ON the 29th of January, 1688, the Eve of St. Francis de Sales, I had to go to the convent of the Visitation. As soon as I was there it was signified to me that I could not have my daughter, nor anyone to attend upon me; that I should be a prisoner, confined by myself in a room. This was the entertainment I had to restore me in my extreme feebleness; but I keenly felt the separation when they tore from me my daughter. I asked that she might be left in the same house, and that I would not see her. Not only was this refused; but they had, further, the harshness to forbid any news of her being given to me. My trouble was that I feared her exposure in the world, and lest she should in a moment lose what I had with so much care endeavoured to secure to her. From this moment I had to sacrifice my daughter as if she no longer belonged to me.
They selected the House of the Visitation in the street of St. Antoine, as being the one where I had no acquaintance, and in which they had most confidence. They thought I should there be kept with more rigour than in any other; and they were not mistaken, for they knew the zeal of the Mother Superior in executing the King’s orders. Besides, such a frightful portrait of me had been given to them, that the nuns regarded me with horror. It is a House where faith is very pure, and God is very well served, and for this reason, believing me a heretic, they could not regard me with favour. In the whole House they chose for my gaoler the person who they knew would treat me rigorously. To make my cross complete this girl was needed.
As soon as I had entered they asked me who was my confessor since the imprisonment of Father La Combe. I named him. He is a very good man, who even esteems me, yet terror had so seized upon all my friends, owing to my imprisonment, that this worthy monk, without realizing the consequences, renounced me; saying he had never heard my confession, and he never would. That had a bad effect, and having detected me, according to their story, in falsehood, there was no further doubt of all the rest. This made me pity that Father, and wonder at human weakness. My esteem for him was not lessened, yet there were many persons who had seen me at his confessional, and who might have served as witnesses. I was content to say, “Such a one has renounced me. God be praised!” It was who would disavow me. Each one brought himself to say he did not know me, and all the rest accused me of strange wickedness; it was who would invent the most stories.
The girl I had by me was gained over by my enemies to torment me. She wrote all my words, and spied everything. The smallest thing could not reach me but she ripped it entirely. She used her whole endeavours to catch me in my words. She treated me as a heretic, deceived, empty-headed. She reproached me for my prayers, and a hundred other things. If I was at church she gave great sighs, as if I was a hypocrite. When I communicated she was still worse, and she told me she prayed God that he would not enter into me. In short, she regarded me with only horror and indignation. This girl was the intimate of the Superior of the House, so that he saw her almost every day, and this Superior was in the party of Father La Mothe and the Official; so that, although this girl was ready enough to obey him from the inclination she had for him, he made it a matter of conscience for her to illtreat me. God alone knows what she made me suffer. Moreover, the Official said I should be judged on the testimony of the Prioress; yet she never saw me, and only knew me through this girl, who perpetually told her ill of me; and being prejudiced against me, the most innocent words appeared to her crimes, and actions of piety, hypocrisy. I cannot express to what point her aversion for me went. As she was the only person of that Community I saw, being always locked into a small room, I had matter for the exercise of patience. Our Lord has not permitted me to lose it.
Yet I committed an infidelity, which caused me strange suffering: it is that when I saw her eagerness to make me speak in order that she might catch me in my words, I tried to watch myself. O God, what torment for a soul become simple as a child! I tried to guard my words that they might be more exact; but the only result of this was to make me commit more faults, our Lord permitting it so, to punish the care I had wished to take of myself—I, who am his without reserve, and who ought to regard myself only as a thing that belongs to him, with no more thought of myself than if I had no existence. Therefore, so far from my precaution serving me, I was surprised into faults in my words, which but for that I would not have committed; and, owing to the care I had wished to take of myself, I was for some days thrown back upon myself with a torment that I cannot better compare than to that of hell. There is this difference between a soul in purgatory and the Rebel Angel—that the soul in purgatory suffers an inexplicable torment because she has a very powerful tendency to unite herself immediately to her Sovereign Good, but yet her pain is not equal to that of a spirit who has in heaven enjoyed her Sovereign Good and who is rejected from it. This was the state in which my soul was. She was, as it were, in rage and despair, and I believe if it had lasted I should have died of it; but I quickly recognized whence came my fault. I abandoned myself freely, and I resolved, though this girl, by her false reports, should bring me to the scaffold, I would take no care of myself, and would have no more concern for myself than if I had ceased to exist. This gradually passed away, and I returned into my former state.
Shortly after I entered the convent I had a dream. I suddenly saw the heaven opened, and like a rain of golden fire which appeared to me to be, as it were, the fury of God, which sought to satisfy itself and do justice to itself. There were with me a great number of persons who all took to flight to avoid it. As for me, I did quite the contrary. I prostrated myself on the earth, and I said to our Lord, without speaking to him otherwise than in the manner he knows and understands: “It is I, my God, am the victim of your divine justice; it is for me to endure all your thunder-bolts.” Immediately all that rain, which was of flaming gold, fell upon me with such violence that it seemed to deprive me of life. I woke with a start, fully certain that our Lord did not desire to spare me, and that he would make me pay well for the title of “victim of his justice.”
Immediately after I came into this House, Monsieur Charon, the Official, and a Doctor of the Sorbonne came to interrogate me. They commenced by asking me if it was true that I had followed Father La Combe, and that he had taken me from France with him. I answered that he was ten years out of France when I left it, and therefore I was very far from having followed him. They asked me if he had not taught me to practise prayer. I declared I had practised it from my youth; that he had never taught it to me; that I had no acquaintance with him except from a letter of Father La Mothe, which he had brought me on his way to Savoy, and that, ten years before my departure from France. The Doctor of the Sorbonne, who was acting in good faith, who has never known anything of the knaveries (for I was not allowed to speak in private to him), said aloud that there was no ground there for a serious inquiry. They asked me if it was not he who had composed the little book, “Short and Easy Method.” I said, “No;” that I had written it in his absence, without any design it should be printed; that a Counsellor of Grenoble, a friend of mine, having taken the manuscript from my table, found it useful, and desired it might be printed; that he asked me to make a preface for it and to divide it into chapters, which I did in a single morning. When they saw all I said tended to acquit Father La Combe, they no longer questioned me about him. They commenced by interrogating me on my book. They have never interrogated me on my faith, nor on my prayer, nor on my morals.
I at once made a formal protest, written and signed with my own hand, that I had never wandered from the sentiments of the Holy Church, for which I would be ready to give my blood and my life; that I had never joined with any party; that I had all my life professed the most orthodox sentiments; that I had even laboured, all my life, to submit my intellect and destroy my own will; that if anything were found in my books that might be ill interpreted, I had already submitted all, and I again submitted it, to the opinion of the Holy Church, and even to that of persons of doctrine and of experience; that if I answered to the interrogatories upon the little book it was merely through obedience, and not to support it, as my only design had been to help souls, not to hurt them. That was the first interrogation. I was interrogated four times. On my coming into the House they told the Prioress that I would be there only ten days, to the end of my interrogation. I was not at first surprised that I was prohibited from all communication outside the house or within, because I thought the motive was that I might not have any advice in the interrogation.
The second interrogation was on the little book; whether I had desired to do away with vocal prayer from the church, and particularly the Chaplet, referring to the place where I had taught the saying of Pater Noster with application, and had explained the Pater, and that a Pater so repeated was worth more than many said without attention. It was not difficult to answer this, for to teach a prayer with attention and application is not to destroy prayer; on the contrary, it is to establish it, and to render it perfect. They then put to me other questions on the same book, which I then had not; and I have so little memory, that I did not even know if what they asked me was in the book. Our Lord gave me the grace that he promised to the Apostles, which was to give me a much better answer than I could have found for myself. They said to me, “If you had explained yourself like this throughout the book, you would not be here.”
Suddenly I remembered I had put at the foot of the chapter the same reason that they approved, and I stated it. They would not write it down. After this, I saw they had simply taken the passages of the book that were not explained, and they had omitted their explanation; and it was merely to serve as a pretext for persecution, as the sequel has shown. After I had declared to them the explanations were in the book, and if there was anything wrong in it, they should not hold responsible me, a woman without learning, but the doctors who had approved it even without my asking them, since I was not acquainted with them; from that time they no more interrogated me on this book, nor on that on “The Song of Songs,” being satisfied with the submission I had made.
The last interrogation was on a forged letter, where I was made to write, that I had held assemblies in houses that I was not acquainted with, and all the rest I have already mentioned. They read the letter to me, and as the writing was not at all like mine, I was told it was a copy, and that they possessed the original, which was similar to my writing. I asked to see it, but it has never appeared. I said I had never written it, and that I had no acquaintance with the Minim, to whom it was addressed. To understand the malignity of this letter, it should be known that a worthy Minim Father came to see me on behalf of certain nuns of my acquaintance. One of the hostile persecutors said to me, “You see then Minims also.” Father La Mothe and the woman saw him, and one of the two asked me his name. I did not know it, for I was not acquainted with him, so I was unable to tell it. They concocted then a letter to a Minim to whom they gave the name Father Francis, although I have since learned his name to be quite different. They made me, then, write to this Father, on the 30th of October, a letter in which I wrote to him as if he were residing at Paris, the Place Royale, “My Father, do not come to see me at the Cloister Notre Dame.” The reason why they had put this was, that they had watched that he had not come to the Cloister Notre Dame, and were ignorant of the cause. It continued, that I no longer held assemblies because I was being spied on. This letter convicted me also of designs against the State, cabals, and assemblies; and they added, “I do not sign because of the evil times.” As they were reading this letter to me, I maintained I had never written it. The very style would have shown this to all who have seen or received my letters. As to the assemblies, I always said I had no acquaintance with those persons; that I knew no other Minim but one, who had come to me on behalf of certain nuns; that he did not belong to Paris, that he was Corrector of Amiens. At the time, I did not recollect other reasons to mention, and the Official would not even let these reasons be written. He made them merely put that I said it was not mine. After having read this letter, he turned to me, and said, “You see, Madame, that after a letter like this there was good reason to put you in prison.” I answered him, “Yes, Sir, if I had written it.” He maintained still, in the presence of the Doctor, it was my writing. But our Lord, who never fails at need, made me remember, as soon as they were outside, that the worthy Father was at Amiens from the commencement of the month of September, and it was impossible for me to have written to him as being in Paris on the 30th of October; that he had gone away five weeks before I lodged at the Cloister Notre Dame, and therefore I could not have written to him from there before his departure, on the subject of that arrest, and pray him to come and see me on the 30th of October, in such and such houses with which I was not acquainted, and where I never was—the more so as he was at Amiens. I sent all this in writing to the Official, who took very good care not to show it to the Doctor. I further wrote him that, if he was unwilling to take the trouble to prove its falseness, he should give a commission to the guardian of my children, who would willingly do it. But far from this, what did they do? I am shut up more closely than before. I am accused and defamed everywhere, and they deprive me of the means of justifying myself. They fabricate letters for me, and they are unwilling I should prove my innocence of them. For two months after the last interrogation not a word was said to me, while the same rigour was practised towards me; that Sister treating me worse than ever.
Up to this I had not written anything for my justification to the Archbishop or to the Official; for I had no liberty to write to others, no more than I have at present. I had been, up to the time that I tried to watch myself in the manner I have mentioned, without any sensible or perceptible support, but in a peace of paradise, leaving myself as a mark for all the malice of men. My diversion was to express my state in verse. It seemed to me that, though shut up in a close prison, my soul had the former liberty, larger than the whole earth, which appeared to me but as a point in comparison with the vastness I experienced; and my contentment was without contentment for myself, because it was in God alone, above every own interest. Twelve days before Easter I went to confession. I raised my eyes without knowing why, and I saw a picture of our Lord fallen under his cross, with these words: “See if there is any sorrow like unto my sorrow.” At the same time, I received a powerful impression that crosses were about to fall on me in greater crowds. I had always, until then, entertained some hope justice would be done me; but when I saw that the more I appeared innocent the more they endeavoured to obscure my innocence, and the more closely I was kept confined, I concluded they sought not my innocence, but only to make me appear guilty. What happened confirmed me still more in this thought.
The Official came to see me by himself, without the Doctor, who had been present at the interrogations, and he said to me, “We must not talk about the false letter; it was nothing” (after having previously told me it was for that I was imprisoned). I said to him, “What, Sir, is it not the point in question—the counterfeiting the writing of a person and making her pass for one who holds assemblies and has designs against the State?” He immediately said to me, “We will seek the author.” I said to him, “He is no other than scribe Gautier,” whose wife had told me he counterfeited all sorts of writing. He saw well I had hit the mark. Then he asked me where were the papers I had written on the Scripture. I told him I would give them when I should be out of prison. I did not wish to say to whom I had confided them. He said to me, “If we happen to ask them from you, say the same thing,” making me offers of service. Yet he went away very pleased thinking he had a means of ruining me beyond remedy, and satisfying Father La Mothe’s desire that I should never be let out of prison.
He drew up a proces verbal as if he had interrogated me judicially, although it was nothiug but a simple conversation. The proces verbal ran, that up to that having been in appearance docile, I had rebelled when they had demanded my papers. I knew nothing of all this. I wrote a very strong letter to the Official on what he had said to me, that the letter they had forged was nothing. I also wrote to the Archbishop, who is himself mild enough, and who would not have been led to treat me with so much rigour if he had not been solicited by my enemies. He gave me no answer. But the Official thought he had found a means of ruining me by saying I had been rebellious, and I would not give up my writings. Three or four days before Easter he came with the Doctor of the Sorbonne aud his proces verbal. To the latter I answered that I had made a great difference between a private conversation and an interrogation, and that I had not deemed myself obliged to tell a thing which had been asked me only hypothetically, and that the papers were in the hands of my maid. They asked me if I was willing to hand them over to be disposed of as they pleased. I said, “Yes; that having written only to do the will of God, I was as content to have written for the fire as for the press.” The Doctor said nothing could be more edifying. The copies of my writings were placed in their hands, for as to the originals they had long ceased to be at my disposal. I do not know where those who took them from me have placed them; but I have this firm faith, that they will all be preserved in spite of the tempest. As for me, I had no more of them than I gave, and I did not know where were the others; thus I could say it with truth.
The Prioress of the House where I am a prisoner asked the Official how my affair went, and if I would soon be let out of prison. It escaped him to say to her (and perhaps he did it owing to the Doctor, the better to screen himself): “My Mother, what could one do to a person that does and says all that one desires and in whom nothing is found? She will be released on a very early day.” Yet they did not justify me. The Archbishop declared himself well satisfied with me, and my release and innocence were openly spoken of. Father La Mothe was the only one who had apprehensions. They sought to catch me by surprise.
The more I was innocent, the more troubles I had. I was informed my affair went well, and I should be released at Easter. In the depth of my soul I had a presentiment to the contrary.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MADAME GUYON 