MARTIN Léonie, Sister Françoise-Thérèse

A difficult childhood...

The distant prelude to Léonie Martin's vocation was that of her maternal aunt, Marie-Louise Guérin, known as Elise, who, at the age of twenty-nine, had entered the Visitation of Le Mans under the name of Sister Marie-Dosithée. This gendarme's daughter had had a very tried youth. His parents, unconsciously tinged with Jansenism, curbed his least manifestations of exuberance with the magic veto: "It's a sin!" The family climate was severe: Marie-Louise had learned to read in the Apocalypse and never knew the joy of cradling a doll.

She wanted to enter the Poor Clares, but reading a biography of the suave François de Sales enchanted the young girl, who began to dream of the Visitation. But the move of the family home from Saint-Denis-sur-Sarthon to Alençon, the studies of the children in religious boarding schools, exhausted the meager resources of the household. You have to earn your bread. Marie-Louise and her sister Zélie opt for the art of lace. Two years passed before the postulant could realize her dream. Admitted on April 7, 1858 to the Visitation of Le Mans, her conventual existence will be a straight climb. "I come here to be a saint," she said as she stepped through the fence.

For his youngest, Zélie, who, after having aspired for a moment to style the cornet of the Daughters of Charity, will unite, on July 13, 1858, with Louis Martin, the visiting room of the Visitation will become the haven of intimacy and confidences. where the couple will seek comfort and support. Letter exchanges will complement the conversations. The children arrive. After the birth of Marie and Pauline, two brunettes full of vitality, is announced that, on June 3, 1863, of a blond girl with blue eyes, very frail of constitution. She was baptized the very next day, at Saint-Pierre-de-Montsort, on the Solemnity of the Blessed Sacrament, which, later, would not fail to delight her. The godmother, Mme Tifenne, gave her her own name: that of Léonie, preceded by that of the Virgin, according to the tradition of the family.

While the two eldest had caused no concern, the one who occupies the third row will be, for more than sixteen months, between life and death. To the address of Mr. Guérin, the young Isidore then assistant pharmacist, who is an authority in the family in medical matters, the health bulletins follow one another, more and more alarming. “Little Léonie is not coming strong, however she is not sick. – “This poor child is very weak; she has a kind of chronic whooping cough, luckily less severe than the one from which Pauline was afflicted, for she wouldn't overcome it and the good Lord only gives what we can bear. – “Little Léonie is not growing well; she doesn't seem to want to walk. She is fat and tall as nothing, without being crippled however; it is only very weak and very small. She has just had measles from which she was very ill with very strong convulsions. »

In March 1865, the situation worsened: continual heartbeats, inflammation of the intestines, purulent eczema all over the body. The parents cry out to the Heavenly Father who never gives up: “If she is to become a saint one day, heal her”. M. Martin, a soul of intrepid faith, who does not recoil before the fatigues of the road, especially to reach some sanctuary, undertakes on foot the pilgrimage of Notre-Dame de Sées. The Visitandine, alerted, begins a novena in honor of the visionary of Paray-le-Monial, recently beatified. At the end of the day, the patient, who could no longer stand on her legs, ran “like a little rabbit” and showed herself, according to her mother, “incredibly agile”.

Léonie nevertheless remains fragile and subject to many discomforts. She contrasts with Hélène, who came to brighten up the house on October 13, 1864, and whose lovely face exudes smiles and joie de vivre. The Mum, very proud to walk Marie and Pauline "well groomed", shifts her thoughts to the youngest: "I still have two others who are not there, one beautiful and one not so beautiful that I like as much as the others, but it won't do me so much honour".

For the moment at least, because the sickly and rickety child is paying the ransom for the anxieties she has perceived around her, for the eager care that has never ceased to envelop her. She is demanding, capricious, rebellious. At certain times, impossible to overcome. “She made us a terrible life, yesterday, all morning, writes Mrs. Martin: she had put it in her head to leave for Lisieux and she did not stop shouting. Her father had to get angry and tell her she wasn't going; then we had peace. »

She was placed with the eldest, as a half-boarder, at 5, rue du Pont-Neuf, a hundred yards from the house where the Martin family had settled, with its double business of jewelry and lace. The primary school is run by the Institute of the Sisters of Providence, which was founded, at the bedside of the Notre-Dame church, in a vast building where the motherhouse, novitiate, workshop of point of Alencon. The little elf is not impressed. Barely left to herself, Léonie broods over some escapade. At the age of four, to reach her snack on top of a buffet, she put two chairs on top of each other, climbed the whole thing and fell on bottles which she dragged down with her. We had to call the father, who with pliers removed the pieces of glass embedded in the forehead and whose marks will remain visible. It was the third accident of the same order. The mother, who narrates the fact, adds no less: “On the other hand, it is the best character that we can see, she and Pauline are charming”. Sister Marie-Dosithée, for her part, after having received her nieces in Le Mans, considers “Léonie very turbulent; but they are often the best”, she immediately corrects.

In truth, there was in this sickly little girl, alongside a heart of gold capable of delicate gestures, a fundamental instability, a kind of rebellious excitement at all regulations. Léonie will speak later, not without some exaggeration, of her “detestable childhood”. In her letters to her sisters of Carmel, she will recall certain episodes of these stormy beginnings. "I remember, devil-to-four that I was, that my pleasure - it was about the days off at the Pavilion - was to make the dogs of Mr. Rabinel, a great friend of Dad, rage and bark, that I saw on the granite steps. If I had been within their reach, of course, I would have had a bad time. »

Another kind of deficiency weighed on this assessment: a real slowness to learn, which, helping playfulness, accumulated academic delays. We will talk for a long time about the arithmetic exercises where, to the desolation of her mistresses, the inattentive schoolgirl lined up the figures pell-mell with a calm casualness. “This poor child, concluded Mrs. Martin, worries me, because she has an undisciplined character and an undeveloped intelligence. »

Several painful conjunctures will aggravate the difficulties. On February 22, 1870, dies unexpectedly the charming little Hélène who would have been, for the one who preceded her a little, the most amiable and the most exemplary of companions. Closeness in age brought Marie and Pauline closer together, as Céline and Thérèse will do tomorrow. Somewhat isolated, Léonie tends to withdraw into herself and become wild. The harmful influence of a servant will add its weight of mystery to an already seriously burdened situation.

There is indeed a mystery in this home where everything conspires to elevate souls to God. Why does the third child show herself, if not impervious, at least reticent to the teachings and examples that have guaranteed in others a harmonious and crisis-free growth? The same principles presided over his education. She enjoys the same atmosphere of radiant tenderness, joyful austerity, simple piety. She is involved in all the events of family life. The vigils under the lamp, the collective liturgy, the Sunday offices and walks, the indoor games too and the relationships with loved ones, all this endearing framework of intense poetry that Mrs. Martin's letters depict over the hours. and of which the Theresian autobiography betrays the nostalgia, Léonie enjoyed it like her sisters; she experienced its incantatory virtue. And yet, she seems to stiffen against the beneficent hold. How to explain this enigma?

Mrs. Martin had an expansive kindness and a keen sense of justice. "She was highly esteemed, loved even by her workers," said Madame Fléchier of her. As for the domestic workers, she considered them to be relatives. She opens up to her brother: “It's not always the big win that ensures the attachment of the servants; they need to feel that you love them, you need to show them sympathy and not be too harsh with them. When people have a good background, we are sure that they serve with affection and devotion. You know I'm very lively and yet all the servants I've had have loved me and I keep them as long as I want. The one I have at the moment would be sick of it if she had to go away; I am sure that we would offer her two hundred francs more than she would like to leave us; it is true that I do not treat my servants less well than my children. If I tell you that, it's not to give myself as an example, I assure you that I don't think about it, because everyone tells me that I don't know how to be served”.

Choose well, love, and trust completely; such was the policy, if one dares to use such a word, of this overworked woman, who added to all her family responsibilities the worries of a complicated and exacting business. Above all, she was looking for people capable of taking care of the children when she herself was absorbed either by the reception of customers and the lacemakers, or by the meticulous work of assembling the stitches. Thus she had hired in 1865, moreover convinced of doing charitable work, a sixteen-year-old teenager, Louise Marais, living in Merlerault, in the Orne, and whose family situation required that she be placed. This country girl became deeply attached to her. She felt like she was adopted and took more and more foothold in the home, especially with the younger ones. It is not that this little peasant girl was without faults. She had outbursts of anger, a sometimes insolent frankness, an obvious lack of psychology and rather summary Christian convictions: the shortcomings of her first education explained these shortcomings, which were redeemed by unfailing devotion.

The woman who was soon to terrorize Leonie with a view to making her bend did not immediately exercise such sway. The mother, at the beginning of the school year in October 1868, had entrusted her two eldest to the Visitation of Le Mans, which offered her the opportunity of more frequent contact with her sister. She recommended to him in an anguished tone the child "very gentle at heart," but who was reluctant to obey. "Entrust it to me," said Sister Marie-Dosithée one day, "I must give it a try." It was finally in mid-June 1871 that Léonie joined her two sisters. Delighted with this solution, Mrs. Martin wrote to Lisieux: “Since I know it is in such good hands and I see myself, on my side, so peaceful, I seem to be in paradise”.

The Visitandine did not share this enthusiasm, if we can judge by the words she sent to her brother: "I now have Léonie, this terrible little girl, I assure you that she gives me not a little to do. . It's a constant fight, so I would have liked her mother to have found a place to put her, but I see that it's me who has to carry that cross, so I'll try to muster up all my courage. This child loves me very much, and it is surprising because I punish her so much, I do not spare her and it is necessary; otherwise we wouldn't do anything, she fears no one but me! »

On the back of a note written by her niece, in broken words, with the most fanciful spelling, Sister Marie-Dosithée writes this appreciation which wants to encourage Mrs. Martin: "Léonie gives me embarrassment, it is true, but no more than Marie gave me. She has faults, but she has many qualities too; she has such a good heart, is very obedient. Never reply to everything we say to him. It's not like his two sisters who always want to be right. But his great fault is that he does not understand more than a three-year-old child”. All in all, favorable diagnosis.

" Hope it lasts ! muttered the mother. It didn't last long. The initial success was cut short. The child was not admitted at the start of the school year in October. She couldn't adapt to a normal class. No mistress was available to take care of her. His aunt, whose health was increasingly precarious, could not, in winter, assume such a responsibility. The parents found themselves with their ungovernable little girl.

Mr. Martin had sold his jewelry to his nephew Leriche, in order to assist more effectively, in his business in Point d'Alençon, the wife crushed under the task. In July 1871, we emigrated to the parish of Notre-Dame, at number 36 rue Saint-Blaise. It was there, on January 2, 1873, that Marie-Françoise-Thérèse, the future Saint, was born. All the witnesses then participating in the signing of the baptismal certificate, Léonie will put her name on the register, next to that of Louise, who will bear the child.

It seems – although no trace of the event has been kept – that in the fall of 1871, she resumed the path of Providence, while benefiting from private lessons. There, as at home, the results were less than brilliant. She herself, at her sister's trial, would later pay homage to those who tried to straighten her character. “At home, the education that our parents gave us was good and affectionate, but attentive and neat. We weren't spoiled. In the sense of the spirituality drawn from the Visitation, fidelity to state duty was encouraged, modest sacrifices decorated with the name of "practices" were suggested. Léonie will remember the lesson, but for the moment she cares little to apply it. More turbulent than ever, not staying in place, creating disorder everywhere, she exhausted those around her, who were never calm on her account. There was no respite until the father intervened, shouting, “Peace! The peace ! ". Using a local expression, the mother moaned: “But they changed her to a nurse, that child! A statement that intrigued and mortified the little one enough to make her worry about it, until he was assured that she had never been entrusted to foreign hands.

"I cannot analyze his character," writes Madame Martin to her brother; besides, the most learned would lose their Latin there; I hope, however, that the good seed will one day come out of the ground. If I see that, I'll sing my Nunc dimittis...” Twelve months later, the bulletin remains pessimistic. “Only Léonie doesn't come or go, she's like an eight-year-old child. We are considering a new trial at Le Mans, as a preparation for First Communion. On the spot, "she uses a catechism in a month, to know nothing at the end". A new rash of eczema, aggravating the nervousness, doesn't incline the wayward schoolgirl to study. The departure for boarding school, deferred for a term, was fixed for the beginning of January 1874. Mme Martin worried about the worries that this new experience would cause the Visitandine. “However, she adds, my duty obliges me to try once more; if she does not succeed, I will have nothing to reproach myself for. » Sister Marie-Dosithée seems to be getting better, « I put myself in the idea, says her sister, that God leaves her to me to transform my Léonie, because she is the only person who has empire over her. Also, when we ask this poor little girl what she will do when she grows up, the answer is always the same: 'I will be a nun at the Visitation, with my aunt.' God grant that it is so, but it is too beautiful, I dare not hope. »

The elders are required to pray for the attempt to succeed. Mrs. Martin, who attends the meetings of the Third Order Franciscans at the Poor Clares of the rue de la Demi-Lune, also implores the suffrages of the Poor Ladies. She entrusts them with hopes and failures; on many occasions she presents to them in the parlor the child of so many tears. She begs, she expects a miracle.

The beginnings look promising. The religious aunt who, either intuition or predilection, set her sights on Léonie very early on, saw her already evolving towards the Visitation. “For the short time that I had her, she wrote to her brother after the first experience, she gave me good hope for the future. She is a difficult child to bring up and whose childhood will give no pleasure, but I believe that, for the future, she will be worth as much as her sisters. She has a heart of gold; his intelligence is undeveloped and well below his age; however, she does not lack means, and I find her good judgment. With that, an admirable strength of character. When this little one is right and she sees her duty, nothing will stop her. Difficulties, however great, will be nothing to her; it will break all the obstacles that will not miss it in its way, because it is built for that. Finally, it is a strong and generous nature and completely to my taste. But if the grace of God was not there, what would it be!...”

There would be no lack of optimism in those who acted as educators and pedagogues. She used, in the first month, the strong way, multiplying warnings and punishments. Then she changed her mind. “I could see that I was going to make this little girl unhappy, and that's what I didn't want. I wanted to be a Providence of God towards him, so I implored the help of God and the light that I needed, because I had only good intentions. So I started to treat her with the greatest gentleness, avoiding scolding and telling her that I saw that she wanted to be good and please me, that I had this confidence in her. It produced a magical effect on her, not only temporary but lasting, because it is sustained, and I find her quite cute. I'm happier than her sisters. It's unimaginable the desire she has to please me; this makes him overcome his laziness. She studies well now; she comes candidly to tell me of her misdeeds. I told him that I wanted so; she is very obedient.

This is the one we thought was heartless and who happens to have more than the others. I hope that God will bless my efforts and that she will turn out well, because all is not done and it will be necessary more than once to season the sweetness with firmness. »

The final reservation was only too justified. The sky does not take long to darken for the impatient child under the yoke, who cannot bend to the rhythm of studies, and who is exasperated by this life in a cage. On March 29, 1874, Mrs. Martin wrote melancholy to her brother: “A week ago I received bad news from the one whom the aunt calls the predestined. If they send her back to me, all is lost, I have no hope except by leaving her there for many years”. She will nevertheless observe with gentle resignation: “When our children are not like the others, it is up to the parents to have the embarrassment”. The Visitandine feels sorry for her. “What a cross! How I pity this poor dear sister! How I wish I could help him, but I can't do anything, nothing at all. »

On April 6, Léonie definitely joined Alençon. Her mother told Mme Guérin how heartbroken she felt about it: “As you can imagine, that really upset me; that's not enough to say, it made me feel a deep pain that still persists. I had no hope except in my sister to reform this child and I was convinced that she would be kept, but it was not possible, despite the best goodwill, or she would have had to be separated. of other children. As soon as she finds herself in company, she no longer possesses herself and shows an unparalleled dissipation.

“Finally, I no longer have faith except in a miracle to change this nature. It is true, I do not deserve a miracle, and yet I hope against all hope. The more difficult I see her, the more I convince myself that the good Lord will not allow her to stay like this. I will pray as long as he lets himself bend. She was cured, at the age of eighteen months, of an illness from which she was to die; why would the good Lord have saved her from death, if he had not had plans of mercy on her? »

Missteps and straightening

Between the world and the cloister

Wouldn't the premature death of the mother introduce a new cause of imbalance into Léonie's life? The posthumous action of the deceased averts this danger. On September 10, Pauline testifies that the teenager "studies herself to be very nice". Nevertheless, she adds: "Its sky is sometimes covered with dark clouds whose downpour we have to endure." On November 16, the situation is much more optimistic. “I notice, writes Marie to her father, that Léonie has been changing from day to day for some time now... I am sure that it is our dear mother who obtains this grace for us and I am convinced that our Léonie will give us a comfort day. »

On this date, the family has just moved to Lisieux, in the gracious cottage of Les Buissonnets, where our heroine will occupy, upstairs, separated from the bedroom of the youngest by a thin partition, the space now reserved at the toy exhibition. From the beginning of 1878, she entered the Benedictines of the Abbey as a boarder, frequented by her cousins ​​Jeanne and Marie Guérin. Her moral metamorphosis is accentuated to the point that she easily adapts to the constraints of discipline. Yesterday's gaps will not be fully filled; the instruction will always remain somewhat truncated, but the student, in spite of frequent headaches, applies himself and makes an effort; in his French compositions – Mother François de Sales is careful to point this out – the delicacy of feelings happily contrasts with multiple discrepancies in syntax and spelling.

During holidays and days off, the young girl tasted the sweetness of family intimacy, such as the Teresian autobiography depicts. She will never completely rid herself of a certain reserve, which, together with the memory of past difficulties and the weighing of complexes not yet exorcised, explains an innate taste for solitude. But it is no longer the savage, bristling at the slightest incident. Mr. Martin, who has a taste for pseudonyms and qualifiers, calls her his “good Léonie”. He urges his daughters to wrap him in gentleness and indulgence. The charm of the hearth heals the wounds and erases the bad folds. If the tears still flow too easily, the background of melancholy fades little by little.

Léonie left the Benedictines at the age of eighteen, during the holidays of 1881, when Thérèse took over, as an extern, like Céline. She remained very attached to her mistresses, meeting them faithfully at meetings of the children of Mary, willingly returning to consult them, and in long conversations full of mystery, which earned her the teasing of her eldest, who called her " the Abbey lover" and sings to him: "Abbaye, mes amours! His time will henceforth be spent in housework, reading, meditation, visits to relatives, works of charity. His heart drew him to the most humble. She became the voluntary nurse for a poor old woman who was wasting away, not far from Les Buissonnets, abandoned by everyone and eaten away with vermin. She took care of her, looked after her linen and, after her death, insisted on burying her with her own hands. In this she resembled Therese, whom nothing will put off.

Marie guided her and stimulated her as needed, with the touch of originality that was in her character. It was nevertheless to the "little queen" that Léonie's predilections went. Somewhat flirtatious for herself, she liked to see her youngest in her finest attire. The child, who called her "Lolo," returned her tenderness; she received from her, at the Apostolic Process, a magnificent eulogy. “My little sister was always very sweet and perfectly in control of herself. I don't remember ever seeing her show signs of impatience, let alone get angry; nor did she seek out treats like other children. The deposition at the Diocesan Process showed her “very affectionate, even calm”. She added this trait which marks both the clairvoyance and the scrupulous sincerity of the witness: “Even in her early childhood, I don't remember having seen her angry, but she was sometimes a bit stubborn then. This defect disappeared very quickly, and at Les Buissonnets she was very obedient”.

Léonie will always keep very fresh in her memory the vision of Thérèse ecstatic before the mystery of Christmas. "She prepared herself, each year, for this feast with a novena, during which she did nine practices of virtue each day... To see her, one guessed that she was already conversing with her Jesus in burning colloquies, very intimate however, for nothing appeared on the outside, except the brilliance of his face, which took on a quite celestial expression. The big sister still evokes the emotion of the child when, at the age of eight, she attended midnight Mass for the first time. She shows her, in front of the crib, immersed in a kind of rapture. "We couldn't get him out of it. It is there that she took her celestial doctrine where she reveals herself as a master. »

The same jubilation when the procession of the Blessed Sacrament paraded through the streets of the city. “At the Processions of Corpus Christi, Thérèse, being part of the children's troupe, was the wisest and the most collected. It was the same in the church, during the long services. The good young lady, in charge of looking after the little girls in the chapel where the children were gathered, could not tire of admiring her. She spoke about it to us several times, to my sisters and to me, in the most complimentary terms. »

Sometimes more picturesque features come from the past. Léonie took pleasure in telling Céline the adventure of Tom, the splendid spaniel, Thérèse's favourite, who, slumped in the laundry room, his eyes glassy, ​​refusing all food, regained a taste for life when his kind mistress introduced him, clogged with bite, bread wrapped in a little meat. Her strength returned, with the exuberance of yesteryear, and the little queen marched triumphantly through the streets, more faithful than ever, her pretty survivor.

More serious thoughts occupied Léonie. The idea of ​​a religious vocation does not leave her. Pauline's entry into the Carmel on October 2, 1882, can only reinforce her desires. She knows, however, that her character must still mature before the divine deadline. This is how she will witness the family drama that will be Thérèse's illness. With M. Martin and Marie, she had gone to the Capital for Holy Week at the end of March 1883. Visits to shrines, exploration of museums and artistic monuments alternated with liturgical services, all crowned by the great Easter communion at Notre-Dame. An anguished call interrupted the trip: in Lisieux, the "little queen", struck down by a strange illness, demanded the presence of her relatives.

Léonie would later relate the doctor's words: "It's a nervous illness... I don't understand anything about it... Perhaps she will remain in this state..." She will cite scenes, to which she attended, delirious demonstrations: “One Sunday, I was left alone to watch her during high mass. Seeing her very calm, I ventured to leave her for a few moments. Returning to her, I found her stretched out on the pavement: she had jumped over the head of her bed and fallen between the bed and the wall. She could have killed herself or seriously injured herself; but, thank God, she didn't even have a scratch”. Beneath his apparent insensitivity, and even in the hallucinatory adventures, the child remains lucid enough to perceive the devotion and affliction of those around him. "Leonie, she would write later, was... very good to me, trying to amuse me as best she could, I sometimes hurt her because she saw clearly that Marie could not be replaced with me. ... »

On Pentecost Sunday, May 13, 1883, when the illness reached its paroxysm and the child cast anxious glances around her that no longer embraced reality, it was Léonie who took her in her arms and carried her to the window overlooking the garden from which Marie calls him, holding out her hands to him. Wasted effort. Stray eyes no longer recognize anyone. “It was then, underlines our witness, that Mary and I fell on our knees at the feet of a statue of the Blessed Virgin, our hearts filled with hope, conjuring our heavenly Mother to heal our little sister. Of the prodigy that followed, Léonie understood only the miraculous outcome. “I remained sobbing, my head in my hands, so I did not see the ecstatic expression of the little patient, favored by the apparition of the Most Blessed Virgin. Only, when I got up from my prayer, I found our little Thérèse perfectly cured. Her face had regained its calm and its beauty, and never since has any trace of this strange illness reappeared. »

No trace: isn't that saying too much? The meticulous Léonie questions herself and identifies two slight after-effects which she reports very faithfully, although the story does not put her in the spotlight. The doctor, who had recommended a hydrotherapeutic treatment without valid result, prescribed, faced with the transfiguration of his young client, to create a climate of calm around her; M. Guérin recommended, in order to hasten convalescence, not to contradict her in any way. Leonie somewhat forgot the instructions. "In the month following the cure," she said, "it happened to me twice to upset her, quite wrongly. She then fell and remained lying for a short space of time (several minutes) with a state of rigidity of the limbs and the trunk, which ceased of its own accord. There did not then occur a delirious state, as during his illness, nor violent movements. These two phenomena were the only ones that occurred. Afterwards, there never appeared traces of this evil again. »

Léonie will also be associated with the religious events of Thérèse's childhood. “She prepared, she said, for her First Communion with extraordinary fervor, above all multiplying for that purpose the small sacrifices and the acts of God's love, which she wrote down very precisely in a little notebook. I had the opportunity to see her during her preparatory retreat: she was in deep recollection and completely penetrated by the thought of the imminent coming of Our Lord within her. On the day of her First Communion, the entirely celestial and angelic expression of her features showed that she was more in Heaven than on earth. Thérèse records in her Manuscripts that she received from Léonie on this occasion the “large crucifix” which during the spiritual exercises at the Abbey, she put in her belt, “in the manner of the missionaries”. When she recalls the memory of her Confirmation, which took place on Saturday June 14, 1884, she specifies: "It was my dear little Léonie who served as my godmother, she was so moved that she could not prevent her tears from flowing all the time of the ceremony". Alongside this privileged child, was the young girl thinking of her own past, which sometimes still obsessed her? Not at all. She is getting more and more used to thinking about others. She herself analyzes her impressions of her youngest child: "I was more than any other able to judge, in this circumstance, of her contemplation and her attitude, which was more angelic than human: having had the honor of being her godmother of Confirmation, I followed her step by step to the altar, holding my hand on her shoulder. You could see that she was deeply penetrated by the great mystery that was about to be accomplished in her soul. Ordinarily, at this age, the child, not understanding the full scope of this Sacrament, receives it very lightly. Therese, on the contrary, was completely absorbed in the love that was already consuming her. I had difficulty in containing my emotion, accompanying this darling child to the altar”. That same day, Léonie gave her goddaughter a multi-panel image, dedicated to the Eucharistic mystery, which would remind her of the dates of the most beautiful days of her life. It was she again who, later on, would offer her youngest, when she was received into the Congregation of the Children of Mary, the traditional medal and ribbon.

The years go by. The summer of 1886 was completely darkened, at Les Buissonnets, by the forthcoming departure of the eldest, who intended to join Pauline in Carmel on the feast of Saint Thérèse of Avila, on October 15. This prospect awakens in Léonie the desire to immolate herself in her turn. Her dreams directed her towards the Monastery of the Poor Clares of Alençon, which, transplanted to rue de la Demi-Lune after the Revolution, owes its origin to a project by Duke René, carried out in 1497 by his widow, the blessed Marguerite of Lorraine. Mr. Martin liked to bring the produce of his peaches there. The young girl had often accompanied her mother there. Fond of austerity, the regime of poverty hardly frightened her. She loved Saint Francis. During the great Lexovian mission, she had resolutely separated herself from her family, to go and hear the Friars Minor who were preaching at Saint-Jacques. She seems to have opened up about her intentions to Father Crété, parish priest of Montsort, who had been Madame Martin's confessor, then, after the latter's death, to her young vicar, Father Bernouis. Mr. Martin, kept informed, puts forward the objection of health, but shows himself too respectful of the divine plan for his home to thwart a vocation. No doubt he relived in thought all the drama of his wife, worried about Leonie's future, and who would have blessed God for such an outcome.

Things rushed during the stay that the whole family made in Alençon, at the beginning of October 1886, to allow Marie to go and pray one last time at her mother's grave. On the 7th of this month, we leave for a time in the parlor of the Poor Ladies Léonie, who wishes to communicate his intentions and negotiate his possible entry. Spectacular turn of events ! When we come back, the young girl is on the other side of the gate, already dressed in the postulants' little habit. Did she give in to a thoughtless movement? The Abbess, who once knew her mood swings, does she think she is doing her a favor by rushing fate? “I was taken like a mouse in a mousetrap, will say later the victim of this adventure. If M. Martin, with his usual kindness, overcomes his legitimate astonishment and even undertakes to defend the improvised nun with supernatural arguments, Marie is less easily put up with this unusual procedure and strongly expresses her dissatisfaction. As for the youngest, they had trouble holding back their tears. Léonie, "very nice in her new costume", as Thérèse would write, tried to lighten the atmosphere and invited her family to take a good look at her beautiful blue eyes, which she would keep lowered later during visits. It is understandable that the young Saint kept a bad memory of an episode worthy of the Middle Ages. This is what will introduce into his Autobiography an inaccurate note, based on an entirely subjective impression, to the address "of the sad rue de la Demi-Lune", where one nevertheless lived, in joy, the evangelical ideal of the Seraphim of Assisi.

On their return to Lisieux, M. Guérin soothed the emotion with a word. “Don't worry, she won't be there long. Indeed, after a few weeks, the forces of the young aspirant gave signs of weakening. Glands appeared under the arms. On contact with the homespun tunic, the eczema flared up furiously. "I thought I had a bushel of fleas on my back," said the unfortunate Léonie. She had to face the facts. On December 1 – the experiment had lasted seven weeks – Mr. Martin came in person to fetch his daughter and showed her so much joy and affection that she calmed down somewhat. She left reluctantly, a mantilla on her head to hide her cut hair. A visit to Doctor Notta reassured her about the physical consequences of a somewhat reckless generosity. Throughout her life, Léonie was to retain the friendship of choice for the nuns she had approached. She will like to see again, in their rounds of quests, the Tourières Sisters of the small Alencon convent. She even made it a pleasure to "cook like the Poor Clares". She understood, however, that on this side the horizon was walled up for her.

Somewhat shaken by the event, and morally depressed, the young girl begged Céline, who, when Marie left, had assumed the government of the house, to keep the responsibility. She herself had little aptitude for leadership. She willingly went about the most ordinary household chores. She also liked to retire to her room to pray. "She was good, gentle and humble," wrote Céline in her diary; she did not seek to appear... This love of retirement did not, however, prevent her from devoting herself to works of charity; she was going to bury the dead among the poor families in the neighborhood. »

Cheerfulness quickly regained its rights in contact with Mr. Martin, who combined a mysticism of good quality with solid reserves of enthusiasm and good humor. As for the two youngest, they were both mischievous and teasing. Having noticed that the "Solitaire", as they called her, had difficulty resisting the temptation of a siesta, they took advantage of a temporary absence to transform her apartment into a monastic cell, furnished with austere mottoes, among which a long cartouche in which blazed this sentence: "My eyes close in the light of day, when, after my dinner, I do not take a walk! Leonie laughed wholeheartedly... and went on again.

Determined to return sooner or later to some convent better suited to her possibilities, she took advantage of this forced respite to perfect a barely sketched culture. Therese, who had left the Abbey a year earlier for health reasons and was taking private lessons from Madame Papinau, was a useful help to her eldest. "I was particularly touched by the great delicacy with which she acted towards me," Léonie later declared. I was then twenty-three years old, and she only thirteen, but I was very behind in my studies and my training; my little sister lent herself to instruct me with great charity and exquisite tact so as not to humiliate me. It was no doubt this same concern not to awaken painful memories that led the “little queen” to defer the confession of her own vocation to Léonie. We have testimony on this at the Trial: “I don't remember that the Servant of God confided in me about her plans for religious life; I also said that she poured out less with me than with my older sisters who were like her mothers, and than with Céline who was almost her age. But the announcement of his plan to enter the Carmel did not surprise me at all. It was not difficult to foresee, by her attitude and her virtues, that she was made for religious life”.

The Taking of the Habit of Mary, March 19, 1887, the authorization given, May 29, to Thérèse, by her father, to enter Carmel at the age of fifteen, kindled Léonie's nostalgia for the cloister. She remembered Sister Marie-Dosithée, who had never despaired of her. She thought of the Seer of Paray-le-Monial, who had cured her in her childhood. The information she obtained about the Visitation persuaded her that there would be no presumption in knocking at this door. Isn't its founder Saint Francis de Sales, the suave Doctor who called himself “as much a man as nothing more” and who advocated a “human and treatable” devotion? Wasn't his intention to make religious life accessible to any soul of good will, accessible even to weak temperaments? The constitutive texts, established with the help of Saint Jeanne de Chantal, did they not arrange a harmoniously balanced regime, where very moderate physical mortifications were combined with an interior mortification at all times? What a guarantee of wisdom was this statement of the Doctor of Geneva to Mother Angelica, the reformer of Port-Royal, who, alas! too few cases! “Eating little, working a lot, having a lot of mental worries and refusing sleep to the body, is to want to get a lot out of a horse that is lean and without feeding it. » To the ironists who reproached him for opening, not a convent, but a hospital, the Saint answered: « What do you want, I am the partisan of the infirm ».

Léonie didn't ask for so much to be convinced. There was in the diocese of Bayeux, in Caen, a Monastery of Visitandines. She visited there around June 20, 1887. The steps were carried out smoothly. After a final family trip to the Exhibition in Le Havre and to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Grace in Honfleur, the young girl crossed the closing gate, on the feast of the Virgin of Carmel, Saturday July 16, 1887. Ten days later, she was admitted to the postulancy.

The little care, the fine attentions were born, it is said, among the Visitandines. The providential meeting François de Sales the Bishop of Geneva and Jeanne-Françoise Fremyot, widow at twenty-eight of the Baron de Rabutin-Chantal, had led, on June 6, 1610, to the creation, in Annecy, of the Daughters of the Visitation Sainte-Marie: institute of contemplatives, which, in the thought of the founder, was intended to include, as a hors d'oeuvre, the visit of the sick, but had to, under the pressure of the opinion of the time and by the intervention of the Archbishop of Lyon, to submit very early to papal closure.

In dependence on the Rules of the Institute of Saint Augustine for the Sisters, the Constitutions and the Spiritual Directory methodically define the aims, the means, the spirit which are imposed on the nuns. “Let their whole life and exercises be to unite with God, to help with prayers and good examples the Holy Church and the salvation of our neighbour. The model is Nazareth, with its stamp of simplicity and gentleness, of humility and annihilation. Francis de Sales, who distrusts penitential exploits as if from a beautiful precipice, but "who does not like half-dead hearts", wants "evangelical girls", "girls of prayer", oriented towards "the absolute of love" by detachment from within and the fervor of love. They will devote themselves, specifies M. de Margerie, "more to interior recollection than to the multitude of prayers, more to disappropriation than to poverty, more to charity than to solitude, more to obedience than to 'to painful observances'.

The diet is healthy and plentiful, comprising two daily meals, sufficient sleep, fasting limited to the prescriptions of the Church, plus a few feast days, recreation time designed and organized in such a way as to largely relax and recreate. But everything is planned to break the self-will and subject it entirely to divine will. Time is fragmented and chopped into multiple occupations. Jobs and duties change frequently. You have to ask permission for everything. On New Year's Eve, a number is drawn, with the name of a patron, which assigns a cell for the year, as well as a place in the choir, in the refectory, in the Community. The bed, the furniture, the objects of piety are subject to the same mutations and transfers. It is, with the breaking of habits, the complete uprooting with regard to the accessory, with a view to establishing and fixing in “the only necessary”. To animate such asceticism and to blossom it in God, a robust and sober spirituality. No “rose water devotions”, no “tenderness”: Mass, frequent Communion, the Office of the Virgin, the hour of daily prayer, pious readings either in private or by mode of collective exchanges and the individual retreat in solitude for ten days.

In this mode of life as it is recalled here, the last decades have introduced certain modifications. The general line is entirely safeguarded, the spirit remains the same, but more account is taken of the necessities of hygiene, of the current need for culture and of active participation in religious ceremonies, of the obligation finally to earn one's living by a work less fragmented and technically better conducted. Educational methods have become more flexible. There is more breadth in the granting of permissions and dispensations. The external Sisters wear the same habit as the cloisters. Interviews in the visiting room are conducted without the presence of witnesses. The Monasteries, while remaining autonomous, now enjoy the possibilities of openness authorized by the erection of the Federations. The Order of the Visitation has wisely adapted to the healthy demands of modern life. Needless to add that account has been taken of the innovations brought by the Church in matters of the Office and reception of Communion, such as with regard to sung masses and liturgical reforms.

In this style of religious life, we recognize both the gently demanding genius of the one whom Mr. Olier called "the most mortifying of the Saints", and the organizing sense as well as the strength of the one who was pleased to call the " Perfect Lady”. The craze for their work was evident from the outset. Thirteen monasteries existed when François de Sales expired on December 28, 1622. There were eighty-seven in 1641, on the death of Jeanne de Chantal. The seventeenth century will not end without the family thus planted receiving from Heaven itself a sort of mystical investiture. The Doctor of Love had given her as her coat of arms "a single heart, pierced by two arrows, enclosed in a crown of thorns". – “Truly,” he said, “our little congregation is a work of the Heart of Jesus and Mary. The dying Savior gave birth to us through the opening of his Sacred Heart. » Presentiment or prophecy which will be confirmed, in the cloister of Paray-le-Monial, in the series of famous apparitions to Marguerite-Marie.

The Monastery where Léonie Martin began her apprenticeship in religious life dates back to the beginnings of the Order. Opened in Dol in 1627, transferred to Bourg-l'Abbé in Caen on July 16, 1631, it had been initiated by several nuns on whom Saint Jeanne de Chantal in person had imposed the Habit, at the convent of Paris. Among them was Marie Catherine Camus, the sister of the Bishop of Belley, whom the Chronicles point out as "very devoted to the precious Heart of our divine Saviour, often greeting him, in imitation of Saint Gertrude, and regarding him as the treasure of all the graces and riches of God”. That is to say that the movement sprung from Paray will find favorable ground there. From 1697, a chapel of the Sacred Heart, the first in the diocese, was erected in the conventual church. Even before this date, Mother Françoise d'Harcourt will have obtained permission to solemnly celebrate the feast of the Sacred Heart. May 23, 1699, will be established, under the same name, a brotherhood which will take root in the region, and first at the Monastery of Our Lady of Charity of Caen. The Visitandines will resist heroically all the attacks of Jansenism. Closely linked to Saint John Eudes, they will contribute to the formation of the Congregation of Women born from the great missionary of the West.

The dominant note of the Community of the rue de l'Abbatiale was, from the outset, charity. This is how, from 1635 to 1641, the nuns imposed fasts on themselves to relieve the scarcity of the Sisters established in Lorraine: for which the Foundress congratulated them, predicting in return that the Visitation of Caen would survive all storms. The storm par excellence was the French Revolution, which brought about the State's seizure of the conventual buildings and the dispersal of the thirty-five occupants. These survived clandestinely in small groups, came together in 1804, and six years later acquired part of the buildings of the Abbaye-aux-hommes, built long ago by the sons of Saint Benedict.

So here they are now installed at No. 3 rue de l'Abbatiale, in the heart of old Caen. House and garden - the whole is less than one hectare - are dominated by the high towers of the Saint-Etienne church, this masterpiece of Romanesque art, erected in the eleventh century, with the help of the scholar Abbé Lanfranc, by the munificence of William the Conqueror, who has his tomb there. The Visitandines will not be able to admire the majestic simplicity of the facade, nor the exterior chevet with superimposed planes, bristling with a forest of turrets, but the octagonal arrows which point eighty meters high will make their recreations hover, in the alleys and groves, a vision of grandeur and beauty.

The material installation is no less precarious, in this year 1887 when the superiority is in the hands of Mother Marie-Stéphanie Lejeune, who will die the following year. The cracked walls threaten to collapse; the roofs make water everywhere. A restoration is necessary; but is it still possible? In the Community, illnesses and deaths follow one another. The director of the novitiate, Mother Marie de Sales Lefrançois, who was not yet thirty years old, was remarkable for her concern for observance and her austerity. Perhaps she lacks this indulgence, this breadth of vision, the concern also to spare the transitions to the unseasoned forces of beginners, in short, these qualities of experience that age alone confers. It is unaware of the handling of dispensations, which François de Sales had nevertheless foreseen. Thus, from Saint Michael's Day to Easter, we strictly adhered to the two daily meals of 10 a.m. and 18 p.m., without allowing breakfast, however modest. Just a little liquid. No account was taken of the rigors of winter. The spirit of the Founder in this respect seemed somewhat forgotten. The result of these excesses, which in fact constituted deviations, was recorded in the decline of health. In eighteen months, two Superiors died, aged forty-six and forty-eight, while a whole series of young vocations passed away.

Léonie had valiantly begun the postulancy, which was in principle six months. There was no longer any trace in her of that instinct of indiscipline which had disturbed her childhood. She was no longer reluctant to obey. His piety was lively and deep. But she remained physically fragile, fickle in character. Not very muscular, of weak constitution, she remained prone to eczema and very sensitive in the bronchial tubes. Especially the humidity and the frost exhausted him. Pale complexion, shaken by chilly tremors, she could only moan: “I am pierced with cold”.

Des Buissonnets and Carmel received valuable encouragement. The eldest Marie and Pauline stimulated her, although inwardly they hardly bet on her perseverance. Céline and Thérèse surround him with their prayers. She reads and rereads these messages, which a severe instruction then orders her to destroy, which will notably deprive us of Thérèse's letters during the trip to Rome. She herself replies when she is given permission to do so, even though she finds writing neither easy nor attractive.

The note addressed to Thérèse on July 20, 1887 is all about optimism. It is the euphoria of the first days. “I am very happy, my darling little sister, in the midst of my new family... The good Lord has given me great graces, for it is He who has led me here, as if by the hand; I think that's really where he wants me... Our cell overlooks the courtyard where I see a beautiful Calvary which was placed this year, on Passion Sunday. Oh ! how it gives courage to suffer all that is most bitter, when we consider a God who has suffered so much for us. I also see the two steeples of Saint-Etienne and I think that the good Lord is very close to me, since he is really present in our churches. So you see that I am very happy; envy my happiness, that is permitted to you, for it is indeed the only one worthy of being envied on earth; all the rest is nothing. »

The letter sent on October 15 to his youngest, for the feast of his Patroness of Avila, already betrays, for those who know how to read, the difficulties that are piling up. Léonie speaks of “the thorns that tear her heart”. “There is much to do, she said, to make me a saint. But, little by little, we succeed all the same with the grace of God. Does his overly keen sensitivity suffer from some repressed tenderness? We could augur it, through this confession. “Because our heart is made only for God, only He can fill it fully. He's too big for the world, so what folly, isn't it, to have too much attachment to creatures. You know that, I can judge from my own experience, because until now I have not been able to possess my poor heart. You, darling little sister, the good Lord knew so how to delight your heart so pure that you did not know all the anguish that is born of mad affections. »

After the humble confidence in which floats some anxiety: "You know that it takes me longer than another to write, and I have such difficulty explaining myself that you're going to have trouble understanding me", the correspondent ends by evoking the visionary of Paray who once cured her: “Pray her well for me, so that, if necessary, she will obtain a second miracle for me so that I may become a Saint Visitandine”.

The hour of such a prodigy had not yet come. As winter approached, the difficulties increased, the physical forces weakened; morale finally gave way. On January 6, 1888, the young girl found herself in the parlor, in the arms of her father, who comforted her with his supernatural kindness. Thérèse emphasizes this in her autobiography: "When Léonie left the Visitation, he was not distressed, did not reproach the good Lord for not having answered the prayers he had made to her to obtain the vocation of her dear daughter, it was even with a certain joy that he went to look for her..."

The links with the cloister were broken, but Léonie wanted to attach herself to God by the vow of chastity. She will also keep in touch with the Visitation of Caen. When the latter, in January 1891, acquired a terracotta statue representing Saint Francis de Sales, the former postulant made a point of assuming the expense. Many times, her imagination will come to prowl around the poor Monastery, where she had left the best of her heart and where she intended to return without delay.

She returns to Les Buissonnets to witness Thérèse's departure. This one mentions it in the story where the farewell meal of Sunday April 8, 1888 is mentioned: “My dear little Léonie, who came back from the Visitation a few months ago, showered me with even more kisses and caresses”. Léonie herself will provide a moving account of these heartbreaking hours. “I was singularly struck by his fortitude in this circumstance. Alone, she was calm. Silent tears only spoke of the pain she felt at leaving our father whom she loved so much and whose old age she consoled. I told him to think carefully before entering religion, adding that my experience of it had shown me that this life required a lot of sacrifices and that it should not be undertaken lightly. The answer she gave me and the expression on her face made me understand that she expected all the sacrifices and that she accepted them with joy. The same lucidity of the young Thérèse, the same peaceful energy, the next day, when crossing the closing gate: “Her attitude above her age, her angelic face, everything about her told me so many things”.

Léonie admired no less the man who in town was often called "the Patriarch." “At the entrance to the Carmel, Thérèse knelt at the feet of our incomparable father to receive his blessing; but he, as far as I remember, would only give it to her on his knees. God alone could measure the extent of his sacrifice, but for this great and generous Christian, knowing the holy will of God and doing it were the same thing. » It is still « the angelic and radiant air of Thérèse », that the young girl underlines, when, at the Taking of the Veil of Mary, the following May 23, she sees, from the grille of the choir, the little queen posing on the forehead of her eldest the traditional crown of flowers.

Events would soon become more tragic. From June 1888, Mr. Martin's state of health worsened. Attacks of arteriosclerosis, no doubt complicated by attacks of uraemia, determine, at times, hallucinatory phenomena with attacks of amnesia and fugues. For Léonie and Céline, it's the beginning of a long ordeal. They worry when, without warning, their father extends a stay in the capital in an unusual way. They were even more alarmed when, on June 23, he disappeared for four days, without giving any sign of life. Alerted by a map, Mr. Guérin and Céline find him in Le Havre, but, while the search continues, a fire devours the Gervais house, adjoining Les Buissonnets, which is threatened for a moment and which Léonie, panicked, must quickly evacuate.

Everything seems to be in order. Mr. Martin is more tender than ever. He makes plans for the future. We settle in a rented chalet in Auteuil. Nostalgia for Lisieux quickly interrupts the experience. Anxiety hovers over this happiness that one feels is so threatened. On August 12, a new onslaught of illness, then, after a period of remission, on October 31, near Notre-Dame de Grâce in Honfleur, during a trip to greet Father Pichon, ready to embark for Canada is a more terrible crisis, of which young girls are helpless witnesses. “Leonie and I, writes Céline, we suffered martyrdom. »

The lull returns once more, authorizing the unmitigated joy of Thérèse's Taking the Habit. But on February 12, 1889, we had to resign ourselves to the inevitable: the transfer of the old man to the Bon Sauveur nursing home in Caen. This establishment, located rue Caponière, and run by nuns, was at the forefront in the treatment of mental disorders. The story of the Chevalier des Touches by Barbey d'Aurevilly had pointed this out to scholars. M. Martin would be treated with the utmost respect. He who dreamed of eremitism, however, it was not this kind of seclusion that he had coveted. When the heavy doors closed behind him, his daughters touched the bottom of human pain. Céline expresses it in one sentence: “Léonie and I, dumb, we kept silent all the time, we were destroyed, broken...”

To pay frequent visits to the dear patient, thanks to the complicity of Mother Costard, they ask for lodging and food, nearby, rue de Bayeux, at the Daughters of Charity, who ran an orphanage and received ladies boarders. Every day, their hearts beating with emotion, they went for the news. The echo was immediately transmitted to the Carmelite]. Céline handled the pen more willingly, but Léonie did not shy away from the duty of informing her sisters. The mail brought her, in return, messages of supernatural compassion, which made her more valiant in the ordeal. There is no trace of this correspondence in the fifteen letters she has kept from Thérèse. No doubt she sacrificed it when she returned to the Monastery. Leonie had another kind of consolation. The Visitation was only separated from the Good Savior by the width of a street. The young girl liked to take refuge there to pray. She asked in the parlor for her former mistress of novices, Sister Marie de Sales Lefrançois, who had become Superior, barely thirty years old, on the previous March 5. Very attached to her, despite her rigid demeanor, Léonie retained complete confidence in her and rediscovered, through contact with her, the meaning of a great vocation.

When, the period of adaptation being over, they had to limit themselves to weekly visits, the two exiles returned to Lisieux on May 14, 1889. It was to live there under the same roof as the Guérins, first at Les Buissonnets, soon in a mansion, 19, rue Paul-Banaston. They participated with them in the trip to Paris for the International Exhibition, then, in May 1890, in the vast journey which took them from the oratory of the Holy Face in Tours to the North of Spain, passing through the main cities in the West and South of France. Léonie, who still suffered from eczema, took advantage of a trip to Lourdes to beg for her cure.

The two sisters were more and more united. Every week, for a few hours, they took the road back to Caen, without omitting, at least as far as our heroine was concerned, the restful stop in the rue de l'Abbatiale. The Carmel parlor offered another shelter of comfort and hope. On September 8, 1890, Thérèse made her profession. The Prioress, Mother Marie de Gonzague, had told her to ask for her father's healing, when she was lying down for the great prostration. “But she contented herself with saying: My God, let dad heal if it is your will, since our Mother told me to ask you, but, for Léonie, let it be your will that she be. Visitandine, and if she doesn't have the vocation, I ask you to give it to her. You cannot deny me that. » On September 24, Léonie attends, moved, her sister's Prize de Voile, which revives in her many nagging memories.

Despite the tenderness with which her family surrounds her, she feels out of place. It especially costs him, between July 15 and August 1888, alternately with Céline, to keep Madame Guérin company, at the gates of Evreux, in the splendid estate of La Musse, which the Lexovian pharmacist, in 1890, had inherited. of his cousin Auguste David. There, distractions and receptions followed one another without interruption, which did not delight the young girl, who was not at ease in social circles. She had to control herself to put on a good face at the festivities which surrounded the marriage of her cousin, Jeanne Guérin, to Doctor Francis La Néele, on October XNUMX, XNUMX. Her young relative holding a medical practice on rue de l'Oratoire in Caen in any case the occasion of less rapid stays in the vicinity of the Bon Sauveur and the Visitation. Intimate meetings will bring together, on Thursday, at a relative of Mr. Guérin, a whole band of friends, most of them destined for the cloister. A witness, Mr. Pougheol, showing photos of the group, told us how Léonie showed herself to be modest and somewhat naive, laughing and a tad talkative, rolling the r in the fashion of Alençon when she lively in conversation, above all good and helpful.

Paternal deprivation, although accepted, is the prevalent concern. The young girl opened up about it to Céline, who had stayed a few days at Jeanne La Néele's home. “The good Lord may want to prolong our ordeal even further, I am inclined to believe it; the best thing for us is to snuggle up in the Heart of Jesus and to entrust ourselves to him for everything that concerns us. There, only, we will take again courage to support the pains of the life which, certainly, do not fail us. But let's not complain, we are more than friends of Jesus, we are his spouses of desire. In Heaven, we will see our beloved father, so humbled here below, filled with glory for eternity! Let us be his crown, let us make ourselves worthy of such a father! »

The celebrations of the second centenary of the death of Blessed Marguerite-Marie – she was not yet canonized – prompted Céline and Léonie to go to Paray-le-Monial. The first would have liked to travel privately and enjoy, apart from the crowds, the interior charm of the Chapel of the Apparitions. Finally, they took part, with Canon Domin and some friends from Caen, in the pilgrimage to the dioceses of Bayeux and Coutances, which began on October 8, 1890, under the presidency of Mgr Germain, Bishop of La Manche. Thérèse told Léonie of her certainty that she would receive many graces there. We guess however, in the letter that she addressed to Céline, that the massive character of reparation given then to this kind of demonstration did not correspond to her personal genius: "You know, I don't see the Sacred Heart as everyone. I think that my Spouse's Heart is mine alone, as mine is His alone, and I speak to him then in solitude of this delicious heart to heart, while waiting to contemplate him one day face to face”.

Thérèse must have been pleased when Léonie gave her the text of the meditation given on October 15 by Father Tissot, Superior General of the Missionaries of Saint Francis de Sales in Annecy. These thoughts were so in line with his budding spirituality! Let us rather judge: “Why remind you of what I forgot? asks Our Lord to a soul that endlessly stirs up all its past. “No, no, do not measure the Heart of Jesus... Throw this weakness into him. No sooner is she in this fiery furnace than she is already consumed... Think about it, the measure of your confidence, that is to say of your love, will be the measure of God's love for your soul..." The allegory follows, with a pre-Theresian and, to tell the truth, Salesian accent, which depicts a mother and her two young children: one who embraces the mother's neck and surrenders to her embraces , the other who stiffens, cries and resists. And yet, don't they both need to be fully supported? “Oh! I beg you, let yourself be carried away! These reflections seem to have touched Leonie's heart deliciously, for they will be found, entirely copied by her, in the few meager papers which at her death formed the whole treasure of her cell. Still too obsessed with the difficulties of yesteryear, and marked by a guilt complex, everything that aroused confidence had echoed in her soul.

At that time, Thérèse did not exercise over her the prestige and authority that her astonishing maturity would soon bring her. She gave way to her elders. Léonie will point this out at the Trial. “When I came to see my sisters in the visiting room, I noticed that Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus showed herself to be particularly humble and discreet, willingly letting others speak. She was also very regular, retiring first when the hourglass indicated that the time granted for the visiting room had passed. – “Even in the visiting room, her humility kept her small and hidden. She willingly remained silent when my other sisters were there, and this deep humility of the Servant of God was all the more remarkable as she possessed to a high degree all the gifts of mind and heart. »

Léonie and Céline's greatest dream was to take the humiliated father back and take care of him themselves. Satisfaction was given to them on May 10, 1892. Mr. Guérin brought back to Lisieux the old man who, with both legs completely paralyzed, could no longer yield to the desire to escape, and whose mental state was that of a soul on the slumber, conscious enough to observe and react, in a spirit of resigned gentleness and supernatural surrender. The young girls settled down with their patient in rue Labbey, near the Guérin family. Was it over with the breakaways to Caen? No, thanks to the kindness of Céline, who facilitated her sister's much-desired escapes. Thus, at the end of July 1892, the latter made a closed retreat in rue de l'Abbatiale. “Everyone takes his pleasure where he finds it, wrote this fine fly of Céline to Mrs. La Néele; I find it at La Musse, Léonie, at the Visitation. Sweet Madame Guérin was a little annoyed; and, later, Céline herself had to reassure her poor sister, who reproached herself for having sometimes left her alone with her father, to run to her pious loves. It was becoming more and more obvious that the obstinate Léonie would sooner or later try a new cloistered experience.

Failure and holiness

Final entry to the Visitation

The dialogue between Caen and Lisieux

In religious institutions where the essence of life is inside, external events only causing surface disturbances, only a diary or, failing that, a few retreat notes, excerpts of correspondence, certain detailed testimonies allow you to attempt a deep cut. For Sister Françoise-Thérèse, if the humility in which she confines herself discourages analysis, the notoriety that Teresian glory earned her, the epistolary exchanges that she maintains with her three sisters at the Carmel of Lisieux, make up for the lack of personal documents.

Our Visitandine left, towards the end of 1903, the period of formation. It now follows the normal cycle of community activities. With a good will which compensates for the lack of practical sense, she attends to the subordinate occupations which are successively entrusted to her. On October 1, 1905, she wrote to Mother Agnès of Jesus: “I have been appointed assistant to the bursar's office. I've been in this job for a month, which I really like. It's entirely my business to put things in order here and there, all over the house; I regard myself as the little donkey of the monastery and certainly I find my fate worthy of envy; What renunciations, what practices known to Jesus alone! How many souls I can save by these little nothings which are my humble harvest, very small like me! Oh ! especially the souls of priests! they have all my attraction”. On this "battlefield", she said willingly, "the little one will wield her sword of love".

At the porter's lodge, his unparalleled memory will be of great help to him. In the sacristy, the big jobs were reserved for her, where she would put all her piety, leaving the liturgical preparation of the Offices to those more competent than her. The lingerie will mobilize its services many times. She willingly offered herself to watch over the sick sisters. This is what will earn her to become a nurse, but under the supervision of the Assistant, who, to lighten her responsibilities, will replace her in medical consultations. The burden turned out to be very heavy, there were fourteen deaths in six years. When the influenza-like bronchitis epidemic occurred in 1913, a new nurse was appointed, of very lively character, of whom Sister Françoise-Thérèse remained the devoted auxiliary, although handled roughly. She always remained in the shadows, docile and even-tempered.

During the year 1905, Sister Françoise-Thérèse had the signal favor of approaching Fr. Alexis Prou, who had come to preach a triduum to the Community. This Franciscan – we said then Récollet – during a retreat given at the Carmel of Lisieux in October 1891, had “understood” and “guessed” Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus “in a marvelous way”. These are the very expressions of Thérèse, who adds: "He launched me with full sail on the waves of trust and love which attracted me so strongly but on which I dared not venture..." Léonie knew him from the Story of a Soul. She had surely already maintained him, because, guardian of the convent of Caen from 1898 to 1902, he had come to confess more than once at the Monastery. With him, it was one of the most beautiful pages of the Theresian adventure which came alive again in Léonie's eyes.

At that time, she really needed such comfort, showing herself to be excessively sensitive – her eldest, Marie, corrected her by letter – to the threats of dissolution hanging over the Community. In the autumn of 1904, in application of the law of July 1, 1901 on the Congregations, a liquidator known for his sectarianism had the doors locked, a search in the Monastery, the affixing of seals, then the 'inventory. An appeal was lodged, begging the Sacred Heart to defend its work. In the opinion of even the eminent jurists who took up the case, it was providential circumstances that delayed the trial and led to a favorable ruling by the Court. In July 1905, the affair rebounded; eviction followed by closure is scheduled for September 1. A retreat preached by Father de Causans must prepare hearts for the cruel deadline. New twist. The liquidator having appealed in cassation, it is necessary to await the sentence. This will be released on February 11, 1907, confirming the favorable judgment of the Court of Appeal. The persecutors were at their expense.

In the meantime, to secure a position of fallback, and, independently of this situation, to create across the Channel a foundation dedicated to extending the cult of the Sacred Heart, Mother Marie-Aimée de Songnis had acquired a villa at Hastings, that is to say, by a curious coincidence, at the historical place where William the Conqueror seized the crown of England by a decisive victory. A group of four Visitandines set sail from Dieppe on October 22, 1909. The “Petit Nid” developed slowly, but in 1920 recruitment difficulties and health problems led Bishop Lemonnier to request the closure of the English branch. , which was not yet canonically erected, and the repatriation of all the nuns.

Through these adventures, Léonie trembles for this religious life for which she paid so dearly. From Lisieux, where all the news was faithfully communicated, came to him pacifying advice. To tell the truth, we had gone through similar alarms there. Thanks to the intervention of Mr. Guérin, the Carmel had set up a place of refuge in Belgium. Mother Agnès of Jesus and Mother Marie de Gonzague were able to talk to the Sisters of the Visitation during their brief stay among them on April 15, 1903. On their way to Valognes, in the Manche department, to collect the money from a loan in a notary's office, they went down rue de l'Abbatiale. Admitted inside, they spent a whole day there and were warmly celebrated. While the former Prioress toured, not without emotion, the places where her years of boarding had passed, Mother Agnès answered the many questions of the Community on the life and death of Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus. Each Visitandine received an illustrated biography of the Servant of God as a tribute.

During an hour-long conversation, Sister Françoise-Thérèse opened up to her sister in direction, showed her her spiritual notebook and solicited her advice. She too adopted Pauline for “Little Mother”. She could not repress her astonishment at the simplicity and humility of her confidante. She had once hailed the miracle of her vocation; she was now touching that of her inner transformation. Of this communion, the mail will be the privileged instrument. While Sister Marie de la Trinité, novice and disciple of Thérèse, liaises with that of her sisters who took the veil at the Visitation of Caen, Léonie deals with three correspondents. Every month, as well as on religious anniversaries and the feasts of Saint Leo and Saint Francis de Sales, she watches for the stamped envelope from Lisieux, which arrives with clockwork punctuality, to the point that she worries rare times there is a delay. From her Profession to 1905, she did not have permission to keep these precious sendings; some will eventually go astray. Hence a lot of gaps in the collection but the loot is no less suggestive.

Through this enormous mass of documents, a whole past comes to life, letting everyone's face shine through. With the Martins, the style is affective and effusive; we have a passion for concrete detail. A graphologist would delight in comparing handwriting; he would notably point out a kind of childish application in Léonie, the cursive characters of Céline, those more ample and cut in the blade of a sword, due to the pen of Mother Agnès. Marie is a positive, independent, original, non-conformist temperament; she speaks with a certain detachment of the "hurricane of glory" which excites others; in the face of difficulties, she armored herself with indifference; willingly, she pleads her birthright to make certain calls to order. Pauline appears as a mother quickly moved and tormented, but always consoling and so supernatural. As for Céline, she is the hard-working and dynamic "Intrépide", who rushes straight to the obstacle, brandishes the truth unvarnished and enamels her texts with sharp affirmations, cookie-cutter words and delicious tenderness. . Léonie herself uses a duller tone, but which touches with a constant concern for self-accusation and fervent gratitude. The destiny and the apotheosis of Thérèse serve for these epistolary exchanges as background; spiritual childhood is its soul.

By this way, Sister Françoise-Thérèse will learn the family news: the sickness and death so holy of her cousin, Sister Marie of the Eucharist, that no less edifying of the second father that Uncle Guérin was for her, the struggles elections of Francis La Néele and his death in 1916. The echo will quickly reach him of the miracles recorded in the "Rain of roses", of the devotion of the crowds, of the publications of the Carmel, of the pilgrimages of the soldiers to the Lexovian cemetery. Céline tells him in detail about her artistic work.

However, if we take Sister Françoise-Thérèse's words to her correspondents literally, we would get too gloomy an idea of ​​her. It blurs its qualities and turns its deficiencies to black, it dwells on its past, it pitilessly raises its bouts of sadness, its phases of discouragement. For a little, one would believe her to be gloomy and tearful, eager for affection and consolation, prey offered to neurasthenia, while the successive Superiors, Mothers Marie-Aimée de Songnis, Jeanne-Marguerite Décarpentry and Marie-Thérèse de Colomby, paid homage to her bravery, and that those who survived her and who were edified witnesses of her monastic life, repeatedly underline her good humor, her undeniable kindness and the ease with which she took part in community exercises. Were the Carmelites duped by their sister's confession? Did they allow themselves to be taken in by the pious game of his humility? We see them in any case eager to relax and expand their Visitandine: which gives the dialogue a very Teresian flavor.

Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart does not like her self-esteem: “I see that your only desire is to please your Jesus. So he looks at you, not as his 'little colt', but as his beloved wife, who shares here below the humiliations of his hidden life, but who will share his glory in Heaven”. Mother Agnès appeals to Little Thérèse: “Become a saint, but not a fearful saint. Go to Jesus with trust and love. Don't cry over imperfections that you will keep all your life; it is useless at all. It's wasted time. We will always be miserable, lame, crippled anyway, but if the heart says to Jesus in the midst of his miseries: Have mercy on me! You are my everything, my joy and my love, everything is good for us”.

Céline does not want an “orchestra of mourners”. "We must lead our soul drum beating, sing warlike and spirited refrains to it. Like this, she runs much better in the way of suffering. She warns Léonie against excessive austerity and introspection. “It's not to blush the disciplines that counts, but to always give up in the little things. As for examining yourself as far as the eye can see and running after a director, what's the point when you're fifty years old, when you're not navigating extraordinary paths and when the Superiors are there? "Feeling the pulse of one's soul in this way is worthless, it's a useless occupation of oneself, it's looking for oneself, it's wasting one's time. » – « Always continue to guide yourself by this path of small things and you will not need directors... The 'made' souls who suffocate by need of effusion are souls who are not faithful... The fidelity in uniting with God makes the soul simple, so simplified that it would be impossible for it to split itself in speaking to men. »

Great was the joy of the three sisters of Lisieux when, on August 6, 1910, Céline received this news: I recited with great fervor. I renew it every day after my Communion, and I often repeat this with extreme confidence: 'In your eyes, time is nothing, a single day is like a thousand years, so you can in an instant prepare me to appear in front of you. »

The rest of the text explains the urgent interest that Léonie then attached to this perspective of eternity. For several weeks she had been suffering from anemia and malaise which, without being extremely serious, contributed to detach her more and more from the earth. “It is not the care that I lack, she writes, I am like a rooster in dough; but, don't worry, little sister, I'm not dying, far from it. I can drag on like this for a long time. My condition is more painful than if I had a well-characterized disease, but since Jesus wants me to be languishing, I am pleasing him in this way, I only want what he wants. Cloth ! Cloth ! and nothing more! And when he finds his little cloth to his liking, little Thérèse will come and take it to hide it in the opening of his Sacred Side forever... »

The health of our Visitandine recovered sufficiently for her to be able to intervene as a witness in the Cause of her youngest child. This prospect had surprised her at first. When the Superior advised her, in the garden where she was hanging out the linen, that there was serious question of a Trial, she began by protesting. “Therese! She was very nice! But, a Saint! all the same!... – Did you notice anything extraordinary about her? – For that, no, but we had nothing to reproach him for. She stuck to the canons of hagiography of the time, for which the halo was supposed to cling only to the forehead of ecstatics.

On February 10, 1910, Mgr Lemonnier, bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux, began the process of researching the Writings of the Carmelite. Léonie copied out, for sending to the Responsible Authority, the fourteen letters she had kept from her sister. On August 3, the ecclesiastical judges were appointed, who would instruct the Informative Process, called the Ordinary. The thought of having to testify in front of such serious characters plunges Sister Françoise-Thérèse into a reverential fear. Céline reassures her and tells her that, as long as she has not taken the oath, she can be assisted. By sending him the Articles written by the vice-postulator, Msgr. de Teil, a kind of preparatory outline on the life and virtues of the Servant of God, she pointed out to him certain inaccuracies concerning alleged charismatic events. “Our Thérèse remained what you knew her to be, and that to the end. “She specifies that if their sister had to suffer from the entourage, it is without any malignant intention, and because of the presence of several depressed or unbalanced patients.

Léonie bravely sets to work, arranging and classifying her memories, which are extremely precise. “Our Mother is for me of an unparalleled devotion, she wrote to the Carmel, I am touched to tears to have so much assistance; I would never get out of trouble without it, I humbly agree. Finally, provided that I have enough spirit to love the good God with all my strength; to live only on love and humility, that is enough for me!...” She also benefits from help from on high: “Thérèse is working my soul a lot at the moment on humility. The more I see her elevated in glory, the more I feel the need to humble myself. I thirst to disappear, to be counted for nothing. What Grace ! »

On September 6, there was the official recognition of the remains of the Servant of God. Doctor Francis La Néele, who played an active role in it, recounted it in a letter addressed to Léonie on the 10th of the same month: “The exhumation of our little Thérèse went very well. The body was whole, but there were only the dry bones, without skin or flesh. His sheaf (sterilized green plant) was very well preserved. I took it off, along with as many clothes as I could. The veil no longer existed. The cross of her rosary was in her fingers, I had it offered to Monsignor, who was very happy with this memory. When the coffin was taken out, Monsignor chanted with all the priests present the Laudate pueri and sprinkled holy water.

“I dressed Thérèse in new clothes which cover her ashes, I put several bouquets in the coffin and I placed a new veil on her head. The tarps that hid the Carmel cemetery were lowered, at the request I made to Monsignor, and the open coffin was exposed in front of the door. Everyone, seven to eight hundred people, who had been waiting and praying for two hours, marched in front and touched a crowd of objects. Monseigneur was in a choir habit, as well as the Abbe Quirié and the priest of Saint-Jacques. There were plenty of priests. Then, the lead coffin was welded and sealed with the arms of Mgr de Bayeux, and Mgr de Teil. »

On September 6, when the first exhumation of Thérèse's body took place, a fragment detached from the coffin was sent to the Visitandine, who was preparing to face the examination deemed by her formidable. She was cited in Bayeux for November 28, 1910. The day before, a car picked her up at the convent door, along with Mother Jeanne-Marguerite Décarpentry who was accompanying her. No stop on the way, not even the desired visit to the Cathedral. The Bishop did not think he had to authorize it. We didn't trifle with the spirit of closure. They were lodged in rue Saint-Loup by the Benedictines of the Blessed Sacrament, who gave them a fraternal welcome. Housed in the Despallières house, reserved for female boarders, they had the happy surprise of being served by the former servant of the Guérins, Marcelline Husé, who had become Sister Marie-Josèphe de la Croix, who was herself to testify at the Trial . The interrogations took place in a large room on the ground floor. Our Visitandine impressed those around her with her humility and self-effacing attitude. Invited to take part in a recreation of the Community, she showed herself to be very cheerful, very relaxed, answering cordially the questions which arose everywhere. In the interval left by the sessions, she was seen spending long periods kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament.

While in Lisieux the Veni Creator was being sung for her, our nun confronted her judges. Court very benevolent, it must be said, but picky by duty. The Promoter of the Faith was Canon Théophile Dubosq. Léonie appeared at seven sessions grouped into four sessions; his deposition, inserted in the Lexovian copy of the Trial (folios 89 to 144), actually occupies thirty-eight pages of text. Here is the thread of the interrogation: taking the oath, presentation of the witness, sources of his knowledge – family origins of the Servant of God – childhood, adolescence, education at home and at the Abbey – entry into Carmel – heroic virtues: faith, hope, love for God and neighbour, prudence, justice, strength, temperance, secondary virtues, religious vows – illness and death – writings of the Servant of God – supernatural gifts – reputation for holiness. It is obvious that the testimony of Sister Françoise-Thérèse can only relate to the period when she lived alongside her sister.

This is not the place to analyze such a document. Let us emphasize only the precision and the obvious accent of sincerity. She strongly insists on two character traits where one can easily find her herself: “The little children delighted Thérèse's pure heart. I will never forget her angelic smile and the caresses she lavished on them, especially on poor children; these had her preferences, and she lost no opportunity to speak to them of the good Lord, placing herself within their reach with appropriateness and charming grace”. – "She had a special ability to counterfeit the tone of voice and the manners of others, but never, to my knowledge, has this little amusement degenerated into mockery and resulted in the slightest breach of charity: she knew how to stop at the right time, with perfect tact".

On December 4, the two nuns returned to Caen. The Trial continued for a year. The closure was pronounced on December 12, 1911. Sister Françoise-Thérèse followed with passionate attention all the events of the cause. Sometimes a visitor came to talk to him about it in the visiting room. She thus received Father Pichon, Father Taylor, who in Scotland made himself the knight-servant of the "little flower", Bishop de Nardo, closely involved in the observation of the miracle of the Carmel of Gallipoli in Italy. The anniversary of Thérèse's death was commemorated privately. In 1912, it earned Léonie a grace of choice, which she announced on October 7 in a letter to the Carmel. “On September 30, Thérèse visited me in the evening with the sweet and penetrating smell of roses. I was extremely consoled by it, although it had only lasted a few moments, so much so that, in my joy, I found myself saying: O my beloved little sister, you are there near me, I I'm sure Since then, I feel more fervent. The 'little nothing' would also like to become holy. Alas! sometimes he revolts, he finds it difficult to practice smallness and humility. »

If she only receives very few perceptible favors for herself, Léonie easily obtains some for others. A postulant, who entered the Monastery on September 27, 1913, immediately fell into a fit of tears that lasted several days. Everything seems strange to him in this new environment. Tempted to escape, she clings to the divine will, and on the anniversary of Thérèse's death, she begs him to come to her aid. In the evening, after the Office, on returning to her cell, she felt watched as she passed, embraced by maternal arms and encouraged by a gaze of love. It was Léonie who was leaning tenderly over this child in whom she was reliving her past struggles. This attention touched the young girl so much that, seeing it as a sign from above, she pulled herself together. Her tears ceased immediately and on October 4 she entered the novitiate.

The mail from Lisieux swelled ever more with the posthumous glory of Therese. Some were already contemplating an imminent glorification and insisted that the Servant of God's entire family, including the cloistered, should witness her triumph under the cupola of Saint Peter. Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart affirmed her preferences for an entirely interior, invisible and distant presence. On the other hand, she bent over with delight the portraits and souvenirs of Thérèse. Thus she sends to Caen the image of her goddaughter in her early childhood, with this graceful comment: “She was always curly to go to the Abbey; on Sundays, I took the trouble to curl it also around the forehead. I took no pride in that; it was only to please our dear little father, who, if you remember, could not suffer me to cut even a piece of his little Queen's hair. It was his glory. As for Thérèse, she didn't think she was pretty, she says so herself, and in fact, we managed to prevent vanity from entering her heart”.

When war was declared, one wondered if the procedure in the Court of Rome would not be interrupted. Providence decided otherwise, and many soldiers placed themselves under the protection of the young Carmelite. Léonie did not hesitate to tell a faithful friend from Caen that, thanks to Thérèse, he would return safe and sound; to another who recommended her mobilized sons to her, she replied: “I will entrust them to our little Saint, and you will find them all”. Both predictions came true, despite being frontline fighters for four years. The plebiscite of the hairy people was added to that of the missionaries to hasten the course of events. On June 10, 1914, Pius X signed the Introduction to the Cause. On August 19, Letters of Remission instructed the Bishop of Bayeux to constitute a Tribunal to instruct the Apostolic Process. Business, far from getting bogged down, was advancing by leaps and bounds.

Faced with this triumphal march, Léonie expresses her joy, but in the minor key that characterizes her. “The more I see our glorified Angel, the more I feel the need to go into exile. It is a suffering to find myself in company, so much I am in a hurry to be alone with my Jesus, in order to savor my happiness with him: only there do I enjoy, I am at peace. » She wishes to die before the Beatification, « because it is such an honor that others turn pale before this one.

I am too weak. It would make me dizzy”. What attracts him the most is to imitate Thérèse, to discover her spirit, not on the surface, but from within. On November 1, 1914, she wrote to her Carmelites: “To be able to please Jesus, how sweet! And that, throwing flowers under his feet... Is there a more lovable and more gracious way of practicing the thousand virtues that one encounters in a single day, for life is but one fabric of sacrifices? One of Thérèse's thoughts that I like the most is this: “I thought that contempt was still too glorious for me, so I became passionate about forgetting”. Is it not to have arrived at the last rung of humility? I think so. And on the other hand, it must be, according to my little judgement, consummate holiness. You see, my little sisters, our Thérèse is my ideal”.

On March 17, 1915, the first session of the Apostolic Process was held in the sacristy of Bayeux Cathedral. Sister Françoise-Thérèse would have liked to avoid the trip. When Bishop Lemonnier entered the cloister for the feast of the Visitation, she ventured to ask him if he could not be questioned in the visiting room. “We are not going to disturb a whole tribunal for you”, exclaimed the Bishop. Shortly after, she was notified that she was being cited at the Carmel of Lisieux.

She went there on September 11. The meeting of the four sisters under the sign of Thérèse had something overwhelming. Léonie, silent for a while with emotion, then kept repeating, clasping her hands: “Oh! I'm so happy " ! She lodged in the cell of Mother Agnes of Jesus, the latter having settled near the infirmary where the Sub-Prioress, Mother Thérèse of the Eucharist, was bedridden never to get up again. In the refectory, she was placed near Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart, in one of the places formerly occupied by Thérèse. She wanted to see everything, to know everything about her youngest child. She kissed the objects that had been for her use. She prayed on her knees in front of the pallet and meditated for a long time where she had suffered. The Story of a Soul, so often read and meditated on, came to life and came to life before his eyes with new relief and inexpressible color. The sacristy, the choir, the oratory, the alley of the chestnut trees, the wash-house, the hermitages, the cemetery: everything spoke to him of the dear deceased. The novices formed by Thérèse were there: one of them, Sister Marie-Madeleine du Saint-Sacrement, also ill and near her end. Léonie, with holy envy, appealed to their memories. But it was mostly with her sisters that she conversed, either on the steps overlooking the garden, or in some solitary corner under the trees. To Mother Agnès of Jesus, whom she kissed to the point of suffocation, she shared the evolution of her soul in recent years. They all found her very comfortable, willing to speak, both deliciously simple and touchingly humble. An unfortunate fall, which she made in the yard, and which, fortunately, had no result, in no way disturbed her happiness.

In this fraternal atmosphere, it was easier to bear the fire of the questions of the ecclesiastical judges, with whom, moreover, Léonie was now familiar. The nuns questioned were in the enclosure, on the platform, in what is called the oratory; the Tribunal sat on the other side of the wall, in the sacristy, where an opening fitted with a grille had been made for the occasion. Our Visitandine, who numbered among the witnesses in the seventh rank at the Trial of the Ordinary, occupied here the eleventh. His deposition, spread over four sessions, in sessions 46 and 47 of September 13 and 14, 1915, takes up thirty-three pages (439 to 452, 463 to 483) of the Lexovian copy of the Apostolic Process. She dwells at length on the moral physiognomy of Thérèse, in her childhood and adolescence.

A few formulas are worth noting: "As far as I have been able to observe the life of my little sister, I have never noticed, in her conduct, the slightest infraction of any duty or obligation, nor any laxity in the practice of virtues”. – “She very punctually followed the little rules that at the age of thirteen and fourteen she imposed on herself for the use of her time and the order of her reading. She never challenged and submitted her judgment with great ease. – “She faithfully avoided showing off and seemed to ignore her great qualities of soul and the physical beauty with which God had endowed her. She says in her notes that her nature was proud, but she dominated her so well that, if she hadn't written it, I believe I would have always ignored it”.

Concerning the reputation of holiness of the Carmelite, Léonie brings a testimony that touches her closely: “In my Community of the Visitation of Caen, we are unanimous in recognizing that Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus is a Saint. Undoubtedly the enthusiasm is not to the same degree among all our nuns, but all agree in recognizing her holiness”. Relieved of the worry of interrogations, the last Carmelite days of our Visitandine were the most radiant. Several photographs were taken where she appeared, either alone or surrounded by her three sisters. She attended two screening sessions on Teresian themes: biographical episodes and miracles. A sort of scenic play in verse was performed for her, composed by Mother Isabelle of the Sacred Heart, on the theme of the Way of Childhood. On Saturday the 18th, shortly before the departure of Sister Françoise-Thérèse, the novices sang a few stanzas to her, in which they said to her in particular:

You are our sister, because your soul is the same
To those of the little ones who live in love.
That was the impression she left in Lisieux. The farewells were accompanied by tears. Mother Agnes of Jesus then confessed: “Oh! You should never do that again!... It's too heartbreaking”! Léonie was no less happy to find the rue de l'Abbatiale and the slender silhouette of the spiers of Saint-Etienne. At noon recreation and during the pious exchange called Assembly, which takes place between four and five p.m., she related in great detail her trip, her observations, the words heard, involving all her sisters on a pilgrimage in the footsteps of Thérèse.

From September 20, she wrote to Lisieux: “Here I am back in the sweet Visitandin nest, but completely transformed. Pray that it lasts until my last breath, because I am much more afraid of myself than of the devil. My exile weighs on me more than before, it's inevitable. But, on the other hand, how many delightful memories and how many ways to sanctify me ever more! Now, I will embark with full sails on the little and very lovable "Way" of my celestial little sister. Like her, I always want to hold the hand of Jesus and let myself be carried by Him”.

She admits at times that she gives in to nostalgia for those days in Heaven, but Céline is quick to remind her that "a sad Saint is a sad Saint" and that she must banish all melancholy. Made more fully aware of the controversies, touching the way in which Thérèse was represented, and her defined personality, she is vehemently indignant: “I can't; not to understand that people refuse to believe us, the sisters of Thérèse, who knew her better than anyone, to give credence to fanciful criticism, both for her portraits and for her character”.

In the presence of the photographs taken in Lisieux, Léonie wrote to Céline, who apologized for certain imperfections in the pose: "It's not your fault if I'm so ugly and so poorly haired, it's mine". She adds humbly: “If I hadn't been afraid of hurting you, I would have returned my portraits to you, because what do you want the Community to do with them? Isn't it enough, not to say too much, to have the poor character, without having the image of it!... It is only a simple supposition, which has no foundation, for I believe myself loved, although I am hardly lovable. Finally, darling sisters, if you find me well, I feel well too, because the very little one feels so poor, so inferior to you in every way”. We can see that the beautiful Theresian adventure did not intoxicate our heroine.

Léonie and the Teresian triumph

The rising life

Sister Françoise-Thérèse had reached that uncertain age that is called “a certain age”. Since the winter of 1927 his health had visibly declined; she became more and more chilly: "A bird for the cat", people said in her entourage. The flu epidemic of December 1930 caused her to have a double pulmonary congestion which brought her to the edge of the grave. Immense is her joy when she thinks she sees, on the feast of the Immaculate, the end of her exile. A night of insomnia where death threatens, she squeezes, she kisses Thérèse's crucifix and applies pain and prayers to the conversion of Russia. One cannot help admiring her faith, her patience, the delicacy she shows to her nurses. The then Bishop of Bayeux, Mgr Suhard, was impressed. Having come in person to bless her, he wrote to Mother Agnès of Jesus on December 10: “The dear Sister is truly in the hands of God, and from the very short conversation I had with her, I came away fully edified. It's like an echo of Heaven. It is good to live in this atmosphere”.

The Visitation of Caen was not resigned to the outcome that the Faculty predicted. In a beautiful surge of confidence, at the very bedside of the patient, the former director of the novitiate of Léonie, Sister Marie-Aimée, begged Thérèse of Lisieux to intervene; she immediately acquired the certainty of being heard. The improvement was not long in coming. Sister Françoise-Thérèse, who had received a telegram from Pius XI, would later write to her sisters: “I end up believing that it is the blessing of the Holy Father that keeps me on earth; so, I beg of you, if I am sick again, be careful not to let him know”. Thereafter, she will better realize where this unexpected survival came from.

The recovery was painful and long. The violence of the cupping and poultice treatment awoke the still latent eczema. Our Visitandine complained about it on January 2, 1931: “He dresses me in a hair shirt from head to toe, because of the itching that prevents me from closing my eyes; if I have the misfortune to relieve myself even a little, they are real burns. I think I would see others if I were in purgatory, so I offer my sufferings for all the great causes that particularly touch the heart of our beloved Pontiff and Father. Finally, all these desires for the apostolate help me to be generous”. On February 11, she will say again: “The remedies roasted me like Saint Laurent on his grill. I thought I was going crazy." On several occasions, a supernatural presence, that of her Thérèse, comforted her in her ordeal. She consoled her for the estrangement, which was then very cruel to her, of her Carmelite sisters. Above all, she benefited from the devotion of her Community. "I didn't think I was so loved," she confessed naively. On March 26, 1931, she was finally able to leave the infirmary. We saw her again in the cloisters, still energetic, trotting with her short step, but more bent, her gait heavy, traversed by nervous tremors.

The correspondence with Lisieux accuses the disappointment of the missed rendezvous with Heaven: “I can no longer acclimatize on this sad earth. Everything is a subject of boredom and weariness to me, pray well – this is addressed to Céline – for your poor little coward, because in short it is pure cowardice to no longer want to suffer for the good God, even though he is more offended than ever... I cling as much as I can to his will, which I love and want above all, but all my meager efforts are fruitless and often leave me in indescribable suffering. The Carmel stimulates her with the optimistic reminder of the Teresian doctrine: "It is not a question of seeing our victories and of feeling strong and courageous, but of agreeing to feel nothing, to hold ourselves humbly in the will of the good God ".

Mother Agnès of Jesus, to soften Léonie's disillusion, resorts to the last words, to the novissima verba, picked up at her sister's bedside: “I suffered as if I were to die. Well ! if I don't die, I'll start again another time, that's all”. – “I missed that train, yes, but I won't miss them all. » – « I will have to pass like the others, no doubt, through the temptations of the devil at the hour of death... But no, for the little ones, he cannot, and I am very little. »

To hunt the birds of darkness, Pauline evokes childhood memories, family evenings, the mysterious charm of Les Buissonnets. " Christmas ! Christmas ! The little midnight candle! Do you remember daddy used to sing that to us once? And it was gay, and our little Thérèse laughed and repeated so nicely. How, after that, to take offense at what Mother Agnès calls her “sermon”. “The fable makes the precept pass with itself. »

Léonie calms down, to the point of writing to her Carmelites: “I am completely abandoned to live until the end of the world, if such is the good pleasure of God! It's what he does that I love, and I'll be willing to watch the three of you die before me, if that's his will. As you know me, you will find this heroic, I am sure”.

Life therefore resumes, with its exercises, its labors, its pains, to the rhythm of the bell, to the step of the regulations, this cloistered existence without escape, of which the profane, failing to grasp the hidden spring, dreads the implacable monotony , where only the cycle of liturgical feasts throw a note of diversity and for each nun, the multiple aspects of the interior landscape in the passionate pursuit of Christ. For Léonie, there is another element of variety that she would gladly do without: this parade of ecclesiastical dignitaries eager to talk to the sister of a Saint and to wring from her, if not an interview, at least some new feature. They are unanimous in admiring his humility. But with the Bishop of the place, she put herself at the expense of kindness: when Mgr Picaud, appointed to Bayeux in 1931, entered the cloister for the feast of Saint Francis de Sales or for a canonical visit, she approached him spontaneously, asks about his health, his sleep, offers to take his intentions.

On August 4, 1932, a Grand of Spain, Cardinal Ségura, arrived unexpectedly. Léonie, as soon as she was informed, cheerfully maintained it, the time to gather all the Sisters to the Chapter. There, he confides to the Community that in Lisieux, at the tomb of Thérèse, he renounced his office as Primate, the Pope having asked him for this sacrifice for the purpose of conciliation, because of a persistent tension between political authorities. and nuns. “The young thaumaturge, he admits, sent me beautiful roses, but there were also a lot of thorns. »

On May 8, 1934, an event of another kind, we united in Caen, with the golden jubilee of Mother Agnès of Jesus, at the same time as we commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of Thérèse's first communion. Léonie, after having answered the prayers of the mass, has the honors of the day. She who was called, not without a touch of emphasis, “our living relic”, considered herself happy to find at the Visitation, so fraternally united were the two Monasteries, the atmosphere of Carmel.

February 17, 1935, new alert. For the past few weeks, bouts of "trembling", as Léonie calls them, have become more frequent. The heart weakens; the nausea worsens to the point of prohibiting the reception of the Eucharist. Is it finally liberation? Sister Françoise-Thérèse is no longer in a condition to enjoy this perspective. Anguish tears her apart; darkness invades it. It is like a veil that hides the sky from him; it enters in its turn into the trial of faith. “I am in perfect abandonment, notes the patient, on March 3. Jesus will come and rob me whenever he wants. And six weeks later, the crisis averted: “Alas! in the depths of my soul I am sad, while singing the Alleluia, which I would have liked eternal in the face to face with my Beloved; but since he doesn't want it, I don't want it either. It's what he does that I love above all else. Poor nature makes me languish, while strongly loving the will of her God”. It can be compared to a "shaky castle", the collapse of which cannot be long in coming. Only good care put it back on its feet, but "my poor cracked window" will end up breaking.

Old age is accompanied by all sorts of infirmities. Céline, who calls them her "ten leopards", alluding to the guardian-executioners of the martyr Ignatius of Antioch, readily jokes about the ravages of time, which wrinkles the forehead, breaks the line and bends the waist: "It's equal , you can't say otherwise, we are now three good women, and there is a fourth in Caen...” – Well! adds Mother Agnès, so much the worse for the good women! Their hearts are even younger than when they were twenty, because their feelings are deeper. »

Death, which took away Jeanne La Néele on April 25, 1938, now awaits Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart. The independent, the savage, who could not sit still and preferred gardening to indoor work, the "gypsy", as Mr. Martin called her, has been immobilized for many years, reduced to impotence. Nailed to her eternal wheelchair, only her hands half free, also deformed by articular rheumatism, she toils without looking up, arranging relics and memories in frames and sachets. The vivacity of yesteryear blunted by long suffering, she remained affable towards all, particularly attentive to the needs of ordinary people, eager to help them. "It's a grace to have misery," she repeats willingly. Like Céline, like Léonie, she longs for the beyond; Mother Agnès shares this desire for Heaven, but, being more nervous, the thought of death frightens her, as do night storms and unforeseeable calamities. Incidentally, the four of them train each other mutually to get in tune with God's good pleasure.

From 1936, Sister Françoise-Thérèse was, in her turn, the prey of rheumatic tortures. The feet swell and twist, giving her, as she puts it, a “stunted little woman” gait. The vertebrae and ribs fuse together, making breathing difficult and the slightest touch painful. Ankylosis will gain from year to year. It takes all the courage of the Visitandine and her astonishing resistance to suffering so that she can still follow the common regime with heroism. Too well cared for, she dreads “living like this until she is a hundred years old. What a calamity! she continues. Won't I go to the end of the world? I'm more afraid than I want to. » The last word remains abandoned: « Let us love the will of God, let us love only it, and of the earth we will make a Heaven ».

A grace, to which she is very sensitive, falls to her at the conventual elections of 1939. One of her dear friends, Sister Marie-Agnès Debon, receives the office of superior. This nun, well known to Pauline, had dreamed of joining her in Carmel. Having had to give it up for health reasons, in 1918 she was referred by the Prioress of Lisieux to the Monastery where Léonie lived. She had shown her a real veneration. And now, by a delicacy of Providence, she received, at the age of forty-six, the mission of surrounding Thérèse's sister with affection in her old age, to whom she would close her eyes.

Léonie was not indifferent to the religious emotions aroused by the growth of the Theresian cult. By correspondence and in conversations in the visiting room, Bishop Germain kept her informed of all his undertakings. Through the letters of her sisters, she followed, in all its adventures, the rapid erection of the Basilica in Lisieux. On July 11, 1937, on the occasion of the National Eucharistic Congress, the building was solemnly blessed by Cardinal Pacelli, Papal Legate. Pius XI had expressed the desire that the Saint's family could hear his message. A post was lent to the two communities of Lisieux and Caen, which were able to join in all the festivities. Léonie listened on her knees to the speech of the Holy Father; she couldn't hold back her tears. She was informed by her sisters of the circumstances of the visit made to Carmel by the future Pius XII. Would he come to her? We hoped for a moment. The rigors of the official itinerary did not allow this. More sensitive to him was the omission of his name in the report in which Bishop Picaud spoke of Thérèse's sisters. She quickly consoled herself and confined herself to saying: "Mother Agnès of Jesus will be more pained than me." She will have better luck on March 20, 1939, when the Nuncio in Paris, His Excellency Mgr Valerio Valeri, will come to Caen for the fiftieth anniversary of the Work of Saint-Pierre Apostle. He insisted on speaking before the Community, conversed familiarly with Sister Françoise-Thérèse and had this charming word for her: "In the sky, there are stars of different sizes, but which are all very beautiful and all in the designs of God ".

Theresian literature, more abundant day by day, was the delight of Léonie. And the confidences of Lisieux have a particular weight. Léonie collects them and underlines them jealously. Mother Agnès took exquisite care of her. She sends him the crucifix which the aunt of Le Mans, Sister Marie-Dosithée, never parted with in her last illness and which she still embraced at the hour of death. She draws, to distract her or to edify her, from the superabundant treasure of her sister's words and gestures. Admitting that she herself constantly takes up as a resolution for retreat that of fraternal charity lived internally and externally, she writes:

“It's incredible how at the end of my life, I understand better what our holy little Thérèse writes on this subject. When she asked me what to write about her memories, I replied: 'Talk about the novices, your missionary brothers, etc. And she replied: 'I don't mind, but I have something much more important to write. It's about fraternal charity, I have so many lights about it'. Unfortunately, she was tormented a great deal when she was writing. The novices, the nurses constantly disturbed her. She then said to me: Everything I wrote was very muddled! Finally ! the good Lord will make up for it, he knows that I have had no peace of mind, he will put his grace where I have not spoken clearly as I understand... speak around me, and above all to practice fraternal charity, and I find there a source of peace... When I say a few words at the Chapter, I always come back to that...”

The world would soon be plunged into a bath of hatred and blood. War is unleashed, which will throw entire populations onto the roads. Communities will not be immune. From September 1939, the Visitation of Caen had to set up rooms to receive possible refugees from the capital. We visit a castle in the countryside where to evacuate, if necessary. The Monastery welcomes Visitandines from Paris, Rouen, Carmelites from Gravigny near Evreux. The lightning speed of the invasion surprised the nuns in a state of alert and spared them the horrors of the exodus. The only consolation in the midst of mourning and ruins: the discreet arrival of two German soldiers, Benedictine and Oblate of Saint Francis de Sales, bringing the fraternal message of several Communities of Visitandines from across the Rhine, who were worried about the fate of their sisters of France. It was good to rediscover, beyond the borders, and in spite of Hitler's contamination, the sense of charity and unity in Christ.

Sister Françoise-Thérèse, who once worried feverishly about threats of expulsion, is now astonishing by her composure and her peace of mind. She is already as if detached from the earth. If events bruise her, because she is not for nothing the daughter of this ardent patriot who was Mr. Martin, she believes with Pius XI that “the desperate hour is God's hour”. All that remains is to turn to Him in a supplication that is all the more confident because the situation is humanly hopeless. We pray in the cloister as we have never prayed.

Death striking everywhere invited this attitude of supernatural stripping. On February 8, 1941, it was to take away the Chaplain, Father Heurtevent, who would soon be succeeded by Father Hue. On January 19, 1940, she kidnapped Sister Marie from the Sacred Heart. The eldest of the family had succumbed to pulmonary congestion; she had passed away softly, murmuring a prayer. Her last letter, addressed to Mother Agnès of Jesus, for her feast day of January 21, contained this cry of hope, with a very Teresian accent: "It is not too much eternity to know the infinite goodness of the good God, his infinite power, his infinite mercy, his infinite love for us. These are our eternal delights which will know no satiety; our heart is made to understand them and be nourished by them”. The departure of Marie, who, since Madame Martin's death, had assumed an almost maternal role towards her, seemed to Léonie a prelude to her approaching death. The thought of the great meeting will never leave her.

* * *

The mystery of Christmas attracted him irresistibly like the irruption and bursting, in the midst of human history, of Merciful Love. Every year there was some young professed mischievous enough to beg her to reproduce the dialogue that took place between Jesus and Saint Jerome in the grotto of Bethlehem where the fierce penitent painfully brooded over the memories of his worldly life. It was on the eve of the Nativity.
– Jerome, what are you giving me for my birthday?
– Divine Child, I give you my heart.
“That's fine, but give me something more.
“I send you all my prayers, all my affections.
- I want more.
– I give you all that I have, all that I am.
– That's still too little.
– Divine Child, I have nothing; what more do you want me to give you?
“Jerome, give me your sins.
– What do you want to do with it?
– Give me your sins, so that I can forgive you all of them.
- Oh ! Divine Child, you make me cry!
At the last words, the narrator herself burst into tears. And we had fun and were edified all together by this tenderness. If Thérèse had known this story, she too would have had wet eyes. By the way, perhaps she read it in the Liturgical Year of Dom Guéranger.

The concept of childhood, for Léonie as for her holy little sister, went far beyond the limits of the first age. He recovered that state of impotence, of fragility, of misery, of which the annihilation of Calvary presented the overwhelming face. “My resolution, she writes, is the obedience of proper judgment, without if without but imitating as perfectly as possible that of my adorable Savior during his mortal life, but especially during his very painful Passion.”

No doubt in order to better accredit the very low idea that she has of herself, God has allowed her to have innocent quirks, which those around her prefer to smile rather than take offense: she is "picky", s seizing everything that seems to be dormant to put it back in its place, even if they are objects that the user has put down for a moment, to take them back later. “It was out of place,” she explains; nothing should be left lying around. She takes scrupulous care to check every evening that the windows are properly closed. Very slow, at the table as in her jobs – she took an hour to finish her first bag of relics – she is easily overwhelmed in the event of the unexpected. Her concern to lead everything to perfection, not to abandon anything that is in disorder, makes her the eternal latecomer, whom some spy on with a shrewd air: frequent occasion for painful remarks, but also, on her part, for humbly requested apologies and pardons.

Despite these slight shortcomings, our Visitandine is loved and esteemed by the Community. In the eyes of all, she embodied charity, bringing out the qualities of others, at the same time as she veiled their faults, welcoming any anguish, always quick to help. One did not sense in her that anonymous and conventional benevolence which keeps timid and suffering people at a distance and freezes them. She was very attentive to the person. The hard experience of his withdrawal at the time of his adolescence helped him to guess the secret wounds. She understands, having experienced them, the difficulties of the postulants. To the one who is frightened at having broken a lot of dishes, she says maternally: “It's a sign of a vocation. Stay happy”.

To another who is worried about suddenly feeling the awakening of self-esteem: “Don't be surprised; you think you've left him at the door on your way home, but you don't take long to find him”. To help out the one who does not know how to unfasten her cape, she does not hesitate to break the silence. To console the one who, in time of war, cries over her family continually exposed, she whispers in her ear: “Don't worry. I entrust them to little Thérèse; she will watch over them, she will keep them”. Shortly before his death, a young girl admitted inside to make an election retreat, solicits his prayers. “I will ask the good Lord, she replies, that he do his holy will in you. »

The predilection of Sister Françoise-Thérèse went to the "white sisters", occupied with domestic work. She gladly joined them, enlivening them with her anecdotes and her songs, emphasizing the nobility of their mission: “You are doing as the Blessed Virgin did in Nazareth, she would tell them. Moreover, choir nuns or not, all are equal in the eyes of God. »

As long as she had the physical capacity, she worked actively to relieve the sick. Mother Jeanne-Marie Décarpentry gave her this testimony: “Sister Françoise-Thérèse surrounds my old age with multiple and affectionate attentions, coming to pick me up to drive me in a wheelchair to the Choir and to the Community assemblies with perfect accuracy”. Let us underline the last feature, which marks a heroic effort not to inflict on a former Superior the humiliation of being late. When the strength fails, it is in the visit to the infirm that the delicacy of the heart is expressed. If they go through an acute crisis, Léonie agrees to part with Thérèse's crucifix for them, which she keeps jealously. Seeing the nurse somewhat overworked, grappling with an agitated patient, she said to her: “I am going to ask my holy little Sister to become her own nurse”.

Community recreation is the testing ground par excellence for charity. In these moments of free relaxation, the personalities manifest themselves more spontaneously, and sometimes clash with their differences in temperaments, tastes, education, aptitudes, made more sensitive by the existence in a closed environment, without external derivatives, without the possibility of setting sail... except on the side of God. Léonie clearly feels the difficulty and the danger. "Since patience is the touchstone of humility, I must embrace it with all my strength, especially during recess, watching over my character, prone to be troubled, to be annoyed, towards those that I don't like. »

Like Thérèse at the Carmel, she largely practices this good humor, this communicative cheerfulness. We tease her; she retaliates in the same tone, for she has a lively repartee. She is pushed onto a subject where she catches fire and flame, stubbornly persisting in her ideas, even if it means then apologizing for this stubbornness by alleging her lack of intelligence. She likes to joke, like the day when she imagined an ingenious way to straighten out the finances of the Monastery, then very indebted. “They would put me in the parlor on an armchair with a sign: Come and see the sister of Saint Thérèse. Good people would pay an entrance fee. There would be a recipe... and the clever ones would protest when they left: “Really, there was no point in coming to admire this old painting; it's not worth our money! »

Sometimes incidents happen. A sister was taken to task rather sharply; she repressed her pain. Léonie finds a way to approach him afterwards to heal the wound: “How happy I was to see you keep the smile and peace of charity! She herself is occasionally the victim of these mood swings. A nun exclaims aloud that there is too much noise around Saint Thérèse, that there is an unpleasant montage in these celebrations. Our Visitandine pretends not to hear and does not depart from her calm. A widow, of a difficult and authoritarian character, who had taken the veil belatedly, and, for lack of judgment, multiplied blunders and disgraceful gestures, willingly took it out on Sister Françoise-Thérèse. She bowed without saying a word and remained for a few moments, her gaze distant, as if lost in God. One day when the attack had been more biting, bruised to the bottom of her heart, she let out this complaint in an aside with her neighbor: “But what have I done to her? Madame Martin would no longer have recognized in this virtue, master of herself, the one whose vivacity formerly stirred up so many storms and darkened the family atmosphere.

It is because the Spirit of God guided our Visitandine. Every day, she recited the Veni Creator, loving to stop at each word to exhaust its sap. Great was his joy when the little annual preparatory retreat for Pentecost returned. She opens up to her Carmel sisters: “How I savor these words: “The good God works in us, there is no need to see him, to feel him Fortunately, because I am always more and more a poor log; I ask Jesus to set it on fire and the Spirit of Love to activate it. Finally, any little one only wants to love, she doesn't know what else to say and do because she is too little, and this littleness is all her happiness and all her strength.

At Community Assemblies, when she did not bring the fruit of her reading, her companions often had the impression that she remained "tranquil in the hands of the tranquil God", as Saint Bernard said, and that "in contemplating the One who is Rest, she was resting. Not that she neglected to help herself by having recourse to good books. She had in her cell the classics of the Visitation, the Imitation of Jesus Christ, the Christian Manual, a compendium of Gospel texts, the writings of Therese, the Breviary of the Sacred Heart. But, like her youngest, more than anything she relished the Gospel.

She had gradually become disillusioned with the search for spiritual facilities. At the end of a retreat, as he was asked: "What is the weather like in the desert?" “, she answered with humor:” The four seasons “. Juggling ideas was not his style; meditation did not suit him; she remained silent, praying, loving.

However, it seemed that the aridity did not resist the contemplation of the Host. “Where are you from, Sister Françoise-Thérèse? they asked her, when she arrived at recess, all beaming – “But, to have adored the Blessed Sacrament! On feast days she made long stops in this way. Everything about the altar captivated her. His joy was to mark all the linen in the sacristy, especially the pales, the purificatories, the corporals, which more closely touch the Holy Species. She worked at it until she was seventy-five, and without the need for glasses. They would have pained her if they had deprived her of responding to the second mass. “I would rather drag myself on my knees than miss a communion,” she assured. And in a letter to the Carmel: “What an immense blessing our daily communion! What would become of us without Jesus? Life would no longer be tenable, and the best preparation, it seems to me, the most effective, is to take communion, because Jesus, the God of all purity, Himself prepares our heart, his beloved tabernacle”.

Mr. Martin had instilled in him a devotion to the Pope. In an interior oratory was an effigy of Saint Peter whose feet she kissed every day. The statue having disappeared on the occasion of a development, she had no rest until it was found and put back in place of honor. His memory faithfully retained the anniversaries of the Holy Father, the capital dates of his Pontificate; she evoked them in her prayer and recalled them to the Community. In the same way she commented with ardor on the outstanding passages of the History of the Church. It was enough, to provoke his ire – some made a game of it – to speak of the enemies of religion by mitigating their wrongs or by invoking their good faith. She literally raged against those she called "Satan's henchmen." She then armed herself with the wrath of Saint Jerome or the vengeful fire of Elijah... only to calm down afterwards and conclude, as a worthy daughter of François de Sales, that placed in the same conditions, she would undoubtedly have gone astray even more. .

These scenes of indignation generally ended in filial recourse to the Mother of the Church. Towards the end of her life, Léonie always had the rosary in her hand. She obtained from the Carmel that of Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart. “It is my happiness, she declared, to sow Hail Marys. » She had copied the words of Father Eymard, where she found the image of the Madonna as Thérèse painted her in her canticle: « If Mary has ravished God by her purity, she has become his Mother by her humility ». She was less sensitive to the sublimity of the Virgin than to her proximity.

Léonie suffered a lot and suffered with courage. She had learned at a good school the significance of the ordeal. We read in her retreat notes of October 1933: “My holy little sister wrote to me: We must live by sacrifices, without that would life be meritorious? Our holy Sister Marguerite-Marie used to say: 'A life without a cross is a life without love'. Sister Françoise-Thérèse valiantly carried the burden of her physical infirmities, her deficiencies, the multiple failures of the past; she mortified herself with tenacity without ever relaxing her effort, to the point that her desires and her tastes were ignored; she accepted to appear in the eyes of the world as “the poor relative” of this Martin family, who were surrounded by Teresian prestige; she faced with gentleness the troubles, the helplessness, the throbbing pains that age brought on her. One day that she had opened up about it, as if from a need of the heart, she suddenly broke off, raised her arms and exclaimed, her face both lit up and streaming with tears: "But you fill me with joy, Lord, by all you do! »

His overly impressionable nature seemed gifted for feeling deeply the involuntary clashes and awkward words that all communal life inevitably entails. A cheerful refrain hid the intimate wound. Same courage in illness. You had to be cunning to get him some relief. The nun charged with helping him, on the twilight of his life, made an outbreak of fire in his cell. Otherwise, Léonie would have endured the cold which tormented her stoically. When they operated on her feet, cut raw, tears came to her eyes, but she gritted her teeth without complaining, even refusing to be carried to her bed, and went there of her own accord. walking on heels.

At the beginning of 1941, Sister Françoise-Thérèse was permanently installed on the ground floor, in the infirmary. A window overlooked the chapel. At night, in her long insomnia, she turned to God. “I do like my Therese, I can't pray, I love. During the day, she still dragged herself to the exercises, bent over, skirting the walls. "Yes, I'm in a lot of pain, she admitted, but I don't want to stop, I want to go all the way..." To those who felt sorry for herself, she said jokingly: "I'm just a poor little old woman, I atone for my vanities, for I was very coquettish, I liked dressing. Now I only love the will of God. I'm going to the Father's house. Oh ! how good it will be up there! »

His last letters bear the mark of clarity and candor. If she still deplores her “very tough pride, her extreme sensitivity”, the fear of judgment does not touch her. She has no enemies. His heart is in charity. Thinking of Louise Marais, she notes in a detached tone: “I forgive my executioner with all my heart and I am grateful to him for having treated our dear mother so well in her last illness, with affection and true devotion”. Then, coming to herself: “I could very well die suddenly. The heart is compressed by the ribs which are on top of each other. I choke when I cough and sneeze; it's almost screaming. I am too small to damn myself; little children are not damned. I intend to fall into the arms of Jesus Love and Mercy; I am not afraid of him ".

A month later, she resumed: “A little word from my soul, so great a sinner and which cannot be afraid of the good Lord! On the contrary, it is my extreme misery that gives me this confidence, and I think with joy that in leaving the dear and so maternal arms of our beloved Mother, I will fall quite naturally into those of Jesus and my mother in Heaven. . What audacity ! »

In April, Léonie goes through a dark phase. She had written to Lisieux: “My infirmities are increasing, I no longer have anything healthy except my eyes, my heart and my head, thank God; but He can take everything, everything is His! Complete abandonment, even for my very small and poor intelligence”. The final word betrayed a secret anguish. Thinking of her father, who had spent more than three years in the Bon Sauveur nursing home, facing the walls of the Visitation garden, she had, in front of a colleague, let out this worrying cry: "Go do I have to go across the street? Then, resigning himself to the worst: “Ah! if it is the will of God, it will have to be done”. This sacrifice was not asked of him. She remained entirely lucid, straining her energies to serve herself, remaining faithful to small observances, refusing all sweets on fasting days, forbidding the nurse to spend the night in the same room as her, because this nun was uncomfortable sleeping with the window closed.

Around May 15, an influenza-bronchitis forced her to take to her bed. She was choking. She had to accept that the Superior slept by her side, but found it hard to bear her getting up to help her. This crisis acutely posed the question of the place of his future burial. Mother Agnès of Jesus wanted her sister to be brought back to Lisieux and buried near Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart, under the Shrine of Saint Thérèse. " Oh ! no, replied the patient, as soon as she was informed of this proposal. They're going to go out of their way to get me there. And then, I am Visitandine, I want to stay at the Visitation. She heard him from the enclosure reserved for the nuns, in the cemetery of Caen. It was decided, through an old friend of Léonie, to seek permission from the municipal administration for a burial on the spot, in the enclosure, in the crypt of the Chapel. The process succeeds. Sister Françoise-Thérèse was both delighted and confused. "Think about it! A poor little nothingness like me! »

On July 2, 1941, she would celebrate her forty-one years of Profession. It was obvious that she would not reach her golden wedding anniversary. Taking advantage of an improvement in his condition, it was therefore decided to celebrate his golden jubilee, which had gone unnoticed during the painful events of the summer of 1940. eighteenth birthday. The ceremony took place in private: mass, renovation

vows, coronation, congratulations from the Community, occasional meal and recreation, where the jubilee figured alongside the Superior. In the evening, they escorted her in procession to the infirmary, singing to her:
To the sky ! To the sky ! To the sky !
Through your gentle path, Thérèse, guide us.
Two prize gifts enhanced the luster of the day. Bishop Natucci sent a special blessing from Rome from Pius XII, Leonie's beloved Pastor, who thanked him in a long letter, the last she wrote. As for the Carmel, it definitively conceded to the Community of Caen, with supporting paper, the precious crucifix that the Visitandine had only received for life. It was the profession crucifix of the “Little Queen”, on the back of which were engraved these lines: “This crucifix was worn for several weeks by Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus. She often kissed him and showered him with flowers. It was placed in his hands after his death”. To facilitate the exhibition, Sister Geneviève de la Sainte-Face had laid out, painted and decorated a tabor, adorned with jewels from the Martin family, which was given on the occasion of the feast of June 3.
Leonie was overjoyed. However, she had no illusions about the future. “It's over, I won't be going back to the refectory anymore... The divine Thief is at the door, and I say to him: this way! this way !" – “I seem to be getting better, but I feel a destruction in my whole being; yes, my exile is over!” – “I tell my Jesus to prepare myself for his coming, not wanting to get involved in anything, because I would do nothing but spoil everything. »

On the eve of Corpus Christi, she took part in recreation with her unaltered gaiety. At the Community Assembly, she underlined the profound meaning of this passage from the Act of Offering to Merciful Love: "I cannot receive Holy Communion as often as I desire, but, Lord, are you not Almighty? Stay in me as in the Tabernacle, never move away from your little host”. She emphasized and weighed every word. Did she foresee that it would no longer be possible for her to receive the Eucharist? That same day, confessing to the Chaplain, she said to him: “I am not feeling bad at all, but what I thank God for is that I kept my head”.

The next day, as she got up very early, as usual, to be ready when the Chaplain would bring her the Blessed Sacrament, she collapsed, stricken with congestion. She regained consciousness, but without recovering the use of speech. She no longer unites herself to the prayers recited around her except by the movement of her eyes, inarticulate words and sketchy gestures. Paralysis invaded him gradually, without however taking away his lucidity. After receiving absolution and Extreme Unction that very morning, she was to remain five days in this painful impotence. Clutching her eldest's rosary and Therese's crucifix in her hands, she kissed them in turn. They had placed in front of her a copy of the statue of the Virgin of the Smile who had cured her youngest child; she stretched out her arms to him, while they murmured the beautiful verses of Thérèse's poetry:
You who came to smile at me in the morning of my life,
Come and smile at me again, Mother, here is the evening.
To the Visitandines, who told the Rosary, were joined two Tourières Sisters from Lisieux. They brought roses from the Carmel garden; the patient stripped them from her crucifix. Sometimes, one guessed on his lips the word: "Mom!" During this interminable wait, she never lost her patience or her kindness. The Superior wrote to Mother Agnès of Jesus on June 15: “I would like you to be able to build yourselves, like us, with her calm, serene, abandoned dignity... It is touching and solemn! We feel approaching the great silence of eternity”. The dying woman was especially animated when, in a low voice, syllable by syllable, the Act of Offering was repeated in her ear. An embrace, a look showed that she made this oblation her own, in which she joined for ever the soul of her Thérèse.

On the evening of Monday, June 16, 1940, it appeared that the end was imminent. The dying woman, lulled by the prayers of those around her, kept all her conscience, under an appearance of torpor. Around XNUMX:XNUMX p.m., the eyelids dilated widely. She stared for a long time with her luminous eyes at Mother Marie-Agnès and the two Lexovian Carmelites kneeling at her side. The Superior blessed her, kissed her in the name of Pauline and Céline, made her kiss the cross saying: “My God, I love you” and, after a few light sighs, Léonie fell asleep for eternity.

On the desire expressed by the deceased, the Community immediately intoned this song of gratitude which is at the same time the canticle of spiritual childhood: the Magnificat. The body, rolled by suffering, regained all its suppleness. The face took on an expression of joy and ineffable peace. Léonie, in death, appeared truly beautiful.

The news of the death was transmitted by radio all over the world. From all sides, messages of sympathy poured in. Pius XII personally offered the Holy Sacrifice for the intention of the deceased. Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris, who, during his visit to the siege of Bayeux, had repeatedly entertained and appreciated Léonie, immediately sent his condolences. "Yes," he said, "she was a humble violet, voluntarily shielded from all eyes, and who drew attention to herself only by the perfume of the virtues which adorned her life. Thus I knew her during the visits I made in the past to her Monastery of Caen, and of which I retain such vivid memories. It is such lives that build here below, in silence, the edifice of holiness, the true city of God. They are also the ones who attract Heaven's blessing, not only to the place where they live, but to the entire universe. »

On Friday, it was exposed to the choir, in the coffin which would not be closed until ten minutes before the funeral. The crowd marched past the funeral remains, provoking an uninterrupted queue of visitors in the peaceful rue de l'Abbatiale, which drew the concerned attention of the occupants: we were at war. Thousands of people lined up at the gate. Four nuns were employed all day to touch rosaries, crosses, medals to the one whom everyone venerated as the sister of Saint Thérèse. Despite the extreme heat, there were no signs of decomposition. The vigil passed in an atmosphere of extraordinary religious fervor.

The burial Mass was celebrated on Saturday June 21 at XNUMX:XNUMX a.m. by Bishop Germain, director of the Pilgrimage of Lisieux. Then, in the absence of the sick Bishop, the highest authorities of the Diocese and about thirty priests escorted our Visitandine to the interior Crypt of the Monastery where she would rest under a slab, at the foot of an altar dedicated to the Virgin.

She had fully realized the desire she expressed in her childhood, when she wrote, in January 1877, to her aunt in Le Mans: "Ask the good Lord...that he give me the vocation to become a true nun". .