Autobiography of Sister Geneviève of the Holy Face (1909) - continuation and end

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   As I write these lines, a new reflection comes to my mind, always about the vanities of this world; this subject, it seems to me, would be inexhaustible if we wanted to study it thoroughly.

   On earth, merit is not attributed to people, they are not judged according to their moral qualities, but they are treated according to the things with which they surround themselves, yes, these are the things which, the would we believe? give them value. So when we lived, in the summer, in the countryside that I have just described, there was around us a whole radiance of honors, we were greeted, we were surrounded with eagerness, in a word we were the lords of the place, treated as such by the locals. Even the local squires wanted to make our acquaintance and the young Countesses of F. made many representations to Monsieur le Curé asking him to invite us to pay them a visit. As we wanted to keep our independence and live with the family, we did not go at first, but one morning after mass, Madame de Fayet having invited us to have breakfast at the castle, it was impossible for us, on pain of to be impolite, not to respond to this advance and we paid them a visit which was immediately returned to us. But, to this exchange of politeness renewed several times, our relations of then were limited. (Later, at Carmel, these young ladies became my intimate friends.)

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for we were extremely reserved, not wanting to throw ourselves into an environment where, as I said, we would have compromised our independence even a little. Besides, we didn't need to create relationships, we were more than enough to make us happy.

   But I come to the contrast. Honored in this Musse campaign, it was quite different when we went to spend a few hours at the little house in St Ouen (St Ouen-le-Pin, near Lisieux) and I remember that having gone there one day in distribution of the prizes, we were lost in the crowd of villagers, without anyone offering us a seat, while the squires of the country sat on the platform, watching us from the height of their grandeur. Why this difference, why? Me, I am the same here or there, I have the same value in this country as in that other, it is not to me that this change of regard should be attributed, no it is not to me , but to whom? whose ? to the house that I live!!!.. Oh! deep abyss of vanity, O deceived and deceitful world, I no longer want to hear you, I want to break all commerce with you, for my soul is too great and the nobility of its feelings too lofty to dwell within your walls where "the we tell lies to each other, where we speak with flattering lips and a double heart”. (Ps XII, 3)

   Taught by my own experience, so I did not find happiness in opulence, I only found it in

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my heart, when it was united with the good God, and this happiness was all the greater the more perfect the union. No, happiness is not in the objects that surround us, "the kingdom of God is within us" (Luke XVII, 21) and I have experienced this truth because, for me, I have never bored only within the distraction.

   Our days were, however, full, walks, excursions, family life shared our time during the holidays. On rainy days we played billiards, or racked our brains at chess. We often practiced target shooting, a favorite pastime of these gentlemen. It was the most skilful, but I have to admit that I was hardly skilful when someone put a 'Lebel' gun in my hands! With this long engine of war I would not have been useful to my country, unless, however, habit had given me strength.

   This was how our time passed, and while I strolled about bored, the servants came and went cheerfully busying themselves with useful work, the gardener visited the apartments and the steps, proudly renewing the flowers in his baskets. while upstairs a young worker ironed, singing, the dresses and lace that I soiled while crying. I say 'crying', because if my eyes did not shed tears my heart suffered from this state of things, human things, cruel,

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unjust who would appeal to the judgment seat of God if they were eternal. Yes, when we begin to consider life as we lived it here below, we feel the need for a final judgment, the necessity of which is essential in order to put everything in its place and judge everyone, not to after his houses and his riches but after the works of his heart.

   I still say "while crying" because these entertainments left a great void in my heart, my days seemed dull to me and I longed for a more interesting, more overflowing life. This dream life, I found it in Carmel and I must admit that there my dreams were exceeded. By entering this blessed solitude, I left the moving grounds far from me and I set foot forever on solid ground where the vertigo of the soul is no longer known...there my heart found rest. , my activity its food, there my unfulfilled aspirations were fully satiated, my inconstancy forever fixed, there in place of my poverty and moral languor I saw "peace inhabited in my ramparts and abundance in my towers . (Ps.)

   The world really does not know where real happiness is, it looks for it in distractions, in conversations, in noise. He does not notice that in spreading outward the soul becomes impoverished, for in order to give without becoming impoverished one must draw from the living source which is Jesus and the soul which, giving itself up to the world, takes its source in vanity cannot take it at the same time in Truth.

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   However, the good Lord has arranged things in such a way that you are your own best company. It is rare to be bored when engaged in useful work, and the hours thus employed pass much more quickly than those when the soul is in search of distractions. I think it's because we use our time in this way that life goes by so quickly in Carmel.

   It is with that as with everything else. To speak only of what I have experienced, not only is solitude and silence the most pleasant pastime for me, but the austerities of my present life, desired and loved austerities, are sweeter, even physically, than the simple inconveniences formerly endured in the world with a thousand precautions to escape them.

   Thus, I have never been warmer than by wanting to fight the heat with light clothing, and I have never been cooler than by patiently supporting my thirty pounds of homespun at the height of summer. So true is it that our peace, our happiness, our well-being are much more in us than in the objects that surround us.

   If those who doubt it wanted to convince her of this truth that it is not the comfort of life

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fortune that bring happiness, they would only have to consult the hearts of children, to study their tastes and their way of being, because they are for us a book of wisdom whose pages have not yet been read. soiled, it is easy to see the imprint of God.

   But the heart of the little ones is neither envious nor proud; it makes no difference between a diamond and a pebble, between silk and rags. When I was at La Musse it sometimes happened that my cousin Marie and I would meet the concierge's many children near their little house. As far as they could see us coming down the avenue, they rushed into the bushes like a flock of birds. That's all the reception they gave us! This was telling us clearly that they had no need of our good graces and that we could go home. They were happy without our gifts and our presence only brought them trouble and boredom.

   O dear little ones, I said to myself, you are right to know how to do without us, and if I did not have at the bottom of my heart this intense love of my God which gives me life and which is my only wealth, you would be in your poverty, much happier and freer than I!

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   Such, my Mother, are my intimate feelings with regard to the goods of this world. If I could communicate them to the poor, the envy would disappear from their hearts forever. And if they did the worldly the honor of granting them one of their thoughts, this thought, far from being a desire of covetousness, would be a deep pity in seeing them take their joy in making waves of dust swirl under the wheels of their chariots, and the ambition of their hearts to mount their castles to the heights, for the word of the Lord will be fulfilled: "When you lift up your floor like the eagle, says he, when you

  place among the stars, I will bring you down! "(Obdias I, 4) And to avoid the trouble of descending, they would not desire to ascend to earth, and their hearts, appreciating only the glory of heaven, which is without envy and without pride, would only like to taste the eternal joys whose satiety is without disgust and whose duration is endless.

   But I leave here my reflections, which are already too long, and resume my family life.

   The stay in the countryside in the last years that I spent in the world was really for me almost cloudless as much as is possible in this land of exile since I had with me my beloved Father. Because of his state of infirmity we were unable to install him in the castle for the night, the arrangement of the rooms and the steps had prevented this and he slept in a [208] large room adjoining the guard's house, who was on the ground floor, on the same level as the park, only a few meters from our house, her servant living in an adjoining room. Seeing him in this rustic dwelling, with the walls simply whitewashed like a hermit's cell, I thought of his desire, once expressed, to end his days in such a place, it was indeed there that he was to die.

   As my dear little Father needed to be looked after night and day, I had established as a law, in relation to the religious exercises, that the servant who missed mass on Sundays because of him would go to hear it on Monday. So every Monday I saw either the servant or the maid put on their most elegant clothes and accompany us to morning mass. One day they said to me with enthusiasm: “Oh! Mademoiselle, this method is wise, unfortunately we do not think about it, and in the countryside, held back by pressing occupations, we become unaccustomed to this great duty, so when we are there later, we will not fail to remember it for put it into practice. These good people were really in awe of such a simple thought and because of it they looked upon me as a genius. Yet it was more than natural and only common sense. But it gave them a high idea of ​​the Sunday precept to see themselves thus driven along with us in carriages without themselves having any service to perform.

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   However, the time had come when Jesus was going to break the bonds of his little fiancée and finally call her to live in his house. But before living under the roof of the Spouse I had to go through great pain in losing on earth the father whom I loved with incomparable tenderness.

   It was on Sunday, July 29, 1894 at 8 o'clock in the morning, that the good Lord called back his faithful servant. It was right that he should enter his rest at dawn on a Sunday, he who had, during his mortal life, so lovingly hallowed the Lord's day.

   The day before, my dear little Father had received the last Sacraments and on the morning of his last day of exile, part of the staff having gone to hear mass in the neighboring town (at Evreux.) I was left alone to keep him. At five o'clock in the morning, finding his breathing panting, they had come to fetch me in all haste, but seeing that the agony was prolonged, it was agreed that we would attend mass in the village when the first group would be back. As for me, I begged Jesus not to allow me to be absent at the supreme moment. It seemed to me that this last consolation was due to me, I had bought it so dearly!

   I was alone with my dear Father (Leonie had left me in June 1893 to return to the Visitation of Caen) when my Aunt came to join me. Having noticed that the dear sick man was falling noticeably, she went to fetch my uncle. It was during

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this space of time that Jesus gave me the ineffable and unforgettable consolation that I am about to describe.

   I had never seen anyone die and I was hard pressed to know what my duties were at this solemn moment. The thought occurred to me to exhort my Father by speaking to him of the good God, but was he going to understand me? He gave no sign of consciousness, his eyes were closed and his noisy breathing would probably prevent him from hearing me. In this perplexity, my heart full of anguish, I turned towards heaven to implore help. So in a moved voice I said these simple words: “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, I give you my heart, my spirit and my life. Jesus Marie Joseph assist me in my last agony, Jesus Marie Joseph make me die in peace in your holy company! »

   As soon as my dear little Father opened his eyes, he looked at me… His gaze was full of life, gratitude and tenderness, the flame of intelligence illuminated him…

  In an instant I found my beloved Father as he was five years before and it was to bless me and thank me!.. Oh! this eloquent and profound gaze is engraved forever in my heart as a pledge of predilection, for the good Lord can only ratify on me this blessing of a dying Father.

   After this ineffable farewell overflowing with promises

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my darling Father lowered his eyes so as not to open them any longer to the passing things of time.

   Immediately after his death, the reflection of celestial bliss rested on his forehead, his beautiful face seemed transfigured and all who saw him were deeply struck by it. As for me, I relieved my pain in a flood of tears, a pain which was not, however, without consolation, for I felt intimately the protection, very special over me, of the one whose painful old age I had shared, a pain also lightened by hope, for I knew that by this death the Lord "had torn the sack of tribulation he was carrying to clothe him entirely with joy, that he had changed his lamentations into joy so that his soul would sing it forever ! (Ps. XXX, 12.13)

   A few days after this supreme separation we were back in Lisieux. How many impressions passed through my heart during this trip when I was bringing lifeless the beloved Father who had surrounded our childhood with so much devotion and exquisite tenderness!... And how proud I was to have been chosen by the divine Providence to wipe away the bitter tears of his last days and return to him in some way the care and love he had lavished on us!

   This mission, which I had had to fulfill, the good Lord had, so to speak, given me a glimpse of in a dream of my childhood. One night, while I slept, while my Father was in the middle of

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vigor I saw him, aged and bent with age, trudging painfully down an extremely long path. He walked without support, however a few steps from him, an angel preceded him holding a lighted torch in his hand.

   Here ended the parable, my sisters, and Thérèse in particular, saw in it the image of the mission that I had to fulfill with my dear Father. As the angel who did not support him directly, but simply guided his walk, I could not alas! relieve him perfectly in his infirmities, particularly during the three years that he spent away from me, and yet by my presence I never ceased to lead him, to light his way and it was I who put him back between the hands of God.

   My noble task once accomplished, no tie held me any longer in the world, I thought I would respond without delay to the call of the good Lord. I opened up about this project to my dear Carmelites, but I had a revelation to make to them, a revelation which they did not expect. Oh! that I suffered to keep my secret until this day especially with regard to my beloved Thérèse from whom I hid none of my thoughts.

   They believed, my dear sisters, to see me applying for admission to Carmel, so what was their surprise when they heard me say that my director, Father Pichon, wanted

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to throw myself into the works and that he had been waiting for me for a long time in Canada to found a small congregation which he was meditating on. He had expressly forbidden me to tell anyone. As for me, I had never promised him to respond to his call: on the one hand I let him maintain his hope, while on the other I had not undeceived my sisters in their conviction that I would be a Carmelite, I I was waiting for the hour of the good Lord, certain that he would manifest his Will to me and would not let me go astray. I was not disappointed in my expectation and the decision was quickly made thanks to the prayers and tears of my dear little Thérèse. In this circumstance, as in all the others, she was the angel sent by the good God to make known to me his will and to purchase by her sufferings the graces which she brought me.

   I can never say what she endured on this occasion, she confided to me that in her life, she had never cried so much, it came to her a certain headache so violent that she wondered if she was not was not going to get sick. She has often since spoken to me again of this great ordeal in which she had suffered so much for her beloved Céline… So much so that I can affirm that she bought me with her prayers and her tears as St. Monique bought her Augustin.

   But why this persistence in wanting me to be a Carmelite and a Carmelite with her? As you can well imagine, my Mother, there was no natural attachment in this, [214] it was a desire that the good God himself put in her heart: she had a presentiment of her mission and wanted form me according to the inspirations she received from heaven. She could not have suffered that her Céline followed another path than "her little path of love and abandonment", because in the eternal plans Céline was to be the first "little victim" offered after her to Merciful Love...

   As I said, the good Lord could not let me wander for long. He had seen the righteousness of my intentions, he had counted above all the efforts that I had had to make and the incomprehensible suffering renewed at each visit to hide from my little Thérèse, the sister of my soul, my confidante, my intimate friend. , I was going to say: myself the projects in which I was rocked in secret. O my Mother! how much I suffered!... and this suffering continued for several years. Thérèse then admired my docility, it is true that she was very great, I recognize that today. Because if I had an attraction for the apostolate of the missionaries in an infidel country, I had none for the work that was offered to me and if I hesitated to answer it it was only for fear of not not be where God wanted me, this work of zeal deceiving me from my true aspirations.

   I loved Jesus so much, in fact, that I would not have recoiled from any sacrifice, I calculated neither with my pain nor with my repugnance and in my impulses for the most perfect I even leaned towards distant exile and total separation from my sisters.

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  Alas! I see now how much this fine zeal was tainted with illusions. I saw it even when these events unfolded because I realized that there was a lot of self-seeking in the execution of this plan. To go so far, to Canada! leaving everyone I loved, founding a work, all that was marvellous, the good Lord had designs on me, no doubt I was a great soul, a saint in germ, why not? Without properly analyzing all these thoughts, I am however certain that they existed in me, if not in theory, at least in action.

   I put my finger on this truth when I renounced these projects and decided to enter Carmel as soon as possible, because this resolution, once taken, disgust invaded my soul, repugnance for religious life became a real torture. . I believe that the devil, seeing me finally enter the path that the Love of Jesus had marked out for me, did everything to throw me into discouragement and make me abandon my plans.

   Would you believe me, Mother, if I tell you that the thought of seeing my dear sister again, of living alongside my Thérèse, did not stir up any feeling of joy in me. The consolation was far away, oh! she was so far from my soul! It was agony. I think that this ordeal was a merciful grace from Jesus who wanted to make my entrance meritorious. This entrance after which I had aspired, for so long, with all the strength of my

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soul and with all the ardor of my will, it was therefore offered to me, I was going to accomplish it without having to undergo great separations, it even brought me the reunion with beings tenderly loved and strange thing! I apprehended it as one apprehends a heavy cross. Thanks to these intimate feelings, so at odds with appearances, I was able, without anyone knowing it, to offer Jesus a real sacrifice by embracing religious life and thus participating in the merit of souls who abandon everything to serve him. Oh! how much I was grateful to my Jesus for having allowed these repugnances which, in the absence of a paternal roof to leave, made me leave myself to answer his call!

   I wondered with anguish what was this dark, hidden life, what was this tomb in which I was going to bury myself. Even the religious costume impressed me. I said to myself with terror: what will become of me when my head is wrapped in laundry, I who love so much to have air and the freedom of my movements? Going back then in my thoughts the diversity of the costumes, I saw such nuns wearing a starched wimple, others with pipes all around the head, like still a kind of flap which automatically follows the movements of the jaw, while their veil makes, at the top of the head sometimes the pointed, sometimes the square. Oh my God! I cried, hiding my face with my hands, my God! that's what I must drink to! I too will be a 'good sister' and participate in the disgrace that surrounds them! What am I a man! that

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the poor women are therefore unhappy to be forced to deck themselves out in this way!

   My Mother, I would not end if I wanted to review all the dislikes that assailed my soul. But as in the past, at a very critical moment, I had said to Thérèse: “Speak up!” I said to myself: “Walk! » and I walked so well that six weeks after my Father's death I entered the Carmel, I would have even made this entry more quickly if I had not wanted to satisfy my family and satisfy the last obligations that remained to me.

   Tested in my soul I was not outwardly, all my steps succeeded as if by magic. On the side of my family I had nothing to fear, I was 25 years old, I was free. I did suffer, it is true, a few small persecutions. It was claimed around me that my vocation was to remain in the world, that I had all the qualities of an excellent mother. So much the better, I said to myself, that's exactly what it takes to consecrate oneself to the good Lord! Oh what! do you imagine by chance that I embrace the religious state to lock myself in a cocoon and enjoy the repose of a sterile egoism? No, no, I don't want a half-life but an overflowing life and it is to become the mother of souls, of many souls that I unite myself to God by the sacred bonds of marriage. mystical, much more fruitful than all the unions of

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Earth! I only have one life at my disposal, I want to give it to Jesus. He sacrificed his for me, isn't it right that I return the favor and that in the absence of the testimony of blood, given in an instant, I give him my whole being drop by drop, in the thousand sacrifices of each day. How good the Lord is to have left us the glory of being able to be generous!

   Yes, my Mother, in spite of the repugnance of which I spoke to you just now, my resolution remained firm and unshakable. It was not these dislikes that were going to make me forget or reject a project that had been matured for a long time, analyzed and understood in its multiple facets. After all, what did the incidents of life matter to me? Was it great of me to allow myself to be frightened by some form of hairstyle or clothing, by an embarrassment due to material causes, that is, far below me, on a miserable body destined to dissolution ? Yes, I understand that those who give themselves up to God abandon everything and, taking in an original way the opposite of the ridiculous socialities which dishonor creatures made in the image of God, creatures emulated by Angels, I understand that these true philosophers make, by their excesses, a gesture of contempt for the world and I found that true beauty was on their side, moral beauty, solid and strong before which all the elegance of the century is eclipsed.

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   As for my final choice of Carmel, it was based on an intimate conviction that where there was more suffering there were more benefits, than where there was a more obscure existence, a more total death to oneself, a more intense radiance of life sprang forth, and I preferred to renounce myself fleeting joys, in order to deserve eternal joys for others.

   What I mean here by fleeting joys is the encouragement given by the sight of the work accomplished. We like to see the seed sprout that our hand has sown in the ground, and I too would have liked to exercise my devotion to positive things, to feel the work of my hands. I said the life of a missionary had smiled on me a lot, I would have liked to go and evangelize distant lands. This desire was pronounced in my soul as it had been in my dear Therese and, in my turn, I was forced to go forward, turning my head away. I refer to this feature of our life:

   It was during the trip to Rome. A priest gave us an annal relating the apostolate of women missionaries. Upon receiving it, Thérèse's features blossomed, but soon she said to me: "Give this writing back to its owner, I don't want to read it because I would thereby arouse attractions that I don't want to follow." » What she wanted was to bury herself in Carmel in order to be forgotten and counted for nothing, because she considered that there was no fruitful and lasting work except the only holiness in total death to oneself. -even.

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   This is also what I had come to seek at Carmel, but I was unaware then of the work that had to be imposed to achieve it. Later I will speak to you, my Mother, of the struggles and the difficulties that I encountered in this work, so simple in itself, but which heroism alone accomplishes.

   I resume my story at the point where I left it before all these reflections. I said that on the side of my family the resistance had been weak, my uncle suspected without admitting it to me, of this final outcome. He must have sensed it from my invariable negative responses, at each marriage proposal, for my Father's state of impotence could not prevent me from founding a home of which he would have been the venerable relic until his last evening, finding in its chief a protector and a support. My uncle knew this very well, so he let me draw up my plans without upsetting them too much, believing them, in the bottom of his heart, to be the fruit of very mature and consequently irrevocable reflections.

   On the side of Carmel the difficulties were greater and more invincible. The superior, annoyed that Thérèse had already entered, as if in spite of himself, on the express order of Mgr Hugonin, always had in his heart this denial given to his way of seeing things and he had sworn that the fourth sister would never enter his monastery. . No one wanted to talk to him about it. I had to take charge of the negotiations alone, I first wrote him a letter to explain my desire to him and then I went to find him. From the first

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words, he took pity on the orphan who placed herself under his protection and gave me his full consent. From Heaven, my dear little Father helped me more than he could have done for his poor little Queen, when he himself accompanied her in her fruitless steps, pleading her cause without result.

   Bishop Hugonin called to also give his consent for this extraordinary exception which constituted, I was going to say, an infraction of our rules - but not since the case was not foreseen - Bishop Hugonin consulted allowed, without hesitation, the immediate entry of this 4th sister, in this same convent of the Carmel of Lisieux. The monastery being very poor they had asked for my admission as a 'benefactress'. Bishop responded by wishing me to be a perfect benefactress in every sense of the word. I then promised myself to do everything in me to be a perfect nun and thereby a source of benefits for the community which had the charity to admit me into its midst.

   It only remained for me to fix the day of my departure. September 14, feast of the exaltation of the Holy Cross, was chosen for this last entry which, by making us all wives of Jesus, was to fulfill the desires of our pious parents. I do not see without emotion this feast appointed by divine Providence to close the series of holocausts offered by the venerable Patriarch who, after having bowed his forehead under the crown of opprobrium, was at this moment exalting in heaven the privileges of suffering and the glories of the Cross.

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   On the eve of this day of departure, my interior sorrows redoubled in intensity and my apprehensions were so great that I passed the night without sleeping. I imagined the nuns as great ghosts who walked slowly through the cloisters reciting De Profundis in a monotonous voice. This painting filled me with dread and really it is not forgivable to me who frequented so many nuns to have such ideas, but in my eyes my darling sisters were my sisters and nothing more, I believe that I do not I hadn't thought that they were nuns: so I had only very briefly seen their habit and I had never thought of analyzing it for myself.

   The morning of the 14th; I left accompanied by my dear uncle, my aunt and my cousin Marie to attend mass at Carmel and enter immediately after our thanksgiving. I was very sorry to leave my beloved parents who had shown me so much affection and had surrounded my Father's old age with so much delicacy and the deepest devotion. As for my cousin Marie, whom I loved very tenderly, I knew that she would join me soon and would share the same religious life with me. Nevertheless, the separation was very hard and many tears were shed, because my parents loved me very much.

   Once I had crossed the fence door all my temptations vanished, the storm gave way to calm and the deepest serenity, I felt that at last I had

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found my resting place

   My 'little Mother' Agnès of Jesus, then prioress, led me to our cell, where I found my two sisters Marie and Thérèse waiting for me. I can still see the gaze of my darling Thérèse welcoming me on the threshold of this new existence that I was beginning. I understood that seeing me at her side, all her wishes were fulfilled and that soon she could fly away. She seemed to think that ... Then taking my hands she showed me, placed gently on the pillow; a paper on which were written in verse:

   And the angels were singing, 'Come to us, young lady!

   “Come and be among us the diamond that shines

   “Or the star, golden flower, of which the world is jealous

   "Come into our garden to open yourself, oh beautiful rose

   "Let the dawn with the full hand of its rays sprinkle

   “Come to us! Come to us!

   "Come to us girl!"

   “My crown lacks a shining pearl,

   “The Lord told us, and we all come

   "To take you away from the world with our white wings

   “As a swarm of birds takes a flower from the branches.

   “Come to us! Come to us! »

   What was my emotion when, approaching me to read this poem, I recognized Papa's handwriting! It was he who received me in this house where the love of Jesus had reserved a place for me. The rosebush, once crowned by the storm, now had its root in the heavens, and of the roses yesterday still scattered Jesus had made a bouquet...

   At this sight, waves of gratitude rushed into

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my heart and tenderness brought forth tears that sorrow and anguish had not been able to make flow...

   I cannot say what passed within me in this first interview with my dear sisters, we said almost nothing to each other. I sat down in silence on the edge of my mattress like the weary traveler who, after a long absence, traversed by countless perils, catches his breath on arriving at the port, still not daring to believe in his happiness.

   In an instant my life of the past appeared to me like a distant memory, like a tiring nightmare which vanished on waking, to the great relief of the poor patient who suffered it. What are, indeed, these vicissitudes of time, these incidents of life which weave our human days if not a dream "a smoke that a breath dissipates?" “All these things, says the Sage, disappear like the shadow, like the messenger who passes in haste, like the ship that cuts through the turbulent wave, without one being able to discover any trace of its passage, nor of the way that its hull has opened in the middle of the waves. » (Wisdom V, 14…)

   Thus, I had just left the unreal things in the midst of which I had lived, to nourish myself with truth, I had just left the darkness which made my steps unsteady to bathe myself in an ocean of light, whose direct action on my soul would no longer be hampered by the futile solicitudes of the century.

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   This is what filled my heart with a deep, lasting joy, with a happiness that I felt should never leave me. I felt no natural joy on seeing my dear sisters again, I had not come here for them, but for Jesus alone. If I found them at my resting place, it was because they themselves had already pitched their tent there. No, no earthly affection made my heart beat then, calm and peace filled it entirely to the brim. Besides, this meeting brought us only a sensitive presence, our souls had never left each other.

   O my Mother! I exclaim after Thérèse: “How can one say that it is more perfect to distance oneself from one's own in order to better serve the good God? The embarrassing human love does not usually exist between children of the same family and Our Lord was not afraid to choose several brothers in his college of twelve Apostles, until then to repeat his call of two brothers (Pierre and André, Jacques and Jean, Jude and Jacques – Act. I, 13) He judged with reason that there was a force there which, put at his service by souls totally delivered wonderful things. It is true that the Apostle-Brothers, after having been together for a moment, then dispersed for the service of the Master, but we too stood ready to disperse at the slightest sign of his hand. And you know, my Mother, if Jesus

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had reason to repent of having kept us together in his house… But on earth, we don't know the good God, we don't know him! We have narrow ideas, and he lets us follow them out of condescension, rewarding in everyone the intentions. However, no one knows where is the most perfect and, as long as man is on earth, he will never be sure to have the same thoughts as God. It is this uncertainty that puts on Thérèse's lips these words which she addressed to the Venerable Mother Anne of Jesus: "Is the good Lord pleased with me? my poor little actions and my desires?...” Indeed, the Lord having created us free, leaves us a certain intuition that everyone uses as he sees fit. This explains the difference in the means taken by the Saints to achieve their goal. Means which, it must be admitted, sometimes do not lack originality and a certain oddity. So God gave himself and himself alone as the supreme model: “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. »

   Here is the model and the measurement. If we ask the reason for this measure, it is still the Lord who deigns to answer us by saying: "Be holy because I am holy." Being our goal, our end, it is fitting that participation in his holy state should be required of us, and for the accomplishment of this work a stage is given to us.

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open. The Door of this stage is Jesus since he tells us in the Holy Gospel: “I am the Door. So whoever enters through this Gate and runs through this stadium will not go astray. It is true that there are certain rules to observe, rather severe rules which are the commandments of God and of the Church, wise laws which our Mother is free to promulgate whenever she sees fit and which it is absolutely necessary to follow under pain of to renounce the crown. However, when one locks oneself in there, there is a lot of latitude, as for the secondary means of winning this crown, this is what makes the prophet write: “Say justly that all is well. (Is.)

   But where am I with my subject? Here I am again part in a maze of reflections, if this continues I will never complete the story of the poor ember so mercifully snatched from the fire by the divine hand of Jesus. Have you noticed, my Mother, this torn word which characterizes so well the violent action that it took to rescue it from combustion? Oh! my Mother, it is this action that Jesus did for me… he did not take me, pull me away, he snatched me from the flames which only sought to devour me. And very happy with his exploit, he placed his flaming ember on the mountain of Carmel.

   Inflamed, yes he really was, but for the sole love of his Liberator… Jesus had monopolized him, possessed him and, on contact with him, he had caught fire never to go out again. Transported to this new home, his ardor will no doubt be activated? It was Jesus' dream

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and that of the ember. You will judge, my Mother, if it has been so. As for me, I hope for it from the mercy of God, because "it is you, Lord, who worked the wonders of ancient times and who formed the design of those that followed, and they were accomplished because you wanted. (Judith IX, 4). This is the whole mystery of my preservation, a marvel which was accomplished not by my own merit but because the Lord willed it.

   I say preservation, because in Carmel, as in the world even more than in the world, the devil covets the ember of Jesus. He sat down on the edge of the hearth, waiting for the favorable moment to remove him from the flames of love in which he was consumed, he wanted it for him at all costs, so my story has some resemblance to that of my divine Spouse “I somehow retired to the desert to be tempted there by the devil. »

   Before talking to you, Mother, about these fights about which I can only say a few words, I must go back to the story of my entry into Carmel. I will first let the worldly philosopher expose her impressions. After having heard it, you will see the Carmelite apostle, putting theories aside, putting herself into practice and you will witness her struggles, unfortunately more fruitful in defeats than in victories.

   After the first interview with my dear sisters, I was shown around a few places in the house, then attended certain exercises. There I saw the community reunited, I observed a lot without

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look like it and I was delighted with my study. Instead of finding myself in the midst of ghosts, I had very living beings for society. Were they men, were they women, we could really have wondered. For a moment I thought I was in a community of monks, there were no effeminate faces, with soft and cowardly manners. Nonchalance does not live in this enclosure, but one sees there male faces, rough and emaciated features, the expressions are frank, the gaits full of vigor. There, there are no servants or servants, the equality is perfect, only two or three are enough to supplement the manual work when the Community recites the Divine Office, because each serves herself and serves the others by washing, rubbing, sweeping.

   There the costume is as usual, a dress without pleats, a leather belt that does not tighten at the waist, the large scapular which falls straight without being held back in any way, the whole thing really has the appearance of a manly outfit. And the hairstyle? Ah! my God, the head is well enveloped in linens and veils, alas! but there is as little as possible, no headband on the forehead, the wimple is not starched, these are vague folds being formed by a flexible, unironed canvas. The veil is done as best it can, it is held only by a small pin on the top of the head. Finally, it is the most simplified necessities of life that can be seen.

   Oh! I cried inwardly, who is the artist who had such conceptions and executed them? How big and beautiful! How simple! how true! I never thought I would find a way of life and customs that I like so much! What happiness, I will not be drawn to four

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pins, decorum will be put under my feet forever, because it is indeed in a desert that I live, there is no mistaking it. Where is the world? it seems to me that I left him a century ago and that I am a hundred thousand leagues from him!

  Oh! my Mother, how happy I was considering the part that the good Lord had given me. I had to leave the world for the truth, I had divorced unstable things to participate in some way in the immutability of God. No expression can express my happiness, because while conforming to it in the world I had found all the inclinations of fashion, I suffered, for example, to see that a frivolity that I had considered beautiful and graceful suddenly became despicable blow and I aspired to the fortunate life which would give me from this exile a sort of stability in things.

   If the simplicity of the clothes delighted me, the rusticity of the dwelling charmed me no less, these whitewashed walls or of badly joined bricks, these exposed beams, these coarse paving stones, these rooms without chairs since each sister carries her own with her on her own. Sitting modestly on his heels, I was totally fine with that. In this environment, there are no sad people, preoccupied faces, dissatisfied with their fate. What a contrast if we compare the demands of worldly life, its impotence, its setbacks, its despair! Yes, the fate of the poor Carmelite, content with little, living on nothing, is far superior, as regards the amount of happiness she enjoys, to that of the rich who dries up with insatiable desires and never says: it is enough. fortune, enough pleasures, enough honours. Oh! this is the school of truth that I was looking for

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and that it was impossible for me to meet in the hungry, the feverish, the neurotic of our cities. May the Lord be forever blessed for having in me "raised the unfortunate from the dust, lifted the poor from the dunghill to make him sit with the princes of his people!" (Ps. 113, 7)

   Allow me, my Mother, to take up a word that I have just said, because it is not exact. If it is impossible to find the truth in the hungry and the feverish engulfed in matter and the rapacity of gain, it is possible to find it in the "neurotic", because the sick are not excluded from the divine contest of the holiness. If the good Lord punishes the human race with rickets, the fruit of the softness brought by the ever-increasing well-being of our modern civilizations, but it is nonetheless called to salvation and just as the possessed can be Saints, witnesses Father Surin and many others, those who have to deplore certain lacks of balance in themselves, can also be such, because at times when one enjoys one's reason one can always practice virtue. I don't know if I'm wrong in thinking that, but it seems to me that it does honor to the justice of God and also to our freedom to believe that we can always use the reason we have to be gentle and humble, patient and mortified, to love the good God with all his heart. Well, there is the truth.

   After having exposed my Mother to you, my first impressions, all very favorable, I quickly take the story of the facts asking you once again to forgive me for being so imprecise.

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by extending myself beyond measure on interminable considerations.

   At the beginning of this story I told you that my spiritual life had blossomed in the light of two stars: Thérèse, the little star of Jesus, the Holy Face, divine sun of Justice. Thérèse has accompanied and guided me since my childhood, through her you have made known to me, Lord, the paths of life and the moment is approaching when you will fill me with joy by showing me your Face (Acts II, 28)

   But before lifting the Shroud which still conceals the features of Jesus from me, I must follow the path he traveled, I must accompany him in his Passion, to Calvary and to the Tomb... When my soul has mystically undergone these various states, then Jesus will reveal himself to her eyes because the imprint of the wounds that disfigure her Beloved will be perfect in her.

   In the first part of this story which related my life at Les Buissonnets until Papa's illness, I told you, my Mother, about my childhood and my youth and you saw me drinking to the dregs on chalice of pain.

   In the second that stretched from my entry to my uncle's until my departure for Carmel, you considered me in contact with the vanities of the world and the perils of life.

   In this third, which includes my stay at Carmel, although more fruitful than the previous ones in trials and fruits, I will not be able, despite my good will, to enter into the detail of

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certain sufferings, so I can say after Thérèse: Many pages of this story will never be read on earth..." I know that you will forgive me for these little reluctances which must be attributed not to a lack of confidence, but to the discretion.

   As soon as I entered Carmel “the Cross stretched out its arms to me” too. I found all the practices of the Rule hard and austere, the devil certainly put his hand in it to discourage me, because what was easy for others became particularly difficult for me. The straw mattress to which the postulants quickly got used was a real penance for me, every evening it seemed to me that it was a board that served me as a bed, and in the morning when I woke up, after a bad sleep, I had broken limbs. It was only after several weeks of this exercise that I somehow got used to it.

   In the refectory I also had a lot of mortifications to do, having a horror of fish, milk and mealy foods, however after a year I was on a diet and now habit has overcome all my repugnance.

   Another penance, the hardest for me and the most tenacious since it increases with the years, is the recitation of the Office standing. What I suffered and still suffer in the summer from the inflammation of the soles of my feet, God alone knows... An infirmity that is all the more painful for being little

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common, we do not know how to relieve it. It is true that my superiors were very condescending towards me, insisting on having me sit in the Choir, but as I wanted to suffer this infirmity until extinction, before complaining or taking advantage of the latitude given, it was It followed that the recitation of the Breviary was a real martyrdom for me.

   The sleep deprivation, the rest time being very limited, was also extremely hard for me. Not sleeping enough at night, the consequence was that I slept during the Office, slept again alas! during my prayers and thanksgiving, even slept sometimes during mass. And above all, what pained me the most, slept during the hours of adoration when the Blessed Sacrament was exposed. I believe that the darkness in which we are to accomplish this pious exercise, is for much in this torpor, it is not less true that many do not experience this infirmity while she visits me, I was going to say , always.

   I could not express to you, my Mother, how painful this propensity to sleep, at times when it is prohibited, was to me throughout my religious life. On this side the devil almost tempted me to discouragement, I sometimes thought myself a bad nun for whom there was no forgiveness, I was horrified by myself and saw myself falling into the state of lukewarmness where Jesus swore to vomit us out of his mouth.

   But these difficulties are not the only ones that I had to

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to overcome or to endure, by entering Carmel. When I entered Carmel, I brought a very distinct character, I was 25 years old, I had lived a lot, suffered a lot and could expect a few things, so I was a little surprised to be , in my quality of last comer, the servant of all, the last everywhere. My novitiate companion, like me under the tutelage of Thérèse, was only 20 years old but as she had entered three months before me, I was the youngest and, consequently, the stopgap in preference to her. This was the fate of novices. In those days, they were not set apart as they are now. Sometimes my nature revolted and I confided my sorrows to my Thérèse in a flood of tears.

   I was put in the robery, my first job was a venerable old lady, excessively good, who, no doubt believing that she was pleasing to me, made me paint little subjects on shells. I had never painted anything but large pictures, so the work of these little silly things was extremely unsympathetic to me. However, they became fashionable and all the sisters, wanting to embellish their works for Mother's Day, obtained the consent of my first and made me decorate, once, up to 40 objects. I would have been somewhat rewarded if I had pleased my customers, but it was never so. One would have liked a snake on her cutlery instead of a bird, another a yellow flower on her ball instead of a rose, finally I saw that it is absolutely impossible to please creatures and I do not tried more.

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   This experience would only have brought me joy if my first job had appreciated my services, but it was quite different and I heard it said on occasion! "Sr Marie de la Sainte Face does nothing to me at all, I do not count on her to help me" - I carried this name until my Taking of the Habit - These words seemed to me an insult, me who knew how to work, to cut, having made myself several costumes in the world, and I could not bear being reproached for not doing what I was forbidden to touch. Thérèse was still the confidante of these revolts, she sympathized a lot with my grief and to console me they offered me on Christmas Eve 1894, the very year of my entry, the poem entitled! "The Queen of Heaven to her little Mary" These stanzas were particularly significant:

   Don't worry Marie And if someone comes to complain

   From the daily book "Let your works not be seen..."

   Because your work in this life - "I like it very much you can say

   Must be Love only. That's my job down here! »

   Since I am on the chapter of the work I will finish my thought although I anticipate on all my religious life since the test of which I speak followed me step by step since my beginning until this day. Whatever employment I have been put in, dressmaking, altar bread or infirmary, some supererogation work has always been demanded of me. Sometimes it was an ornament that had to be decorated with paint, or a medallion on a blade, on a stole. There was always something new, no sooner had one book been completed than another. So the first jobs

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naturally suffered from this theft of time from their work, hence a few words said kindly, but which carried no less. Other Sisters, we knew, had fights saying that in Carmel it was not necessary to receive 'young ladies' who worked on ornamental works, while the others labored at heavy work.

   I cannot say how much I suffered from seeing my Sisters suffer, I understood that they thought so, because it is not given to everyone to have a taste for artistic things. On these occasions, as on all the others, I still went to pour my heart into the heart of my Thérèse. On this subject she said to me one day: "Do not be distressed by this state of affairs, it is the good God who allows it thus, to give our sisters an opportunity of merit concerning us, while we have one. very big on our side, because it is a very big test to know how to paint in the Community. The more you go the more you will experience it, so do not lose heart from the beginning, rather rejoice in having this opportunity to suffer. »

   My dear little Thérèse could talk to me like that, she did it knowingly, having herself suffered a lot in this regard since, out of obedience, she had carried out several painting works. As for me, it was the first time, but not the last, that I experienced the

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profound words of the Sage: “He who increases his knowledge also increases his pain. (Prov or Eccl.) and more than once I was tempted to curse the knowledge I had acquired through so much labor.

   From this insufficiency, which the extra work imposed on me vis-à-vis my fellow workers, germinated a great defect, which was very detrimental to my perfection, I mean: eagerness in business. I wanted to please everyone and multiply myself. With my lively and ardent nature there was a real pitfall for me, which denoted a great self-esteem, because I could not bear to be below my obligations and this thought that I felt only came from this principle, not at all of my charity for my sisters.

   Therese followed in me these struggles of nature, she gave me her advice always full of the right thing and whose every word distilled the best understood perfection. Listening to him, I thought I was receiving the very answers of the Holy Spirit, but alas! there was a long way from the good will to the execution!

   If my pride was tested by the unfavorable judgment of creatures on me and my impossibility of preventing the cause, my patience was no less so. During my novitiate I was placed as an assistant in the infirmary. There I had to take care of a good mother suffering from cerebral anemia. She was well educated, having been a boarding school mistress in her youth, but she had retained from her old

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profession a certain phlegm mixed with severity which made approaching him a little difficult. It was her principle that youth should be exercised in order to accustom it to softening its character. For me, whose virtue was so weak, I would have preferred, I confess, that my difficulties had been diminished instead of increased. Sometimes she rang me to tell me absolutely insignificant things. Once I had come running from very far to answer her call, she simply told me "that she could distinguish my step from that of my companion." Or else, she would send me to explore all the surroundings up to the attic, in order to find out if there was not a half-open door or an open fanlight because of the "correspondences of air" to her. arrived in his infirmary.

   In order to amuse herself, she really liked to make conversation with me, but her mysticism was so polished that I didn't understand a thing; moreover, I had no time to delve into the profound mysteries of his education. So I politely told her that I was expected elsewhere, that did not satisfy her and she held me back without pity. I wouldn't finish if I wanted to list all the patience exercises she made me do. What made them extraordinarily tiring was that they came from an intelligent person, whom one even often went to consult in thorny questions, a person who had the use of all his limbs and was only served on principle.

   It was too much for my weakness, and the superhuman efforts

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I had to do to contain myself was getting on my nerves. One day, I left to seek help from my Thérèse, exhausted with fatigue, my soul upside down, I sat down on a table that was there and began to sob. My dear little sister welcomed me with unparalleled kindness, she approached me, leaned my head on her shoulder and dried my tears with entirely heavenly reasoning.

   My pride, my patience exercised, my freedom was too. I choose one example among a thousand: one spring day when the novices were walking together in the garden, I saw gracefully sitting in the grass, a small snowdrop. My first impulse was to rush out to pick the flower, but Therese held me back, saying that it was not permitted to take anything from the gardens of the infirm without their consent. I asked where we could pick, but seeing that there was no common garden and that permission was needed for all things, even the most insignificant, I felt great sadness and two big tears rolled down my back. my cheeks.

   Returning to our cell, I wanted to console myself with my Beloved and I resolved to compose a hymn which, after having listed all the things I loved, said: that in Jesus I have found them…The following Sunday, m ' being put in duty to carry out my project, I realized with pain that I was incapable of it, because at the end of the day I had only done this single line:

   The Flower that I pick, O my King!

   It's you!

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   My dear little Thérèse, made aware of my desire and my impotence, promised me to compose this poem herself. She made me specify my thoughts and, as they were hers, on April 28, my birthday, I received the delicious hymn so much desired. Therese had titled it "Le Cantique de Céline" and she had made sure that nothing was missing, in order to satisfy me fully.

   But I quickly resume the presentation of my trials from which I have deviated by this little line.

   In the world, my soul lived, so to speak, in a fortress, it was confined there and enjoyed its riches. Inside and out, everything obeyed him. Praised, applauded, she thought she was something without suspecting it. Besides, did she need to be praised from the outside when she herself felt herself to be alive with constantly reviving energies, when the good Lord had placed her, so to speak, face to face with the gifts he had given her? so liberally?

   But suddenly the picture changed. Instead of the building, I see nothing more than ruins which leave uncovered abysses hitherto ignored, abysses of pride, anger and independence. Where am I ? Who broke down these walls? I lived happily in their enclosure and now the war is kindled in me, my faults that had been dormant until now have awakened. Was it to live in their company that I came to Carmel?

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  Is it to dull me? Where are my vivid and ardent impressions? Formerly I was passionate, I felt my heart beating with zeal, I was enterprising, and for the glory of God I would have been at the end of the world and here I am, bewildered, without strength, biting the dust! What aim am I pursuing and what will be the end of all this? After a day spent in the midst of goading of all kinds, the whip - discipline - is the reward for these labors and, hardly have we taken a few moments of rest, which we must endorse, from the morning, instruments of penance and thus set out harnessed to their work. My God! my God! but it's a miserable life that I lead!!

   My Mother, while listening to these complaints, words of revolt and blame, you doubtless believe you hear the reasoning of the impious, those who judge only from the outside the brutal fact put before their eyes, and who have never worn the yoke of the Lord and therefore never tasted his sweetness.

   If molten metal could speak, it would of course complain of having lost its shape, its solid state, to liquefy under the heat of the fire, and yet it is for its own good that it is put in the crucible since it should come out brighter and purer. Everything in nature preaches this truth to us, you have to lose to win, you have to suffer to give birth: the flower gives its fruit only by stripping its petals, the mother cries while giving birth to her son. Before being victorious one must go into battle and shed one's blood; to get rich you have to work

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without fearing its pain and if we find the rural nature of our mountains superb, we must remember that it only acquired its beauty by the painful upheaval of its blazing depths.

   Mother, I don't know if my soul is beautiful, but surely it is not a flat country, and if some tourist ventures one day to explore it I would advise him to be very careful if he does not want to break your neck in some ravine. I mean that I would fear that it was cursed by the abrupt disorder which reigns there. We feel that the deluge has passed by. Beloved mother, you, I know, do not curse yourselves about me, the chaos, the deep ravines, the crevices of the ground, the noisy waterfalls, the angular rocks that you meet in my soul do not frighten you, can You may even find charms there sometimes. If, however, you prefer to leave these wild lands, there is a very shady and very quiet little corner, better than that... at the bend of this dangerous path you will find yourself in the presence of a calm and serene lake like the azure sky that it reflects in its silver mirror that no wrinkle disturbs.

   Oh! my Mother, how I have suffered and how happy I have been in my life! happier than unhappy oh! by a lot!.. because my pains have always 'juiced' joy and the more intense these pains were, the more abundant and suave the expressed juice.

   One day, tormented by discouragement, I approached my Mother Prioress who was then Mother Agnès of Jesus, she was going up

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quickly up the stairs when I said to him: "I can't take it anymore. Life is too hard! While continuing her walk she said to me: "You find too much, do more!" I asked for no other and, turning back, I went back meditating on this bold piece of advice. Grace helping me, it pleased me, charmed me, filled me with enthusiasm and I took the resolution not to spare myself from now on.

   I kept my word to myself and, without yet understanding bodily penances, without ever liking them, I asked permission to do them, so that people might have thought me a very mortified soul. Since I am on this subject I am going, my Mother, to confide something to you. It was only lately, very recently, that it came to me to understand how bodily penances could be pleasing to God. I found these flagellations shameful and therefore unworthy of such a great and lovable God. But this mystery of the sacrifice, I understood it fully until there that it delights me with admiration. I was no longer surprised that Isaac lay down with joy on the wood of the holocaust, awaiting the thrust of the sword which was to consecrate him forever, a voluntary victim to the God thrice holy. The writing, in fact, does not relate any revolt of the sweet child in the face of death and, without a doubt, he was happy to supply a crude victim, unworthy of infinite majesty. Oh! that I would have liked to be thus immolated

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to God!... But the Lord in his sovereign ordinances never went that far, he never asked for the life of man, although he would have been quite free to ask for what he had given.

   “With what, then, shall I present myself before Jehovah? Will he accept thousands of rams, will I give my firstborn for my crime? – You have been told, O man, what is good and what Jehovah requires of you. It is to practice justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah VI, 7.8) So it is to practice justice that I treat my body as it deserves, hoping thereby to receive mercy, obtain it from others and the grace to walk in the truth.

   I spoke about this question in my small work on the Holy Face, because the grace to understand the corporal penances was the fruit of my study on the painful Face of Jesus and the ignominies of his passion, I do not go there won't elaborate any longer here. But to complete my thought I must say that if I understand them I do not like them. They are a means, not an end, therefore, a transitory thing due to our present state of degradation. So, I despise them like everything that is unstable, and it is with great joy that once I have arrived in Heaven, I will overthrow the ladder that made me climb there!

   However, since I am still below, I do not want to disdain any means of raising myself, that is why I

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use these bleachers that I find useful. For this purpose, I have never willingly passed up the opportunity to obtain the latitude to indulge in the exercises of penance, and it has often happened that I have had much more extensive permissions than I would have liked. It is due to one thing, it is that wishing to do in this as in all the rest, the unique will of my Beloved, I asked all that one could ask convinced that the wisdom of my Mother Prioresses would always bring down enough and that 'so their final decision would be directly the words of Jesus, his last word.

   These penances once settled, I never varied them, never omitted them, I had an intention in that: I wanted them to pass to me in the state of habit, without becoming an occupation.

   Then!..- I resume my subject here - Then the strength, the ease, the vigor of the soul and consequently the joy, deep and strong joy, was expressed from the pain giving me to drink much more sweet juice that I had tasted of bitterness.

   Since then, I have thought that generosity could be expressed in a completely different way than by corporal penances of supererogation. She is, in fact, in the good will to accomplish her state duties as best as possible. It is in the attempt to correct faults and the effort to faithfully follow the Rule that one has voluntarily embraced, trying not to give oneself any latitude in this. It even seems to me that this simple and obscure method of mortification is more the vocation of “little souls” who are ordinarily called to holiness by the common way, following the example of the Blessed Virgin.

   “It is by the common way, O admirable Mother!

   “Please walk to lead us to Heaven…”

   But I come back to the time of my novitiate so marked by many struggles. I say it in passing: I believe that if everything had been like now, in order and normal, I would not have had these difficulties, which are really rare. I continue their nomenclature:

  Another time, still discouraged, my soul desperate, I said: No, never, never will I be able to persevere in such a life. I prefer to have a less beautiful place in heaven, I don't want to go to so much trouble for myself! That day, unable to overcome my anguish and seeing it on the contrary become more intense, I begged the Blessed Virgin to come to my aid and console me.

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   The following night, during my sleep, as I was crying a lot, my heart pressed by the trials, I raised my eyes: a great immensity of Heaven surrounded me. There were many small clouds, between which intertwined crowns, they were like nimbus surmounted by a star, I saw thousands of them, multitudes, and as the clouds parted, I discovered some others. – I remained panting, my tears were drying and I noticed that the horizon was all red, red with blood and this red was still rising. So, I thought that I was not working for myself, but to please the good God and save souls for Him...a goal that I would only achieve through the Love who gives his life for Him whom he likes.

   I had finally found the reason for my existence, the why of so much labor. No, they weren't useless or exaggerated since they were destined for such a beautiful conquest. Does the general who wants to gain ground on the enemy and take towns from him, spare his time, his forces, his men? Well, if we don't shrink from any sacrifice to win ephemeral victories whose memory will not pass the threshold of eternity, I don't want to spare myself to win immortal souls for my Immortal Sovereign. Ah! how not to

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launch into the arena when we know that the destiny of so many souls is attached to our efforts!....

   Having such an end as a horizon, the hope of attaining it already becomes a reward whose sum of joy infinitely surpasses, even from this world, the sum of the renunciations which lead to it. Incomplete happiness, however, if it lacks a certain personal richness, which is acquired by a "skill" which I will speak about later. It is, so to speak, to the soul which devotes itself to the salvation of others, what substantial nourishment is to the mother who, by neglecting herself for her children, would lose her life without this help.

   It was still and always after a phase of poignant discouragement where, believing myself to be a bad nun, I saw myself pursued by divine justice.

  Oh! how I had to weather storms before fully entering the "little way" of my Thérèse!// One evening when the storm was roaring louder than usual, bathing my pillow in my tears, I thought of the rights that the punishment had acquired over me and I said to myself that deserving the rigors of this justice I would certainly not escape it, when a feeling of despair passed over me so acute that I was on the point of uttering a cry. Instead, I made for

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so to speak, turn around on my pain and throw myself with my eyes closed into the arms of the good Lord, abandoning myself to Him. Immediately all my troubles disappeared and I was breathing easily, when I remembered a tale that I had read in my childhood and which had once struck me and Thérèse very much:

   It was said there that a king, being out hunting, pursued a little white rabbit which he was about to reach, when the little rabbit, seeing himself hunted by the dogs, at gunpoint, turned back with a quick movement. and threw himself into the king's arms. The latter, who just now wanted to kill him, kissed him and, having taken him under his protection, did not yield to anyone else the care of feeding him.

   My Mother, this blind, mad, unjust abandonment is the “skill” of which I spoke just now, which is an inexhaustible source of good for the soul.

   Ah! this story of the little white rabbit! It so happened that, having told it to a good Jesuit Father, Father Mantor of the Residence of Laval (at our retreat in 1899) who was suffering from a great deal of inner pain, she consoled him so well that he did not never forgot and on his dying bed he still talked about it. This was proof to me that this distant memory which had been handed over to me

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memory, in such an auspicious moment, was a kind of parable by which Jesus had instructed me of his mercy towards the humble soul which, losing confidence in its own forces, puts its confidence only in Him.

   From the painting I have just made of the trust, you can guess, my Mother, if my habitual residence is not on the edge of this beautiful lake! So abandoning the bogs where the passions swarm, I live there as long as I can.

   I say: as long as I can, "man's way is not always in his power", often it is by the express will of God that we find ourselves face to face with his miseries and we must stay in this annoying company until he allows you to escape. So you don't ask for your rest and a few moments spent by the peaceful lake will make you forget those hours of anguish and shame.

   But, however useful these hours are! For while nature violents herself so as not to pulverize the creatures who oppose her, it is she who is destroyed, reduced to ashes and from these ashes germinates a rebirth of which Jesus prepares to show her the fruits.

   The world, however, laughs at our fights which it treats as childish. If he speaks thus it is because he has never engaged in battle on this ground. As for me, it is from experience that I say it, I find that it is much more difficult to overcome oneself by practicing

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gentleness, humility, patience in adverse occasions than enduring much greater trials which do not directly exercise our character. In the trials of life that reach us, for example in our fortune, illness or the loss of loved ones, it is undoubtedly very meritorious not to revolt, but it is out of pure goodness that the Lord has attached of merit to this submission, to the unfortunate consequences of the original sin which are a punishment. But, reasonably speaking, isn't it in our interest, for what is the use of standing up against the vicissitudes of our life in exile? Is it our weakness that will overcome by its resistance, the course of events? We know very well that no one commands them and that we have everything to gain and nothing to lose by patiently enduring the setbacks of life.

  But letting oneself be accused without complaining, finding oneself in the grip of injustice and repressing the flood which rises bubbling up to our lips, that is what is difficult and meritorious. To achieve this, one must be endowed with a famous humility and possession of oneself, if now these virtues are only acquired by exercise or by a free gift from God, it must be recognized that it is mainly in the convents that one finds the occasion. Yes, religious life is a rolling mill that files our soul, our spirit, our heart under all their faces. It is still a telescope, the great virtues of the world are often only imperfection at this observatory.

  I judge for myself who would never have believed that I had so many faults. This is due to one thing: living with well-educated or subordinate people, they did not resist me while those studied themselves to have easy and polite relations with those around them. From there an exercise of the virtues nil or almost.

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  I hear you say to me, Mother, “Well, you who, at first sight, considered religious life so great, so beautiful, you are very disenchanted, perhaps even in the bottom of your heart do you find smallness in it? »

  Little things? Oh! no, my mother! despite all that one can suffer there, or rather, because of what one suffers there, life is not only great but sublime.

   Undoubtedly each one brings with her her ways of seeing, her more or less cultivated education, her pettiness, who has none on earth! but the action of giving oneself up voluntarily as pasture through others, of giving oneself up to an austere rule, to an obedience at all times, this action is great and very great because it brings with it innumerable sacrifices.

   O my Mother, this appreciation that I bear is very sincere and yet it is there that the world awaits me to protest against, the world which, instead of admiring the beauty of our immolation, considers us as diminished beings, who have a certain derangement in the spirit, which causes them to alienate their freedom and personality, dearest rights to man, to put on the chains of enslavement, "which calls us impostors as St Paul says, though we are truthful, unknown and yet well known, as dying and behold we live, as saddened we who are ever joyful; as poor we who enrich many; as having nothing we who possess everything. (2 Cor. VI, 9.10)

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   He does not know, the world, that in contact with God and holy things our heart is purified, our intelligence spreads its wings. Freed from the cares of the body and the solicitudes of the century, our momentum is no longer shared, but directed entirely towards the ideal Sovereign. As for me, I noticed that in Carmel my soul was opened and enlarged, my artistic taste developed and not little, I would say immensely, I no longer recognize myself. I feel more thoughtful, smarter and how did this growth of all the best in us come about? How ? I lived in solitude, I read very little – the texts quoted here and there were taken on the fly: they come from the Office or from readings in the refectory – if not at all, carried away rather by the breath of meditation only by the desire to instruct me, Holy Scripture was almost my only book: I was not surrounded either by artistic works, far from it. And yet it was at the Carmel that I composed all my paintings. They are not without faults it is true, but what does it matter if they have this touching and inspired something that the good Lord likes to put in the works undertaken purely for his glory, this something indefinable which supplements human knowledge?

   I have often heard it said, by well-meaning people, that hardly had we spent a few months in a convent we lost the simplest notions of the things of life. But it's childish to blame us for that!

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  and it would be “thank God” if they were telling the truth! What's the point, in fact questioning us on questions of mathematics, on the affairs of notaries is not our job. Are we going to require a doctor, for example, to be an astronomer; of a mason that he knows about agriculture? Let someone speak to us about God and the things that concern his service, and we will see if we are ignorant of this science!

   But we are despised because of the very branch of culture we have embraced, and the higher we rise the more we are despised. Just as the balloon flying through the air seems smaller and smaller as it rises, so the more a soul is holy and freed from the cares of human life, the less it will be appreciated on earth.

   And yet who will say the importance of these lives consecrated to prayer and renunciation! – One evening, on the point of falling asleep, I heard the railway whistle and it made an unusual impression on me. I seemed to be in an unknown city, I saw the train disembarking, several travelers were going to their homes, others were wandering here and there like strangers. Then picturing to myself the various homes of this city, of each city that dots the surface of the globe, I saw groups, families, meetings occupied in different actions. All these actions seemed to me isolated, nothing therefore, and I cried out with anguish

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  “Man is nothing! it is an atom lost in immensity, oh my God! give them value! Immediately I heard this great voice which rises from the earth, goes up to the Heavens and which is called: Prayer and I found that the man, however small he was, who united himself to it was something, I found it great. Then my vocation appeared to me in all its splendor… The religious vocation which keeps man away from isolated, personal acts, which makes him perform universal, permanent, eternal acts is the only truth. And everything done by those who do not unite with these agents of humanity, all that is wasted time!

   I saw, however, that the wicked united in their dark plots, they did not want isolated acts either. I saw that the multitude of those who indulged in vice was greater than those who indulged in prayer. But, I understood that their forces were divided and, although their foul deeds rise like a single and black smoke which covers the earth, all together are nothing however, because they do not aim at a single goal: each seeks its own satisfaction, satisfies his pleasure, seeks his interests, his personal glory. So man, so all men are nothing, apart from those who, detaching themselves from themselves, by perpetual sacrifice, aim for the one and only goal which is God.

   In no time, I had cast that glance like a

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  philosopher who thinks and it seemed to me that, even if I had no faith, guided only by my reason seeking the truth, I would give the prize to those who pray. Then, gratitude overflowed from my heart when I saw that God had chosen me, called me to this religious life, the ideal of life, even before I knew it, before I could appreciate it.

   Beloved Mother, hearing me speak like this, you have the right to say to me: it is not enough to be in love with truth and beauty, show me your works. Alas! my Mother, what shall I show you? as I told you, the edifice of perfection erected in the world by those who praised me and by my own appreciation, that edifice has collapsed, and I have only ruins to present to you. My virtue now is to feel weak and powerless, to believe myself to be an abyss of faults and imperfection. If this is what the good Lord wanted to do by destroying, he has indeed achieved his goal! I have nothing to my credit, and even this virtue comes to me from God, I have only a great good will, the intention of always going forward. But for victories won over the enemy I know of few, there have been many efforts, great desires and little success. The victories it is Jesus who counted them and won them, for

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I am unaware of them and I have not enjoyed them, prey to the suffering of my innumerable wounds. But I am not saddened by my misery, I know that one day my ideal will be realized and that I will be perfect in heaven because the humbled ember, pushed by the foot, will not have ceased to be incandescent on earth. I know well, it is true, that love is nourished by sacrifices, it takes fuel to feed the flame, it takes holocausts whose smoke rises to the sky to give a raison d'être to the ember: What use would he be, there alone, if he didn't constantly consume victims?

   My Mother, I know this, but I also know that love is superior to works. There was a time when Judas had the works since the Holy Gospel tells us that he made a public confession by confessing his crime, a rehabilitation since he declared his Master innocent, a restitution since he returned the money for his treason: "I have sinned, he said, by delivering innocent blood and throwing into the temple the 30 pieces of silver he withdrew" (Matt. XXVII, 4.5) This conduct was a series of good deeds, but love failed him, he doubted the mercy of his Master, he did not have the humility to love him after his fall and perished in his despair.

   Me, on the contrary, I have no good works and I recognize it with happiness, I will be happy to die empty-handed because

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that, all that I could have put there of myself wouldn't be much. Instead, Jesus will fill them. Yes, I have Love, and since Love cannot remain sterile without dying out, since it does not die out, but on the contrary it always increases in my heart, it is therefore that Jesus compensates for my poverty and feeds it without my knowledge in an unknown and entirely divine way! ..

   Now you are no doubt wondering, Mother, what my new relationship with Thérèse was like at Carmel and it is with joy that I am going to respond to this legitimate desire. But I won't go into the details of our conversations, because I'm afraid I'll tire you out having dealt with this throughout in my preparation for the deposition. Far from having the intention of repeating all these details, I beg your pardon, as I did at the beginning of this story, for the repetitions that you will find in these pages written in the knowledge of my pen, or like Thérèse "in the knowledge of my heart", because I am certain of having repeated myself many times, especially of having often expressed in this notebook the same thoughts, already written in my little work on the Holy Face. These faults are due to my poor memory, hardly remembering the subjects I studied there. Forgiveness once again, beloved Mother.

   Because of the charge of novices given to her, my relations with my dear Thérèse were very frequent, but there again I had to encounter the cross. Not being the only "little cat called to drink from the bowl of the Child Jesus", I had to avoid

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more than the others and not to return to it more often, but on the contrary to make me forgive, by my discretion, the privilege of being his sister. It was a matter for me of great sacrifices… The hindrances, the fears, the secretiveness were completely contrary to my character. To be happy I would have had to act in broad daylight, but this total freedom is not of the earth, here below, alas! we will always have to count on our weaknesses. So there were many privations to impose on me compared to my companions in the novitiate.

   To be afraid, to hide myself, it was necessary in spite of my repugnance because we also had to spare [or so?] the delicacy of some old people who hardly understood that the novices had been entrusted to a child. This feeling is quite pardonable for anyone who did not know the maturity of this Angel of the earth, but the little malevolence, the little words said from here and there, did not fail to make us suffer.

   Moreover, her office was hanging by a thread and we had to be extremely skilful not to hurt the susceptibility of Mother Marie de Gonzague who, if she had suspected that Thérèse was directing us, would have withdrawn the permission. We had to be very diplomatic.

   You can guess, Mother, the source of suffering and embarrassment that resulted for me from this state of affairs. Nevertheless, the work of the good Lord is accomplished in its entirety despite the traps and the machinations that the demon set up to put an end to our

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this direction so wise and so inspired.

   When my time had come to go to her, I was very happy, and in these all-too-short moments the two sisters resumed the conversations that had once begun at the windows of the Belvedere... However, the theme had changed a little, because the impulses of enthusiasm for suffering and contempt were now lived, virtue in flower and in desires had become virtue in action: my flower had shed its leaves and the still green fruit was knotted in the laborious transformations of a painful and hidden work .

   For Thérèse, the fruit was ripe and the divine Gardener was about to pick it, but mine was only beginning, there was then more difference between Thérèse and Céline than before at the time of the first blossoms, they were no longer equal, the two little sisters… That presupposes, you understand my Mother, more devotion than joy in the mission that my Thérèse was fulfilling with me.

   Without seeking her personal consolation, she applied herself to breaking down the illusions, the prejudices that I had brought from the world because, however impermeable one may be by the grace of God, it is nevertheless impossible not to preserve some vestiges of that dye. And I had been immersed in it for too long for the accursed colors not to remain. But shouldn't I have hoped for everything from the liberality of the Lord, I who could say with the Bride of Songs:

  “Don't think I'm tanned because the sun bleached me. My mother's sons rose up against me, they placed me in charge of the vineyards, I did not keep my own vineyard. »

   Indeed, it was not for myself that I had remained so long in the world, but to assist my dear Father in his painful old age, and the good Lord could not hold me against me "to be black." »

   This is why, in order to bring me gradually to the acquisition of religious virtues, our talks most often revolved around the practice of the new life that I had embraced. She taught me the art of war, showed me the pitfalls

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the means of defeating the enemy, the way of handling arms, she led me step by step in the struggles of each day.

   Sometimes we also had intimate and deep conversations. There, Céline and Thérèse met… We talked about the mysteries of the future life, of predestination, of the rewards of suffering, of martyrdom. Oh! martyrdom, we always hoped! Seeing the war being waged on religion in our unhappy country, we lulled ourselves into the hope of one day giving our blood for the cause of Jesus. our heads fall under the executioner's axe. Alas! it was not our heads that had to be sacrificed in giving us death, but our hearts that had to be pierced in leaving us alive!

   Sometimes it was time for confidences: in one of these circumstances I confided to my darling Thérèse the horrible temptations I had suffered in the world, I didn't think she was too young to listen to such revelations. She had sensed them, but her astonishment was great on touching their intensity closely.

  Then she pressed me to her heart and kissing me tenderly, she said to me in a voice full of tears: “Oh! how merciful the good Lord is to me! these sufferings were the only ones that I had not had to offer him and without daring to ask him for them because they frightened me… I regretted them! but since my Céline has experienced them, I am satisfied: we are the same soul, between us we have offered to Jesus all kinds of martyrdom!...”

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   This valiant athlete, who wanted to offer Jesus all that a human nature can suffer, had herself at that time her terrible ordeal of temptations against the Faith. Often in our intimate conversations she let me see her sharpness, as if on the sly, because she wouldn't have wanted to tell me the details for fear of communicating their venom to me. Sometimes, however, sighs escaped him. One day when I was talking about Heaven, she said to me: “Ah! you believe it!... tell me something about it…” So I continued and she resumed almost immediately in an anguished tone: “Ah!!! enough! then she turned quickly to the conversation, which increased her sorrows instead of alleviating them.

   O my Mother! what a grace to have been the witness of so many virtues! What abnegation, what disinterestedness and what humility shone in her! – Still convinced that I had left a lot by abandoning the world and the joy of a home, I asked him to compose a long poem for me that would remind Jesus of what I had given up for Him, and each stanza of which would end with these words of a melody that we liked: "Remember. - In my mind, Jesus was very indebted to me for the immense sacrifices made for Him!! and I thought, without however realizing it, that I would find there an enumeration of my own merits.

   However, I had explained my case well, so what was my astonishment when Thérèse gave me the poem entitled “My Beloved, remember! It was just the opposite of what I had wanted, since it did not mention my sacrifices

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done for Jesus, my great trials suffered for his love, but the sacrifices of Jesus for me…All the glory, all the merit was for Jesus, nothing for me, what I had given was probably not worth it. we are talking about it! I said nothing and it was only later that I realized how right my little sister had been. For, in reality, the call to religious life is a grace, a gift, and however little one has let go of some illusion of youth, one easily recognizes that one has left nothing at all by abandoning the hopes of Earth.

   However, the day of my Taking the Habit arrived, ah! it was a cloudless day! It was February 5, 1895, snow covered the ground, like Therese I didn't need to ask for it to enjoy it, I didn't ask for flowers either, and yet a lot of white sheaves arrived. There was one more beautiful than the others, composed of flowers resembling lilies, it was sent to me by the young man of whom I have spoken in the course of this story. I was touched by this witness given to my divine Spouse and I prayed a lot for the donor.

   Oh! my Mother, how happy I was to see myself the fiancée of Jesus! I could not believe my happiness. Was it really me who, after having attended so many human marriages, finally had my turn! Yes, I was the bride, I advanced in front of the altar in the white adornment of the wedding and I was alone, no mortal was at my side and my soul sang a mysterious canticle to the virginal Spouse who, after to have chosen me, to have known

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to tear myself away from the pursuits of those who coveted me.

   During the ceremony I received a particular grace of intimate union with my Beloved, I no longer saw anything of what was happening around me, the presence of the Bishop, the numerous clergy, the people who had come in droves , everything had disappeared from my eyes, I was alone with Jesus… When suddenly I was awakened from my interior silence by the singing of Compline which continued in vibrant and lively notes, the Choir intoned the psalm: “ Qui habitat in adjutorio altissimi! and I understood its meaning and each word fell into my soul like the pledge of a sacred promise made to me by Him to whom I united my life.

   How can I repay the grace that visited me then? I cannot say anything else except that it was one of the sweetest emotions I have ever tasted. And the voice said:

   “Whoever shelters under the protection of the Most High rests in the shadow of the Almighty. He said to Jehovah…I will show him my salvation! (Ps. 91)

Jesus! what is this commitment

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taken from me? Because I said, "You are my refuge...you deliver me this day from the nets of the fowler." So far I understand, because I am witnessing this deliverance of which I am the happy privileged person. But since I am in your holy asylum, how will I again meet the lion and the asp on my way, how will poisoned arrows pursue me here? how terrors, how contagion, how shall I again be in distress and need deliverance? …

   Mystery!... the book of the future was at that moment closed to my eyes and I was only to grasp the meaning of this prophecy on the distant day when, after the storm, Jesus showing me without spot our nuptial love would reveal to me the wonders of protection wrought for me. Oh! it is then that I would know how far his fidelity goes to the wife who has placed all her trust in Him!....

   This delicious feast over, dressed in the religious habit after which I had so much aspired, I resumed the practice of the Rule with a new burst of generosity. Although the life of Carmel seemed very hard to me, witness the feelings of revolt of which I have spoken and which sometimes assailed the lower part of my soul, I can however say that I was fervent and always in the disposition not to refuse anything. to the good God.

   On the morning of the day of Pentecost of that same year, 1895, Mother Agnes of Jesus, then prioress, had an inspiration that she

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communicated immediately. “I thought, she said to me, that the good Lord wanted one of us to be a lay sister and as you have not yet made profession, you are naturally indicated, do you want it? »

   Oh! it was not I who would have knowingly refused an order from Above and I immediately accepted the proposal. This news was quickly known, they talked about it at recreation; I even believe that the letter requesting this permission was written by our Mother to the Superior. The whole day was spent taking the necessary measures for this change, when Mother Marie de Gonzague, perceiving that the matter was serious, opposed it with all her power. Seeing this, our Mother gave up her project for fear of upsetting her.

   If you ask me, my Mother, what my dispositions were then, I will simply tell you. I was neither moved nor saddened by this news. I had, it is true, a sacrifice to make: that of renouncing to say the Divine Office, because although it was for me a suffering, because of my struggles against sleep, it was nevertheless my consolation and my joy. , I was so proud to raise my voice with that of the priests to sing the praises of the Lord!

   But this renunciation was quickly offered to God and I thought to console myself that the Blessed Virgin had not recited it since in her time the liturgy was not composed, the Saints celebrated there were not born and she -even was still on earth, she the main heroine whose gracious memory returns so often on the Cycle.

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  I still thought that in heaven we would no longer recite "Psalms of David" and I accepted with joy to begin in this life to praise God only in mind and heart while waiting to sing with voice and lips the "Song new” of the Fatherland.

   On the other hand, for a long time, I had no ambition for preeminence, I made no distinction between the value of our occupations. It doesn't matter what we're doing down here! is it up to us to define there whether one thing is more useful there than another, more perfect than another! I read in the life of the Fathers of the desert that a solitary man having gone to find Saint Arsène who did not answer him, addressed himself to Abbé Moïse who received him with eagerness and charity. As this solitary was astonished that Saint Arsène, by the love he bore to God, fled the company of men, while Saint Moses, by the effect of the same love, received everyone so well, an elder had on this subject a vision: God made him see two boats which sailed on the Nile, in one was the Abbé Arsène led by the Holy Spirit in great rest and in great silence; and in the other Abbot Moses led by the Angels of God who filled his mouth with honey.

   What is the use of boasting about one thing or another? Isn't it wiser to agree with St John of the Cross that "there is no law for the just!" - A religious Order, for example, for very perfect reasons does not say the Office in common, multiplies vocal prayers, puts the greatest simplicity in the pomp of ceremonies and divine ornaments. Another, on the contrary, devotes himself to prayer, puts

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recitation of the Office in Choir in its main obligations, devotes all its savings to embellishing the altars. – In one Order we read and study a lot, in another life is divided between contemplation and the work of the hands. “Jean-Baptiste came who ate no bread and drank no wine. – The Son of Man has come who eats and drinks. Thus wisdom is justified by all her children” (Luke VII, 33.35)

   Yes, I found Wisdom, perfection and happiness in the humble occupations of the kitchen sisters and it was with joy that I obeyed God by becoming one of them.

   Eight days had hardly elapsed since this oblation of myself when Jesus asked me for another, more intimate one, the obligations of which, like the rewards, had a different value.

   It was June 9, the Feast of the Holy Trinity. Coming out of mass, her eyes all aflame, breathing a holy enthusiasm, Thérèse dragged me without a word to follow our Mother who was then Mother Agnès of Jesus. She told him, in front of me, stammering somewhat, how she had had the inspiration to offer herself as a Victim of Holocaust to the Merciful Love of God, asking Him for permission to deliver us together. Our Mother, very in a hurry at the moment, allowed everything without really understanding what it was all about. Once alone, Thérèse confided to me the grace she had received and began to compose an act of offering which we officially pronounced together afterwards, on June 11.

   Together! always together!... Could there be something important in Thérèse's life without Céline being associated with it? I do not

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I did not understand, it is true, all the beauty (the scope) of the act I was accomplishing, but I had full confidence in the inspirations of my darling Thérèse and thought of giving myself up like her, to the same extent as she .

   After this donation to The Love, my union with Jesus became even closer and the following 8th day, in a completely interior (intimate) grace which was granted to me during my evening prayer, Jesus made me feel that he was taking possession of my soul to live there…I felt that I was possessed by Jesus…It was on this occasion that I received his holy Humanity as a sacred deposit, but I was only to appreciate this priceless wealth later when I would be brought to the assert. For then, I was only happy to feel Jesus living in me.

   And there it is, oh happiness! that that very day, He wanted to give me a visible testimony of the grace that had happened in my intimacy. Returning shortly after to our cell, I found all the belongings for my use marked with the holy name of Jesus!... For some time it had been said in the monastery that this mark would no longer be given. Then, going back on this decision, they had changed my old mark, without telling me, to give me instead the monogram of Christ and that on the very day of my grace!

   Ah! I needed these treats, Jesus gave them to me no doubt, so that on the day of trial I would remember the sacred commitments he had made to me, which would be like a guarantee of preservation to me.

   At that time I liked to consider Jesus as "my Knight". He had given me his name as an inheritance, taking away the flower and the Color of his Lady which would remind him of his desires. This color was white, this flower the lily and I was begging

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my Spouse to preserve them for me pure and spotless. Many times I had given him my freedom, many times I had warned him to beware of me. “Put me under lock and key, O my Beloved, I said to him, for I fear not to remain faithful to you! I thought after that humble prayer it would be her fault if I fell. I lived in peace, trusting in his amiable supervision.

   I even composed a coat of arms which I drew with a pen, Thérèse painted it for me in color with an explanation of the coat of arms written by her own hand, and gave me this treasure on the day of my Profession (It was on this initiative that she composed for itself a coat of arms). – The two coats of arms are surmounted not by a crown, but by a knight's helmet with the visor lowered. I said to myself with justice, that being almost a widow since I lived far from my Spouse, I did not want, without him, to wear a crown. That I preferred to have before my eyes, during life's time of trial, a helmet that would constantly remind me that one day would finally shine when the mystery of his Face would be revealed to me, a day when raising his visor I would contemplate his liked traits.

   To tell the truth, I was not very patient and many times I reproached him for the inequality of our conditions. He saw me, knew me, I had never seen him, this deprivation was very hard for my love... So hard, that the hour was about to strike when, unable to hold it any longer, I would pop off the visor and discover as soon as exile his adored face...

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   But before I was allowed to perform this act of boldness, many sufferings were going to visit me and I had to buy this grace in a way by extraordinary trials. I also had to unite myself to the divine Knight through the sacred bonds of mystical marriage which are formed by the issuing of Vows.

    This blessed day was set for February 24, 1896. That year, which was a leap year, the Commemoration of the Agony of Our Lady was celebrated there in the Garden of Olives, and I was very happy to offer myself to Jesus in this place where he had been abandoned by his own, to give him there and my soul and my life and to replace there those who have abandoned him.

   Two days before this great day (because the night which directly precedes it is reserved for "the vigil of Arms"), I had been sent to bed early. I had just finished my toilet in anticipation of the party and I had extinguished our little lamp, when at the same moment when I was in the darkness I heard at the foot of our bed like a series of firecrackers which followed one another. One would have said that a brazier was lit and crackled with a crash. Dominating my

first fright I dared to look, because I thought the cell was all on fire, but I saw nothing. Thinking then that it was the demon, I prayed fervently, without being able to take my hand out of bed to take holy water, because it was impossible for me to make any movement I was as if compressed under an extraordinary gravity, it it seemed to me that someone was lying on top of me. This last state lasted all night.

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              The next morning I hastened to run to our Mother to tell her everything, so she wept with consolation thinking that her little girl must have greatly displeased the demon since he hadn't been able to help showing his rage. For me, this incident did not surprise me, because the evil spirit must have been furious to see that a prey which it had particularly coveted escaped it. He had done his things for many years to bring me down, he had trampled on me with the most shameful temptations, I had been the plaything of his bellows, no wonder he let his anger burst on one occasion. where he would be defeated forever.

              It was not, however, the only time that he gave me sensible marks of his presence around me, he prowls there like a roaring lion seeking to devour me. I will give examples of this which will be encountered in their time. I am only saying here to my greatest confusion that I have had, so to speak, intercourse with the other world, having sometimes heard warnings which you know, my Mother, have all come true. There were hardly any sufficiently striking circumstances of which I was not informed. Once there was a whisper around my bed, as if several people had hatched a plot against us and two days later you learned, as if by a miracle, that some plotting had been invented to make me fall into a trap and thereby have the opportunity to send us away.

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              When I decided on the plan of my little work on the Holy Face it happened that, having woken up in the middle of the night, I waved my covers to cover myself. Then it was as if something alive, like a sentinel in the hollow of the bed, fled, dragging after itself a whole quantity of scrap metal.

                 I wouldn't finish if I wanted to tell everything. I also sometimes heard the souls of Purgatory in one of these circumstances, it was as if a piece of calico was deployed in our cell, the noise started from the ceiling and sank into the floor. You lived in my Mother, in the infirmary downstairs and, without knowing what had happened to me, you felt all night long the presence of a mysterious being who had entered through the place I indicated.

                Another time, committing an act of infidelity after Matins, since I was stopping to read a few lines of a business letter, I heard in the apartment a strange noise similar to that which one makes with the tongue to warn children to be quiet. At the first warning I turned my head towards the noise which was in the air very close to me, and, not guessing its source, I resumed reading. So second warning. I stopped again under a certain supernatural impression, but without understanding yet and resumed my reading, when a 3rd warning gave me to understand that I was doing wrong. I then put the letter down and dared not take it back. It was a missive concerning the affairs of the Holy Face which concerned me then.

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a lot. The good Lord no doubt did not want me to allow my soul to be tarnished by the slightest imperfection in this enterprise entirely to his glory. I thanked Jesus for having made me thus warn and I was no longer caught in this infidelity.

                When I happen to hear some supernatural noise I always pray, either for the dying or for the souls in purgatory, but when it is the demon, I am very afraid and I beg Jesus to come to my aid.

                  It's not just at night that the devil plays tricks on me. One evening at Matins, it was the Office of one of the ferias in honor of the Passion, I did not sleep and gave myself up entirely to the fervor and joy of following the psalmody when I had everything Suddenly the impression of someone passing quickly in front of me. At the same moment I received in my eyes something like a handful of sand which made my eyes suffer a great deal. Being forced to close them I fell asleep almost immediately.

                 To express my thoughts, I believe that my disposition to sleep during the hours of prayers is not entirely unrelated to the malice of the demon who wants to tease me, because he is not without knowing that it pains me a great deal. . What leads me to suppose this is that I am not sleeping when I should be sleeping. So, although I am in darkness, as soon as I am in bed I have extreme difficulty in resting and when I am before the Blessed Sacrament I cannot fight sleep. Poor Jesus! me who loves him so much, me who only dreams

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to look at the host, to say that as soon as I contemplate it it is as if I had taken a soporific! With that, to increase this tribulation, when you consult the directors on this subject, they always make you look gray and you leave the interview no more advanced than before, sometimes even more discouraged. No doubt that, attributing this state to a spiritual lukewarmness, they want to get us out of it by fear, but that does not succeed, for me at least. O my Jesus! you know that my life at your service is not nonchalant and colorless, but lively and warm, so you don't blame me, I'm sure of this weakness or… temptation!

                   I read something very consoling on this subject: "Some former solitaries said one day to St Pémen: Father, when we see brothers dozing at prayer time, shouldn't we shake them to keep them awake? ? And he answered them, "When I see a brother so overwhelmed with sleep, I would like to lean his head on my knees to make him rest there..."

                 But here I am still far from my subject. I was on the blessed day of my Profession. Oh ! my Mother that I was happy that day, it was with my First Communion the most beautiful of my life. It seemed to me that the whole of Heaven was rejoicing with me, for not a cloud dared to show itself in the firmament and the interior peace and the joy that I felt told me very loudly that divine grace surrounded me.

                 I had the happiness of pronouncing my holy vows between the

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hands of "my little Mother", my darling Pauline who had brought me up and had sown in my heart the fruits she was reaping on this day. I saw in the ranks of the nuns Marie, our dear eldest and my Thérèse who seemed to be triumphant. I felt that very deep impressions passed through her soul, she was no longer of the earth. As for me, I was not one either. At the time of pronouncing the vows that bound me to Jesus, I was so penetrated by the mystery, that it was with great difficulty that I finished the formula, the emotion oppressed me, very sweet tears flooded me...

                 Ah! it seemed to me, as I said, that with my sisters on earth, Heaven was there entirely listening to me. I saw with the eyes of the soul the Holy Trinity, my Jesus my adored Spouse, Mary, my Mother, my Father St Joseph. Dad, Mum, my little brothers and sisters in Paradise who attended full of joy the immolation of poor little Céline, the last guest at the divine wedding. It was the end of God's appeals to our family, so this celebration was particularly touching.

               With what happiness I remained alone after the Ceremony! I needed to converse with my Beloved in silence from Heart to Heart… This day was truly cloudless, it was for me a reward and a dawn. It was in the midst of an ineffable peace that a past full of mourning came to an end, it was in the energy of overflowing hope that the dawn opened. My "little

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Mother" had told me in the address she addressed to me at the solemn moment:

         “Now, if I ask you what you expect for the price of your complete dedication to Jesus, you will certainly answer me: “I want souls! » Well, on this mountain of Carmel where you will henceforth pitch your tent, the Bridegroom calls you… He shows you as his apostles the white and abundant harvest. He complains to you about the small number of workers who present themselves to collect it… He whispers in the ear of your soul like the valiant Joan of Arc these sweet words: “Go…daughter of God! Go! Do not be afraid of the heat of the fight, be my little reaper… Pour your tears, your sacrifices and your prayers into the furrows that you see over there!… Thus with one hand you will sow the seed, and on the other picking the ripe ears, your generation will become more numerous than the stars of Heaven and the sand which is on the shore of the sea… This is the purpose of your life, it is for this mission that I created you …If you weep now while shedding your seed in the midst of the painful struggle of life, you will soon return to me bearing the fruit of your victory, that is to say, sheaves of gold in your hands. »

              Oh ! how this entirely apostolic language found an echo in my heart! I only wanted that: souls, souls! The painful childbirth did not frighten me, I did not fear the means, the goal alone attracted me. Like a Mother who forgets herself, who remains in a vile position, feeds and dresses poorly, having only one ambition: to buy happiness for her children, I wanted, renouncing spiritual ease

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for me, to think only of procuring it for my sons by my savings and privations of all kinds. Oh ! how boldly I threw myself into the battles of life without looking back!

                The next day, they had to be taken back with all their unattractive cortege. You know, Mother, the ordeals that had preceded that beautiful day and my reception at the chapter from which the Mother Prioress had been dismissed… a not very brilliant reception, alas! but what reception can one give to a brand, if not to take it with tweezers to throw it away with contempt! My little sisters and I suffered a lot and, without the direct intervention of the Superior, I would never have been allowed to pronounce my vows under the Priorate of Mother Agnès of Jesus. However, it was more natural to favor this act than to fight it. But it was part of the divine will to allow that on this occasion as in many others, the creatures were towards us the instruments of our Passion. To say that is to excuse them before God since in our liturgical feasts we honor the cross, the nails that caused Jesus to die.

                   The days that followed were the last rolls of thunder, a worthy echo of the preceding ones. Then everything went back to normal, on the condition, however, that my companion in the novitiate was delayed and waited to pronounce her vows for the next Priorat. I'm stopping, my Mother, I would even be afraid of having lacked charity if you didn't know everything. These ordeals are indeed too exceptional to be recounted. It is enough to glorify God to know that Holiness

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of Thérèse and our days of happiness have risen on the rock of Calvary.

                   I resumed my life as a disciple with this dear little Saint, alas! this year was to be the last of our union on earth. She employed him to complete her work by giving me all her instructions concerning the way of childhood, the manner of going to God and the practice of the virtues, especially humility. She was happy to see me struggling step by step with faults that kept me constantly humbled, because with my spontaneous (impetuous) character I often had little outings with the sisters. Outings that distressed me greatly because of my great self-esteem. I found that my exterior was deceptive and that I was much better than I appeared, hence a certain annoyance at not being judged at my fair value. Appearing imperfect in the eyes of creatures seemed like a mountain to swallow.

                So my little sister endeavored, by her penetrating instructions, embellished with typical and quite appropriate stories, to make me love the opprobrium in which I was. She told me “that if there was no imperfection in falling, it would have to be done on purpose in order to practice humility. She made me find my joy in believing myself to be a "tiny little soul" that the good Lord is constantly obliged to support because it is nothing but weakness and imperfection. She also wanted me to come to want others to notice my faults, so that they would always despise me and judge me a nun without virtue. This heroism inflamed me with desires

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and I thought I had already achieved it through my admiration, when on the next occasion I found myself just as weak and imperfect. It was then the case to make him mine, but once within my reach, I no longer found so many charms in him and resentment once again succeeded the sad satisfaction of satisfying my nature with a lively word. A movement which, to my great regret, still escaped me sometimes! Only there's this difference, it's that I don't worry about it anymore… I ask the good Lord for forgiveness, then I get up and only run faster. If the creatures are cursed, I'm very sorry for them, I pray for them, that's all the attention I give them.

               About a year ago, a sister who loves me very much had particularly prayed for me during my great retreat, when at the end of this spiritual treatment designed to revive my oral strength, I fell at the first shock. This sister who had seen me began to cry, saying: "I can see that she will never correct herself!" "As for me at first, I was sad to find myself always the same, however, instead of remaining hypnotized by the fact, I kissed my Jesus internally, then I took to my heels to catch up with time. lost by this fall. In reality, I hadn't lost much, only that of falling and getting up again. As for those who cried over my unfortunate fate, they would have done better to run with me than to waste precious time lamenting in front of the empty place that I had hastened to leave.

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              After all, as long as we get there!... I sometimes say to myself: Come on, no terrors! You will always be as well decorated as your Jesus. See him then in the arms of Mary all bloody and disfigured, does his Mother reject him with horror? Well, she won't reject you either, but she will press you to her heart, cover you with kisses, cleanse your wounds saying: “How you have suffered, my poor little one! ". Then, my toilet once done, she will present me to the good God who, finding in me the resemblance of his Son, my beloved Spouse, will admit me without delay to the banquet of Heaven.

               Our Mother told us one day during recreation that a misfortune had just happened on the Rhone: Ten men were returning home rather late in a frail boat which threatened to sink completely. The pilot, to lighten the boat, swam, but he took bad momentum and made it capsize. A few minutes later, attracted by their cries, they came to their aid: 7 men had disappeared, only three were saved, they were found clinging to the boat. The newspaper pointed out that the 7 men lost were very strong swimmers, while the other 3 could not swim. This is what will happen to us, I tell myself! Strong souls sometimes go astray, relying on their own vigor, while the weak and imperfect cling to what they find. Me, it is to the good Lord that I attach myself and as I am very small and very weak, I will be saved.

               The prophet Ezekiel strengthens us in this thought when

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He said: "What was lost I will seek, what was lost I will bring back, what was broken I will bind, what was strong and fat I will preserve, and what was weak I will strengthen" (XXXIV ) Thus, for those who are strong and fat, the Lord is content to preserve them, but for those who are weak, He strengthens them: He gives to those who do not have! liberal hand of the Almighty than from the sordid little bag of our meager savings?

               O my Jesus! no, I am no longer afraid of my miseries, they are, on my way, these rungs which help me to reach you and which Saint Perpetua saw in a dream on the eve of her martyrdom: she saw a ladder which ascended to Heaven, a ladder bristling right and left with sharp swords. At its base stood a dragon ready to devour those who were bold enough to dare to climb. Ste Perpétue did not hesitate for a moment and resolutely putting his foot on the monster's head forced him to serve as his first rung. O Jesus! I dare to say that I do the same thing, my faults would like, so to speak, to devour me by paralyzing my strength through discouragement, but I am not afraid of them, they are the ones who serve me because they are the ones who throw me into an abyss of abandonment and humility!

                  Ah! I am experimenting today with the motto Thérèse gave me: “Who loses wins! Yes, it is by wanting to lose everything and losing it in reality that we gain everything. Open your mouth, says the Lord, and I will fill it! » (Ps. 81, 11) It is only those who have nothing, only the poor, who feel the need to ask for food.

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O my God and it is I, this poor destitute of all help, who has spent his life wasting, it is I who open my mouth and my heart so that you may fill them with your divine riches. O happy poverty that would not love you, you the source of all good!

            Yes, it is Love alone that counts and the darkest poverty cannot be unsuited to the operations of Love. Lately I was attracted by a very symbolic phenomenon. The sun was darting its rays in the garden, when in the middle of an alley I saw shining like a diamond with a thousand lights. I approach and what was my astonishment to see an old piece of broken crockery which, eagerly borrowing the ray of light, itself became by this communication a veritable sun. Then I exclaimed: My God, I am that despicable morsel, oh! grant me the grace to always hold myself thus in your beauty and although I am the vilest of all my sisters, I will nonetheless be a shining sun that will make you shine in souls.

             My Mother, if you knew what my faults have been to my advantage, I compare them to a gold mine. Either I conquered them by practicing the opposite virtues in difficult times, or, conquered myself, I humbly supported my captivity and my wounds, they always enriched me. I even believe that they have benefited me more in this last case, and I have never made better prayers than on the days when I counted defeats. With what joy

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then, passing in review all my sisters, I pointed out to Jesus their qualities, their virtues, praising him in them and begging him to have pity on me because of them, on me miserable sinner!

             Many times in my poor life I have desired to be a saint, I have asked the Good Lord to arrive where his Love awaits me, I would not like to have spent my ephemeral life without drawing as much profit as possible from it. Sometimes I even wanted to surprise Jesus so that he would be happy and say to himself in astonishment: “I didn't expect that from her! She did that, then that again!...” - Oh! yes, I would have been happy to push my skill so far! And on the contrary, I fell short of my desires for perfection. However, I do not despair: Not being able to offer him these surprises by my patience and my gentleness, I will do it to him by my humility... Humility, I have cultivated it with an avid jealousy and I hope that it will give me one day an unexpected and brand new little flower that I will offer to Jesus. So my dream will come true...

                 My Mother, I did not know that I was going to write all these pages which anticipate the order of facts, because this state of peace and abandonment is my present state, but not that of the time of which I am undertaking now to write history. These graces of trust were given to me only after the death of my dear Thérèse. She could have said after Jesus: "It is useful for you that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Comforter, this Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father will not come to visit you, but if I go, I will beg the Father to send it to you, then He will remind you

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of all that I will have told you and will give you the intelligence..."

             How luminous is the “little way” that Thérèse came to discover for souls! And how true and well suited to our present needs! Just now the axle of the world seems to sag under the weight of pride, the plague of our times. Hence a frightening moral degradation, luxury, well-being, selfishness gnawing at the sap of our dignity and soon if we are not careful, instead of freeing ourselves and growing up, our pride will have made us similar to beasts.

             To stop this invasion the good Lord, by an admirable spring of his Providence, sends us a gentle messenger. He takes her as a type, he works on her what he wants to work on souls, and bringing her to that smallness, to that childhood which he gave us as a model during his mortal life, he puts on his lips inspired words to invite all souls to that pleasant state of childhood which will tear them from the arms of pride to throw them into those of God.

               There is salvation, for here is the blessing promised to little Benjamin: “Beloved of Jehovah, he will dwell in safety with him, Jehovah protects him continually, between his shoulders he rests…” (Deut. XXXIII, 12) – And what else to desire, is it not the rehabilitation of the human race, this smallness to which so many privileges are attached, and why look elsewhere for the upliftment of our race?

              Is this an empty promise? no, we have the guarantee

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Before our eyes, what he did to Thérèse he will do to us if we want: “He surrounded his little Benjamin, he took care of him, he kept him like the apple of his eye. Like the eagle which stirs up its brood and flutters above its young, Jehovah has spread his wings, he has taken him, he has carried him on his feathers, Jehovah alone has led him. (Deut. XXXII, 10.11)

               At this moment, our beloved France enthusiastically greets her liberator Joan of Arc, she begs her to come and save her a second time, she hopes for salvation from her. And it is not in vain that she puts all her hope in the valiant Maid. But, just as St Michael formerly raised her up from God to save the kingdom, why would this amiable liberator not raise up herself a sister, worthy emulator of her zeal and her virtues who, by raising the banner of 'Love, would rally all Christians under the flag of our adored King?

                Let us not hope for it, Joan of Arc will not return with her spear and her armour, it is no longer a united power that must be kicked out of the country, we must convert to God. To bring about this transformation which seems impossible, because of the ever-increasing flood of the iniquities of the earth, a means is needed. This means, what will it be? A miracle can save us momentarily but not heal us, it is the heart of each of us that must be changed if we want the recovery to remain. Doesn't this way seem indicated by "the little way

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of humility and abandonment to God” “the little way full of love and sacrifice” that Thérèse came to teach us?

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                But here I am again lost in a maze of reflections. Also, waiting for others than me to find meanings

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to all this I resume my subject at the place where I left it.

                I was therefore under the direction of my darling Thérèse, listening to her advice without being able to put it into practice and I hardly gave her any consolation. pleasure. This was in particular the Rme. Father Godefroy who, having come to preach a triduum and a retreat, asked us our names in the confessional in order to recognize us. “You both have the same voice, he said to me, the same way of expressing yourselves, it's incredible how much moral resemblance there is between you. All four of you have singing souls, but between you two there is something more. To tell you, my Mother, how proud I was when I heard that, so I have never forgotten it.

               Decidedly I have always had very advantageous resemblances. In the Cte. the sisters sometimes told me that I represented St Thérèse to them, no doubt because of my manners and my frank character. I was also very honored by this comparison.

              St. Therese will no doubt not disapprove of her since she wanted to take me under her special protection by having “the two sisters” bear her name. I should have related this peculiarity before speaking of my Taking of the habit, because it was only a few weeks before this feast that, on the advice of the Superior, they added to my name "Marie of the Holy Face" (which I I had carried so far and that Thérèse had chosen me herself) that of "Geneviève de Ste Thérèse".

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             This substitution, although only apparent, was a very significant sacrifice for me and for Thérèse too… I remember that on this occasion I said to her: “Well, it is you, my little Thérèse who will be my St Thérèse! I take you for my boss and it is I who first bear your name in your honor! Wasn't I, in fact, his first conquest, the first branch that sprang from the trunk whose branches were later to multiply ad infinitum? I owed her everything, and my preservation in the world, and my vocation to Carmel, as I owed, to the sufferings she endured for me on her deathbed, and the Holy Face and the destruction of the snares set for me by the hell. The sacrifice was therefore a little softened for me because of this intimate reason and because I kept my first titles which I always include in the first line in the formula of my vows. Nevertheless, in the eyes of creatures I was no longer Marie de la Sainte Face but Genviève de Ste Thérèse. I was given this name in memory of the holy foundress of our monastery, La Rde. Mother Genevieve. She could bequeath me nothing better than her name, no doubt she thought that I would not dishonor him! – The day before that day, in order to prove to me that it was indeed his will, the good Lord allowed that, without knowing anything of what would happen the next day, I was given the belt buckle, the cross and the medal of the Belt rosary of Mother Geneviève. (Since then, I took the medal bearing our little saint, the memorial medal was returned with the relics of Mother Geneviève.) use. Inwardly I prayed to the Blessed Mother to protect me and I already looked to her as my patroness when the next day I was given her name.

              Despite this manifest will of divine Providence on me, I regretted my dear name for a long time and I was obliged to console myself by thinking that in Heaven I would receive a new name that Jesus would choose for me himself and that no one could take away from me. . So the good Lord was stripping me internally and externally of everything I cared about, and he was soon going to take away my dearest treasure, my little Thérèse.

              But as he is Father before being the sovereign Master of

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all things he gave me the consolation of taking care of my dear Sister myself, and so that no one disputed with me the rights which he himself granted me he allowed my companion in the novitiate who shared with me the office of aid in the infirmary, was withdrawn from this job just at the onset of her illness. Left alone, the first made no difficulty in giving me part of her rights with my Thérèse, she even forced me to accept it.

            So it was I who assisted my dear little sister, who looked after her at night in a small cell near the infirmary. Oh ! what memories!... but you know them, Mother. You are not unaware of the painful circumstances in which our poor little martyr spent her last months of exile and how she was never relieved by the sedatives which have since passed through the doors of the monastery, but which at that time were prohibited as a shame. She was therefore reduced not to the intelligent care of medicine, but to the loving care of her little sister; these, although very sweet, were not enough.

           For me, since I entered Carmel, I have seen many sisters die, I have never seen so much suffering, it was dreadful. I believe that no suffering was spared her, it was doubtless necessary so in order to fulfill until the end her role as the first victim of the Holocaust, queen and mother of the innumerable "little souls", following the example of Jesus who has won us eternal life.

          I will not speak to you, my Mother, of the details of his illness

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nor of those of his death, I will mention only two particularities which concern me personally which have great importance in my life.

          One of her last days in exile, I witnessed a strange sight, it was the only time I saw her struggling with the spirit of darkness. – One morning when I woke up, I found her very distressed, she seemed to be in the grip of a forced and painful struggle, she said to me: “Something mysterious happened last night, the good Lord asked me to suffer for you. , I accepted it and immediately my sufferings were doubled. You know that I suffered especially in all the right side, the left one took itself immediately and with an almost intolerable intensity. So, I felt the sensitive action of the demon who does not want me to suffer for you, he holds me as if with an iron fist, he prevents me from taking the smallest relief so that I despair: I suffer for you and the demon don't want!..."

          As she spoke these words, the little patient was pale and trembling, disfigured by pain and anguish, I no longer recognized her. A supernatural atmosphere surrounded us: deeply impressed, I lit a blessed candle and shortly after the demon fled never to return, but until her last hour she continued to suffer for me in all her left side which she named "the side of Celine".

          Ah! my Mother, at the time I did not understand the mystery, but today I have the secret. The demon meditated on me again

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assaults, he had resolved to destroy me and no doubt I would have lost myself if the good Lord had not guaranteed me by the prayers and the sufferings of a Saint... of Satan.

          The second fact is the complement of this one, Jesus wanted, after giving me a glimpse of Gethsemane, to encourage me by revealing to me in some way the divine plan and the fruits of my pains.

           During her illness, our dear little Thérèse said to us: "My little sisters, you won't have to be upset if, when I die, my last look is for one of you and not for the other, I don't know what I will do, it is what the good Lord wills. If he leaves me free, this last memory will be for our Mother (Mother Marie de Gonzague) because she is my Prioress. »

           She repeated these words to us only a few days before her blessed death. But on the day of her death, during her agony, just a few moments before dying, I was doing her a slight favor when, thanking me with a delicious smile, she gazed at me for a long time, it read like a prophecy…Look penetrating mixed with both tender affection and pride. She seemed to say to me: “Go! do not be afraid ! Undertake with courage the mission that God entrusts to you! I'll be with you!...” It was grandiose… La Cté. who was present shuddered… Then Thérèse, looking for our Mother, looked down at her, but her gaze was no longer inspired, it had resumed its usual expression.

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          Ah! my Mother, how can I tell you again of the impressions that passed through my soul at that solemn moment! However, at the time, I only believed in a delicacy of the good Lord who had granted me this privilege because, as Thérèse said, “it was I who had to suffer the most from his death. In losing her I lost, in fact, my little companion, my intimate confidante, my daily support: Marie and Pauline would still live together on earth, but one of Céline and Thérèse would remain in exile, the another would dwell in Heaven...

            Many times since, the memory of this Gaze (sic) came back to me and made me shudder, it was an encouragement in my trials, the rainbow announcing to me that the divine promises would be kept for me. and that the final victory would belong to Jesus. Today I think I better understand the hidden meaning. This mission, this future, was the Holy Face.

[transverse note in the left margin of p. 294]:

It was also the work that I had to undertake to make known “the little way”, to make known my dear Thérèse, in order to ignite the true love of Jesus in all hearts…

At the time when I was writing this manuscript nothing had yet been started of the Cause, which is why I could not mention this future which I was unaware of; (note of 9ber 1920)

And now that I'm about to enter my 80th year, I wonder if that look didn't still prophesy to me that I would be left alone, the last here on earth……. (note from March 1948)

But before producing this work, I would have to suffer a lot, the storm would beat my frail skiff for a long time. Then an hour would be given to the spirits of darkness during which they would try to sink my little boat. However, Jesus, by a constant miracle, would support her on the waves and would save me… Then, permission would be granted to me to steal from the divine Sun, which shines in the sky of the Heavens, a luminous ray of his glory, the Face of Jesus. My Mother, perhaps you will think that I exaggerate the struggles of the demon against me, that it will be impossible for you to judge, since I cannot give you the details of this hurricane. And yet these images taken in the material world are only a pale sketch of my ordeal.

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          But I come back to my dear little Thérèse. Ah! my Mother, allow me not to evoke here the details of his departure for Heaven. You can well guess what passed in my heart at that supreme moment. You can also imagine what were the intimate relations of Thérèse and Céline during the last months of their sensitive union, the devotion of poor little Céline, her pain...

          I wonder how the good Lord could deprive me of my support so soon, I felt like a child in the cradle who loses his mother. It's because, in my life, I notice the exact opposite of what happened in Thérèse's life: At the age of 14, she regained her child's strength of soul, which never left her, in the last period of its existence, I enjoyed it during my youth, then I lost it when I entered Carmel never to find it again. Jesus then works in me only by demolishing.

          So he took my Thérèse from me and, while after her death my elder sisters had the courage to pay her the last respects, I went out into the cloister to cry, and while crying I looked at the sky covered with clouds and I said: "If only there were stars!" "It seemed to me that, seeing the open firmament, I would penetrate the mysteries of the Ascension of my dear Sister... I had lowered my eyes to cry again when, raising them, I saw that there were no more clouds and the stars were beginning to shine! This delicacy of my darling sister responded so fully to my desire and in such a prompt manner that several people from the town who were returning to take shelter under their umbrella were greatly surprised by this sudden change in the weather.

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This completely unexpected delicacy seemed to me like a smile from my little sister, but the next morning, when I found her inanimate and I spoke to her without her answering me, my tears started again, I asked her what she had done. in Heaven during those first hours, what she had seen there and realizing that I had lost her forever I could not console myself.

          Twelve years ago and these feelings are so strong, sometimes in the evening when I contemplate the starry azure, my thoughts become so deep thinking of her, I want so much to go find her, that I still cannot hold back my tears. . You see, my Mother, how strong I am in the face of suffering! And it was for me, for me, deprived of all help, that the Lord was going to allow the great trials of which I am going to speak.

          But before letting me feel the sting of it, he prepared me for it by very great graces. After the death of my darling Thérèse, the good Lord placed my soul in a region of calm and serenity that nothing could disturb, I no longer lived on earth, but in Heaven. This state, which lasted several months, had as its starting point a grace which was granted to me just two weeks after Thérèse's departure. It was the evening of Oct. 9, the feast of the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin, which is particularly dear to me. I began, under the cloister, the exercise of the Way of the Cross. It was full moon, there were a few small clouds here and there and from the horizon rose a white cloud which ended in water vapour, the moon

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was, however, very brilliant and its luminous clarity. These two things, the clarity of the star in its fullness and the water vapour, materially prevented the stars from being seen, so there was none (note: I have since noticed that at the full moon of October we never saw any star around the star). Having begun my prayer, I arrived at the fourth station, when suddenly from the depths of the sky, on the right side of the moon, came out like a small sun which, describing a slight curve, sank into the immensity, passing quickly in front of her. It was a luminous furrow, like the fringe of an angel's dress or the trace of his footsteps. This gave me the impression of someone letting himself be seen, passing for a moment the limit of his domains.

            I exclaimed: “It's my Thérèse!!! ". And immediately a celestial joy came over me, so vivid that I was unable to express it. What I do know is that I couldn't have endured greater joy without dying, it was just the measure of my weak nature. The vision had faded but my eyes remained attached to Heaven… I then understood a host of things that it is impossible for me to express. The inner grace far surpasses anything I could say about it. In the space of a flash, I had the answer to what had so often darkened my hope and saddened my heart. Then all my vain preoccupations vanished, Thérèse's "little way of trust, abandonment, humility and spirit of childhood" was explained to me and became luminous.

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in my eyes and since that day, I was in the inner disposition that she tried to give me when she was still on earth.

          This grace was very striking for my soul and the starting point of a whole new spiritual life. It was to me, in a small way, what Pentecost was to the Apostles after the Ascension of their Master. I received the spirit of Thérèse there by a grace of strength in weakness, but not a grace of victory over my faults, because the good Lord, since my entry into Carmel, has never changed his way of doing things towards me. which was always, as I said, a path of humiliation and destruction. No matter, the main grace for me was knowing how to glory in my weaknesses and that was the one I received on that day.

          From that blessed moment, a celestial peace filled my heart and since I am on the subject of the graces and delicacies of the good God towards his little Céline, I will tell you, Mother, the joy I felt when Thérèse's cell was given. I would never have dared to ask for this privilege although I really wanted it. I contented myself with praying to my darling sister a prayer in my heart, by which I begged her to give me her double spirit, this favor I dared to ask for without tiring. And now, against all my forecasts, I was appointed to take his cell as well as all the small pieces of furniture that make it up and I entered it on June 14, the feast day of St Elisha to which this cell is dedicated! I thought I saw in the very fact and its coincidence an answer to my prayer. Just like the prophet

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Elie bequeathed his disciple his coat as proof that he had granted his request, so Thérèse, in response to my prayer, gave me the cell witnessing all her virtues. Some

days later, wondering what was the first work I had done there, regretting not having prepared it, I remembered that in the evening, during the silence, rendering a service to a sister, I had cut out a small tongue of fire and written on it “Plenitude of the gifts! »

              All these little things encouraged me and helped me to endure life. I was also designated to take his stall in the choir, his bell ringing. It is true that one day I had to leave them, but it was I who succeeded her first, just as it was I who had first followed her on the path of Love by offering myself with her Victim of Holocaust to this merciful Love. Ah! no doubt I was quite unworthy of all these privileges, but I have always thought that the good Lord, in granting them to me, was saying very loudly that he did not disdain my misery and that, if he accepted pure and stains like Thérèse, he also accepted imperfect and sinful Victims [in pencil] like me.

             But where his infinite Mercy gave me perfect assurance of this was in the grace of March 5, 1898, for on that day he caused the torrents of his Love to overflow in my heart, he broke the dikes, overthrew all obstacles, and , satisfied at last with his victory, he overwhelmed my whole being with the impetuosity of his waves.

              After the death of my dear Thérèse, an aspiration

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became habitual, especially at the time of Communion. I then said to Jesus: “O my Beloved! how is it that I eat fire and do not burn! How is it that, putting myself on the passage of a torrent, I am not overwhelmed! If I approached a material fire I would burn, if I placed myself in front of a rapid torrent, I would be overthrown. Well, I come to you, oh! burn me, swallow me! »

              This prayer which did not come from me, but from Heaven, which wanted me to desire the grace which it was about to grant me, was fully granted. It was during my great retreat, the morning of the last day (March 5, 1898). I was doing my prayer alone in the choir, a very sterile prayer, alas! and I addressed gentle reproaches to my Thérèse for not having given me better inspirations during the first retreat that I made without her. I was in a very great aridity mechanically reading the book of the Prophets that I had started. I had given myself a task and I wanted to see several chapters very quickly

               In this disposition, I arrived at this passage from the prophet Zechariah: "What good and beautiful has the Lord, if not the wheat of the elect and the wine which makes the virgins sprout?"

                No sooner had I read it than something extraordinary happened. In an instant, God's Love for us appeared to me as without veil and revealed itself to me with such intensity that I cannot express this transport. I felt like a violent commotion… on three different occasions my heart was shaken, it was as if someone, wanting to attack it, rushed into it with violence and made a way out…… It seemed to me then that the torrents of divine Love were overflowing in my heart and I understood a host of things about the mysteries of Love, which were, so to speak,

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discovery… I was overwhelmed, swallowed up and too weak to bear this excess of love, I was crying…

                My tears flowed for an hour, without my being able to say a word, and when I wanted to get up I was all tottering, I felt like a kind of intoxication. Ah! I could well say with Saint John of the Cross: "In the interior cellar of my Beloved, I drank and, when I went out, in all this plain I no longer knew anything and I lost the herd that I followed previously. »

               I wanted to tell our Mother everything, but I was too moved and had to wait until evening. During the Offices, I had to turn my images upside down and take my thoughts away from God, otherwise I would not have been able to attend, the waters of divine Love had not yet flowed enough and it was impossible for me that day to feed myself with food from the earth.

                This unique grace surpasses all those I have received in my life and, each year, I celebrate its sweet anniversary. It seems to me greater, this grace, even in the natural order, than if with my own eyes I had seen the Blessed Virgin and she would have placed the Child Jesus in my arms. I received the Love and I kept it! The prayer contained in the Act of my Thérèse came true in my favour: "In order to live in an Act of perfect love, I offer myself as a Victim of a holocaust to your Merciful Love, begging you to consume me ceaselessly , letting overflow in my soul the floods of infinite tenderness which are contained in you, and so that I become a martyr of your Love, O my God! »

                But, why had the Lord, in conquering my whole being, submerged me in water, rather than consumed by fire? It would have been more understandable for him to maintain, by fire, the incandescence of his "brand" rather than by 

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the water ! Ah! his ember! it was both overwhelmed and incandescent with divine love, but the demon was about to set its cursed fire on it. A year later, almost to the day, would strike his hour and Jesus wanted, by this emblem, to give me, so to speak, the assurance that the efforts of the enemy would be in vain. How, indeed, to ignite a brand that water surrounds and soaks on all sides?

                Jesus had therefore come to visit me in a moment of aridity, why had he chosen this occasion in preference? I think it was to prove to myself once again that sensitive fervor, if it gives us contentment, is no more valuable in his eyes than an apparent dryness that does not come from infidelities. On the contrary, dry wood is the cleanest for combustion and an empty vessel the most suitable for filling. I was that empty vessel and that's why Jesus came to me.

                 I have also noticed in different circumstances of my life that the good Lord has always taken advantage of moments of distress to give me graces. Being still in the world, one evening when I was doing my prayer badly, I mechanically raised my eyes and they met those of the blessed Virgin before whom I was kneeling. At this moment I started, for it seemed to me that she was looking at me tenderly and smiling at me. I received this impression as a great favor and carefully marked the date. My lukewarmness had suddenly changed into a very great fervor which stimulated me to piety. When this

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sweet grace had vanished I tried in vain to recapture it by the effects of light projected on the statue, but I was never able to do so. Around the same time (it was during my sleep) having had a lot of pain the previous days, I was dreaming that I was still under her embrace, when suddenly the Blessed Virgin came to me: a drop of blood one of his fingers. Not hesitating then, despite my extreme repugnance for blood, I brought the droplet to my lips, but as soon as it was in my mouth, it changed into milk… It was a Sunday feast of the Maternity of Mary.

                   Thérèse told me that this was a living image of what happened to us when we accepted suffering with a good heart, it looked like blood to us, but in reality it is only milk.

                   Quite recently (it was during my great retreat) one evening when my soul was undergoing a real agony, returning after Matins to our cell I found the oratory of the Virgin of Thérèse “full of incense”. This fragrant emanation filled the atmosphere for more than a quarter of an hour, it was "the perfume of my little Thérèse." This circumstance is not the only one where she visited me in this way, but I noticed that it was always either when I was sad, or discouraged, or lukewarm in my prayers.

                  Speaking of prayers, it happened to me within a year of her death that I was awakened one evening at Matins by a kiss she gave me on the forehead.

                  Another time, it was the anniversary of his Profession,

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and the Community was to come and celebrate it at the oratory of the Blessed Virgin. I was in our cell (his) and had been unable to attend Compline due to a migraine, when suddenly I heard his voice nearby. She was calling me. I only jumped up thinking I'd find him there, but I saw no one. However, I was filled with ineffable consolation and proceeded to light all the candles I had prepared for the feast. I had just finished this work when the Fellowship entered. It was Thérèse who had warned me of her arrival as if she had said to me: "Hurry up, it's high time to dispose of your illumination!" »

                    This time I had heard a voice with my ears, but in other circumstances, although I did not perceive any sound, I nevertheless heard his voice which exhorted me either to humbly ask again for an object which I was going to claim with mood ; or by reminding me to gently close a door when I was going to let it knock.

                   Finally, his help accompanies me when I am at fault or unhappy, never in times of prosperity.

                   One evening, after having suffered from a violent toothache without complaining, I went to the refectory, very much at a loss to know how I could have a snack with unsoaked bread, as is the custom on young. Having recommended myself to his protection, I was quite surprised when I arrived at the refectory to find my piece of bread peeled all around! The sisters were interrogated, but no one had touched them!

                   You see, my Mother, Thérèse does not abandon me

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                    The eighteen months following his death, that is to say until my great ordeal, my life was studded with small and large favours. With those that I have just written, I pointed out others in my deposition and I can say that she keeps her promise: “From the moment she left me, we have never been more united. It was like a continual presence, a perpetual colloquy, and I possessed her much more than when she was on earth where her sensitive presence gave me only a decrepit, miserable union, hampered by a thousand pains.

                   Before ending this subject I want to take up a note that I wrote saying that I had asked him for his double spirit. O my Mother, I have never thought, nor desired to have anything better than my Thérèse, quite the contrary, it is with all my heart that I lay the crown of “Queen” on her head. I wanted to say that I was asking the good Lord to accept me by grace as a follower and to accomplish in me what she herself proposed, in challenge, with these words "If by impossible, O Jesus, you find a soul weaker than mine, I feel that you would like to shower it with even greater favors! For I am that weaker soul, the weakest of all the weak. But as I cannot envisage a greater sum of graces than those granted to my dear sister, nor also a greater sum of correspondence to these graces, I consider myself very happy and quite fulfilled if it is given to me follow in his footsteps. It is this grace that I have asked many times when begging Jesus to allow there to always be on earth “a little soul” who, like Thérèse, possesses the fullness of Love.

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                   Among the favors and instructions that Thérèse gave me, I do not consider the least great this zeal for souls that she activated in my heart and that devoured me with the desire to save them all. To achieve this end, as far as possible, no sentence would have seemed to me too arduous, no test too difficult to bear. Ah! the rough paths did not scare me! to look for the lost sheep, with joy I would have rushed there. What does the struggle matter when the goal is worth it? Also the chances of combat do not frighten me, I consented to go down into the arena, even if it meant some harm to me. “And what does it matter, I said, that I blush this arena with my blood? I prefer to come back with some wound and carry in my hands sheaves of souls snatched from the enemy rather than remain very quiet and harvest nothing. »

                   How then could the good Lord make me buy these coveted treasures with such ardor? He did not take me by the physical sufferings, I had a good health and if sometimes my rheumatic pains prevented me from sleeping or that in the evening, as it often happens to me, I was inconvenienced from the fast, I estimated these small miseries too little and I thought that the good Lord would allow me other more painful and more dangerous trials.

                  Thérèse, it seems, could wean me off and that's what she did, because a year after my great grace, in March-February 1899, the sky seemed to abandon me. I entered a period of temptations that I will call appalling. I who, for 9 years, enjoyed the most peace

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profound as to the virtue of purity, saw me assailed by moral sorrows which became of an intensity of which I could not give an idea. I had to endure them for two years and three months without any order from above coming to put an end to my martyrdom. I say moral penalties, because the good Lord allowed the sting not to be in my senses. He made me, so to speak, invulnerable on this side. But a religious scholar told me: this kind of temptation is much more subtle and more dangerous than the others, it is a direct emanation from hell since the flesh has no part in it. It was not the external things that came to excite me, I had nothing to run away from, nothing to avoid either to put an end to this strange ordeal.

                 As I said, it resided in the spirit alone, that is to say in the upper part of myself. My imagination was absolutely haunted, my intelligence clouded. I think that there is no intelligence of a worse materialist or a worse sinner more erroneous or more soiled than mine was then by the sting of desires. I thirsted for happiness, there was a gaping abyss within me and I had to struggle constantly not to run towards every object capable of giving me only a drop of bliss. You see, my Mother, the faculties of my soul were absolutely taken, only my heart and my senses were safe. My reason was so spoiled that I counted the vows of obedience and poverty as nothing, and I was surprised that the vow of chastity was not exalted more than all the others, so difficult and impossible did I find it.

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               O my Mother, but I stop, I even fear I have gone too far and yet this painting is far from reality!..

               To top off these pains, the sky seemed to have completely abandoned me, rejected as an infamous being. I believe that the demon, seeing that he could not make me sin in my thoughts on the side of purity, wanted to throw me into despair. One evening the troubles in my soul took on such frightful proportions that I thought I heard a voice saying to me inwardly: “Ah! ah! your confidence is finally overcome! look at all your faults! contemplate your numberless infidelities, whatever you do, God's justice must do its work! » And I felt indeed that I deserved if not hell at least punishments until the end of the world, I saw God allowing his justice to act, which was pursuing me… Then, I threw a cry towards Heaven, I called Thérèse !!! then I threw myself into the arms of my Judge, closing my eyes so as not to see what he was going to do with me!...

           It was on this occasion that the justice of God, defeated by the act of abandonment that I had just made, was temporarily suspended and that the story of the "little white rabbit" came back to my memory to console me.

            But this consolation was only a short-lived brightening and this ordeal which I compared to a smell spread in my clothes which I could not have gotten rid of, this infernal smell again made the atmosphere all around me heavy, and it It was poisonous to her taste that I ate my daily bread alone.

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            You are doubtless wondering, my Mother, what I did during this terrible ordeal which a learned theologian told me was the most painful for a consecrated virgin.

              What I did, ah! it's quite simple. When the ordeal was at its height, blinded as I was by the false light of the pleasures of the flesh, I quietly said to Jesus: "O my Beloved, yes, it is true that this light seems seductive, but I am happy to be unaware of its clarity and the more times the demon makes them dangle in my eyes, the greater will be my happiness to have thereby new opportunities to renew my sacrifice. Never did my vow of chastity seem more lovable to me than at this moment and I kissed my chains with joy, I give you my body again and if I had a thousand; if all those on earth were mine, I would consecrate them all to you not wanting to enjoy in any, the only grace I ask of you is never to offend you. »

              Ah! I often repeated this last aspiration, I reminded Jesus of my conventions telling him to behave towards me like a "jealous spouse", to carefully close all the exits of our house and, as in the past to the liberating ark, not to leave any opened only a small window on the sky, because I felt my weakness and I knew that if I had been reduced to my own forces I would have fallen immediately into sin! It was therefore necessary that Jesus be vigilant around me and I hoped that he would not fail to do so. This hope kept my little boat in peace and despite the storm my peace was unalterable.

                How to explain this? I do not know. Trouble and peace, temptations of the flesh in the spirit, seems contradictory

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and indeed is. Isn't it as contradictory as a good Jesuit Father to whom I had opened my soul, said to our Mother while speaking of me: “This child is so candid! You know we don't see that! »

My dear little Mother Agnes of Jesus who hoped to console me with this appreciation repeated it to me immediately, but how could I have been consoled, the bread of bitterness never leaving my lips! Nevertheless the good Lord allowed that at certain hours the thought that I, heap of rubbish, could still hope to be candid, this thought gave me courage and helped me to support life.

               I received yet another consolation through my little Mother. She was partly unaware of my sufferings, because I talked about them as little as possible and one day, having come to see me on the occasion of a painting job, she said to me: “How pure your eyes are! I looked at her dumbfounded, recognizing myself for a vessel of iniquity, and her reflection saddened me almost so much that I found it false. I then pointed out to her that not I, but such and such sisters, whom I pointed out, had purity painted on their faces. The prayer sounded. She handed me after this little note:

               “Purity in the eyes of those you mentioned to me, rather the candor of childhood: purity in yours like St. Cécile who fights, more interesting purity. I don't know how to express my thoughts to you: it's like the honeycomb that Samson found in the mouth of a lion, there you have your beautiful purity, little Cécile! »

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She then pointed out to me that, thinking of me, this light had come to her during her prayer and she explained to me that the lion of which Samson speaks was a dead lion, therefore harmless. "Once upon a time," she told me, "he was alive, so it's a marvelous sight to have such a sweet honeycomb in the mouth of a ferocious beast." Our Lord plays with difficulties, it is a more pleasant thing for him to find a honeycomb in the mouth of a lion than in the hollow of a tree. »

                 Ah! it was Jesus who sent me this sweet message and I thought that if his creatures were indulgent to this excess, there was no reason for him to give in to them and be less so, so I was much encouraged and this consolation momentarily became a bright spot in my dark sky. Yes, it was very real, since I had surrendered myself totally to Jesus the lion was dead, he no longer had any right over me, he had, it is true, the power to make me suffer, not that of make me fall, because my will to remain faithful to Jesus was united to the will of Jesus to be faithful to me, what to do in the face of two such powerful adversaries?

                 No, and I am certain of it, the demon and all the rage of hell united together, can absolutely nothing on the humble soul whose spouse and defender Jesus is. “For, says Saint Augustine, if before the arrival of Christ, the devil was unfettered, Christ by coming into our soul chains him. But if he was chained why does he still have so much power? - It is true that there are many, but on the lukewarm, the negligent. Held back like a dog on a chain, he can bite no one except the imprudent who binds himself with him through the desires and greeds of the age. Judge then of the folly of

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the man who is bitten by this chained dog! He can bark, he can provoke, he can only bite if you want to. For he does harm not by violence, but by persuasion: he does not extort our consent, he solicits it. »

               In reality I was not afraid of this dog and I never asked the good Lord to deliver me from his pursuits, but only the grace not to succumb to them, because I felt or rather I foresaw, without feeling it, that I was to be very pleasing to the good Lord and to save many souls by my sufferings. He gave me striking proofs of this several times. Among other things, one day when I was suffering a lot, our Mother received a letter from a Seminary Superior who urged her to recommend several very compromised vocations: "the devil, he said, is acting up, he must be disarmed". I immediately offered to Jesus, my interior trials, I thought that being sheltered, there was less danger for me and that I could well suffer in the place of these souls by taking on me their temptations. Immediately my troubles redoubled and became intolerable, but some time later a letter announced that the dangers were averted, that everything was back to normal.

             Ah! the desire to save souls was my madness and, in comparison with a single soul snatched from Satan, all my sorrows seemed like nothing to me. It was this hope that gave me courage, for if I had had to suffer such cruel, such humiliating, such dangerous pains to acquire a virtue, even humility, I would not have had any. didn't have the strength. But souls, I wanted souls to

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any price, at any price. Should I become impoverished by buying them, should I hurt myself by pulling them out of the abyss, what did personal damage matter to me as long as I succeeded? I had as I said, only a prayer “Lord, deliver me from evil, do not allow me to offend you by committing the smallest sin”, but give me souls! »

           One day when, not satisfied with my labors, I was still looking for a way to save souls, it occurred to me that my desires were undoubtedly rash, I was even afraid of taking on too great a burden by accepting all the brothers that our Mother gave me. This preoccupation became a real pain for me and I asked Thérèse to enlighten me, when she explained to me in new terms the beautiful words of the Canticles: "Attract me, we will run." She reminded me at the same time of a dream I had had two years before (before my grace of March 5)

             I found myself alone in the middle of a large bridge, brand new, as far as the eye could see, an overflowing torrent rushed with force under this colossal arch, and as it grew bigger while bubbling, its waves filled it completely. And I was there panting because the waters were still gaining, a moment longer and they were going to overwhelm the bridge and carry it away in their impetuous course. When I woke up I immediately thought that I was the great bridge and that the overflowing torrent was

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divine love, I then begged Jesus to make his love overflow in me and I said to myself: the bridge will not hold up, whether it is old or new, the current will carry it away, so I must not lose Courage if I have good health, because in the absence of illness love will kill me.

               I had never envisaged this parable except from this point of view when in the anxiety of which I speak, it appeared to me in a different light: "the bridge is me, I say to myself, but I am alone there and yet there is a lot of space, a whole people can take place there, and the more people there would be, the more there would be submerged by the torrent!... O my Jesus! I cried, give me souls, the number of my brothers no longer frightens me. Whether there are a hundred or ten thousand and with them all the souls they will win you, there is room for everyone. Again ! again!.. oh! this word the first that escaped from my childish lips I say it now and will say it again for all eternity. Again ! Again ! more souls! more love! Again ! .. I am thirsty ! No, I no longer fear anything, not even not being able to feed so many children, because my Spouse is Almighty, a single one of my poor little actions, blessed by him, is enough to satiate all this crowd and this mysterious food. there are still pieces left as before in the miracle of the loaves… And so, alas! I did not do this little action, if I have not gained anything for my children, Jesus will see my pain, my poverty and instead of only blessing a bread that is presented to him he will create some!.. and this one this will be even better and much more strengthening than the other. Jesus! don't expect to be confused

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your poor little wife, she knows to whom she gave her faith and her heart by uniting her life to yours!

             But I resume the story of my ordeal. Ah! it is quite true that I hardly wished to be rid of it, so great was my desire to save souls by this means. Every evening, during the silence, I went to kneel at the foot of the Calvary of the Préau, I placed myself under the Cross and I asked Jesus to make his redemptive blood flow on me, to flood me with this divine dew and to purify all defiled souls. It seemed to me that I was the scapegoat charged with all the sins of the people, ah! I took them with a good heart, because I knew the fountain where I could wash them off… I stayed there for a long time…

             Often also, not being able to pray, so much my soul was dry or brutalized by the trial, I exercised myself in acts of charity in order to prove my love to Jesus, at least by mechanical means. I then stood on the edge of the cloister and opened and closed the door to the sisters who passed laden, which often happens to nurses during silence. I then thought of Saint Christopher at the edge of his torrent and I hoped that, following his example, I would meet Jesus in my exercise of charity. I met him indeed, because these little things maintained in me the strength to suffer.

             To help me endure my ordeal, I still remembered my dear Thérèse who, too, had suffered for the souls accepting to sit at the table of sinners until the moment

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where Jesus would order him to leave her. She tasted bitter dishes at this table of skepticism and doubt. As for me, attending in my turn at a banquet of iniquity, I ate the sweet and at the same time poisonous dishes of voluptuousness, asking like her to the Lord to cast my eyes on his little wife who loved him and, to because of her, to look favorably on the other guests.

             However, the demon, furious to see that he gained nothing by keeping me in the company of his friends, formed another plot: It did not suit him to see that despite the storm, my boat did not sink and he absolutely wanted it sink down. He had tried all his strings compared to the last temptations, he was going to take another bow. For more than two years he had not given me a moment's rest and even at night through dreadful dreams, he had persecuted me, he was about to change tactics. But before putting his diabolical project into execution, he made a point of warning me.

             It was on the night of April 24 to 25, 1901. In the evening having fallen asleep as usual, I found myself in the midst of the deepest sleep when I suddenly awoke, but in such a clear way that I thought it was time to get up. While waiting for the wake-up signal, I wanted to tuck myself in. As I was rearranging the covers I felt a strong resistance and someone entering the bed. Then a claw sank into my foot, I immediately wanted to free it from this embrace, then I felt like a dog's paw landing in my hand and someone

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was sliding on the left side in the lane of the bed. In the meantime, the dormitory clock struck midnight, I distinctly counted the 12 strokes, but I dared not get up to kiss the earth and adore the Word made flesh, as is the custom when one wakes up at this hour. However, I tried to make this prayer all the same, but an unknown force prevented me from doing so and it was impossible for me to pronounce the words. It was then that I felt a claw land on my left shoulder and sink in cruelly, then a muzzle very close to my cheek, several puffs of breath and the sensation of hair brushing my face. The monster stammered at times unintelligible words, I listened I heard nothing, I only understood that he was referring to this passage of the Holy Gospel where he is called "Prince of this world". But suddenly raising his voice, he said these words: “I will go up! I will win! "That's not true!" I exclaimed, with force, it is Jesus who will win for me! »

        The demon left me immediately and free of my movements I sat down on our pillow, I took holy water, I repeated the sweet names of Jesus and Mary, I kissed our crucifix. I had been praying fervently for about half an hour, when I heard very close to me something like the fierce and mocking cry of a bird of prey. I couldn't hold it any longer and didn't think I was making a mistake against poverty by lighting our little lamp. So I heard

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the door, but outside, a sound similar to that of claws, scraping it with force. And that was it.

          Of course, I didn't sleep all night, I prayed all the time. The next day, my shoulder ached very badly, although no outward signs of injury appeared. There were only five tender spots like bruises.

           What was this challenge Satan had given me? A month later, all my temptations vanished never to reappear, giving way to calm, peace and freedom.

           Of this new ordeal, which preceded my work on the Holy Shroud, and which lasted only a few months, I will not speak to you, my Mother, you know them. You know that it was to her that the grace, received on the distant day of my Taking the Habit, related. For, at one of the most painful phases, this grace returned to me lively and penetrating. The psalm “Qui habitat in adjutorio altissimi! unfolded in front of me and every word entered my

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heart like a balm, accentuating, interrupting itself as if someone had explained to me the prophetic meaning, revealed on this day.

           When this sweet instruction was finished, I heard inside a voice which said to me: "Blessed are you, you who believed, because all that was spoken to you by the Lord has come to pass!..." ( Luke)

           Often again, I remembered the image of Daniel in the midst of the lions and this word of Scripture pronounced about him, seemed to me to be said for me: "...And no wound was found on him because he had believed in his God. »

           Ah! I finally knew the thought of my Heavenly Father, I no longer doubted it and this thought tallied perfectly with everything I had hoped for from his goodness!

          Yes, Jesus truly "overcame for me!" » - « It is in vain, he said, that Satan has wanted, up to now, to sink your boat to the bottom, believing thereby to reach you. Ah! my "Tison", it bathes in the waters of my Love, there, it 

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is not inflammable… and even if the last wrecks of the boat disappeared, it would be there intact carried on the waves, only waiting for my divine hand to take it and save it forever from the tyrant. »

            My Mother, it is this last phase of my existence that I am going to tell you about shortly. – For some time Jesus seemed to abandon his brand, he seemed to despise him. This miserable wood had nevertheless given him his little cluster of love, but he had pretended not to remember it: "What good is the wood of the vine, he said?" It is not useful for any work and we put it on the fire to consume it! (Ezek. XV) He had therefore apparently delivered it to the fire, but his heart was watching, and there came a time when, leaning down from the heights of Heaven, he took it up tenderly and swore by himself, saying: "He escaped the fire and the fire will consume him!" (Ezek. XV, 7) The fire of his love therefore took on a renewal of intensity in his ember, for the Lord, by a breath of his mouth, had increased his ardor. But that was not the end of his divine mercies. He who had loudly declared that no use could be made of this wood, more base than all the others, resolved to make use of it. It was a whim of his omnipotence.

       Having decreed in ancient ages that at the end of time, He, Jehovah would "stretch out his hand a second time to redeem the remnant of his people" had promised as a rallying sign "to lift up in that day the root of Jesse as a standard for the nations” (Is. XI, 10.11) But he needed a pole to raise this standard, and the Lord

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 who likes to use what is weakest to confuse the strong took his ember for this purpose!

        O my Jesus! when I consider how far your mercy goes, your condescension towards the most puny of all your creatures, my heart melts with gratitude, and I cry out with Therese: “Love has chosen me, weak and imperfect creature! Isn't this choice worthy of Love? Yes, for Love to be fully satisfied, it must lower itself to nothingness and transform this nothingness into itself. »

         Jesus had lowered himself for me to Calvary, to the Tomb, he rested there disfigured in a shroud and I, associated with his immolation, had followed him to this place where buried, humiliated in the eyes of creatures and in mine , I was truly conforming to my Beloved. So the moment had come when he shared his holy humanity with me by creating me the little apostle.

           It was at the very end of the ordeal of which I have just spoken, in 1902, that it was given to me to reproduce the Holy Face of Jesus. The circumstances are a page of history which lengthens this account, but of which I will nevertheless give the details with the aim of obeying you, my Mother, since you told me to write naturally what entered into my subject. So here are the circumstances in which I was led to paint the Holy Face.

          My Uncle being very interested in scientific questions, which he follows closely, got hold of Mr. Vignon's book entitled: “The Shroud of Christ”. When he

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had become acquainted with this work, he passed it on to us. But we looked at it with indifference, our Mother (Mother Agnès of Jesus) had no time to study this subject and the engravings, seen in haste, had not seduced her. However, I asked for the book before it was sent back to its owner. It was at the beginning of the evening silence, I was alone in our little cell. I cannot say the impression I felt contemplating the features of my Jesus… I was dumb with emotion, it seemed to me that I saw him in person. Yes, it was indeed Him, I recognized Him, He, God, who portrays himself thus in Holy Scripture: "Merciful and compassionate, slow to anger, rich in goodness and faithfulness, who preserves his grace until a thousand generations, who forgives iniquity, rebellion and sin" (Exodus XXXIV, 7), He who, on the evening of his Passion, left us as his inheritance "his Peace" after having given us the means to keep it, telling us “Learn from me that I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls. »

           He was indeed my Jesus as my heart had sensed him… This image was not inferior to the ideal that I had

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 mortal traits of my God... And, seeking the traces of his Love for us, I followed the wounds the bloody imprint...

           Then, unable to contain the feelings of my heart any longer, I covered that adorable Face with my kisses and sprinkled it with my tears. And I took the resolution to paint a Holy Face according to this ideal that I had glimpsed.

           I went to Our Mother, who, while finding the holy imprint marvelous, did not share my enthusiasm. I told him that I understood his impression, but that, according to this sketch, I would make a true portrait of Our Lord very neat. She let me

            My cousin Marie, who had become Sister Marie of the Eucharist in the Carmel, particularly encouraged me in this undertaking, confiding to me that the Holy Face such as it had been represented until then had been for her the subject of her greatest scruples. Because her parents praying in front of one of these images called "after the Veil of Veronica" she was obliged to imitate them, but finding it so ugly, she hastened as soon as she was alone to turn the back to the painting to pray, which then caused him terrible remorse.

         Our Chaplain also strongly urged me to undertake this work. He told me that he had known pious ecclesiastics far removed from devotion to the Holy Face, because of the imperfection of the effigy presented for the veneration of the faithful.

         I therefore sought to obtain the documents necessary to accomplish my plan and especially time. But it was only in

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1904 that I was able to carry out this project. During these two years I also received from everywhere, without having requested them, images of the Holy Shroud. Each time it seemed to me that it was Jesus who reminded me of the promise I had made to him.

         I have just spoken to you, my Mother, of this material impossibility which is called the lack of time, which it is difficult to make up for. Here, I will make a small digression on my subject by returning to the question of jobs.

         Since my entry into the Carmel, I remained 4 years without painting, I only touched colors for the small nonsense or the miniatures of which I have spoken to you. I had heard that this genre was losing its touch for drawing, the notions of which faded through lack of practice. I, who was already not too skilled in this art, did not want to lose the little that I possessed and I acted like those who want to make a fortune: I placed my little nest egg in a safe and extremely rich bank.

            I presented myself before the Blessed Virgin and I said to her: “My dear Mother, you know very well that you are the Mistress of my house, all my interests are in your hands, here is one that I recommend to you especially. I know painting and drawing, but too little to leave them aside without cultivating them. You know that I don't have time to study so I am entrusting you with my little assets that I will pick up when I need it. As you are so powerful I really think that you will have made my little treasures bear fruit and that they will always go by making the ball much better than, if, using the human means I had studied in the courts of the earth. »

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            After this prayer, I lived peacefully in this respect. Also, when 4 years later, obedience ordered me large paintings for the choir, an apotheosis 5 meters high, I set to work as if I had done only that all my life, with a ease, an ease that astonished me. If I had any difficulty, in the evening I carried my canvases and paintbrushes in front of the miraculous statue of Mary and I asked her to work in my place. Above all, she knew my desire to do good and to speak to the heart through my paintings and did not refuse me this gift.

            These works which were asked of me for the Com.té were not accomplished without difficulty. The good Lord has always wanted nothing in my life to go like clockwork, but for everything to be pulled off by stubborn work and crosses of all kinds. As in these circumstances my Mother Prioresses were forced to give me time on the jobs, the poor sisters were not very satisfied, they said with reason: “Why go to so much trouble? for 40 cents you get a large image and for 2 cents a small one representing all the desirable subjects” and they couldn't understand why people were starting to compose new models. However, Bishop Amette, having seen some of my paintings, told our Mother that I had to cultivate my talent, and that, as soon as I did not dispense with common work, the sisters would not have to complain. .

              But I never dispensed with it, so this advice, which did not bring relief to the sisters, did not bring me either

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lots of leeway. We always had to say that St Thérèse had recommended that, in her monasteries, we only do simple works like spinning wool or working the land because we were poor. As a result, I never had a workshop. When there was an empty cell, I put my easels there, otherwise my job was in the attic, and I took down the necessary materials each time to work in our little cell where I I didn't have room to turn around, even with these precautions. We hadn't thought about the lighting, we had to protect ourselves from the sun in this walnut shell, hide large and small canvases in it so as not to attract attention and pedal fast! That's what I did my best, because luckily I was not slow at work. But how many times while climbing the stairs of the dormitory, reading there this sentence written on the wall: “Today a little work, tomorrow eternal rest”, I said: “Lie! lots of work today! and in a long time, alas, eternal rest! You understand, my Mother, that in such conditions my painting has always been a great test for me, I have never found pleasure in it, but an additional occupation. The good Lord wanted it that way, because I noticed that on earth nothing goes better than when everything goes wrong. We would like to have our little provisions, to take our composure, that our life be regulated like music paper and the good Lord likes to see us thrown into all sorts of difficulties to then have the pleasure of withdrawing from them. This is what he did for me in this circumstance since all my efforts were crowned by the Holy Face.

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           I also received graces that are almost miraculous. It was about the portraits of Thérèse to illustrate the Story of a Soul. For these I never took a single minute out of work time, I did them all during my midday silences in summer, when time is free and in the evening in the light. Sometimes, when the heat was excessive, I had a great need to take a few minutes of nap since it is allowed. So I lay down on the floor in front of my drawings, like a poor dog at the feet of his Master, then after having slept for 5 minutes I resumed my hard work, because there was no time to lose.

            Although the Blessed Virgin gave me back my talent a hundredfold, I often had many failures and I only succeeded at the cost of unheard-of pains. One day when I was doing the portrait of "Therese and her Father" and it was completely missed, our Mother (Mother Marie de Gonzague) told me that it had to be finished the same evening and, for this purpose, she sent to work there during the evening recess. But lost! If Therese was fine, Papa was not at all like and there was no more hope, the worn paper had become unworkable and I was only getting more and more encrusted.

              Discouraged, I went to find our Mother who signed to my two sisters to come upstairs to help me with their advice, she was no doubt hoping that being tired I was no longer a good judge and that they would find what I thought to be so bad. But unfortunately ! they were even more severe than me. Nevertheless they made me try a few touch-ups which resulted in missing it altogether.

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              What to do ? our Mother had said that we were going to leave it and that she forbade anyone to touch it: that we wouldn't use it and that would be settled. Sr. Marie of the Sacred Heart, in a surge of faith, left the cell and prostrated herself at the feet of the statue of Mary in the oratory next door. We soon followed Mother Agnes of Jesus and me. When we returned all three we placed ourselves in front. O surprise! suddenly we see the portrait which gradually changes by itself. It was like a person stepping from behind and being seen through the paper. I cannot define that, it was extraordinary. We looked at each other without saying a word, all gripped by a supernatural feeling… In the meantime, Compline rang out, we descended, very moved, announcing to our Mother that the portrait was perfect and how the resemblance had arrived.

                This painting is the first large drawing that I made since my entry into Carmel, so it was the first time that I experienced the protection of the Blessed Virgin. She must surely have sent Therese and Papa to get their hands on this portrait that the demon didn't want. Ah! who will say the pitfalls it caused us in our first attempts to edit the Story of a Soul!

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               But I come back to my story of the holy face. I was saying earlier that the demon had created a number of pitfalls for us when it comes to editing the Story of a Soul. One day when they had reached their climax and all seemed lost; Mother Agnes of Jesus, overwhelmed with grief, began to burst into tears. That night she had a dream. She was alone with me in the courtyard, we contemplated the immensity of the sky that no cloud came to darken. The horizon was reddish like an aurora borealis while in the middle of the firmament hovered a radiant sun, this sun was the Holy Face! Suddenly a melodious voice was heard

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said: "Patience!..."

              Since then, a few years have passed "and the little star has come out of its little cloud" announcing the divine sun of Justice. It has already appeared and it rises majestically on the horizon and the higher it rises the more its little star becomes brilliant and pure...

              It should indeed be noted that it was immediately after the death of our little saint that a committee of scholars took care to include the Holy Shroud in an exhibition of Sacred Art in Turin. For 30 years no one had seen it, but our Thérèse from the top of Heaven had discovered this treasure. She remembered that, during her mortal life, she had sought and loved above all the Face of her Beloved, that her little sisters, still in exile, longed for the Homeland to see his divine face and she did not want her true portrait remained longer hidden from the earth since she had the privilege of possessing it. It was the small star which tore the cloud hiding the divine Sun.

               And the Sun rose giving back to its "little star" the glory it had procured for it, for it was at the very moment when the first images of the Holy Face appeared that there was talk of starting a trial to put our dear little Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face on the altars. The time to take "Patience" had not been long!

               Since “Thérèse” was thus busy bringing the portrait of her Jesus out of the shadows, she had to choose someone to promote this treasure, it was her “Céline” whom she took on as a craftsman. It was quite natural, we often prefer to deal with simple workers

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that one can guide according to one's taste, than to address masters whose works one is obliged to take without daring to criticize. And what a guarantee for the souls, who were later to enjoy this portrait, to know that the hand of the worker was only a machine and that all the merit of the initiative and the success are due to the chosen ones of Heaven: Angels and Blessed Ones!

                 As I said, two years had passed since the promise I had made to Jesus to reproduce his portrait. I was in possession of precious documents, in particular a colossal photo representing the Holy Shroud, which my uncle had brought to me from Turin, this photo bore all the stamps and seals of authenticity, it was a perfect success. , all I had to do was get to work.

                At the beginning of Lent 1904, Jesus reminded me of my promise, giving me at the same time the guarantee of success. As we drew, in the Community, tickets to prepare to spend this time of penance well, this fell to me in sharing: "My daughter, I leave myself to you in the mystery of my burial". From that moment I no longer doubted success since NS himself gave himself to me in the very Object which was to serve as my model.

                  Finally I started this work at Easter. As I had no time to take from my job, I resolved to devote all my free time to it, on Sundays and holidays. This work can therefore be called “Sunday work”. I offered it for repair

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of all forbidden works which profane the holy day of the Lord.

                   It was only at the cost of many sacrifices that I completed this work. When on feast days I saw the sisters walking in the beautiful sunshine in the garden and I remained locked up there without a minute's rest, I had to muster all my courage to continue unceasingly what I had undertaken.

                   The first reproduction I made of the Holy Face was a charcoal drawing. As once completed we found it very beautiful and several people urged us to have it published, we took several steps with various publishers, but they remained unsuccessful. They all told us: “that the subject of Ste Face was not selling. “These negotiations lasted about a year after which we wanted to publish our painting, advising us to redo it in paint so that the reproductions would be finer. I did not hesitate for a moment seeing that, by this means, I could procure the glory of the good God, because following the example of my Therese I can say: “how great were my desires to make him loved!!. . »

                    At Easter of the year 1905, I began my work. Knowing him better, I interpreted the model even more faithfully than the first time. I procured new documents including a life-size reproduction of the Holy Shroud “The head of Christ”. I was thus able to work the Holy Face from afar for the whole and closely with a magnifying glass for the details. I painted my little picture standing. And when my fatigue was greater than usual

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I thought of the Blessed Virgin “standing” at the foot of the Cross, which gave me strength. I spent several months on this work and did it under the same conditions as the previous one, that is to say on Sundays.

                However, my means of success were not limited to human precautions, which would only have resulted in a lifeless body, for even when I would have succeeded in the most beautiful pictorial work in the world if the gift of the Holy Spirit had been lacking everything was lacking, by that very fact. So I did absolutely everything in me to make sure of it. I earnestly asked for the prayers of the Sisters. I did the impossible to interest them in my project, they promised me, but I could see that it was only to please me, because they did not understand that I find so beautiful the blurred images of the Holy Shroud which didn't tell them anything at all. But the more I saw little enthusiasm around me, the more I felt my ardor grow and I said: “It is precisely because these images are defective that I want to make the portrait of Jesus as beautiful as it deserves! I glimpsed the likeness of my Jesus, I will paint his portrait, even if I had to spend my life there, and death will surprise me, brush in hand! “In view of this settled resolution, they gave me their full support. I had prayers, communions, services were rendered to me: "Go and take the little brush, they said to me, I take the big one and the sisters and the sisters, to also take part in my work, took my place broom or

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dishcloth when it was my turn.

           As for me, I said in my heart: "Lord, strengthen me, and cast a favorable look at the work of my hands at this moment, so that I can accomplish what I believed possible through your assistance" (Judith XIII, 7). I commended myself again to my Heavenly Mother, I went to kneel in front of the statue so dear to our family and placed my brushes in her hands. Each time I brought him my little canvas which I placed at his feet asking him to work on it in turn, oh! how fervently I prayed!

              I also entrusted my work to St Joseph, to my family in Heaven. I called to my aid the whole celestial militia: the Angels and the saints. I represented to them our sorrow for us, poor exiles from the earth, at not being able to turn our gaze to our divine Saviour. It seems to me that I must have pitied them… After having tried to convince them of the legitimacy of my requests, I took them all by heart, I begged them since they saw Jesus in his glory, to show him to us in his humiliations and his pains. I said: you see that I don't ask for much since I don't even want his portrait as it was during his mortal life, I only ask you for it wounded during his Passion. Ah! it is however a vision which is well suited to the earth!... And I went from one to the other, I prayed to the Apostles, St Madeleine, St Veronica who had known him here below. Finally, I tormented Heaven with my supplications, I believe that they must have had enough of me and answered me if not to please me, at least to have peace! I told them again that all the glory would go to them, since this company

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would be theirs and that this grace would forever be considered a gift from Heaven to earth. I also went to find the little saints, the very little saints, those who had only been converted at the time of death had not had time to work for the glory of the good God and pointed out to them that it was was a great opportunity to make up for the shortcomings of their works, I showed them how much a portrait resembling our adored Chief would electrify the masses, would uplift the peoples, becoming a powerful means of rallying under the divine banner. But I wouldn't be done if I wanted to write everything I told them.

                And yet, my prayers did not stop there. I conjured the good God, the Father who is in Heaven, my Father to me...to come and paint the portrait of his Son Jesus himself, and to the Spirit of Love to breathe life into it so that it does not be no ordinary portrait... Every morning during Holy Mass at the Elevation of the Host, I reminded Jesus of the promise he made to us: "to obtain everything we would ask in his name" and I offered to the Father the divine Victim as the price of my request. Thus the payment was not less than the coveted object.

                Several times even when the Blessed Sacrament was exposed at the oratory and I was alone, I brought my little canvas and putting it in front of the Host, as close as possible I begged Jesus to imprint his perfect likeness on it. I was saying: O my Jesus, will you show yourself less powerful than men? They invented the photo, we only have to put an object in front of a sensitive plate and immediately this object is printed on the plate with an exactness.

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surprising and I would expose my canvas to the rays of love of the living Host, which is your sacred body, and I would remove it without an imprint? Oh ! That can not be ! »

         But I will stop, because these quotations would be too long and even if I tried to say everything, I could never express, in the language of the earth, the faith and the Love which reproduced on my little canvas the Holy Face of Jesus. I was intimately convinced that I would be answered, because I did not lack graces. Several times, during the course of my work, it happened to me to see in front of me the Face of Jesus suffering (It was not eyes of the body) but this vision was extraordinarily clear and striking. I then looked at Jesus to engrave him in my mind, it was my model who posed in front of me. Oh ! I will never forget this Holy Face!... These features, this expression, this divine majesty, this calm, this serenity, this incomparable sweetness I wanted to reproduce it at all costs, and I watched eagerly not to miss any detail. This vision lasted a few seconds (about a long minute).

         I spoke of this favor to Fr. Auriault asking him what it could possibly mean since Ste Thérèse says somewhere "that when NS presents itself to the soul one is so delighted by its beauty that it would be impossible to study her features", while I forgot beauty to penetrate form. He answered me that this grace which I had received was appropriate to the goal which NS proposed.

           This Face of Jesus that I saw was that of the living Holy Shroud; after having looked at it attentively I compared the scrambled details which the Holy Shroud gives and which could have escaped me. So it was with great fidelity that I copied the slightest details. Each drop of blood held the same place, had the same shape on my canvas as on the model. As soon as, even without

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Wanting it, I changed the slightest thing, it wasn't him anymore… Having found, among other things, the beard too light, I wanted to paint it in a darker tone, but I was obliged to come back and copy exactly. I also tried to separate it only in two, in the middle of the chin, vain effort! I also noticed that several details which, today, are admired by connoisseurs, were self-made. Thus, there is a certain small light that directs the gaze to the half-lowered eyelid of the left eye, I had noticed it on the Shroud, but it was not I alone who rendered it on my canvas, it Something happened that I couldn't explain to myself.

           However, after many months, this work was finally finished, I took it to the Blessed Virgin to give her the first fruits. I was there in front of the statue of Mary with a heart filled with joy, but a little anxious. I had turned to the whole assembly of the elect asking them if they recognized him… Instinctively I opened the Holy Gospel at random and I read these words: “All those who were there and who saw what was happening said: “This is truly the Son of God…”

             Once the portrait was done, I took care of having the images edited. Almost a year passed in negotiations, in troubles of all kinds. It seemed that the demon, jealous of the good that this holy image should bring about in the world, was causing me a thousand difficulties and annoyances. Already when I had just completed my first Holy Face in 1904 (although painted in 1905 I also dated the second to '1904' because the latter was not in itself a new work, but the resumption of the work made in 1904) I had heard strange noises. It was on the night of June 27, my Holy Face had just been finished and also “The Call for Little Souls”, a publication that I had taken care of; - Around 11 p.m.

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I heard a whole upheaval in the oratory of the Blessed Virgin which is separated from our cell only by a wooden partition, it seemed to me that a clumsy person had entered there and smashed all the objects. There were a few minutes of calm and then the uproar began again. Strange noises were also taking place in our cell, like the crackling of a violent fire, especially where I laid my head, the pillow seemed to be made of burning dry wood which crackled excessively. I dared not move, even breathe, because as soon as I made the slightest movement, however imperceptible, everything started all over again, both in the cell and next to it, as if it was I who was giving the signal to the mysterious character. Also, I dared not get up, nor light our lamp, even less go through the oratory to get help. The noises continued intermittently quietly until 2:XNUMX a.m. in the morning. Finally at that hour there was such a bacchanal in the oratory that the house seemed to me to shake and I thought everyone was going to wake up. Then I heard nothing more.

          In the morning I expected to find the statue broken and everything upside down, but nothing had moved. I went to relate these facts to our Mother, and as I was leaving, another very trustworthy sister entered in her turn and made exactly the same report. She had heard the upheaval of the oratory and the fire and she indicated the same hours as me. No one but the two of us had heard, neither the sister whose cell is next to mine, nor the invalids and nurses who sleep downstairs and assured us that the night had been very calm.

           Be that as it may, I don't think the demon is happy with us, he takes pleasure in frightening us by showing us his rage.

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          But now everything is over. The Holy Face of Jesus received the kisses of his Vicar who opened for it the treasury of indulgences. Jesus sent his little wife by the hand of the Head of the Church a precious medal, in his eyes the most appreciable reward of all those that can be received on earth. And even more his apostolic vows have been fulfilled, since it is every day that we receive testimonies of gratitude for this image “which, it is said, operates transformations in souls”.

           I know that many priests maintain lamps night and day in front of this pious effigy. He is credited with conversions. Religious scholars take it as the theme of their prayer and recently one of them (P. Auriault) said to me: "This image is not ordinary, looking at it one does not have the sensation of seeing whatever, you believe you are in the presence of a living person. When he told me this he did not yet know his story. He did not know that it was the work of the whole celestial court and that the Spirit of Love had come to animate it with his divine breath. Also this appreciation which responded so fully to my prayers, showing me that they had been answered, was especially precious to me.

           Now my Mother, what would I say to you again? "the story of the ember pulled from the fire" was much longer than I thought, I didn't think I was only filling my first notebook, so it was shameful that I was taking up new pages. Forgive me all these lengths, one thing leads to another, one finds oneself drawn into the details as if in spite of oneself, and when one is no more balanced than me one does not know where to stop. Oh ! however after plotting all these pages, as

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Thérèse “it seems to me that I have not yet begun, there are so many different shades, so many new glimpses that only the palette of the celestial painter can reveal the marvels of grace that he has wrought in my soul”… To him I owe everything… and my life can be summed up in these words of the King Prophet: “The Lord has quenched the soul devoured by thirst and filled the soul exhausted by hunger with good things…” (Ps. 107.7)

           I was just saying that I didn't know where to stop. For the things of the earth it is true, but for the things of the sky oh! I knew where to stop!... I pitched my tent near the living spring, at the very door where the divine Almighty hides its treasures...

           I desired for me that the infinite Mercy surrounded me with its shade and “it completely covered me with its wings and under its feathers I found a refuge. (Ps.91.4) Ah! I have heard it said many times that it is expedient to practice non-judgment in order to partake of the Master's promise and not be judged in turn. Oh my God ! if I exercise myself in charity, you know that it is not for this purpose, for you are not unaware that the sweetest hope which makes my heart palpitate is that of making known in broad daylight your kindness to me. And how would they be unveiled if all my miseries and all my faults are not discovered? O my beloved treasure! yes, we will know your generosity towards me and if you do not speak, I will open my mouth to accuse myself, so that you may be glorified in me!

             I desired for myself again, that the Spirit of Truth “the Spirit of Jesus” (Act. XIII, 7) reside in my heart, that it penetrate all my faculties; I kept saying to God: “Teach me to do your will! (Ps. 149.10) and the Lord opened wide and spacious to me the way of peace, he instructed me every moment of the day, making me experience that "wisdom is with the humble"... (Prov. XI , 2)

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             I desired for others to redeem my brothers from eternal torture and Jesus placed in my hand the precious piece of his Holy Humanity which is his adorable Face. He gave me the suffering granting me to be myself "anathema, far from Christ, for souls" (Rom. IX, 3) - It is a great pain to believe oneself far from Jesus by the trials heart and soul, but that is truly the most meritorious sacrifice one can offer to God. The gift of the Holy Face that Jesus gave me is no doubt very great and I appreciate it, but I appreciate even more the Cross and the part he gave me in his immolation. I don't misunderstand the good that writing or images can do, good always restricted, limited to physical conditions. Also I have attached my desires only to the unlimited good of sacrifice which makes grace rain down on souls, on all souls without distinction of place, origin, language, which reaches to the ends of the earth, passing from one pole to another with the promptness of thought.

                I desired for God to make him loved, to procure his glory, ah! with what vehemence I was devoured by this desire!... I would have liked to announce it, to preach it to all the nations. Instead, he gave me a dark life to share among the dark. My desire to pour into the hearts of others the flames that consumed mine has never been satisfied, never has divine Providence entrusted me with the ministry of souls, with regret I have not entered this sanctuary. But I didn't feel sorry, I said: "My God, you see that my heart, like a steam engine overflowing with energy, only aspired to lead you souls, with what speed it is would rush towards you dragging after her her treasures. But she is alone... O Jesus, it is not my fault, you know: like Anne, mother of Samuel, I

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I asked you for sons and, if I remain in my apparent sterility, do not refuse me the part of the fruitful wife, are you not more than ten thousand sons to me! All my riches will be for you! I will constantly launch my vapor towards the sky, it will rise there ardent and ablaze to repeat my love to you, and I have the hope of it, a day will come when this too long compressed force will burst the machine and throw its pieces to the four corners of the world! So, like my Thérèse, I will spend my heaven doing good on earth! What does it matter to me that the world ignores this, that the souls who owe me their salvation do not recognize me as their mother? As long as the good God is loved, I don't want anything else. I would like to be a step to his throne, a foundation stone that supports and raises the whole edifice from its height. I would be in the mud, far from everyone's eyes, but this place would be my happiness. Because although I am not worthy to serve as an ornament in the Holy Temple, I hope that the good God will allow me to make it worthy, Him, the Beloved. Ah! how I have the desire to glorify him, to elevate him! Seeing what he did here below, when he came there, I am sometimes afraid that he is not jealous enough of his glory in Heaven, I am afraid that he is not exalted as I want !

              O my God, why don't you already reign on earth, why are there so many hearts that live far from you! Ah! since I cannot make you known and loved according to my wishes, I only want to have one ambition: to make you reign in my own heart! I want this whole little kingdom to be submitted to you, and I am only going to work to conquer it entirely for you. I know that to get there I will need above all a powerful grace at all times, because when the insurrection

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is not on one side, it is on another: pirates hold the high seas, thieves are in the forests and ferocious beasts in the deserts, but your victorious arm will overcome it for me. So you will be glorified in my opinion, you will reign in my opinion somewhere, it will be in my heart! And when it pleases you, O my Jesus, to finally take possession of your conquest, you will swoop down on me, like the eagle and carrying me into the burning dwellings of infinite Love you will make me become like Thérèse! happy Victim!

            O my Jesus, but before singing your ineffable mercies to heaven, allow me to sing from this world the hymn of gratitude and bear you here a just witness. On earth, everyone seeks happiness, some through pleasures, others through wealth, honors, science, the arts: we were created for joy and we tend towards it with all the strength of unlimited attraction. But how few are the privileged people who find it and taste it!

           I too have gone towards happiness and I have found it. Ah! Why can't I teach the souls where I found it, why can't I reveal to them the joy I tasted in the service of the Lord! In my life, I have had stinging sorrows, painful sleepers, but always “the drop of blood turned into milk…” always if “Jesus was the Master, I was the Mistress!” Why is that? O my Beloved? what is the secret of this happiness? Ah! I know it... I have always sought your Face, I have loved your Holy Humanity, I have taken it for my inheritance and what happened to the Apostles on a stormy day happened to me: "They wanted, said St John, take Jesus in their boat and immediately the boat was at the place where they were going…” (John VI, 21)

End of the 1909 story

Read the 1931 story here