ALTHOUGH the Archbishop had told the Counsellor, who is guardian of my children, that I had written to him those retractations and those dreadful letters of which I have spoken, which, as the Lord showed me in a dream, they had got written by the forger who had done the first one, they did not cease, in an underhand way, urging me to write something similar, promising me complete liberty. They wished to draw from me retractations, and yet neither in the interrogations nor judicially had they ever required them of me, because the Doctor, who is an honorable man, was witness to it, and there was nothing which called for them, as I was never interrogated upon anything of this kind. But they hoped, in procuring this letter from me, to declare me guilty to posterity, and to show thereby they had reason for imprisoning me; thus covering all their artifices. They further wished a pretext which might appear, and which would prove it was with justice they had caused Father La Combe to be imprisoned; and they tried by menaces and by promises to make me write that he was a deceiver. To this I answered, that I was not unhappy in the convent nor in prison, however rigorous it might be; that I was ready to die, and even to ascend the scaffold, rather than write a falsehood; that they had only to show my interrogations; that I had spoken the truth as I had sworn to speak it.
As they saw they could extract nothing from me, they composed an execrable letter, wherein they make me accuse myself of all sorts of crimes, even of those our Lord has given me the grace to be ignorant of: that I recognize Father La Combe has deceived me; that I hate the hour I knew him. O God, you see this, and you keep silence: you will not always keep silence. When Father La Mothe saw that people were beginning to believe he was the author of the persecution and of the imprisonment of Father La Combe, in order to excuse himself to the world, he caused it to be conveyed to Father La Combe that I had accused him. He said, “I have intreated the Archbishop to show me the interrogations of my monk. I even wished to follow this up, and to demand the reason why he was a prisoner, but the Archbishop told me that they were matters concerning the King, with which I should not meddle.” He published to all the world that I was on the point of ruining their House: that I tried to make them Quietists—I, who never spoke to them. He bethought him of another trick, in order it might never be known to His Majesty that he was the author of our persecutions. He made the Archbishop, whose director he is, consult him to know if in conscience he, the Archbishop, could set me free; because he feared Madame Maintenon might speak in my favour. To an answer making me appear guilty, Father La Mothe, in a concerted letter, writes as if in my interest: “I think, my Lord, you may let my sister go, notwithstanding all that is past; and I answer you after having consulted God, and I do not find any objection to it.” This letter is carried to His Majesty to show the probity of Father La Mothe, and to arrest any suspicion touching him. Yet they did not cease to say openly, notwithstanding the consultation, that they do not believe in conscience they could set me at liberty, and it is on this footing they speak of it to His Majesty; making me appear so much the more criminal as they make Father La Mothe the more zealous. A Bishop, speaking of me one day to one of my friends, who tried to defend me: “How,” said he, “do you wish to make us believe her innocent, —I, who know that Father La Mothe, her own brother, has been compelled by zeal for the good of the Church and by a spirit of piety, to carry frightful reports against his sister and his monk to the Archbishop? He is a good man, who has done this only through zeal.” This Bishop is intimate with the Archbishop: a Doctor of the Sorbonne, who is everything with the Archbishop, said the same.
Although Father La Combe is in prison, we do not cease to communicate together in God, in a wonderful manner. I have seen a letter of his where he writes it to a person in his confidence. Many spiritual persons to whom our Lord has united me by a kind of maternity, experience the same communication, although I be absent, and find in uniting themselves to me the remedy for their ills. O God, you who have chosen this poor insignificant creature to make her the throne of your bounties and of your rigours, you know I omit many things from not knowing how to express them and from want of memory. I have told what I have been able, with an extreme sincerity and an entire truth. Although I have been obliged to write the proceedings of those who persecute me, I have not done it through resentment: since I bear them in my heart and pray for them, leaving to God the care of defending me and delivering me from their hands, without my making a movement for that purpose. I have believed and understood that I should sincerely write all things in order that he might be thereby glorified, and that he willed that what had been done in secret against his servants should one day be published upon the house-top, and the more they endeavour to hide themselves from the eyes of men the more will God make manifest all things.
I experience at present two states both together. I bear Jesus Christ Crucified and Child. As a consequence of the one, crosses are in great number, very severe and without cessation; there being few days I have not many of them. As a consequence of the other, I have something childlike, simple, candid; something so innocent that it seems to me, if my soul were put under a press, only candour, innocence, simplicity and suffering would issue from it. O my Love, it seems to me you have made of me a prodigy before your eyes for your sole glory. I cannot tell how it sometimes happens that when I approach the image of Jesus Christ Crucified, or Child, I feel myself, without feeling, suddenly renewed in one or other of these states; and there takes place in me something of the original, which communicates itself to me in an inexplicable manner, and which experience alone can make understood—this experience is rare. It is, then, to you, O my Love, that I make over what I have written for you.
Written this 21st of August, 1688, aged forty years, from my prison which I love and cherish.
I will write the memoirs of the rest of my life through obedience, with a view to completing them one day, if it is deemed suitable.
I forgot to say that I believe I felt the state of the souls who approached me, and that of the persons who were given to me, however distant these were. I call “feeling” an interior impression of what they were; especially in the case of those who passed for spiritual. I knew at once if they were simple or dissimulating; their degree and their self-love, for which things I had a repugnance to them. I recognized when they were strong in themselves, and resting on the virtue they believed themselves to have, and by which they measured others, and condemned in their mind those who were not like them, although more perfect. These persons, who believe themselves and are believed righteous, are much more disagreeable to God than certain sinners through weakness; whom the world regards with horror, and to whom, nevertheless, God shows very great mercies. This will only be seen at the Day of Judgment. Yet God suffers with difficulty these strong souls, of themselves so full, although they think themselves humble, because they practise certain forms of humility; which most often only serve to augment their self-opinion. If these souls had to suffer some real humiliation, whether for some unexpected fall or public infamy, where would they be? Then one would know their lack of solidity. If it were known how God loves true littleness, men would be astonished at it. When people speak to me of some persons of piety, my central depth rejects those who are not in the littleness of which I speak, and it admits those who are devoted to God as God wishes them, without my knowing how this takes place. I find there is in me something which rejects the evil and approves the true good. It is the same in the practise of the virtues; this upright spirit discerns at once the true virtue from that which is it not. It is, again, the same with the Saints of heaven as with those of earth. Our Lord makes me know that which constitutes the principal character of their sanctity; who those are who have been more annihilated, or those whom God has sanctified by action: and when some prerogative is attributed to a Saint, and it is not the one which belongs to him, this central depth rejects it without my paying attention; but as soon as that which belongs to them is said, it acquiesces.
The 21st of August, 1688, it was thought I was about to be released from prison, and everything seemed arranged for it. Our Lord made me feel in my central depth that, far-from intending to deliver me, it was new snares they were spreading for me, and that they were taking counsel together the better to destroy me; that all they had done was only to make the King acquainted with Father La Mothe, and to give him an esteem for him.
The 22nd at my waking, I was put into a state of agony, like that of Jesus Christ agonizing and seeing the counsel of the Jews against him; and the certainty of that plot was again given to me. I saw that there was none but you, O my God, who could withdraw me from their hands. I comprehend that you will one day do it by your right hand; but I am ignorant of the manner, and I abandon all things to you. I am yours, O my Love, for time, and for eternity. My soul has long been completely independent of all which is not God: she has not need of any creature, and though she should be alone in the world, she would find herself infinitely content. Her indifference is entire and perfect, and she does not depend on anything whatsoever under the heaven: nothing but God occupies and fills her. This deadness of all desire, this powerlessness to have need of any creature (I am not speaking of things necessary for a corporal life) and this perfect satiety exempt from all desire, because nothing is wanting, is the greatest mark of the entire possession of God, who alone as Sovereign Good can content the whole soul.
One day, as I was thinking to myself how it happens that the soul who commences to be united to God, although she finds herself united to the Saints in God, has yet hardly any instinct to invoke them, it was put into my mind that servants have need of credit and intercessors, but the wife obtains all from her husband even without asking him for anything. He anticipates her with an infinite love. O God, how little they know you! They examine my actions; they say I do not repeat the Chaplet, because I have no devotion to the Holy Virgin. O divine Mary, you know how my heart is yours in God, and the union which God has made between us in himself, yet I cannot do anything but what Love makes me do. I am altogether devoted to him and to his will.
The Official came with the Doctor, the guardian of my children, and Father La Mothe, to speak to me of the marriage of my daughter. Father La Mothe, who heard all this, did not say a word, except that he whispered to me (believing thereby to hide his part in the persecutions, and to persuade me he had no part in them) that I was detained in the convent only about the marriage of my daughter. I made little answer to him, and I treated him as civilly and as cordially as was possible; our Lord giving me the grace easily for love of himself to treat him so. They said to Father La Mothe I had received him very well and they were edified at it. He answered that, while I was showing him outward civility, I was abusing him under my breath. He wrote the same to my brothers, saying I had strangely illtreated him. I declare I was surprised at such an invention, and I would not have believed that one could invent in such a way.
God, who never abandons those who hope in him, has done that which he had made me know he would do for me by the hand of Madame de Maintenon. It happened in the way I am about to describe: which should make us marvel at the conduct of God, and the care he takes of those who are his, while he appears most to abandon them.
God had permitted the affairs of my only uncle to fall into disorder. He had a daughter, a canoness of intelligence and merit. She had a very pretty little sister, and, as Madame de Maintenon had lately established a House for girls whose fathers were ruined in the service of the King, the canoness went to present her sister to Madame de Maintenon, who was very much pleased with her, and also with her own cleverness. She begged her to remain at the House until her little sister got used to it; but when she had become acquainted with the cleverness and the capacity of the canoness, she engaged her to remain altogether, or at least for some time, begging her to see the House fairly started. Shall I say, oh my Love, that I believe you have done this only for me? My cousin wished to speak in my favour to Madame de Maintenon, but she found her so prejudiced against me by calumny that she had the grief to see nothing could be done in this quarter. She let me know it. I remained very content in the will of God, with this rooted conviction, that nothing would be done except through Madame de Maintenon, and that this was the way of which God had resolved to make use.
I remained then very peaceful, waiting the moment of the good God, when Madame de Miramion, who had been very much prejudiced against me, and who believed me very criminal, because my enemies had persuaded her of it, came by pure providence to the convent where I was. She had much esteem for the Prioress. She asked her if she believed me misled, as she had been told. The Prioress and the nuns told her a thousand good things about me, which their charity made them see. She was amazed, for she had been assured I caused great evils in this House. She resolved to serve me through pure charity, and to speak to Madame de Maintenon, and this had a good effect. But that which above all makes us marvel at the providence of God with regard to me is that the Abbess with whom I had placed that worthy girl, the nun, who has caused me so many crosses both at Gex, and because Father La Mothe’s desire to get the money I had given for her dowry has been in part the cause of the persecution he stirred up against me—this Abbess, I say, found herself obliged to come to Paris for some business. She is a relative of Madame de Maintenon; and as she had need of arranging with me for the dowry of that girl, she complained of the Archbishop’s refusal to allow me to speak to her, and she explained it was a business of charity I was doing in favour of a poor girl, whom I was making a nun in her House. This gave an opportunity to Madame de Maintenon to speak for me, that I might be able to arrange with this Abbess. Being again entreated by my cousin, she spoke to the King, who said they should present him with a “Placet.” It was brought to him, and, as it was the eve of St. Louis, I had an instinct to pray for the King that he might be enlightened as to the truth. He ordered the Archbishop to set me at liberty; which not a little surprised and vexed him. I marvelled, O my God, at your divine providence, and the markedly special springs of your adorable control; since this same money, which has been the first source of all my troubles, through Father La Mothe’s desire to have it, you have made, O my God, the means of my liberty. This Abbess did much more, for by her authority she caused to be given to Father La Mothe, as it were in spite of himself, and while fearing his practices were discovered, a letter of esteem for my piety and the pious life I had led.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MADAME GUYON 