing from any creature. It was what I wrote at the commencement to one of my friends, who was in a position to serve me effectually, that I begged him not to meddle with the matter; that I did not wish it should be said that any other but God had “enriched Abraham”—that is to say, I wished to owe everything to him. O my Love, I desire no other safety but what you yourselfeffect; to loseall for you is my gain; to gain all without you would be lossfor me. Although I was in such universal disrepute, God did not cease to make use of me to win for him many souls, and the more the persecution increased, the more children were given to me, on whom our Lord bestowed the greatest graces through his insignificant servant.
There was not a day passed without a new attack on me, and sometimes many in the day. Reports were brought of what Father La Mothe was saying of me: and a Canon of Notre Dame told me that what made the ill he said of me so very credible was that he pretended to love and esteem me; he exalted me to the clouds, then he cast me down to the abyss. Five or six days after he had said that horrible reports against me had been brought to the Archbishop, a pious girl went to the scribe Gautier, and, not finding him, his little boy of five years of age said to her, “There is great news. My papa is gone with papers to the Archbishop.” In consequence of this, I learned that in fact the reports of which Father La Mothe had spoken had been carried to the Archbishop after the arrest of Father La Combe.
Father La Mothe, to excuse himself, said to me, “You were indeed right in saying that woman was wicked; it is she who has done all this.” But our Lord, who wished to leave him without excuse, and who did not wish that I should be ignorant that these things came from him, so permitted that two merchants of Dijon came to Paris. They spoke to me of a wicked woman, who had fled from a refuge at Dijon, and had come and got married at Paris. She had committed thefts at Lyons of the silver of a famous confraternity, and was near having her nose cut off in some disreputable place. I had heard this woman say that she had dwelt at Dijon. I suspected that she was the person, and the more so because a worthy girl, who had seen her at service in a house, assured me that she there had committed theft, and changed her name and residence. I had a presentiment that this was the person. I asked those merchants—who were very honourable men, and brought me a letter from the Procurer-General’s wife, a friend of mine, who is a saint—if they could recognize her. They said “Yes.” As she gains her livelihood by sewing gloves, that devout girl who knew her brought about an interview with those merchants. They recognized her at once, and told me that they were ready to depose she was the person. I could not take up the cause, for I had not been attacked, but Father La Combe. I sent to Father La Mothe to tell him that I had discovered a means of proving both the knavery of this woman, and the innocence of Father La Combe: that there were merchants who knew her, and were ready to go and depose against her before the authorities, after which, a thousand witnesses would be found at Dijon. Father La Mothe answered me, that he did not wish to mix himself up in it. He did indeed wish to mix himself up in betraying his monk, but not in defending him. I saw thereby accomplished all that our Lord had made known to me five years before, regarding Father La Combe and me, and how he should be sold by his brethren. I even made verses on it at the time; for truly it was given me to know that he should be a second Joseph, sold by his brothers, and the persecution of Father La Mothe was shown to me with the same clearness that I have since seen it carried out: therefore I could have no doubt of it; for in all that happened, I had an inner certainty that he was the mover, and God showed me in a dream how this Father was managing matters before I learned it elsewhere. Servants of God must not be judged by what their adversaries say of them, nor by the fact that one sees them succumb to calumny without any deliverance. Under the ancient law, God tried his most cherished servants by the greatest afflictions, as, for instance, the holy patriarchs, Job and Tobias; but he lifted them up from their disgrace, and seemed to pile upon them wealth and prosperity in proportion to the pains that they had suffered. But it is not the same under the new law, where Jesus Christ our legislator and divine model has been willing to expire in agonies. God, at the present day, treats his most cherished servants in exactly the same manner; he does not relieve them during their life, finding pleasure in seeing them expire in crosses, discredit, and confusion; and he acts in this way to render them conformable to his well-beloved Son, in whom he has especial pleasure; so that the conversion of an entire people could not be more agreeable to the eyes of the Eternal Father than this conformity to his Son: and as the greatest glory that God can draw from outside himself, is to see his Son expressed in men, whom he has created to be his images, the more extent this expression has in all its circumstances, and the more perfect that resemblance is, the more love and complaisance does God also have for those souls. But no one places that conformity where it ought to be. It is not in the troubles one procures for one’s self, but in those, whencesoever coming, which are suffered in this submission to the wills of God, uniform, in whatever manner or on whatever subject they may show themselves: in that abandonment or renunciation of all that we are in order that God may be all things in us; that he may lead us according to his views, and not according to ours, which, in general, are entirely opposed: in short, all perfection consists in this entire conformity with Jesus Christ, not in striking things of which men make account. Only in eternity will it be seen who are the true friends of God. Jesus Christ alone is pleasing to him, and nothing is pleasing to him but that which bears the character of Jesus Christ.
They still kept pressing me to fly, although the Archbishop had told me myself not to quit Paris, and they wished to incriminate me and Father La Combe also by my flight. They did not know how to work to get me into the hands of the Official, for if they accused me of crimes I must have other judges, and any other judge that might have been assigned me would have seen my innocence, and the false witnesses would have incurred risk. Yet they wished to make me pass for guilty to be master of me and shut me up, in order that the truth of this business might never be known; and for this purpose it was necessary to put me out of the way of ever being able to make it heard. They still circulated the same rumour of horrible crimes, although the Official assured me there was no mention of them, for he feared I should withdraw myself from his jurisdiction. They then made known to His Majesty that I was a heretic, that I had constant correspondence with Molinos—I, who did not know there was such a person as Molinos in the world until I learned it from the Gazette; that I had written a dangerous book; and that therefore His Majesty should give a lettre de cachet, to place me in a convent, in order that they might interrogate me; that, as I was a dangerous spirit, it was necessary I should be shut up under key, cut off from all intercourse either without or within; that I had held assemblies. This they strongly maintained, and therein was my greatest crime; although this was utterly false, and I had never held one, nor seen three people at the same time. In order to better support the calumny about the assemblies, they counterfeited my writing, and concocted a letter in which I wrote that I had great designs, but that I much feared they would come to nothing, owing to the detention of Father La Combe; that I no longer held my assemblies at my own house; that I was too closely watched; but that I would hold them in such and such houses, and in such streets, at the houses of persons whom I did not know and never heard named. It was on this fictitious letter, which was shown to His Majesty, that the order to imprison me was given.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MADAME GUYON 