A FEW days later I saw, by night in a dream, the same man who had made the first false document, and he made two others. I also saw another intrigue of Father La Mothe and a persecution he raised against me, so that I found no refuge. Our Lord made me know, either by presentiment or by dream, what they were doing against me. Three or four days afterwards the Official and the Doctor came to tell the Prioress that I must again be shut up under key. She represented to them that the room I was in was small, opening only on the side where the sun shines all day; and in the month of July, how was it possible? it was to cause my death. They paid no attention to this. The Mother asked why they shut me up again. They told her I had done frightful things for a month back in her House, that I had had strange bursts of violence in this same House and that I scandalized the nuns. In vain the Mother protested the contrary, and assured them the whole community were edified by me, and they could not tire of admiring my patience and my moderation. The Official said he knew it at first hand, and I had done terrible things in her House. The poor woman could not restrain her tears at seeing an invention so utterly remote from the truth.
They then sent to fetch me, and they maintained to me that I had done horrible things in this House for a month back. I asked what they were. They would not tell me. I asked who could give an account of what I had done beside the Prioress and the nuns, yet they would not accept their testimony; that I would suffer as long as it pleased God: that they had commenced this business on forgeries, and would continue it on the same. The Doctor said to me I ought not to embitter matters, nor do the horrible things they said I had done. I answered him that God was witness of all. He told me that, in this sort of affairs, to take God for a witness was a crime. I told him that nothing in the world could prevent me having recourse to God. I then withdrew, and I was shut up more closely than the first time; and because they had not got a key, they fastened the room with a wooden bar across. All who passed by there were astonished. I had much joy at this new humiliation. Oh, what pleasure, my Love, to be, for you, in the most extreme abjections!
When the Official was asked why he had caused me to be shut up, he said, he did not know; that they must ask the Prelate. The guardian of my children went to see the Archbishop, and asked him why they had imprisoned me, since he himself had said I was exonerated. He answered him, “You, Sir, know, being a Judge, that ten documents do not condemn, but a single one may be found which condemns absolutely.” The Counsellor said to him, “But, my Lord, what has my cousin done anew?” “What,” says he, “you do not know it! She has done frightful things for a month back.” He, very greatly surprised, asked what they were. He said to him, “After having declared she was innocent, she has written with tears, and as if under force, a retractation, in which she states that she recognizes she has been in error and in evil sentiments, that she is guilty of the things of which they accuse her, and that she cursed the day and the hour she became acquainted with that Father” (meaning Father La Combe). The Counsellor was strangely surprised, but he suspected it was an invention. He requested to see that, and also my interrogations. The Archbishop told him it was a thing which would never be shown, and that it was the affair of the King. The counsellor, for greater certainty came here to see my friend, to know if I had written and signed anything. My friend assured him that neither the Official nor the Doctor had come here for four months—that is, since the Holy Thursday, when they came to propose the marriage of my daughter, on which occasion the Counsellor was present. Thus he saw I had signed nothing, and that I had written nothing, except, at the instance of the Mother, one letter to the Archbishop, of no importance, the copy of which she had and showed him. Here it is:—
“My LORD,
“If I have so long preserved a profound silence, it is, not to be troublesome to your Greatness, but at present the necessity of my temporal concerns indispensably requires me: I earnestly pray your Greatness to ask my liberty from His Majesty. It will be a favour for which I shall be under infinite obligations to you. I am the more hopeful of obtaining it, because the Official told me, before Easter, that I should not remain longer here than ten days, although many times that period has since passed; but I shall in no way regret this if it has served to persuade you, my Lord, of my perfect submission and of the profound respect with which I am, etc.”
This letter said nothing at all; yet he asserted he had a frightful one which I had written against the King and against the State. It was not difficult for the scribe who had written the first false letters to write others.
It was, then, these frightful counterfeit letters, which were shown to Pere de la Chaise, for which I was shut up. O God, you see all this, and my soul was content in the face of such falsities and such knaveries. As soon as I was again shut up, a fresh rumour was set going that I had been convicted of crimes, and that I had committed fresh ones. Everyone broke out against me; even my friends found fault with me, and blamed me for the letter I had written to Pere de la Chaise. They commenced, also, in the House to have doubts of me; and the more desperate I saw everything, the more content was I, O my God, in your will. I said, “O my Love, now they will no longer oblige me to have recourse to creatures. I await everything from you alone. Do with me, then, for time and for eternity, whatever is pleasing to you. Gratify yourself with my trouble.” The guardian of my children was not firm. He was sometimes for me, but as soon as Father La Mothe spoke to him he was against me; so that he was continually wavering.
Three days before I was shut up, Father La Mothe had said that they would shut me up again, and he wrote to my sister, the nun, a violent letter against me. He also said, “We have learned that, in the place where Father La Combe is imprisoned, there is a commandant who is one of his friends. They will take care to imprison him.” It should be known that when Father La Combe was transferred to the Isle of Oleron, the commandants did justice to his virtue. As soon as they saw him they recognized he was a true servant of God. Consequently the commandant, full of love for the truth, wrote to Monsieur de Chateauneuf, that this Father was a man of God, and that he begged some alleviation of his imprisonment might be granted. De Chateauneuf showed the letter to the Archbishop, who showed it to Father La Mothe, and they decided he must be transferred from there. This has been done. He was taken to a desert isle, where he cannot see those commandants. O God, nothing is concealed from you. Will you for long leave your servant in ignominy and grief?
Before I was arrested, M. — had sent for a woman, who is a person of honour, but who did not know me, to tell her that she must go to the Jesuits and depose against me many things which he mentioned to her. She answered him, that she did not know me. He said that was of no importance, it must be done; that his design was to destroy me. Thereupon this woman went to consult a virtuous ecclesiastic, who told her it was a sin and a falsehood. She did not do it. He then proposed it to another person who excused himself. Another, a monk, against whom there were subjects of complaint, to bring himself into credit, wrote against me. It was who would write most violently. I have a cousin-german, whom I believe our Lord has provided for me; for I expect sooner or later he will finish his work. This relative, who is at Saint-Cyr, spoke on my behalf to Madame de Maintenon. She is the only person who has spoken for me. Madame de Maintenon found the King much prejudiced, Father La Mothe having been even with him to speak against me. There was, therefore, nothing to be done. They came to tell me there was no more hope, and all my friends said that the only thing which could be expected was perpetual prison.
I fell dangerously ill, and the physician considered me in great peril. It could not be otherwise, as I was shut up in a place where the air was so hot it was like a stove. They wrote to the Official to procure for me the necessary alleviations, and even the Sacraments, and to permit some one to enter my chamber to attend me. He gave no answer, and but for the Superior of the House, who thought they could not in conscience allow me to die without treatment, and who told the Mother Superior to give it to me, I had died without help; for when it was mentioned to the Archbishop, he said: “What, she is ill, is she, at being shut up within four walls after what’she has done!” and although the Counsellor asked it of him, he would yield nothing. I had a very violent continuous fever, inflammation of the throat, a cough, and a continual discharge from the head upon the chest, which, it seemed, must suffocate me. But, O God, you did not want me, since you inspired the Superior of the House to give orders I should be seen by the physician and the surgeon; for I should have died but for the promptness with which they bled me. I believe few examples of like treatment can be found. I knew all this, and that all Paris was let loose against me, but I felt no pain at it. My friends feared lest I should die; for by my death my name would remain in disgrace, and my enemies have the upper hand. These latter believed I was already dead, and they rejoiced at it; but you, O my Love, did not will they should rejoice over me; you willed, after having abased me to the abyss, to make your mercy shine forth.
The day of Pentecost it was put into my mind that, under the ancient law, there were many martyrs of the Divinity; for the prophets, and so many other Israelites have been martyrs of the true God, and have suffered only for maintaining the Divinity; that in the Primitive Church the martyrs have shed their blood to maintain the truth of Jesus Christ Crucified, God and man; their martyrdom also was bloody: but at present there are martyrs of the Holy Spirit. These martyrs suffer in two ways—first, because they maintain the reign of the Holy Spirit in souls; and, secondly, because they are the victims of the will of God; for the Holy Spirit is the will of the Father and of the Son, as he is the love of it. These martyrs must suffer an extraordinary martyrdom—not in shedding their blood, but in being captives of the will of God, the plaything of his providence, and martyrs of his Spirit. The martyrs of the Primitive Church have suffered for the message of God, which was announced to them by the Word. The martyrs of the present time suffer for dependence on the Spirit of God.
It is this Spirit, which is about to be poured out on all flesh, as is said in the prophet Joel. The martyrs of Jesus Christ have been glorious martyrs, Jesus Christ having drunk all confusion and disgrace. But the martyrs of the Holy Spirit are martyrs of shame and ignominy. It is for this reason the Devil no longer exercises his power upon the faith of these last martyrs; the question is no longer of that: but he attacks directly the domain of the Holy Spirit, opposing the celestial movement in souls, and discharging his hatred on the bodies of those whose spirit is beyond his attack. Oh martyrdom most horrible and most cruel of all! So will it be the consummation of all martyrdoms. And as the Holy Spirit is the consummation of all graces, so the martyrs of the Holy Spirit will be the last martyrs, after which, during a very long time, this Holy Spirit will so possess hearts and minds, that he will cause his subjects to do through love all that is pleasing to him, as the devils by tyranny made those whom they possessed do all that they wished. O Holy Spirit, Spirit of Love, make, then, of me all that pleases you for time and for eternity. Let me be slave to your will, and as a leaf is moved at the pleasure of the wind, may I allow myself to move at your divine breath: but as the impetuous wind breaks and tears away all that resists it, break all that opposes itself to your empire, break the cedars, as your prophet expresses it,—yes, the cedars shall be broken, all shall be destroyed; but “Send out thy Spirit, and thou wilt renew the face of the earth.” It is this same Spirit which destroys, that will renew the face of the earth.
This is very certain. Send your Spirit, Lord; you have promised it. It is said of Jesus Christ, he expired, “breathed out his spirit;” marking thereby the consummation of his sufferings and the consummation of the ages. Also, it is said, he gave up his spirit after having said, “It is consummated,” which shows us the consummation of all things will be effected by the extension of that same Spirit through all the earth; and that this consummation will be that of eternity, which will never be consummated, because it will no more subsist but by the vivifying and immortal Spirit. Our Lord in expiring gave up his spirit into the hands of his Father, as if to let us know that after this Spirit (which is, which was, and which will be, the will and love of God communicated to men) had come out from God to visit the earth, it would return to God almost entirely withdrawn from earth and continuing immovable for a time.
The reign of the Father has been before the Incarnation; that of the Son through the Incarnation, as it is said of Jesus Christ, that he came to reign; and, since his death, St. Paul says that “he will hand back his Kingdom to God his Father,” as if this Apostle would put into the mouth of Jesus Christ these words: “I have reigned, O my Father, in you and through you. Yon have reigned in me and through me. I now hand back my Kingdom to you, that we may reign through the Holy Spirit.” Jesus Christ asks his Father for us in the Pater, “that his Kingdom may come.” Is not this Kingdom come since Jesus Christ is King? But let us hear what Jesus Christ himself teaches us: “That your will be done on earth as in heaven.” It is as if he asked that his true reign, which must come through that of the Holy Spirit, may come,—reign where that Holy Spirit, by communicating himself to them, shall make men accomplish his will upon the earth, as it is accomplished in heaven, without repugnance, without resistance, without delay, and infallibly. “It will be then,” Jesus Christ means to say, “that our reign, O my Father, will be consummated upon the earth. It will be then my enemies shall be made my footstool;” and thus it will be, because the Holy Spirit, in subjecting all wills to himself, will subject all men to Jesus Christ and that, all wills being subjected, all spirits will also be subjected. It is this which will bring about that, when the Holy Spirit shall have renewed the face of the earth, there will be no more idolaters; all will be subjected by the Spirit to the Lord.
O Spirit, Consummator of all things, reduce everything to one! But before that can be, you will be a Spirit-Destroyer. Accordingly, Jesus Christ, speaking of the Spirit that he is about to send, says: “I am not come to bring peace, but the sword. I am come to bring fire. What do I wish, but that it should burn?” It is necessary to be re-born of the Spirit and of water. The message (speech) is like water that flows away; but it is the Spirit which renders it fruitful. It is this “Spirit, which will teach us all things;” as Jesus Christ says, “He will take of mine:” for it is by the Holy Spirit the Word is communicated to us, as in Mary:—Spirit who teaches through the central depth.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MADAME GUYON 