•■•%.•■

U. ^:... *\ 'K

HK

V* t^ •-» '^^^

ti' issT

A^V^

i«^ "^^ i' >^ ■ "^

^.^--•L.-^

f\ *

i^V^^^'l^^

r'?^f?:

.-.^- .V ,

A' W

**v

1 : i'i

^. ?% «.- k. ^ »,

t*--^*

. X'^:

Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN

f

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OF

MADAME GUYON

THE LIBRAKY LOS A3#)£:LBfl

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OP

MADAME GUYON

TBANSLATED IN FULL

THOMAS TAYLOE ALLEN

BENGAL CIVIL SERVICE (RETIRED)

IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I.

LONDON

KEG AN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., Ltd

PATERNOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD

1898

. The rnjlifs of translation and of reproduction are reserved.)

SHLF YRL

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE,

Often as one sees her name in religious and quasi-religious publications, it has appeared to me, that those, who so freely use it, for the most part have no acquaintance with the Life of Madame Guyon written by herself. For many years the English-speaking family has been content to depend, for any knowledge of her, on Upham's defective and misleading Life, where her catholic spirit appears bound in the grave clothes of so-called Evangelical dogma. That this should be the case argues ill for the depth of religious life in those communities. Piety, doubtless, there has been, but of a shallow, superficial character, hardly veiling a robust selfhood, which keeps its votaries in perpetual movement and fuss, and sends them running over the world to pluck the motes out of brothers' eyes, forgetful of this great beam in their own. When doctors and teachers with some knowledge of her writings do seriously mention her name, it is without exception apologetically and in a tone of patronizing superiority, which shows how much they have to learn both about themselves and her.

Putting aside for the moment all consideration of her

vi TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

heavenly exaltation, it may yet be seen, when the secrets of world hi>!tory are opened up, that her role as forerunner of the moral and spiritual upheaval, which politically presents itself as the French Revolution, was no unim- portant one. The spiritual light which shone out from her through the darkness of France was not extinguished by her persecution ; and it may well be that to the latent unperceived working of that divine influence of which for a time she was the channel we owe the profound change which distinguishes modern Europe from its preceding ages. Perhaps George Sand's dying monk was not in error when he hailed the overthrow of the altar at whose foot he was killed by the preachers of Liberie, Erfalite, et Fraternite, as the opening of the Spirit's reign he had BO long sighed for.

No complete translation of Madame Guyon's auto- biography has, apparently, ever been published, in English. Of those in the British Museum library the fullest is an abridged translation, published at Bristol, by subscription, in 1772. A couple of years later, in Dublin, appeared an edition which differs from the above much as the Gospel of St. John differs from the Synoptics ; but the Bristol translation has remained the foundation of all that has since appeared. For whatever claim to originality Upham in his most unsatisfactory Life puts forward, it is evident, from his reproducing the very mistakes of the Bristol translator, that he depended on him wholly. Quite recently the Bristol translation has been still further abridged, in a small volume published at Philadelphia in 1886.

Now, an autobiography such as that of Madame Guyon

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. vii

cannot be abridged without losing much of what constitutes its peculiar charm and power for those who can appreciate it. As well clip the floating sprays and delicate twigs, with all their tender green leaves, from a beech tree, until it stands up a mere exaggerated broom of dry, stiff branches ! So the abridged autobiography becomes a tasteless narrative of events, while the spiritual perfume and unction that breathe from the original phrases, and even apparent repetitions, entirely disappear. It is to breathe and drink in something of her spirit that one seeks the company of such a writer. In the translation which I now offer to the public I know I render her meaning. I hope I have been able to preserve her spirit, so that readers who are com- pelled to know her only through a translation may not be serious losers. For it has been to me a labour of love. Commenced as an occupation to fill up leisure hours in the Indian hot weather, the attraction of the work grew, and I could realize how far-reaching are the principles of religion enunciated and illustrated in her life. For that which shines forth with such an extraordinary lustre in her life is the same Light of which Eastern sages had caught a fleeting glimpse, and which they sought to bring down to the comprehension of their disciples. But in the East, as in the West, the materializing and externalizing tendencies of human nature rapidly made themselves felt, and the true Nirvana, where only the self-centre is lost that the Divine Spirit may take its place and make man, as originally intended, a form to express the Divine Love and Wisdom, was forgotten, and hidden away from the vulgar in a teaching which, at the present day, seems to point to total individual annihilation. The French traveller

viii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

Bernier, who bad spent several j'cars in India at the Mogul Emperor's court, shortly before his death in 1688, incited thereto by the noise the affair of Moliuos was making in France, produced from his old Indian note-books a memoir on the Quietism of India. This was published in October, 1688, six weeks after his death. He writes : " Among the different fakirs or pagan rcUcjieux there are those who are called Jogees — that is to say, saints, illumines, perfect, or perfectly united to the Sovereign Being — to the First and General Principle of all things. They are people who appear to have totally renounced the world, and who ordinarily withdraw into some secluded garden, like hermits, with a few disciples, who, modest and submissive, are only too happy to listen to them and serve them. If food is brought them they receive it ; if they are forgotten, it is said, they do without it, and that they live by the grace of heaven in fasts and perpetual austerities, and are sunk in contemplation ; I say, sunk (ahimes), for they enter so deeply therein, that, it is said, they pass whole hours ravished and in ecstasy. Their external senses appear totally inert, and they maintain that they see the Sovereign Being, as a living and indescribable Light, with a joy and satisfaction inexpressible, which is followed by a contempt and total detachment from the world. Now here is the basis of the sect and the secret and mystery of the Kabala, which I discovered only with great trouble and artifice. Their ancient books teach that the First Principle of things is altogether admirable, and that he is something very pure (these are their own terms), very clear, and very subtle ; that he is infinite, and can be neither engendered nor corrupted ; that he is the perfection of all things,

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. ix

sovereignly perfect, and (what is to be remarked) in perfect repose, in absolute inaction — in a word, in a perfect Quietism : for they hold that, being the origin and source of all virtue, of all understanding, and all power (these are still their terms), he has not, however, in himself either virtue, understanding, or power ; that, on the contrary, the property and sovereign perfection of his essence is to move nothing, to understand nothing, to apprehend nothing (rien agiter, rien entendre, rien apprendre). For this reason, whoever desires to be perfect, and to live happily and well, must by a continual contemplation and victory over him- self use all possible efforts to become similar to his Principle, so that, having subdued and entirely extinguished all human passions, he may be troubled or tormented by nothing, and, after the manner of an ecstatic, entirely absorbed in profound contemplation, he may happily enjoy this Divine Repose, or Quietism, the happiest state of life one can wish." ^

Two thousand years before Bernier, the Greeks of Alexander's army had much the same to tell of the Gymnosophists of India — whence doubtless the hermits of Egypt imported their ideas and practices. The Mussul- man mystics of Persia, of whom some account is to be found in Henry Martyn's Life, but the fullest information in a recent book, Browne's "Year Among the Persians," have evidently been fluttering round the same principle. This latest traveller has the rare merit of trying to study his subject as a disciple from within, rather than as a critic from outside ; and we have to thank him for a

• See Max Miiller's " Real Mabatma " iu the Nineteenth Century, Aug. 1896, for accovint of a modern Jogee.

X TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

translation from the Babi poetess, Karrat-ul-Ayn, in which occur the following lines : —

" The country of ' I ' and ' We ' forsake ; Thy home in Annihilation make : Since, fearing not this step to take. Thou shalt gain the highest felicity." '

In no dim or uncertain way, though superficially, the mystic of India and of Persia has seen that the " Self- hood," that which makes each man regard himself as the centre of the universe, and look out upon this universe solely in relation to, and as supplying nourishment for, the self-centre — what Goethe calls das verdamnte Ich, — is the source of all human troubles, so that true happiness can be reached only by the annihilation of this " Self- hood." Then, centred on and animated by the Divine Spirit, man shall resume his original and proper place, as a finite expression of Divine Love and Wisdom.

It is the same truth essentially, but with the clearer light thereon shed by Christ's life and sacrifice with its con- sequence, the help of the indwelling Paraclete, that this autobiography sets forth and illustrates ; and thus we see how true are Law's words, " There is but one salvation for aU mankind, and that is the Life of God in the Soul. God has but one design or intent towards all mankind, and that is to introduce or generate his own Life, Light, and Spirit in them, that all may be so many Images, Temples,

' In Vaughan's " Hours with the Mystics " will be found a few extracts from Sufi poets ; but the criticisms of this author, redolent of the " wisdom of the deu," can be accepted by no serious truth-seeker. Reason, however apt in guessing the sequences and relations of the images reflected in the intclloct— that mirror of the jwycM, — can never grasp the realities of spirit {pneuma).

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xi

and Habitations of the H0I3' Trinity. This is God's good will to all Christians, Jews, and Heathens. They are all equally the desire of his heart ; his Light continually waits for an entrance into all of them ; his Wisdom crieth, she putteth forth her voice, not here or there, but everywhere, in all the streets of all the parts of the World. There is but one possible way for man to attain this Salvation or Life of God in the Soul. . . . and that is, the Desire of the Soul turned to God. . . .

" Suppose this desire to be awakened, and fixed upon God, though in souls that never heard either of the Law or Gospel, and then the divine Life, or operation of God, enters into them, and the New Birth in Christ is formed in those that never heard of His name. And these are they that shall come from the East and from the West and sit down with Abraham and Isaac in the Kingdom of God." 1

In the narrative of Madame Guyon's life are many abnormal incidents which were omitted or softened down by the translator of 1772, doubtless through regard for Protestant prejudices ; yet in John Wesley's Journals may be found several not very dissimilar. It is to be hoped that readers of the present day will, thanks to the study of the occult and the recognition of psychical phenomena by large numbers, bring a more open intelligence to the perusal. Numbers, no doubt, will dismiss all such as pure hallucinations, that convenient word which, with hysterics, covers so much pretentious medical and philosophical ignorance ; but each one will attribute to them just so much credit as his previous education has prepared him to

» " Spirit of Prayer," part i. 97-99.

xii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

afford.^ 1 do not feel called upon to endeavour to extend that education, but on two matters I venture to suggest some explanations which may perhaps lessen bond fide difficulties for candid readers. I mean the terrible seven years of darkness, and the strange suffering she experienced from Father La Combe's infidelities and waverings.

Throughout, Madame Guyon regards man, as the Latin Church generally does, as composed of soul and body ; but in St. Paul we find man described as body, soul (psyche), and spirit {pncuma) — a threefold being. Yet she constantly speaks of her " fond " — a word which I have translated as "the central depth." This doubtless represents the inmost essence and centre of the pneuma. Now, while we exist on this physical plane, the operations of the spirit (pneuma) are concealed from us by the limitations the psyche and body impose, and it is only the result of those operations, having come to birth as a fait accompli, which rises into consciousness. Thus we are spared much suffering, and, in fact, are like children who are trusted only with blunted tools while learning their use. The pain and stress of our struggles on this stage are there- fore less than they must be for those who, having laid aside the body, enter upon the psychic stage of existence with the selfhood in full sway. But for Madame Guyon, even whUe existing still in the body, the operations of the pneuma were, I conceive, fully perceptible, not merely as results accomplished, but as struggles and tortures in

' The caudiii reader, however, will admit as a permissible hypothesis, that the faHhiouable opinious of this century in t-cience or melaphysic may not be a complete measure of Reality. Where, then, Madame Guyon's story clashes therewith, the explanation may possibly be found, not in her inaccuracy, but in their inadequacy.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xiii

progress towards results. Thus in her years of darkness she experienced the continued process of destruction and gradual mortification of that selfhood, which, drawn away from every earthly object by the raptures of the Divine Love already poured into her, was yet nourishing itself from this food as a new form of spiritual selfhood. This danger and the necessary course of remedy are largely discussed by St. John of the Cross in " The Obscure Night of the Soul."

In the same way, after the intimate spiritual union with Father La Combe, all the movements of his spirit (pneuma) were perceptible to her as movements of her own pneuma ; but that pneuma of hers was now identical with the Spirit of the Saviour living in her ; thus, by the infidelity of Father La Combe, resisting and, as it were, pulling against the Saviour's attraction, her spirit was torn in different directions. Much that might otherwise seem difficult and obscure in what she tells will perhaps thus become in- telligible, by recognizing that, after her consummation in Unity with the Saviour, she enjoyed a distinct and full perception of the operations of her spirit while actually in progress. The tremendous vivacity of these we ordinary persons, in our present state, can form no conception of. To this contrast it is probable our Saviour alludes when he says, "If ye have not been faithful in that which is least, who will commit to your charge true riches ? " How can you be trusted with your full-edged tools, while you show yourselves so maladroit or mischievous with the blunt ones lent you for practice ? For it is never to be forgotten that man is essentially pneuma, temporarily compelled to manifest its life and activity through the limitations of

xiv TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

psyche and body. Those who, on the death of the body, continue an existence under the limitations of the psyche, in a universe related thereto, as our physical universe is related to our physical organs, must yet, after a time, part with that also, and enter, as pure pneuma, upon the eternal inheritance they have chosen for themselves — either a life of ravishing and triumphant joy with bliss indescribable, in a society where, Self extinguished, each one continually realizes and manifests forth with an infinite variety some ever new phase and aspect of the Divine Nature, with its endless perfections, in a harmony so perfect that the happiness of each is the joy of all, and the happiness of all is the joy of each one ; with capacities ever expanding and deepening to receive more, and to sink down further into the bottomless depths of the Saviour's Heart ; at the Source to drink more fully of the Light which lives there as all-attracting Love, incessantly breaking forth in streams of blessing, peace, and joy, while he imparts himself to all who will receive : — or a life in the coldness, darkness, and isolation of an all-devouring Selfhood, which no ray of heavenly Light can penetrate, or of Love warm ; where the Creature, having entirely and permanently separated himself from God, is shut up in the poverty of his own covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath, raging in fury and madness, to experience the contradictory workings and self-torturings of mere Desire, unsatisfied and insatiable — an Extremity of Want.

Wide indeed of the truth has the Protestant world wandered, wlien it can accept with such eagerness, as a solution of difiiculties, " Natural Law in the Spiritual World." Pseudo-science, having, as it fancies, dethroned

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xv

God from all control of the Physical Universe, and set up iu his place two fetishes,^ has, it seems, gotten itself baptized and adopted into the Christian system, and crude generalizations of imperfectly observed and half-under- stood physical sequences are accepted as capable of explaining the mysteries of spiritual existence. More hopeful it would be to try to explain the vital activities and living tissues of an oyster from a microscopic examina- tion of the lime particles in its shell. Swedenborg, a true man of science, one of the most eminent of his time, endeavoured to show how spiritual law underlies and rules the phenomena of the physical world, and a still profounder insight into the mystery of the origin of matter may be found in Law's " Spirit of Love." Illumined and guided by the light of Boehme, he shows how matter and its laws are the outward manifestation, on the physical plane, of the essential contrarieties of working in spiritual desire — the torment of spiritual nature, left to itself and working on and in itself (as was never intended), divorced from God ; to manifest forth whose glories alone, as their vehicle, it had come into existence with the one qualifica- tion thereto of being in itself an extremity of want.

However much there may be in this autobiography to startle the narrow rationalism of Protestant sects, those of her own Communion, who have made themselves acquainted with the writings of St. John of the Cross, and

' The present age was lately characterized, by a speaker at the British Association, as " drunken with writing." Could a better illustration ofier than the popular acceptance as efficient causes of two mere phrases : the one — Natural Selection — a contradiction in terms ; the other — Survival of the Fittest— when stripped of the ambiguity in the word " fittest," a platitude as rank as Moliere's explanation of opium effects. Doubtless the chief claim on the scientist's adoration lies in the lurking suggestion of Atheism.

VOL. I. h

xvi TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

the life and letters of St. Catharine of Sienna, must be well aware that these canonized saints more than bear out all which Madame Guyon relates and expounds, and, were it not for her own explanation and the further evidence of political intrigue, which is brought out in Cardinal Bausset's Life of Fenelon, and St. Simon's Memoirs, it might well be wondered why such obloquy was piled upon a person so perfectly saintly, according to the accepted standards. But all spiritual independence had left the Gallican Church. Domineered by the King, himself controlled by Madame de Maintenon, a mere tool in the hands of her director, it lent itself to the suppression of truth, and not only countenanced, but assisted in the scandalous political pressure which the French King brought to bear on the Pope and his Court, to force a condemnation of Molinos, and later of Fenelon, which otherwise could never have been procured. It would seem as if, for the second time, being offered the choice between darkness and light, this Church deliberately, and with the approval of the mass of the French people, chose darkness. The Nemesis was not long delayed. The Revolution of 1789 swept away at one stroke the faithless Church, whose candlestick had been previously removed, and the French people are still expiating their fathers' indifference to truth, by which was rendered possible, the massacres of Huguenots, revocation of the Edict of Nantes, suppression of Port Royalists, and persecution of Fenelon and Madame Guyon. In her writings spiritual religion offered itself to their consideration in no strange garb, but within the recognized forms of the Roman Communion, and every

TRANSLATORS PREFACE. xvii

element clothed in the approved and sanctioned doctrines of long canonized saints.

From that catastrophe all Europe is now profiting ; for the Apocalyptic beast of Ecclesiastical Domination received thereby his death stroke, and though we are still under the seducing influences of the three unclean spirits who had their birth in it, — Democracy, which says boldly, Authority comes from below, not from above ; Materialism, declaring the lusts of the flesh the only source of happiness; Analysis, falsely called Science, which seeks the solution of the mysteries of Life by going further and further from the Centre and Source of Life ; — yet none of these can operate save by deceiving : the cruel coercive tyranny of Ecclesiasticism is at an end for ever. Without the support and ignorant bigotry of the laity it never could have prevailed.

The anonymous writer of a discourse prefixed to some copies of her Life, thus introduces Madame Guyon to his readers : —

'* I had read many spiritual books of undoubted value, and I had collected one hundred and thirty folio volumes of the most esteemed Fathers of the Church. God forbid I should refuse them the tribute of veneration which is their due, but I nowhere found Madame Guyon or her writings. How happy should I esteem myself, dear reader, if my example could serve you as a compass ! It is forty years since I had the happiness, decisive for me, of becoming acquainted with her divine writings. That epoch of my life shall be for ever blessed. What was not my astonishment to see an order of verities so new for me ! At first I understood very little, for want of that poverty of

xviii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

Bpirit so necessary to receive the kingdom of God and his eternal truth. On the contrary, my brain was furnished with those opinions which amuse the children of men, with those academic doctrines with which grave Divines fill their nurselings, and which they are not ashamed to call true knowledge. However, in spite of the blindness to which I had been brought by those common principles, barren for the mind and puffing up the heart, which I took for indubitable, the sweet and penetrating unction shed forth from all the holy writings of Madame Guyon, that character of truth which is its own proof, that chain of connected doctrine, that sublime truth always tinctured and tempered in the love of God, which is its end, — that divine magic attracted me and seized hold of me ; rays of light pierced the denseness of my soul ; a secret fire warmed, softened the hardness of my heart. Gradually my horizon grew clearer ; my heart, I say, took fire, and the Light of Life melted insensibly its ice. Then I saw clearly that I had understood nothing in our holy books, but the little which is accessible to reason, which in divine things is for man only an additional source of blindness. Then the contradictions it finds there were completely removed, and a new, pure light of day raised me to the idea of that Christianity of which most men have scarcely the most elementary notion, far from conceiving its spirit."

The present translator did not derive his conception of Christianity from Madame Guyon, but drew directly from the Source, yet would he add his tribute of veneration to all that has been said of her by the writer quoted ; for who can approach this divinely fed fountain w^ith a genuine thirst, and fail to receive refreshment as from a draught of

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xii

living water ? The Spirit of the Saviour, who alone lived in her, and for over thirty years, after having so perfected her that her natural and proper dwelling-place was among those dazzling white-robed ones of the highest heaven, that had come out of great tribulation, seen by the Apostle John, yet retained her on earth ; not for any further purifi- cation, but that He might give to men, in these modern days, an example and illustration of a life truly hid with Christ in God; — the self-same Spirit still breathes forth from her record, and penetrates the heart of the reader who will cultivate that simplicity of mind, that docility of the little child, which is the first essential to being taught of God. For the superior person, the self-satisfied critic, it must prove a stone of stumbling. Such a one may need some centuries of providential education, with its many crushing experiences, before Pride shall be so broken as to let fall the barrier of the Will — that only obstacle throughout all the Universe which can permanently resist the Will of God : but unless he be a most perverse, obstinate son of perdition, the time will come ; for it is difficult to baffie the resources of Divine Wisdom animated by Divine Love. Then he will have a right understanding of what Madame Guyon was.

The writer of the discourse alluded to above, himself apparently a Roman Catholic, does not hesitate to call Madame Guyon the Apostle of our times, and to claim for her a place next to the Virgin Mary, above all canonized saints. It is a subject for wonder as well as regret that Protestantism should have regarded her with such cold- ness, and should have preferred, above that spiritual life from God and in God, a self-complacent intellectualism

XX TRANSLATORS PREFACE.

fast losing itself in rationalism, agnosticism, and atheistic pessimism. For Madame Guyon belongs to no Church, or sect, or nationality. Stripped of the purely accidental, due to her education and surroundings, her life illustrates the catholic, universal doctrine pro- claimed by Christ, and true for Christian, Jew, and Heathen, that " God is a Spirit, and they who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth " — thus further defined and emphasized by St. Paul, " I live, yet not I, Christ lives in me " — the creature, nothing : Christ, all.

The work here translated was published at Cologne in 1720, less than three years after Madame Guyon's decease, which took place on June 9, 1717, under the title of " La Vie de Madame J. M. B. de la Mothe Guion, ecrite par elle-meme." According to ** La Nouvelle Biographie," the correct spelling is Guyon. Her husband, very wealthy, was son to the engineer who had constructed the canal of Briare, for which work apparently he had been ennobled, while her family name of Bouvieres de la Mothe shows her to have been noble by birth.

This narrative, commenced under the orders of her spiritual director, and meant originally only for his eye, was wTitten before and during her first imprisonment, in the year 1688, but subsequently continued, and finally revised in 1709. The remarkable words in chap, viii., part iii., however, show that she early foresaw that it would eventually be made public. How this publication came about is explained by the original editor in his Preface.

Attention having been attracted, both in Germany and England, to the violent proceedings against Fenelon, whose

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xxi

position as Archbishop of Cambrai had doubtless made him well known to numerous officers in the allied armies, curiosity was aroused to learn all particulars of the controversy, and, going to the root of the matter, certain English and German noblemen, not content, our editor tells us, with a mere perusal of such of Madame Guyon's writings as they had been able to procure, took the opportunity, after her release from prison in 1703, to visit her in person. ** She confided to them the history of her life, written and revised by herself, and her intention that it should be published when God had withdrawn her from the world. The manuscript she entrusted to an English Lord, who took it back with him into England, and who has it in his possession at this moment. Seeing that God sometime ago withdrew its author, in order that there may be no further delay in giving effect to her will, I here offer to the public that same Life, from a copy carefully compared with her original manuscript."

This positive assertion of the editor (said to be M. Poiret) ought to leave no room for doubt as to authenticity ; while there is the undoubted fact that an autobiography had been written by her, and, under the secrecy of confession, shown to and carefully read by Bossuet in 1694. Subsequently, in the attack on Quietism which Madame de Maintenon employed him to undertake, he drew weapons from this autobiography, which in his eagerness for a controversial victory, he garbled and caricatured, betraying thus the confidence placed in him ; as, indeed, he did also with regard to Fenelon and Ranee, the reformer of La Trappe.

The writer, however, of the article in "La Nouvelle Biographic " has thought fit to repeat Bayle's gratuitous

xxii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

doubts, and suggests that in its present form the auto- biography is a compilation, based on that which he says she had made over to the Official of the Archbishop of Paris in 1688, and other documents. Now, a reference to the work itself will show that this suggestion is baseless : she made over no autobiographical papers to the Official, and it was subsequent to the surrender of the copies of her other writings that much of this autobiography was written.

But the reader whose spiritual taste has been cultivated and developed will make light of such cavils, and as to the genuineness of this autobiography, he will use M. Tronson's phrase, "Je le sens bien." He can discern between the didactic style of a M. Poiret — whose ideas, originating in and moulded by intellect, appeal to intellect — and the spontaneous outflow from the heart, not tied together by a logical sequence, or woven into ratiocinative cohesion, which offers itself direct to the intuition of the spirit. None but a person with Madame Guyon's ex- periences could have written Madame Guyon's Auto- biography.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

PAOB

Introduction on the mysterious ways of God, who destroys before building, and regards with more abhorrence the righteous than the

1

CHAPTER II.

Birth and infancy — Placed with tlie Ursulines, afterwards with the Benedictines — Remarks on the education of children and serious faults commonly committed therein 7

CHAPTER III.

Returns to the Ursulines, and placed under her own sister — Various illnesses — Brought back to her father's house, then placed in another convent ; where neglected and illtreated .... 16

CHAPTER IV.

Various troubles at home — First Communion — Affected by report of a visit from a relative, a missionary to the East — Reads something of St. Francis de Sales and the Life of Madame de Chantal, which attract her to prayer — Desires to be a nun 22

CHAPTER V.

Attends on her father in his illness — Benefits from society of a cousin, whom, however, her mother separates her from — Makes a journey into the country, and neglects prayer of the heart ; from which she

CONTENTS.

PAOB

suffers miicli iajury, vtinity gaining strength — Serious loss ono suffers who abandons lieart prayer, — which the Devil fears and hates ............ 31

CHAPTER VI.

Marriage arranged by hor father — Harsh treiittnt-nt in her husband's house— Isolation and unhappiness drive her back to God for assistance — Crosses of her daily life ; afterwards seen to be God's instruments for her salvation 41

CHAPTER VII.

Her first pregnancy — Considerable pecuniary losses — Workings of vanity — Joins her husband at Paris, where she meets Madame de Longueville— Falls ill, and life despaired of — Usefulness of this illness 51

CHAPTER VIII.

Death of her mother — Visit of Madame de Ch , and of her oousin

from Cochin China, to her father's house — Arrival in the neigh- bourhood of a Franciscan monk, to whom her father sends her — The interview and its effect — He hesitates to accept responsibility of director — Her new state, love and enjoyment .... 61

CHAPTER IX.

Discussion on visions — Ecstasy — Interior distinct words — Revelations of the future — Ravishment — Her state that of pure love and simple faith 69

CHAPTER X.

Austerities — Magdalen's Day, 166^, profoundly touched — Absorption in God — Gives up all amusements and society — Annihilation of the Powers : the Will in Charity ; the Understanding in Faith ; Memory in Hope — The whole soul through the Will absorbed and lost in Charity 74

CHAPTER XI.

The effective way to mortify the senses — One must not become utlached to this mortification — Love guides and corrects her through all —

CONTENTS.

Difficulty of confession — God punishes the least faults and purifies — Severity of such purification; similar to the purgatory after death 81

CHAPTER XII.

Continual domestic trials — Also her husband objects to her devotion — So possessed by God that she sees and feels only his love — Becomes acquainted with Genevieve Granger, Prioress of Benedictines — Opposition of her confessor and her mother-in-law — Intensity of the love by which she was drawn — Delight in crosses ... 88

CHAPTER XIII.

Was given au instinct of self-sacrifice — And a state ot prayer in silence — Dryness in prayer — Went on a journey where she com- mitted some infidelities through weakness — At Paris confessors amazed at her — Infidelity and dryness — Mediate speech and sub- stantial operative speech — At Paris has strength to avoid the occasion but not to stand faithful when the occasion arises, therefore hastens to leave — Entertainment at St. Cloud in her honour — Strange inter- view on her way to Notre Dame witii one formerly a porter . .100

CHAPTER XIV.

Journey to Orleans and Touraine — Struggle between nature and grace, with respect to the admiration she aroused — Inefficiency of con- fessors— Accidents an<l dangers on the journey — Perverse confessor — Encouraged on her return home by Mother Granger — Prays to be delivered from the means of sinning through vanity — Melting power of Divine caresses after a fault 110

CHAPTER XV.

Is attacked by small-pox October 4, 1670, in her twenty-third year — Neg- lected by her family, and in the utmost danger — i^everity of her illness — Thankfulness — Younger son died — Refuses to use pomades o!i recovery, and, in her disfigured state, is compelled by Love to expose herself — Illness of her husband 116

CHAPTER XVI.

Annoyances from the maid-servant — 111 treatment from her husband and mother-in-law — Her father's remonstrance with her, and the answer — Continued petty vexations, and her behaviour under them — Absentmindednese and incapacity to notice external matters 124

:cxvi CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XVII.

Increased attraction to, and absorption of her will in God's— Difficulty in obtaining time for prayer and in attending Mass — Special providences regarding Mass — Intercourse with Mother Granger prohibited — Her son set against her — Her husband's indiflference to her attentions 131

CHAPTER XVIII.

First meeting with Father La Combe — Continual prayer and presence of God— Domestic ill treatment — Alternations of crosses— Natural disposition to hastiness — Large charities to the poor — Complete alienation from life of the senses 139

CHAPTER XIX.

Effects of small-pox and her austerities — Visit to Paris to see M. Bertot ; not of much use to her — Her father's death, and her return home alone, by night, through a dangerous forest — Death of her daughter, a sweet and pious child — Mother Granger sends her a contract of marriage with the Child Jesus — Effects of this consecra- tion— Crosses increased — Letter from M. Bertot — Malignity of nature in nourishing itself even from despair 146

CHAPTER XX.

Her friend, wife of the governor of the town — Touched by God — Accidents on a journey — Pilgrimage to St. Reine of her husband — Becomes again pregnant — During this period enjoys an anticipation of beatitude, being totally possessed by God — Death of Mother Granger — Marriage of her brother, and his hatred of her — Unjust lawsuit, happily ended on her representations .156

" CHAPTER XXI.

Entry on state of total privation — The dark night of the Soul — Difference between this and previous temporary privations — Communion, far from relieving, deepens the state — Total abandon- ment to God, the only root of spiritual happiness here and here- after— Internal struggle — Inability to fix thoughts in prayer — Utter powerlesenesB 165

CHAPTER XXII.

External croBseB and increased illness of her husband— Chapel built by him in the country consecrated— Birth of her daughter — Death of her husband on Eve of the Magdalen- 111 health — Arranges her husband B pajiera and affairs ...... 173

CONTENTS. xxvii

CHAPTER XXIII.

The state of privation — M. Bertot of no help, and declines to conduct

her — Inability to read — A state of insensibility .... 182

CHAPTER XXIV.

Domestic crosses — Visit to Paris to seek Bertot — Makes a retreat under his control —Acquaintance with suspected Jansenist, who becomes hostile and decries her — Often ill — State of pure misere — Abjectness 189

CHAPTER XXV.

Instantaneous deliverance from all sensibility for the creature — Various offers of marriage — Extreme illness — Nothing to be seen but condemnation of herself, with a secret joy at Jesus Christ's suiBciency — Self-hatred — Bodily weakness, and utter ignorance of the nature of her state 197

CHAPTER XXVI.

Given up by the monk whose words first touched her — Perversity of her mother-in-law — Determination to leave her house — Prevented by intervention of a common friend 203

CHAPTER XXVII.

God had not allowed her to seek relief from His yoke— Since shown how the obscure way in which she was led is the surest — Whence the soul emerges clothed with Jesus Christ's states — Final insensibility mistaken by her for hardness of reprobation — Letter to Father La Combe on behalf of a servant, and his answer — Idea of Geneva had forced itself on her — Second letter to Father La Combe, and his Mass on the Magdalen's Day 210

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Perfect deliverance and entry into the state of God-Peace — One day of which compensates with interest many years of suffering— Perfect indifference, and resignation to God's plans for her — Ascent from the gifts to the Giver — This state never lost, but continued growing in strength and perfectness- Unity in place of Union . . "216

CHAPTER XXIX.

Visit to Paris, and direction given by an unknown confessor — Domini- can monk, a friend desirous of going to Siam, visits her — Her

CONTENTS.

dream of Tabor — After Mass for the purpose, this monk tells her tu go to Geneva, aud visits Paris to consult the Bishop of Geneva on the subject — Being in Paris, she consults the Bishop herself, and eeea the Superior of the New Catholics — Confirmed in the plan by M. Bertot and others— Prognostics of crosses to come — Satisfied that it was God's will 224

CHAPTER XXX.

Change in her mother-in-law's behaviour— Purgation of a priest and of a nuu — Severity of the winter 1G80, and her charities — Dying soldier taken in and nursed by her — Love to her children — Despite hesitations beforehand, since the event has never doubted she was doing God's will — Discussion of plans with New Catholics — Diverted from her first idea — Daughter of the Cross of Geneva 233

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

Departure from home ; afterwards from Paris -Mysterious behaviour of her daughter — Foretelling crosses — Vision of a holy nun — ■ Incompatibility between the New Catholics and the spirit guiding her — Divine support and protection on the road— Arrival at Annecy — Mass at the tomb of St. Francis de Sales — Arrival at Gex ; where only bare walls— Profound suflfering ou account of her daughter 245

CHAPTER II.

Father La Combe, by order of the Bishop of Geneva, came to see her — Spiritual union perceived at once, to her great astonishment — Father La Combe said Masses to ascertain God's will regarding her — Answers given in the central depth of her spirit — Distinction between communicatiuus ah exlerno falling upon tlie Powers, and immediate communication througii the central depth — Meeting with a holy hermit at Tonon — His vision — Anxieties ou account of her daughter 252

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER III.

General condemnation in France of her departure — Borne by her in a divine manner — Enlargement of her intelligence when lost in God — Biahop of Geneva came to see her, and was convinced of her divine call — Praised Father La Combe, and gave him as her director — Her dangerous illness— Cured miraculously — Her vows of perpetual chastity, poverty, and obedience — The realities corresponding to these vows — Tender watchfulness of God over her 261

CHAPTER IV.

Radical purification with annihilation of the selfhood in its effects — Experience at the commencement of this state — Passage over of the soul into God — Partitions or dividing barriers caused by trifling and superficial assertions of the selfhood — The Union becomes Unity — Extraordinary experience while at confession, lasting over three days — Return to Gex, after her retreat at Tonon, through Geneva ; where thrown from a horse — Change of opinion at Paris . . 270

CHAPTER V.

Surrenders all her property — Sees all external crosses as coming from God — The Devil attempted to alarm her — Rappings on the windows and all over the room, but she was without fear — Then he at- tacked her indirectly, through an influential ecclesiastic — Choice between approbation of men with the assurance of her salvation, and OOD'S OLOBT ALONE— Mysterious dream foreshowing perse- cution to her and Father La Combe — 111 treatment by the New Catholics 279

CHAPTER VI.

The Bishop of Geneva turns against her; wishes to force her to become Prioress of this House at Gex ; and urges Father La Combe to order her to consent — Father La Combe preaches a sermon at which that ecclesiastic takes offence — Madame Guyon leaves Gex, and retires to the Ursulines at Tonon — Vision of a holy aged priest 287

CHAPTER VII.

The Bishop and his ecclesiastic intercept her letters, and write against her — Father La Mothe, her step-brother, joins with them in circu- Inting calumnies — Her interior state: the central depth in enjoy- Ku-nt of a peace, freedom, vastness, admitting of no disturbance —

XXX CONTENTS.

rAOB So lost in the Will of God as to will only what he willed — Means previously used by God to make her perfectly supple — The two modes by which God leads souls to himself shown under figure of two drops of water — Visit of Bishop to Tonon at Easter, 1682 — Speaking with the responsibility of hifl oflSce, he expressed approval 296

CHAPTER VIII.

Tranquillity of her soul — Description of a soul in the state of divine indiflFerencf, self-centre annihilated — Trials vary according to the state of the soul — Grace must come and go in its purity in God — The soul perfectly happy in what she has, without choice or desire — A plaything of providence — Reserve of former states no longer proper — Engendering of the Word — Aiwstolic state . . 307

CHAPTER IX.

Calamnies against her and Father La Combe — Circulated by Father La Mothe — Reception at Rome of Father La Combe — Arrival of her sister, an Ursuline nun, with a maid for her— Sanctity in God's sight and in man's — Return from Rome of Father La Combe — Serious affection of the eyes— Immovable in the midst of all her crosses — In such immovable state, only suffering direct from the hand of God can make itself felt 319

CHAPTER X.

Miraculous recovery of her daughter- -DiflBculties as to lier education ; but all received as from God, leaving no sting — Spiritual con- versations unprofitable — Divine providence sole rule and guide for a soul whose self-centre is lost —The divine moment — Enjoyment of saints in heaven— St. Catharine of Genoa on purgatory . . 330

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF

MADAME GUYON.

PART I.

CHAPTEE I.

GOD ALONE. — Since you wish me to write a life so worth- less and so extraordinary as mine, and the omissions I made in the former have appeared to you too considerable to leave it in that state, I wish with all my heart, in order to obey you, to do what you desire of me ; although the labour appears to me a little severe in the state I am in, which does not allow me to reflect much. I should extremely wish to make you understand the goodness of God to me, and the excess of my ingratitude ; but it would be impossible for me to do it, as well because you do not wish me to write my sins in detail, as because I have lost the memory of many things. I will endeavour to acquit myself as well as I can, trusting to your assurance never to let it appear to the eyes of men, and that you will burn it when God shall have drawn from it the effect that he proposes for your spiritual profit ; for which I would sacrifice all things, being persuaded, as I am, of the designs of God for you, both for the sanctification of your X)wn self, and for that of others. But I assure you at the

VOL. I. B

2 JIADAME GUYON. [Part L

same time, that you will not attain this save b}* much trouble and labour, and by a road which will appear to you quite eontrarj- to your expectation. You will not, how- ever, be surprised at it if you are convinced that God does not establish his great works except upon " the nothing." It seems that he destroys in order to build. He does it so in order that this temple he destines for himself, built even with much pomp and majesty, but built none the less by the hand of men, should be previously so destroyed that there remains not one stone upon another. It is these frightful ruins which will be used by the Holy Spirit to construct a temple which will not be built by the hand of men, but by his power alone.

Oh, if you could understand this mystery — so profound it is ! — and conceive the secrets of God's conducting, revealed to the little ones, but concealed from the great and wise of the earth, who imagine themselves to be the councillors of the Lord, and to penetrate the depth of his ways ; who persuade themselves that they attain this divine wisdom, unknown to those who still live to them- selves and in their "own" operations, ** concealed even from the birds of the heaven " — that is to say, from those who by the vivacity of their lights and by the strength of their elevation, approach the heaven, and think to penetrate the height, the depth, the breadth, and the length of God ! This divine wisdom is unknown even to those who pass in the world for i)ersons extraordinary in light and in learning. To whom, then, will it be known ? and who will be able to tell us news of it? "Destruction and death." It is they who " declare to have heard with their ears the sound of its reputation." It is, then, in dying to all things and in truly losing one's self as regards them, to pass into God, and to subsist only in him, that one has some intelligence of the true wisdom. Oh, how little one understands her ways, and the course she leads her most chosen servants ! Hardly does one discover

Chap. I.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 3

something of it, than, surprised at the difference of the truth one discovers from the ideas one had formed of the true perfection, one exclaims with St. Paul, " 0 depth of knowledge and of wisdom of God, how incomprehensible are your judgments, and your ways difficult to know ! " You do not judge things as men judge of them, who call good, evil, and evil, good, and who regard as great righteousness things abominable before God, and which according to his prophet he values no more than if they were dirty rags ; who will even examine with rigour those selfhood-begotten righteousnesses, which (like those of the Pharisees) will be matters for his indignation and his anger, and not the object of his love and the subject of his recompenses, as he himself assures us when he says : " If your righteousness does not exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Who of us has a righteousness that approaches that of the Pharisees, and who, while doing much less good than they did, has not a hundred times more ostenta- tion than they had? Who of us is not well content to appear righteous to his own eyes and to the eyes of others, and who does not believe it is enough to be righteous in this way to be so to the eyes of God ?

Yet we see the indignation Jesus Christ has exhibited, as well as his forerunner, against these sorts of persons — he whose gentleness was so infinite that it was the perfect model of all gentleness, but of a gentleness radical and coming from the heart, not of that affected gentleness, which under the appearance of the dove preserves the heart of a hawk. Jesus Christ, I say, has had only severity for these self-righteous persons, and seemed to dishonour them before men. The picture he made of them was strange, while he regards the sinners with mercy, compassion, and love, and protests he is only come for them, that it is these sick ones who have need of a physician ; that while the Saviour of Israel, he is yet

4 MADAME GUYOX. [Paut I.

come to save only the lost sheep of the House of Israel. 0 Love ! it appears you are so jealous of the salvation you yourself give, that you prefer the sinner to the righteous. It is true, this poor sinner, seeing in himself only wretchedness, is, as it were, constrained to hate him- self ; finding himself an object of horror, he casts himself headlong into the arms of his Saviour. He plunges with love and confidence into the sacred bath of his blood, whence he comes forth white as wool. It is then that, all confused at his disorders, and all full of love for him who, having alone been able to remedy his evils, has had the charity to do it, he loves him so much the more as his crimes have been more enormous, and his gratitude is so much the greater as the debts which have been for- given him are more abundant ; while the righteous, supported by the great number of works of righteousness he presumes to have done, seems to hold his salvation in his own hands, and regards heaven as the recompense due to his merits. He damns all sinners in the bitterness of his zeal. He makes them see the entrance of heaven shut for them. He persuades them they ought not to regard it but as a place to which they have no right, while he believes its opening so much the more assured to him as he flatters himself to deserve it more. His Saviour is for him almost useless. He goes away so loaded with merits that he is overwhelmed with their weight. Oh, but he will remain a long time weighed down under that vain- glorious burden, while his sinners, stripped of everything, are carried swiftly by the wings of love and confidence into the arms of their Saviour, who gives them gratuitously what he has infinitely merited for them.

Oh, how the former have love of themselves, and little love of God ! They love themselves, and admire themselves in their works of righteousness, which they esteem as the cause of their happiness. They are, however, no sooner exposed to the rays of the Divine Sun of Eighteousness,

CuAP. L] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 5

than it discovers all their iniquity, and makes them appear so filthy that they make one sick ; while he pardons the Magdalen, devoid of all righteousness, " because she loves much," and her love and her faith take for her the place of righteousness. Whence comes it that the divine Paul, who so well understood these great truths, and has so admirably described them for us, assures us "the faith of Abraham was imputed to him for righteousness " ? This is perfectly fair, for it is certain this holy patriarch performed all his actions in a very great righteousness. Oh, it is that he did not see them as such, and being entirely disengaged from all of the self and devoid of its love, his faith was founded only on the future salvation his Saviour should bring him. He hoped in him even against hope, and this faith was imputed to him as righteousness — that is to say, righteousness, pure, simple, and clean ; righteousness merited by Jesus Christ, and not a righteous- ness of his own, performed by him, and regarded as from himself. This, which will appear extremely remote from the object I proposed to myself at first in writing, will never- theless conduct you to it insensibly, and make you see that God chooses for carrying out his works either con- verted sinners whose past iniquity serves as counterpoise to the exaltation, or else persons in whom he destroys and overthrows that *' oiun " righteousness, and that temple built by the hand of men, so that there remains not a stone that is not destroyed, because all those works are built only upon the quicksand, which is the resting on the created, and in these same works, in place of being founded on the living stone, Jesus Christ. All that he has come to establish, by entering the world, is effected by the overthrow and destruction of the same things he wished to build. He established his Church in a manner that seemed to destroy it. What manner of establishing a new law, and accrediting it when the legislator is condemned as a criminal by the doctors and powerful of the earth,

6 MADxYME GUYOX. [Part 1.

aii.\ at last dies upon a gibbet ! Ob, if men knew bow opposed is tbe " dUu " rigbteousuess to tbe designs of God, "we sbould bavc an eternal subject of bumiliation and of distrust of wbat at present constitutes our sole support ! Tbis granted, 3'ou will liave no trouble to conceive tbe design of God in tbe graces be lias bestowed on tbe most worthless of creatures. You will even believe tbem with- out difficulty. Tbey are all graces — tbat is to say, gifts — wbicb I bave never merited ; on tbe contrary, of wbicb I have made myself very unworthy. But God, through an extreme love of bis power, and a righteous jealousy of the way in which men attribute to other men the good that God puts in tbem, has willed to take tbe most unworthy subject that ever was, to show that his bounties are effects of his will, and not fruits of our merits ; that it is the IDeculiarity of his wisdom to destroy wbat is proudly built, and to build what is destroyed, to make " use of weak things to confound the strong." But if be makes use of things vile and contemptible, he does it in a manner so astonishing tbat he renders them the object of con- tempt to all creatures. It is not in procuring for them the approbation of men tbat he makes use of tbem for the salvation of those same men, but in rendering tbem tbe mark for their insults and an object of execration. This is wbat you will see in tbe life you ordered me to write. ,

Chap. II.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

CHAPTER II.

I WAS born, according to some accounts, on Easter Even, 13fch April — although my baptism was not till 24th May — in the year 1648, of a father and mother who made pro- fession of very great piety, particularly my father, who had inherited it from his ancestors ; for one might count, from a very long time, almost as many saints in his family as there were persons who composed it. I was born, then, not at the full time, for my mother had such a terrible fright that she brought me into the vrorld in the eighth month, when it is said to be almost impossible to live. I no sooner received life than I was on the point of losing it, and dying without baptism. They carried me to a nurse, and I was no sooner there than they came to tell my father I was dead. He was very distressed at it. Some time after they came to inform him I had given some sign of life. My father immediately took a priest, and brought him to me himself. But as soon as he came to the room where I was they told him that mark of life I had given was a last sigh, and that I was absolutely dead. Ifc is true they could not observe in me any sign of life. The priest went away, and my father also, in extreme desolation. This state con- tinued so long that were I to tell it, it could hardly be believed.

0 my God, it seems to me that you have permitted so strange a course in my case only to make me better com-

8 MADAME GUYOX. [Pact I.

prebend the greatness of your bounties to me, and how you willed I should be indebted to you alone for my salvation, and not to the industry of any creature. If I had died then I should never perhaps have either known or loved you, and this heart, created for you alone, would have been separated from you without having been one instant united to you. 0 God, who are the sovereign felicit}', if at present I deserve your hatred, and if in the future I am a vessel prepared for perdition, there remains to me at least this consolation of having known you, of having loved you, of having sought you, of having followed j'ou, and how willingly I accept, simply from love of your righteousness, the eternal decree it shall give against me. I will love it though it shall be more rigorous for me than for any other. 0 Love, I love your righteousness so, and your pure glory, that without regarding myself and my own interest, I place myself on its side against myself : I will strike where it will strike. But if I had died then, I had never loved it. I would perhaps have hated it instead of loving it, and although I should have had the advantage of never having actually offended you, the pleasure of immo- lating myself to j'ou through love, and the happiness of having loved you, outweigh in my heart the trouble of having displeased you.

These alternations of life and death at the com- mencement of my life were fateful auguries of what was to happen to me one day ; now dying by sin, now living by grace. Death and life had a struggle. Death was on the point of vanquishing and overcoming life, but life remained victorious. Oh, if it was permitted me to have that con- fidence, and I could believe at last that life will be for ever victorious over death ! Doubtless it will be so if you alone live in me, 0 my God, who seem to be at present my only life, and my only love. At last they found a moment when the grace of baptism was conferred upon me. I ceased for a short time to be your enemy, 0 my God, but,.

Chap. II.J AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 9-

alas ! how soon I lost so great a good, and how disastrous for me was my miserable reason, wdiich appeared more advanced than in many others, since it only served me the sooner to lose your grace ! As soon as I was baptized they sought the cause of these continual faintings. They saw I had at the bottom of the back a tumour of prodigious size. Incisions were made in it, and the wound was so great the surgeon could introduce his entire hand. So sm-prising an ailment at such a tender age ought to have deprived me of life ; but, 0 my God, as you willed to make of me a subject of your greatest mercies, you did not permit it. This tumour, which discharged a frightful pus, was, methinks, the symbol that you should, 0 my Love, discharge the corruption that is in me and take away all its malignity. Hardly was this strange ailment cured, than, as they have told me, gangrene attacked one thigh, afterwards the other. My life was only a tissue of ills. At two and a half years, I was placed at the Ursulines, where I remained some time. Afterwards they took me away. My mother, who did not much love girls, neglected me a little, and abandoned me too much to the care of women who neglected me also ; yet you, 0 my God, protected me, for accidents were incessantly happening to me, occasioned by my extreme vivacity, without any serious consequence. I even fell several times through a ventilator into a very deep cellar filled with w^ood. A number of other accidents happened, which I omit for brevity. I was then four years old, when Madame the Duchess of Montbason came to the Bene- dictines. As she had much friendship for my father, she asked him to place me in that house when she would be there, because I was a great diversion to her. I was always with her, for she much loved the exterior God had given me. I was continually dangerously ill. I do not remember to have committed any considerable faults in that house. I saw there only good examples, and as my natural disposition w^as towards good, I followed it when I

10 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

found nobody to turn me aside from it. I loved to bear talk about God, to be at eburcb, and to be dressed as a nun. One day I imagined tbat tbe terror they put me into of bell was only to intimidate me because I was very brigbt, and I bad a little archness to which they gave the name of cleverness. A.t night, when sleeping, I saw a picture of hell so frightful that, though I was so young, I have never forgotten it. It appeared to me as a place of fearful gloom, where the souls were tormented. My place was shown to me there, which made me cry bitterly, and say to our Lord, ** 0 my God, if you would be merciful to me, and give me some days of life, I would no more offend you." You granted them to me, 0 my God, and you even gave me a courage to serve you beyond my age. I wished to go to confession without saying anything to any one, but as I was very small, the mistress of the boarders carried me to confession and remained with me. They only listened to me. She was astonished to hear that I first accused myself of having had thoughts against the faith, and the confessor, beginning to laugh, asked me what they were. I told him that I had up to now been in doubt about hell : that I had imagined my mistress spoke to me of it only to make me good, but I no longer doubted. After my con- fession I felt an indescribable fervour, and even one time I experienced a desire to endure martyrdom. Those worthy girls, to divert themselves, and see how far my budding fervour would go, told me to prepare myself for it. I prayed you, 0 my God, with ardour and sweetness, and I thought this ardour, as new as it was agreeable to me, an assurance of your love. This gave me boldness, and made me urgently demand that they should grant me martyrdom, because thereby I should go to see you, oh my God. But was there not in this some hypocrisy, and did I not perhaps persuade myself they would not put me to death, and that I would have the merit of death without suffering it ? There must have been something; of this

€ii\v. U.} AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 11

nature, for these girls bad no sooner placed me on my knees on a spread-out sheet, than seeing them raise behind me a great cutlass, which they bad purposely taken to test bow far my ardour would go, I cried out, ** It is not allowable for me to die without the permission of my father." They said that I would not then be a martyr, and I said this only to save myself, and it was true. Yet I nevertheless continued much afflicted, and they could not console me. Something reproached me that it bad only depended on myself to go to heaven, and I bad not been willing.

In this liouse I was much loved, but you, 0 my God, who were unwilling to leave me a moment without some crosses proportioned to my age, permitted that as soon as I recovered from the illness, grown girls who were in this house, one in particular, played numerous tricks upon me through jealousy. They once accused me of a serious fault that I had not committed. I was very severely punished for it, which gave me a dislike to this house, whence I was withdrawn owing to my great and constant illnesses. As soon as I returned to my father's, my mother left me, as before, to the charge of servants, because there was a maid there in whom she trusted. I cannot help here noting the fault mothers commit who, under pretext of devotion or occupation, neglect to keep their daughters with them ; for it is not credible that my mother, so virtuous as she was, would have thus left me, if she bad thought there was any barm in it. I must also condemn those unjust preferences that they show for one child over another, which produce division and the ruin of families, while equality unites the hearts and entertains charity. Why cannot I make fathers and mothers understand, and all persons who wish to guide youth, the evil they do, when they neglect the guidance of the children, when they lose sight of them for a long time ^nd do not employ them ?

This negligence is the ruin of almost all young girls.

12 MADAME GUYOX. [Part I.

How many of them are there who would be angels, whom liberty and idleness turn into demons ! What is more deplorable is that mothers otherwise devout ruin them- selves by what ought to save them, they make their sin of what ought to constitute then- good conduct, and because they have some taste for prayer, especially at the com- mencement, they fall into two extremes ; the one of wishing to keep young chikU-en in church as long as them- selves, which gives them a strong disgust for devotion, as I have seen in many persons, who when they are free avoid the church and piety like hell. This arises from their being surfeited with a food they could not relish, because their stomach was not suited for that nourishment, and for want of power of digestion they conceived such aversion to it that, where it would be suitable for them, they will no longer even try it. What also contributes to it is that these devout mothers keep them so shut up, giving them no liberty, like birds one keeps in a cage, who as soon as they find any opening fly away and never return ; whereas to tame them when they are young, one should give them from time to time a lly, and as their wings are weak and one watches them flying, it is easy to catch them again when they escape, and this little flight accustoms them to return of themselves into their cage, which is for them become an agreeable iDrisou. I believe we should do thi3 same with young girls. A mother should never lose sight of them, and should give them an honourable liberty. They should keep them correct without affectation. They would soon see the fruit of this conduct.

The other extreme is still more dangerous. It is that these devout mothers (for I do not spe:ik of those who are addicted to their own pleasures, the luxuries and the vain amusements of the age, whose presence is more hurtful for their daughters than their absence : I speak of those devotees who wish to serve God in their mode, not in his, and who, to pursue their style of devotion, disregard the

Chap. IL] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 13

will of God) — these mothers, I say, will he the whole day at church, while their daughters' one thought is to offend God. The greatest glory they could render God would he to prevent his heing offended. Of what kind is this sacrifice, which is an occasion of iniquity ? Let them perform their devotions, and never separate their daughters from them. Let them treat them as sisters, and not as slaves. Let them make it appear to them that they are diverted at their diversions. This conduct will make them love the presence of their mothers, instead of avoiding it, and, finding much sweetness with them, they will not think of seeking it elsewhere. "We must be careful to occupy their minds with useful and agreeable things, as it prevents them filling themselves with evil things. They should each day have a little good reading and some quarter of an hour of prayer — of the affections rather than of meditation. Oh, if one so treated them, one would soon put a stop to irregularities ! There would be no longer wayward daughters nor bad mothers ; for these girls, when mothers, would bring up their children as they themselves had been brought up.

There would also be no more division, no more scandal in families, when uniform conduct was observed to each. This would promote union, while the unjust preferences that are shown to children give rise to secret jealousy and hatred, which augment with time and last till death. How many children do we see the idol of their house, who play the sovereign, and treat their brothers as slaves, in imitation of their fathers and mothers ! You would say that the one are the servants of the others. It ordinarily happens that this idolized child becomes the scourge of father and mother, and that poor neglected one becomes after- wards their whole consolation. If people lived as I have said, they would no longer think of forcing children into religion, and sacrificing the one in order to rear the others. By that the cloisters would be freed from disorder ; for none

14 MADAME GUYOX. [L\u:t L

would be there but persons called by God, and whose vocation was supported b}' him ; while those persons who inahc the vocation of their children are cause of their despair and their damnation, through the irreconcilable hatred they preserve against their brothers and their sisters, the innocent causes of their misfortune both tem- poral and eternal. Oh, fathers and mothers, what reason have you to treat them so? "That child," you say, "is ill favoured by nature." For this very cause you ought to love it more and to pity it. It is you, perhaps, who are the cause of its misfortune ; increase, then, yom- charity towards it. Or else it is, God gives it to you to be the object of your compassion and not of your hatred. Is it not sufficiently afflicted in seeing itself deprived of those natural advantages which the others possess, without your increasing its grief by your unjust and cruel procedure ? This child which you despise will one day be a saint, and that other, perhaps, a demon.

My mother failed in these two points, for she left me aU. day at a distance from her, with servants who could only teach me evil and render it familiar to me. For I was so constituted that good examples attracted me in such a way that where I saw people doing good, I did it and never thought at all of ill ; but I no sooner saw people doing iU, than I forgot the good. 0 God, what danger would I not then have run if my infancy had not been an obstacle to it ! With an invisible hand, 0 my God, you put aside all the dangers. As my mother gave no sign of having any love except for my brother, and never showed any tenderness to me, I willingly kept away from her. It is true my brother was more amiable than I ; but also the extreme love she had for him shut her eyes to mj' exterior qualities, so that she saw only my defects, which would have been of no consequence if care had been taken of me. I was often ill, and always exposed to a thousand dangers without, however, doing at that time, it appears

CnAr. II.] AUTOBIOGrvAPUY. 15

to me, anything worse than saying many pretty things, as I thought, to divert. As my liberty increased each day, it went so far that one day I left the house and went into the street to play with other children at games which were not suited to my rank. You, 0 my God, who continually watched over a child who incessantly forgot you, per- mitted that my father came home and saw me. As he loved me very tenderly, he was so vexed that, without saying a word to any one, he took me straight away to the Ursulines.

K MADAME GUYOX. [Part I.

CHAPTER III.

I ^VAS then nearly seven years of age. Two of my sisters ■were there as nuns — one the daughter of my father, the other of my mother ; for both my father and my mother had been married before having married each other. My father made me over to the charge of his daughter, and I can say she was one of the most capable and the most spiritual persons of her time, and most fit to form young girls. It "was for me, 0 my God, an effect of your providence and your love, and the first means of my salvation. For as she loved me much, her affection made her discover in me a number of qualities you had placed there, 0 my God, by your goodness alone. She endeavoured to cultivate them. I believe that if I had always been in such wise hands, I should have had as much of virtue as I have subsequently contracted of evil habits. This worthy woman employed all her time to instruct me in piety and in learning suited to my capacity. She had natural talents, which had been well cultivated, and moreover was a person of great prayer, and her faith was very great and very pure. She deprived herself of all gratification to be with me and to talk to me, and her love for me was such that it made her find, she told me, more pleasure with me than anywhere else. If I made her some pleasant reply, more by chance than wit, she thought herself only too well paid for all her pains. In short, she instructed me so well

Chap. III.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 17

that, after a short time, there were hardly any thmgs of those suited for me -which I was ignorant of. There were even many persons of full age who could not have answered the questions I used to answer.

My father used often to send for me to see him, and it happened that the Queen of England came to the house when I was there. I was then nearly eight years of age. My father told the queen's confessor, if he wished for some pleasure, he should converse with me and put questions tc mc. He asked me even very diflicult ones. I answered them so apropos that he took me to the Queen, and said to her, "Your Majesty must have the diversion of this child." She did so, and seemed so pleased with my lively answers- and my manners, that she urgently asked me from my father, assuring him she would take particular care of me, intending me to be maid of honour to Madame. My father resisted and vexed her. 0 my God, it was you who permitted the resistance of my father, and thereby turned aside the stroke on which, perhaps, depended my salvation. For being as weak as I was, what could I have- done at Court but destroy myself?

They sent me back to the Ursulines, where my sister continued her charity towards me ; but as she was not mistress of the boarders, and I had sometimes to go with them, I contracted evil habits. I became a liar, passionate^, undevout. I passed days without thinking on you, 0 my God, who watched continually over me, as what I shall tell in the sequel will prove. I did not long continue in this, evil state, for the care of my sister brought me back. I loved much to hear talk of you, 0 my God, and I never wearied of it. I was not tired at church, and I loved to pray to you, and I had tenderness for the poor. I was naturally greatly opposed to persons whose doctrine was- doubtful, having sucked in the purity of the faith with my milk, and you have always preserved this grace to me,. 0 my God, in the midst of my greatest infideUties.

VOL. I. C

18 ^lADAME GUYON. [Paut I.

There was, at tue cud of the garden, a chapel dedicated to the Chikl Jesus. I conceived a devotion for it, and for some time every morning I carried my breakfast there and concealed it all behind his image ; for I was so childish I thought I was making a considerable sacrifice in depriving myself of it. I was, however, greed}-. I wished, indeed, to mortify myself, but I did not wish to be mortified, which jDroves how much self-love I already had. One day, when they were thoroughly cleaning out this chapel, they found behind the picture what I had carried there. They knew it was I, because I was seen going there every day. You, 0 my God, who leave nothing without recompense, you soon repaid me with interest this petty childish devotion. One day, when my companions, who were big girls, were amusing themselves, they went to dance over a well which, the water not being good, had been used as a cesspool for the kitchen. This cesspool was deep, and it had been covered with boards for fear of accident. When they had gone away, I wished to do as they, but the boards broke under me. I found myself in that frightful sink, supported by a little morsel of wood, so that I was only soiled and not stifled. 0 my Love, was there not here a figure of the state I should hereafter bear? How often have you left me with your prophet in a deep pit of mud, whence I could not get out ! Have I not been fouled in this pit where I was all covered with mud? But you have preserved me there by your goodness alone. I have been soiled, but not stifled. I have been even to the gates of death, but death has had no power over me. I may say, 0 my God, that it was your adorable hand which sustained me in that frightful place, rather than this stick by which I was stopped ; for it was very small, and the long time I was in the air with the weight of my body ought doubtless to have broken it. I cried with all my strength. The boarders, who saw me fall, instead of getting me out, went to look for the servants. Those Sisters, in place of coming to me, not

Chap, III.] AUTOLlOGllAPirf. ID

iloubtiug I was dead, went to the church to inform my sister, who was there in prayer. She at once prayed for me, and, after having invoked the Holy Virgin, she came to me half dead. She was not a little astonished when she saw me in the midst of that sink, seated in the mud as if upon a chair. She admired your goodness, 0 my God, who had supported me in a miraculous manner ; but, alas ! how happy would I have been if this had been the only filth into which I should fall ! I escaped from that, only to fall into another a thousand times more dangerous. I repaid so remarkable a protection with the blackest in- gratitude. 0 Love, I have never wearied your patience, because it was infinite. I have wearied myself of dis- pleasing you sooner than you of supporting me !

I remained still some time with my sister, where I retained the love and fear of God. My life was very tranquil. I grew up pleasantly with her. I even profited much during the time I had my health; for I was continually ill with diseases, as sudden as they were extraordinary. In the evening I would be quite well ; the morning I was found swollen and full of violet marks. Another time it was fever. At nine years of age I was seized with a vomiting of blood so violent they thought I was about to die.

A little before this time the enemy, jealous of my happiness, caused another sister I had in this house to become jealous and wish to have me in her turn. Although she was good, she had no talent for the education of children. I can say that was the end of the happiness I enjoyed in this house. She caressed me much at first, but all her caresses made no impression on my heart. My other sister did more with one look than she with her caresses or her threats. As she saw I loved her less than her who had reared me, she changed her caresses to ill treatment. She would not even let me speak to my other sister, and when she knew I had spoken to her, she caused me to be whipped or beat me herself. I could not hold out

20 MADAME GUYOX. [Part I.

against this rigorous conduct, and I paid ^Yitll the blackest ingratitude all the kindness of my paternal sister, seeing her no more. That, however, did not hinder her from giving me proofs of her usual kindness in the great illness of which I have spoken, when I vomited blood. She did it the more willingl}' as she knew my ingratitude was rather the effect of the fear of punishment than of my bad heart. I believe it was the only time the fear of punishment has acted with so much power upon me ; for since then my natural character led me to be more distressed at the trouble I might cause a person for whom I entertained affection than at that which concerned myself. You know, 0 my Love, that the fear of your chastisement has never made much impression either upon my intellect or upon my heart. Disgust at having offended you caused all my grief, and this was such that it seemed to me, though there should be neither Paradise nor Hell, I should always have had the same fear of displeasing you. You know that even after my faults your caresses were a thousand times more insupportable than your rigours, and that I would have a thousand times chosen Hell rather than displease you. My father, informed of all that passed between my sisters and me, withdrew me to his own house. I was then nearly ten years of age.

TVhile with my father I became still more wicked. My former habits grew stronger day by day, and I inces- santly contracted new ones. Yet you guarded me, 0 my God, in all these things, and I cannot without astonishment consider that, with the liberty I had of being all day away from my mother, you have so preserved me that I have never done anything unworthy of your protection. I was only a very short time with my father, for a nun of the order of St. Dominic, of very high birth, and an intimate friend of my father, urgently begged him to place me at her convent, of which she was Superior ; that she would herself take care of me, and she would allow me to sleep in

CiiAP. III.] AUTOBlOGRArHY. 21

her room, for this lady conceived mucli fiicndsliip for mc. As people saw only my exterior, and knew not how wicked I was, I used to please those who saw me. As soon as the opportunity was wanting, I forgot the evil which I com- mitted, not so much from inclination, as because I allowed myself to be led away. I did not appear wicked to this lady, because I loved the church, and used to remain there a long time ; but she was so occupied with her community, where there was then much quarrelling, that she could not give her attention to me.

You sent me, 0 my God, a species of flying small-pox which kept me in bed for three weeks. I no longer thought at all of offending you. I remained much neglected and without help, though my father and my mother believed I was perfectly well cared for. Those worthy ladies feared so much the small-pox that they dared not approach mc. I passed almost all this time without seeing any one except at the hours when it was necessary to take nourishment, which a lay sister brought me and immediately retired. I providentially found a Bible in the room where I lay. As I much loved reading, I attached myself to it. I read from morning till evening. I had a very good memory, so I learned everything in the nature of history. After I was recovered, another lady, seeing me so neglected owing to the great occupation of the prioress, took me into her room. Since when I had a reasonable person with whom I could converse, I thought no more of my old habits (to which I had no other attachment than that which others gave me), I again became more devout. I was very well disposed to pray to the Holy Virgin : I do not understand how I was made. In my greatest infidelities I used to pray, and I was careful to confess often. In another way I w'as very unhappy in this house, for as I was the only one of my age, and the other boarders were very grown, they severely persecuted me. As to eating and drinking, I was •so neglected that I grew very thin. I had still other little crosses according to my capacity.

22 ilADAME GUTOX. [Part I.

CHAPTER IV.

After having been about eight months in this house, my father •withdrew me. "My mother kept me with her. She was for some time very -well pleased with me, and loved me a little more as she found me to her taste. She never- theless still preferred my brother to me, which was so visible, every one disapproved of it ; for when I was ill and found something to my taste, my brother used to ask for it, and, although he was quite v;ell, it was taken from me to give him. From time to time he caused mo divers vexations. One day he made me climb upon the imperial of the carriage ; then he threw me to the ground — he was near killing me. I, however, received only bruises, no open wound ; for whatever fall I have suffered, I have never received a serious wound. It was your protecting hand, 0 my God, which supported me. It seemed that you ■were carrying out in me what you said by your royal prophet, that you place your hand under the righteous, that when he falls he may not be wounded. At other times he used to beat me. My mother never said any- thing to him for it. This conduct embittering my natural disposition, which would otherwise have been gentle, I neglected to do good, saying I was none the better for it. 0 God, it was then not for you alone I used to behave well, since I ceased to do so because they no longer had

Chap. IV.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 23

any consideration for mc. If I bad known liov.' to make use of the crucifying conduct that you maintained over me, I should have made good progress, and, far from going astray, that would have made me return to you. I was jealous of my brother, for on every occasion I remarked the difference my mother made between him and me. However he behaved, he always did right, and I always wrong. My mother's servant-maids paid their court by caressing my brother and ill-treating me. It is true I was bad, for I had fallen back into my former defects of telling lies and getting in a passion. With all these faults I nevertheless willingly gave alms, and I much loved the poor. I assiduously prayed to you, 0 my God, and I took pleasure in hearing you spoken of, and in good read- ing. I do not doubt you will be astonished, Sir, by such resistance, and by so long a course of inconstancy; so many graces, so much ingratitude ; but the sequel will astonish you still more, when you shall see this manner of acting grow stronger with my age, and that reason, far from correcting so irrational a procedure, has served only to give more force and more scope to my sins. It seemed, 0 my God, that you doubled your graces as my ingrati- tudes increased. There went on in me what goes on in the siege of towns. You were besieging my heart, and I thought only of defending it against your attacks. I put up fortifications to that miserable place, redoubling each day my iniquities to hinder you from taking it. When it seemed you were about to be victorious over this ungrateful heart, I made a cross-battery, I put up barriers to arrest your bounties and to hinder the course of your graces. It required nothing less than you to break them down, 0 my divine Love, who by your sacred fire were more powerful than even death, to which my sin has so oftentimes re- duced me.

I cannot endure people saying we are not free to resist grace. I have had only too long and sad experience of my

■34 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

liberty. It is true that there are graces gratuitous and active, vrhich have no need of man's liberty, since they are iTeceived even without a man's knowledge, who knows nothing of them till he receives them. I had so feeble a will for good that the least attack overthrew me. When the occasion no longer offered, I thought not of evil, and opened my ears to grace. But on the least occasion I gave way, and shut all the avenues of my heart in order not to hear your secret voice that called me, 0 my God ; and, far from flying the occasion, I sought it, and gave way to it.

It is true our liberty is very disastrous to us. You maintained over me, my God, a crucifying conduct to make me return to you, of which I knew not how to make proper use ; for I have been in troubles from my tender youth, either through illnesses or through persecutions. The maid who had care of me used to strike me when settling my hair, and never made me turn round except with a slap. Everything was in concert to make me suffer. But in place of turning to you, 0 my God, I fretted and my spirit became embittered. My father knew nothing of all this ; for his love for me was so great, he would not have allowed it. I loved him much, but, at the same time, I was so much afraid of him, I did not speak to him of anything. My mother often complained of me to him, but he had only one answer, ** There are twelve hours in the day; she will be converted." This liarsh treatment was not the worst for my soul, although it much embittered my temper, which was very mild. But what caused my ruin was that, being unable to endure persons who ill-treated mo, I took refuge with those who caressed me to my destruction.

My father, seeing I was grown, placed me for Lent with the Ursulines, in order that I should have my first ■Communion at Easter, when I should complete eleven years of age. He placed me in the hands of his daughter, my

Chap. IV.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 25

very clear sister, who redoubled her cares that I might perform this action with all possible preparation. I thought only, 0 my God, of giving myself to you once for all. I often felt the combat between my good inclinations and my evil habits. I even performed some penances. As I was almost always with my sister, and the boarders of the grown class with whom I was, although I was very far from their age, were very reasonable, I became very reasonable with them. It was surely a murder to bring me up ill, for I had a natural disposition much inclined to good, and I loved good things ; a reasonable conduct suited me. I let myself be easily won by gentleness, and my sister, without using harshness, made me unresistingly do all she wished. At last, on Easter Day I made my first Communion (after a general confession) with much joy and devotion. Until Pentecost I remained in that house, but as my other sister was mistress of the second class, she required that in her week I should be in her class. The utterly different manners of m}-- two sisters cooled my first fervour. I no longer felt this new ardour, 0 my God, that you had made me taste in my first Communion. Alas ! it lasted but a short time, for my troubles returned. I was withdrawn from the convent.

My mother, seeing I was very tall for my age and more to her taste than usual, only thought of bringing me out, making me see company, and dressing me well. She took a regrettable delight in that beauty you had given me, 0 my God, only that you might be praised and blessed for it, and which has yet been for me a source of pride and vanity. Numbers of proposals were made, but as I was only twelve years old, my father would not listen to them.

I greatly loved reading, and I shut myself up alone a,lmost every day in order to read in quiet. What finished in gaining me enth-ely to God, at least, for a time, was that a nephew of my father (whose life is written in the account of foreign missions under the name of M. de

26 MADAME GUTON. [Part I.

Cbamcsson, although bis namo ^vas De Toissi) visited us on his way to Cochin China with the Bishop of Heliopolis. I was not at the house, and, eontrar}' to my usual practice, I had gone to walk with my companions. When I returned he had already gone. They gave me an account of his sanctity, and the things he had said. I was so touched, that I was near dying of grief at it. I wept all the rest of the day and the night. I got up in the early morning and went to visit my confessor in great trouble. I said ta him, "What, my Father! shall it be said that I am the only one in my famil}^ to be damned ? Alas ! aid me to save myself! " He was greatly astonished to see me so afflicted, and did his best to console me ; for he did not believe me so wicked as I was, because at my worst time I had docility, and obeyed very exactly. I was careful to confess often, and since I went to him my life was more orderly. 0 Love, how many times had you knocked at the door of my heart, which did not open to you ? How many times have you frightened it by sudden deaths ! but that made only a passing impression. I returned at once to my infidelities. You caught me this time, and I can say you carried ofif my heart. Alas ! what grief did I not feel at having displeased you ! what regrets ! what sobs ! "Who would not have believed, at seeing me, that my con- version would have lasted as long as my life ? Why did you not take this heart, 0 my God ? I gave it to you so truly. Or, if you did take it then, why did you afterwards let it escape ? Were you not powerful enough to retain it ? But perhaps you wished, in leaving me to myself, to make your mercy shine forth, and that the depth of my iniquity should serve as the trophy to your goodness. I made a general confession with a great feeling of sorrow. I told, it seems to me, all that I knew with torrents of tears. I became so changed I was not to be recognized. I would not have committed the least fault voluntarily, and they found nothing for absolution when 1 confessed. I disclosed

CnAr. IV.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 27

even the smallest defects, and God gave me the grace to conquer myself in many things. There was only a remnant of the hastiness I had trouble to conquer. Whenever through this same hastiness I had given trouble to any of the servants, I asked pardon for it, in order to conquer at the same time my anger and my pride, for anger is the daughter of pride. A very humble person does not give way to anger, because nothing offends him. As it is pride which dies last in our soul, hastiness is also externally that which perishes last ; but a soul truly annihilated can no longer find anger in herself. She would require to make an effort to be vexed, and though she should wish it, she would feel clearly that this anger would be a body without a soul, and that it would have no correspondence with the central depth, nor even any emotion in the more super- ficial part.

There are persons who, because they are filled with an unction of grace and a very sweet peace from the com- mencement of the passive way of light and love, believe themselves to have attained this ; but they are much deceived, as they will easily discover if they will carefully examine two things. The first that, if their natural character is very quick and violent (for I do not speak of apathetic temperaments), they will remark that from time to time they have outbursts in which trouble and agitation have some part, and which at that time are even useful to humiliate and to annihilate them ; but when the annihilation is effected, all this disappears and becomes as if impossible. Moreover, they will experience that often- times there arises in them certain movements of anger, but the sweetness of grace restrains and arrests them by a secret violence, and they would easily escape if they gave it some free course. There are persons who think them- selves very gentle, because nothing opposes them. It is not of those I am speaking, for the gentleness which has never been tried is oftentimes a mask of frcntleness.

28 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

Therefore those persons who by themselves appear saints are no sooner tried by opposition than one sees in them a strange number of defects, which they thought dead, and which were only asleep because nothing waked them uj).

I shut m3"self up all day to read and pray ; I gave all I had to the poor, taking even the house linen to make up for them. I taught them the Catechism, and, when m}-- father and my mother were absent, I made them eat with me, and helped them with great respect. At this time I read the works of St. Francis de Sales and the Life of Madame de Chantal. It was there that I learned that people prayed. I begged my confessor to teach me to do it, and, as he did not do so, I endeavoured to do it by myself the best I could.

I could not succeed in it, as it then appeared to me, because I could not imagine anything, and I was persuaded that without forming to one's self distinctions and much reasoning one could not pray. This difficulty for a long time caused me much trouble. I was, however, very assiduous at it, and I earnestly begged God to give me the gift of prayer. All that I saw written in the Life of Madame de Chantal de- lighted me, and I was so childish I thought I ought to do all that I saw there. All the vows she had made I made also ; as that of aiming always at the most perfect, and doing the will of God in all things. I was not yet twelve years of age ; nevertheless I took the discipline according to my strength. One day, w^hen I read she had placed the name of Jesus on her heart, in order to follow the counsel of the Bridegroom, " Place me as a seal upon thy heart," and that she had taken a red-hot iron on which was engraved that holy name, I remained very afflicted at not being able to do the same. I bethought me of writing this sacred and adorable name in large characters on a morsel of paper ; with ribbons and a big needle I fixed it to my skin in four i)laces, and it continued for a long time fixed in this manner.

Chap. IV.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 29

My only thought was to l>ecome a nun, and I went very often to the Visitation, to beg them to be willing to receive me ; for the love I had for St. Francis de Sales did not allow me to think of other communities. I used then to slip away from the house to go to these nuns, and I urged them very strongly to receive me ; but although they were extremely desirous of having me, and regarded it even as a temporal advantage, they never dared give me admittance into their house, as well because they much feared my father, who was known to love me specially, as because of my extreme j^outh — I was then hardly twelve years old. There was then at our house a niece of my father, to whom I am under very great obligations. She was very virtuous, and fortune, which had not been favourable to her father, placed her in some sort of dependence on mine. She discovered my intention and the extreme desire I had to become a nun. As my father had been absent for some time, and my mother was ill, and I was under her care, she feared being accused of having encouraged this idea, or at least of having entertained it ; for my father so greatly feared it that, although he would not for anything in the world hinder a true vocation, he could not without shedding tears hear it said I should be a nun. My mother would have been more indifferent. My cousin went to my confessor to tell him to forbid me going to the Visita- tion. He dared not do this out and out, for fear of setting that community against him ; for they believed me already one of theirs. When I went to confession he would not absolve me, on the ground that I went to the Visitation by myself and by roundabout streets. In my innocence I thought I had committed a frightful crime, for absolution had never been refused me. I returned so afflicted my cousin could not comfort me. I did not cease weeping till the next day, when at early morning I went to my confessor. 1 told him I could not live without absolution ; I begged him to grant it to me. There was no penance I would not

30 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

have performed to obtaiu it. He gave it to me at once. I still, however, wished to be a nun, and I urgently begged my mother to take me there, but she would not for fear of vex- ing my father, who was absent, and she always put it oft till his return. As I saw I could gain nothing, I counterfeited the wi'iting of my mother, and I forged a letter in which she begged those ladies to receive me, making excuse, on the ground of illness, for not bringing me herself. But the prioress, who was a relative of my mother and well knew her writing, discovered at once my innocent deceit.

CiiM'. v.] AUTOBIOGllAPiJY. 31

CHAPTER V.

My father bad no sooner returned than he fell seriously ill. I constituted myself his nurse. He was in a wing of the house separated from that of my mother, who seldom came to see him, as well because she was still weak as because she feared, perhaps, a relapse. Being alone with him, I had every opportunity of rendering him all the services I was capable of, and I gave him all the marks of affection he could desire of me. I have no doubt my attention was very agreeable to him, for as he loved me extremely, all I did was very pleasant to him. When he was not looking I used to go and empty his basins, seizing the time there were no valets there, as well to mortify myself as to honour what Jesus Christ says, that he had come to serve and not to be served. When he made me read to him, I read with so much devotion he was surprised. I still continued my prayer and the Office of the Virgin, which I had not missed saying since my first Communion. I remembered the instructions my sister had given me, and ejaculatory prayers she had taught me. She had taught me to praise you, 0 my God, in all your works. All that I saw instructed me to love you. If it rained, I wished all the drops of water were changed into love and into praise. My heart insensibly nourished itself with your love, and my mind was occupied with remembering you. I united myself to all the good that was done upon the earth, and I

32 MADAME GUYOX. [Paut I.

-would have wished to have the heart of all mankind to love you. This habit rooted itself so strongly iu me that I preserved it even in the midst of my greatest inconstancy.

My cousin was not a little useful in keeping me in these good sentiments ; for, as I was often with her and I loved her, and she took gi-eat care of me and treated me with much gentleness, my spirit became again gentle and reasonable. Perhaps I fell into an extreme, for I so strongly attached myself to her that I used to follow her through the house wherever she went, for I greatly liked to be treated with gentleness and reason. I thought myself in another world. It is true children should never have near them any but reasonable persons, who are in no way passionate. This attachment appeared to me very right for a person who had been given me for my guidance ; for her fortune not being equal either to her birth or her virtue, she did with charity and affection that which her present condition imposed upon her. I did not think I was committing an excess, yet my mother thought, in loving my cousin so strongly, I should love her less. The Devil so well managed with his artifices that my mother, who previously trusted me much to myself, and even, when I passed days without entering her room except at bedtime, made no inquiries as to where I was, being satisfied I was in the house, wished me to remain always with her, and would hardly ever leave me with m^- cousin. My cousin fell ill, and my mother took the opportunity to send her back to her own house, which was for me a ver^- serious blow, both for grace and for nature. Although my mother thus behaved, she was none the less very virtuous ; but God permitted this to try me, for my mother w^as one of the most charitable women of her age. If there was an excess in this virtue, one might say hers was excessive. She used to give not only what was to spare, but even the necessaries of the house. No poor person was ever sent away by her, nor any destitute one ever applied to her

Chap. V.] AUTOBIOGRArHY. 33

•without receiving help. She furnished poor artisans with the means of carrying on their work, and poor traders with the means of supplying their shops. I think it is from her I have inherited charity and love of the poor, for God gave me the grace to succeed her in this holy exercise. There was not in the town or its neighbourhood any one who did not benefit by her charity. She has sometimes even given the last pistole that was in the house, without losing or failing in confidence, in spite of the great establishment she had to maintain. Her faith was living, and she had a very great devotion to the Holy Virgin. She meditated every day during the time of a Mass. She never missed repeating the Office of the Virgin, and all she wanted was a director who would introduce her to the inner life, without which all virtues are weak and languishing. What caused me to have so much liberty as I have mentioned is that, when I was little, my mother relied too much on the care of the maids, and, when I was grown, she trusted too much to my own conduct, and, being assured I loved to be alone to read, she was satisfied at knowing I was in the house, without troubling herself further; for as to going out, she almost never gave me liberty, which is a great thing for a girl. The habit I hnd acquired of remaining at home was very useful to me after my marriage, as I shall tell in its proper place. Mj mother was not, then, so much at fault in leaving me to myself ; the fault she committed was in not keeping me in her room with an honourable liberty, and not finding out more often the part of the house in which I was.

After the departure of my cousin I remained still for some time in the sentiments of piety of w^hich I have spoken. One grace that God gave me was a great facility in pardoning injuries, which surprised my confessor ; for, knowing some young ladies spoke of me unfavourably out •of mere envy, I used to speak good of them when I had an opportunity. I fell ill of a double-tertian fever, which lasted

VOL. I. D

34 MADAME GUYON. [Part L

four months, ^lieu I suffered considerably, as well from vomiting as from other troubles caused by the fever. I had sufficient moderation and piety during this fever, suffering with much patience. I continued the manner of life of which I have spoken above as long as I continued to praj'. About a year or eleven months after, we went to spend some days in the country. My father took with us one of his relatives who was a very accomplished young gentleman. He had a great wish to marry me, but my father, who had resolved not to marry me to any of my relatives, owing to the difficulty of obtaining dispensation, unless false or frivolous reasons were alleged, opposed it. As this young gentleman was very devoted to the Holy Virgin, and used to say her Office every day, I said it with him, and, in order to have time, I gave up prayer, and this was the source of my troubles. I still for a time preserved the spu'it of piety, for I used to go and look for the little shepherd-girls to instruct them and teach them to pray to you, 0 my God ; but this remnant of piety was not nom-ished by prayer. I insensibly relaxed. I became cold to you. All my former faults came back, and I added a frightful vanity. The love I commenced to have for myself extinguished what remained in me of your love. I did not entirely give up prayer without asking my confessor. I told him I thought it better to say every day the Office of the Virgin than to pray ; that, having time only for one and not for both, it appeared to me I ought to prefer the Office to prayer ; and I did not see, 0 my God, it was a trick of your enemy and mine to withdraw me from you, and a means of involving me insensibly in the snares he was laying for me ; for I could have had enough time for both, having no other occupation than what I chose for myself. My confessor, who was very easy and not a man of prayer, consented to it, to my ruin. 0 my God, if one knew the value of prayer, and the advantage the soul reaps from conversing with you, and its importance for salvation.

CiiAP. v.] AUTOBIOGRAPIIY. 35

every one would be assiduous in it. It is a strong place, into wbicli the enemy can never enter. He may, indeed, attack this place, besiege it, make much noise around its walls, but, provided one is faithful not to leave it, ho cannot do us any ill. Children should be taught the necessity of prayer as they are taught the necessity of their salvation ; but, alas ! people are unfortunately content to tell them that there is a Paradise and a Hell, that they must endeavour to avoid the latter and aim at the possession of the former, and they are not taught the shortest and easiest road of arriving there. Prayer is nothing else than the pathway to Paradise, and the path- way to Paradise is prayer — but praj^er of the heart, which everybody is capable of, and not of those reasonings which are a play of the intellect, a result of study, an exercise of the imagination, which, while filling the mind with vague things, rarely and only for moments fix it, and do not warm the heart, which remains still cold and languishing. Oh, ye poor people, intellects coarse and foolish, children without reason and without knowledge, dull minds which can retain nothing, come, practise prayer, and you will become wise ! Strong men, clever and rich, have you not all, great as you are, a heart capable of loving what is suited to you, and hating what is contrary to you ? Love, love the Sovereign Good, hate the sovereign evil, and you will become wise ! When you love any one, do you know the reasons of love and its definitions? Assuredly not. You love because your heart is made to love what it finds lovable. Is there anything more lovable than God? You know well enough that he is lovable ; do not tell me, then, that you do not know him. You know he created you and died for you ; but if these reasons are not enough, which of you has not some want, some ill, or some disgrace ? Which of you cannot tell his ill and ask a remedy for it ? Come, then, to this source of all good, and without amusing yourselves, complaining to feeble and powerless creatures

36 MADAME GDYON. [Part I.

■who cannot comfort you, come to prayer, to open out to God your troubles, to ask from him his graces ; and above all, come to love him. No one can escape from loving ; for none can live without a heart, nor the heart without love. Why amuse yourselves with seeking reasons for loving Love itself? Let us love without reasoning about love, and we shall find ourselves filled with love before the rest have found the reasons that lead to love. Taste, and you shall see ; taste love, and you will be more wise in love than the cleverest philosophers. In love, as in everything else, experience teaches better than reasoning. Come, drink at this source of living water, instead of amusing yourselves with the broken cisterns of the creature, which, far from quenching, augment your thirst ! Oh, if you had drunk at this fountain, you would no more seek elsewhere the means of satisfying your thirst ! for you would no more have thirst for the things of earth, provided you continue always to go and draw from this source. But if you quit it, alas ! your enemy has the upper hand. He will give you his poisoned waters, which, while making you taste an apparent sweetness, will deprive you of life.

It is what I did when I gave up prayer. I left God. I became that vine exposed to pillage, whose broken-down hedges admit all the passers-by to ravage it. I commenced to seek in the creature what I had found in God. You abandoned me to myself, because I had first abandoned you, and, while permitting me to be plunged in the abyss, you wished to make me understand the need I had of drawing near to you by prayer. You say you will destroy those adulterous souls who separate themselves from you. Alas ! their separation itself constitutes their destruction, since, in withdrawing from you, 0 Divine Sun, they enter into the religion of darkness, into the cold of death, whence they will never recover if you do not draw near to them, and if, by your divine light, you do not come to illumine gradually their darkness, and by your vivifying warmth to

CiiAP. v.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 37

melt their deadly ice, and to restore life to them. I fell into the greatest of all misfortunes ; for I still wandered from you, 0 my God, who are my light and my life, and you removed further from me. You withdrew yourself gradually from a heart which left you, and you are so good that it seems that you abandoned it only with regret ; but when this heart consents to be converted, ah ! you return to it with giant steps. It is an experience I have made,

0 my God, which will be for me an eternal witness of your goodness and my ingratitude. I became then yet more hasty than I had ever been, because my age gave more strength to my passions. I often lied. I felt my heart corrupted and vain. There was no longer any piety in my soul, but a state of lukewarmness and real undevout- ness, although I still preserved the external with much care, and the habit I had acquired of behaving in church with modesty, made me appear other than I was. Vanity, which hitherto had left me at peace, seized upon my spirit.

1 began to spend a long time before the looking-glass. I found so much pleasure in seeing myself, that it seemed to me others were justified in finding it. This love of myself became so strong, that in my heart I had only scorn for all others of my sex. In place of making use, 0 my God, of that exterior you had given me as a means of loving you more, it was to me the source of vain complaisance. What ought to win my gratitude, furnished my ingratitude. I found that there was nothing but what was beautiful in my exterior, and I did not see that it covered a horrible dung- hill. All this made me so vain, that I doubt if there ever was a person who interiorly carried vanity so far ; for as to the exterior, I had an affected modesty which would have deceived anybody'.

The esteem I entertained for myself made me discover faults in all the rest of my sex. I had eyes only to see my exterior good qualities, and to discern the weak points of others. I concealed my defects from myself,

38 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

an,], if I remarked any, they appeared to me very trifling in comparison with those I saw in others, and I even excused them in my mind, picturing them to myself as perfections. The whole idea I had of myself and of others was false. I loved reading madly : I emploj^ed day and night at it. Sometimes the next day dawned and I was still reading, so that for several months I had completely lost the habit of sleeping. The hooks I ordinarily read were Romances. I loved them to folly. I was eager to find out their conclusion, thinking there to discover something, but I found there nothing but a hunger for reading. These books are strange inventions to ruin youth, for though one should commit no other evil but to lose time, is not that too much ? I believe this was the greatest fault I committed in it. I was not prevented ; on the contrary, people have a foolish idea that they teach one to speak correctly. Yet, 0 my God, your extreme goodness led you to seek me from time to time. You were knocking at the door of my heart. I was often seized with sharp sorrow and abundance of tears. I was afflicted at a state so different from that I had found with you, 0 my God. But my tears were without effect, and my sorrow vain. I could not of myself withdraw from such a disastrous state. I would have wished that a hand as charitable as powerful had drawn me out of it ; but for myself, I had not the strength to do it. Alas ! if I had had a confessor who examined the cause of my ill, he would doubtless have applied the remedy, which was merely to make me betake myself again to prayer ; but he was content to rebuke me severely, to give me some vocal praj'er to repeat, and he did not remove the cause of the ill — he did not give me the true remedy. " I was," said the prophet, "in a deep pit of mud, from which I could not get out." They repri- manded me because I was in this pit, but no one stretched to me a hand to withdraw me from it, and when I tried to make vain efforts to get out, I sunk myself the deeper,

€hap. v.] autobiography. 39

and the trouble I bad taken served only to make me see my powcrlcssncss, and render me more miserable and more afflicted. Alas ! bow this sad experience has made me compassionate for sinners ! and bow it bas sbown me wbence it comes tberc are so few who correct tbemselves and who emerge from tbat miserable state to which they are reduced, because people are content with crying out against their vices and terrifying them with menaces of future punishment ! These cries and these menaces at the commencement make some impression on their minds, but a band is not given them to come out from where they are. They make feeble efforts, but after having many times experienced their powerlessness and the inutility of their attempts, they gradually lose the will to make new efforts, which appear to them as fruitless as the first. Hence it comes that, in consequence of this, all one can say to them is without effect, though one should preach incessantly. We hear nothing else but outcry against sinners, yet no one is converted. If, when a sinner goes to confession, he was given the true remedy, which is prayer ; if he was obliged every day to place himself before God in the con- dition of a criminal, to ask from him the strength to emerge from this condition, — he would soon be changed : that is the way to stretch forth a hand to a man, to drag him from the mud. But the Devil has falsely persuaded the doctors and wise men of the age that one must be perfectly converted in order to pray ; and as prayer is the efficacious means for conversion, and they will not give it, this is the reason there is no durable and sincere con- version. It is only against prayer and those who practise it the Devil breaks forth, because he knows it is the true moans of carrying off his prey from him. People may practise all the austerities they please, the Devil lets them practise them, and persecutes neither those who prescribe them nor those who practise them, but one no sooner speaks of prayer, one no sooner enters upon the life of the

40 MADAME GUYOX. [Part I.

spirit, than one must be prepared for strange contradictions. Who says, " a life of prayer," says, " a life of crosses." If there is in the "world a spiritual soul, it seems that all the crosses, all the persecutions, all the scorn, are reserved for her. If there is in a monastery a soul of great prayer, all the ill will is for her, all the humiliations are for her — at least when the prayer is profound and true. If a soul is reputed to be one of great prayer, and things should be otherwise, and she should be applauded and considered, I say either her prayer is not true, or, if it is, that she is little advanced in it ; that they are persons who walk by light and striking gifts, and not by the narrow path of faith, of renunciation, of interior death, and of annihilation ; and that the prayers of these persons are only in the powers and in the senses, and not in the centre. I sometimes wander, but as I give myself up to what carries me away, I am not particularly careful to pursue the narrative exactly. Pitiable, then, as was the state to which I was reduced by my infidelities, and the little help I had from my con- fessor, I did not fail to say every day my vocal prayers, to make confession pretty often, and to communicate almost every fortnight. I was sometimes in church weep- ing and praying to the Holy Virgin to obtain my conversion. I loved to hear speak of you, 0 my God, and if I had found persons to speak to me, I should never have wearied of listening to them. "When my father spoke thereof I was transported with joy, and when he went with my mother on some pilgrimage, and started very early, either I did not go to bed to avoid being surprised by sleep, or I gave all I had to the maids in order they should wake me up. My father always at that time spoke of you, my God, which gave me extreme pleasure. All other pleasures were then tasteless to me. I would have preferred this to every- thing. I was very charitable ; I loved the poor ; and yet I had all the defects of which I have spoken. 0 God, how reconcile things so opposed '?

Chap. VI.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 41

CHAPTEK VI.

We subsequently came to Paris, where my vanity increased. Nothing was spared to bring me out. I paraded a vain beauty ; I thirsted to exhibit myself and to flaunt my pride. I wished to make myself loved without loving anybody. I was sought for by many persons who seemed good matches for me ; but you, 0 my God, who would not consent to my ruin, did not permit things to succeed. My father dis- covered difficulties that you yourself made spring up for my salvation. For if I had married those persons, I should have been extremely exposed, and my vanity would have had opportunity for displaying itself. There was a person who had sought me in marriage for some years, whom my father for family reasons had always refused. His manners were a little distasteful to my vanity, yet the fear they had I should leave the country, and the great wealth of this gentleman, led my father, in spite of all his own objections and those of my mother, to accept him for me. It was done without my being told, on the vigil of St. Francis de Sales, 28th January, 1664, and they even made me sign the articles of marriage without telling me what they were. Although I was well pleased to be married, because I imagined thereby I should have full liberty, and that I should be delivered from the ill-treatment of my mother, which doubtless I brought on myself by want

42 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

of docility, you, however, 0 my God, bad quite other views, and the state in which I found myself afterwards frustrated my hopes, as I shall hereafter tell. Although I was well pleased to be married, I nevertheless continued all the time of my engagement, and even long after my marriage, in extreme confusion. It came from two causes. The first was that natural modesty I never lost. I was very reserved with men. The other was my vanity ; for though the husband provided for me was above what I merited, I did not believe him such, and the style of those who had previously sought me appeared to me very different. Their rank dazzled me, and, as in all things I consulted only my vanity, all that did not flatter this was insupportable to me. This vanity, however, was useful to me, for it prevented me falling into those irregularities which cause the ruin of families. I would not have been willing to do any external act that would have exposed me to blame, and I always guarded so well the exterior, that they could not blame my conduct ; for as I was modest at church, and I never went out without my mother, and the reputation of the house was great, I passed for good. I did not see my betrothed till two or three days before the marriage. I caused Masses to be said all the time I was engaged, to know your will, 0 my God ; for I desired to do it at least in that. Oh, goodness of my God, to suffer me at that time, and to permit me to pray with as much boldness as if I had been one of your friends ! — I who treated you as if your greatest enemy !

The joy at this marriage was universal in our town, and in this rejoicing I was the only person sad. I could neither laugh like the others, nor even eat, so oppressed "was my heart. I knew not the cause of my sadness ; but, my God, it was as if a presentiment 3'ou were giving me of what should befall me. Hardly w^as I married when the recollection of my desire to be a nun came to overwhelm me. All those who came to compliment me the day after

Cdap. VI.] AUTOBIOGRAPnY. 43

my marriage could not help rallying me because I wept bitterly, and I said to tlicin, " Alas ! I liad once so desired to be a nun ; why am I then now married ? and by what fatality is this happened to me ? " I was no sooner at home with my new husband than I clearly saw it would be for me a house of sorrow. I was obliged to change my conduct, for their manner of living was very diflferent from that in my father's house. My mother-in-law, who had been long time a widow, thought only of saving, while in my father's house we lived in an exceedingly noble manner. Everything was showy and evcrthing on a liberal scale, and all my husband and my mother-in-law called extrava- gance, and I called respectability, was observed there. I was very much surprised at this change, and the more so as my vanity would rather have increased than cut down expenditure. I was more than fifteen years — in my sixteenth year — when I was married. My astonishment greatly increased when I saw I must give up what I had with so much trouble acquired. At my father's house we had to live with much refinement, learn to speak correctly. All I said was there applauded and made much of. Here I was not listened to, except to be contradicted and to be blamed. If I spoke well, they said it was to read them a lesson. If any one came and a subject was under dis- cussion, while my father used to make me speak, here, if I wished to express my opinion, they said it was to dispute, and they ignominiously silenced me, and from morning to night they chided me. They led my husband to do the same, and he was only too well disposed for it. I should have a difficulty in writing these sorts of things to you, which cannot be done without wounding charity, if you had not forbidden me to omit anj'thing, and if you had not absolutely commanded me to explain everything, and give all particulars. One thing I ask you, before going farther, which is, not to regard things from the side of the creature, for this would make persons appear more faulty than they

44 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

were ; for my mother-in law was virtuous, and my husband was religious and had no vice. But we must regard all things in God, who permitted these things for my salvation, and because he would not destroy me. I had, besides, so much pride that if a diflferent conduct had been observed with me, I would have been upheld in that, and I should not, perhaps, have turned to God, as I did eventually, through the wretchedness to which I was reduced by crosses.

To return to my subject, I will say that my mother-in- law conceived such a hostility to me, that in order to annoy me she made me do the most humiliating things ; for her temper was so extraordinary, from not having conquered it in her youth, that she could not live with an}' one. There was another cause also that, from not praying, and only repeating vocal prayers, she did not see these sorts of defects, or else, while seeing them, from not gathering strength by prayer, she was unable to rid herself of them ; and it was a pity, for she had merit and cleverness. I was thus made the victim of her tempers. Her whole occupation was to continually thwart me, and she inspired her son with the same sentiments. They insisted that persons far below me should take precedence, in order to annoy me. My mother, who was very sensitive on the point of honour, could not endure this, and when she learned it from others — for I never said anything of it — she found fault with me, thinking I did it from not knowing how to maintain my rank, that I had no spirit, and a thousand other things of this kind. I dared not tell her how I was situated, but I was dying of vexation, and what increased it still more was the recollection of the persons who had sought me in marriage, the difference of their temper and their manner of acting, the love and esteem they had for me, and their gentleness and politeness : this was very hard for me to bear. My mother-in-law incessantly sjioke to me disparagingly of my father and my mother, and I

OiAP. VI.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 45

never went to see them but I bad to endure tbis disagree- able talk on my return. On tbe otber band, my motber complained of me tbat I did not see ber often enougb. Sbe said I did not love ber, tbat I attacbed myself too mucb to my busband ; tbus I bad mucb to suffer from all sides. Wbat increased still more my crosses was tbat my motber related to my motber-in-law tbe troubles I bad given ber in my cbildbood, so tbat tbe moment I spoke, tbey reproacbed me witb tbis, and told me I was a wicked cbaracter. My busband wisbed me to remain all day in tbe room of my motber-in-law, witbout being allowed to go to my apartment : I had not therefore a moment for seclu- sion or breathing a little. Sbe spoke disparagingly of me to every one, hoping thereby to diminish the esteem and affection each had for me, so that she put insults upon me in the presence of tbe best society. That did not produce the effect she hoped, for those in whose presence it took place preserved for me the greater esteem as they saw me suffer patiently. It is true sbe discovered the secret of extinguishing the vivacity of my mind and making me become quite dull, so that I could no more be recognized. Those who bad not seen me before used to say, " "Wbat ! is that tbe person who passed for being clever ? Sbe does not say two words. It is a pretty picture." I was not then sixteen years old. I was so timid I dared not go out without my mother-in-law, and in ber presence I could not speak. I did not know what I said, so apprehensive was I of vexing her and drawing upon myself some harsh words. For crown of affliction I bad a maid they bad given me, who was quite in their interest. Sbe kept me in sight like a duenna, and strangely ill-treated me. Ordinarily I suffered in patience an evil that I could not binder, but at other times I lost my control so as to make some answer ; which was for a long time a source of real crosses to me and of bitter reproaches. "When I went out, tbe valets bad orders to give an account of all I did. It was then I

46 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

commenced to eat the bread of tears. If I -^as at table they did things to me that covered me with confusion. I betook mj'self to my tears and had a double shame — one, at what was said to me, the other, at not being able to restrain my tears. I had no one with whom to share my grief, who might aid me to bear it. I wished to tell something of it to my mother, and that caused me so many new crosses that I resolved to have no other confidante of my vexations than myself. It was not through harshness that my husband treated me so, but from his hasty and violent temper ; for he loved me even passionately. What my mother-in-law was continually telling him irritated him.

It was in a state so every way deplorable, 0 my God, that I commenced to conceive the need I had of your assistance; for this state was the more perilous for me in that outside my own house, finding only admirers and persons who flattered me for my ruin, it was to be feared, at such a tender age and amidst such strange domestic crosses, that I might turn altogether to the outside world and choose the path of irregularity. You, 0 my God, by your goodness and the love you bore me, made a quite contrary use of it. You drew me to you by those redoubled blows, and you effected by your crosses what your caresses could not do. You even made use, at the commencement of my marriage, of my natural pride to keep me in my duty. I knew that a woman of honour ought never give umbrage to her husband, and for this reason I was so extremely circumspect I often pushed matters to excess, even to refusing the hand to those who offered it to me — and there was one occurrence which, from having pushed prudence too far, was near ruining me ; for things were taken in the opposite sense, yet my husband knew my innocence and the falseness of what m^'' mother-in-law wished to impress upon him. I say, then, these severe crosses made me return to you, 0 my God. I commenced to deplore the sins of my youth ; for since my marriage I

Chap. VI.] AUTOBIOGRAPnY. 47

had only committed one that appeared to mc voluntary — the rest were feelings of vanity that I did not wish to have, or, if I wished them, my vexatious counterbalanced them. Moreover, there were a number that appeared right to my defective light, for I was not enlightened on the essence of vanity. I fixed only upon its accidents. I endeavoured, then, to improve my life by penitence and a general confession, the most particular I had yet made. I gave up at once all Eomances, although they were at one time my passion; it had been weakened some time before my marriage by the reading of the Gospel. I found it so beautiful, and I discovered in it a character of truth that disgusted me with all other books, which appeared to me full of lies. I even gave up indifferent books, in order to read none but what were profitable. I resumed prayer, and I endeavoured not to offend you, 0 my God. I felt that, little by little, your love was regaining the supremacy in my heart and banishing from it all other love. I had, however, a frightful vanity and a very great complaisance for myself, which has been my most troublesome and most obstinate sin.

My crosses redoubled each day, and what rendered them more painful was that my mother-in-law was not content with the sharp words she said to me in public and private, but for the smallest things she would continue in a temper for a fortnight at a time. I passed a part of my life in lamentations when I could be alone, and my grief became each day more bitter. I sometimes was carried awa}'' when I saw maids who were my servants, and who owed me submission, treating me so ill. Nevertheless, I did what I could to conquer my temper — a thing that has cost me not a little. Such deadly blows diminished my natural vivacity to that degree that I became gentle. The greater part of the time I was like a lamb that is being shorn. I prayed our Lord to help me, and he was my resource. As my age was so different from theirs — for my

48 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

husband ^vas twenty-two years my senior — I saw there was no chance of changing their temper ; it was strengthened with their age. I caused Masses to be said in order that you might give me the grace, 0 my God, to adapt myself to it. It was what I incessantly asked of you. As I saw all I said offended them, and even things at which others would have felt themselves obliged, I knew not what to do. One day, beside myself with grief — I had only been six months married — I took a knife when I was alone to cut off my tongue, in order to be no longer obliged to speak to persons who made me speak only to have matter for getting into a passion. I would have performed this mad operation, if you had not suddenly stopped me, 0 my God, and if you had not made me see my folly. I prayed you continually, I even communicated and had Masses said that I might become dumb, such a child was I still. I have had large experience of crosses, but I have never found any more difficult to bear than that of an unrelaxing contrariety, and while one does what one can to eatisfy persons, in place of succeeding, to offend by the very things that ought to oblige them, and being still compelled to be with them from morning to evening, not daring to leave them for a moment ; for I have found great crosses overwhelm and even deaden anger, but as for continual contrariety, it irritates and wakes up a certain bitterness, it produces so strange an effect, that one must practise the most extreme violence on one's self not to fly into a passion.

Such was my married life rather that of a slave than of a free person. To increase my disgrace, it was discovered, four months after my marriage, that my husband was gouty. This disease, which doubtless has sanctified him, caused me many real crosses both without and within. That year he twice had the gout six weeks at a time, and it again seized him shortly after, much more severely. At last he became so indisposed that he did not leave his room, nor often even his bed, which he ordinarily kept

CuAP. Yl.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 4{V

many months. I watched him with great care, and, though I was very young, I did not fail in my duty. I even did it to excess. But, alas ! all that did not win me their friendship. I had not even the consolation of knowing if they were pleased with what I did ; never did they exhibit the least sign of it. I deprived myself of all even the most innocent diversions to remain near my husband, and I did what I thought might please him. Sometimes he tolerated me, and I thought myself very happy. At other times I was insupportable. My own friends used to say that I was indeed of a nice age to be nurse to a sick man ; that it was a disgraceful thing not to make use of my talents. I answered them that, as I had a husband, I ought to share his troubles as well as his wealth. I did not let any one know I was suffering, and, as my face appeared content, they would have thought me very happy with my husband, if he had not sometimes, in the presence of people, let bitter words to me escape him. Besides, my mother could hardly suffer the assiduity I exhibited to my husband, assuring me I was thereby securing unhappiuess for myself, and in the end he would exact as a duty what I was doing as virtue ; instead of pitying me, she often found fault with me. It is true that, to look at things humanly, it was a folly to make a slave of myself in this way for persons who had no gratitude for it ; but, 0 my God, how different were my thoughts from those of all these persons ! and how different was that which appeared to them on the outside from that which was within ! My husband had this foible, that when any one said anything against me, he was at once angered, and his natural violence at once took lire. It was God's mode of leading me ; for my husband was reasonable and loved me. When I was ill he was inconsolable, even to a degree I cannot tell ; and yet he did not cease to get into passions with me. I believe that, but for his mother and that maid of whom I have spoken, I should have been very happy with him ; for as to hastiness,

VOL. I. E

50 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

there is hardly a man who has not plenty of it, and it is the duty of a reasonable woman to put up with it quietly without increasing it by sharp answers. You made use of all these things, 0 my God, for my salvation. Through your goodness you have so managed things that I have afterwards seen this course was absolutely necessary for me, in order to make me die to my vain and haughty natural character. I should not have had the strength to destroy it myself, if you had not worked for it by an altogether wise dispensation of your providence. I urgently'' asked patience from you, 0 my God. Nevertheless, I often had outbursts, and my quick and hasty natural character often betrayed the resolutions I had taken to hold my tongue. You permitted it, doubtless, 0 my God, in order that my self-love should not nourish itself on my patience ; for an outburst of a moment caused me many months of humiliation, reproach, and sorrow. It was a matter for new crosses.

€iiAr. VIL] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 61

CHAPTER VII.

This first year I did not make use of my crosses. I was still vain. I lied to conceal or to excuse some things, because I was strangely afraid. I gave way to anger, being unable to approve in my mind what appeared to me such unreasonable conduct, especially in what concerned the ill-treatment from that maid who attended me. It appeared to me an unheard-of thing that they should take her side against me when she offended me ; for as for my mother-in-law, her great age and position rendered things more tolerable. 0 my God, how you made me in the end see things with very different eyes ! I found in you reasons for suffering, which I had never found in the creature, and I saw with complaisance that this unreason- able and crucifying conduct was all necessary for me. I had still another fault which was common to me and almost all other women, and arose from the love I bore myself. It was that I could not hear any beautiful woman praised in my presence without finding some fault with her, and cleverly bringing it to notice, to diminish the good they were saying of her ; as if I was esteemed less when any one else was esteemed with me. This fault lasted for a long time. It is the fruit of a stupid and coarse pride, which I had in a supreme degree. What a debt I owe to you, 0 my God, for having observed with me the conduct

62 MADAME QUYON. [Part I.

that you have ! for if my mother-in-law and my husband had applauded me, as was done in my father's house, I should have become insupportable from my pride. I was careful to go to see the poor. I did what I could to conquer my temper, and especially in things which made my pride ready to burst. I gave much alms. I was exact in my prayer.

I became pregnant with my first child. During this time I was greatly petted as far as the body went, and my crosses were in some degree less severe thereby. I was so indisposed that I would have excited the com- passion of the most indifferent. Moreover, they had such a great wish to have children, that they were very apprehensive lest I should miscarry. Yet towards the end they were less considerate to me, and once, when my mother-in-law had treated mo in a very shocking manner, I was so malicious as to feign a colic in order to alarm them in my turn ; because if I had miscarried they would have been inconsolable, so anxious were they to have children, for my husband was the only son, and my mother-in-law, who was very rich, could have heirs through him alone. Nevertheless, when I saw that this gave them too much trouble, I said that I was better. One could not be more miserable than I was during this pregnancy; for besides a continual sickness, I had such an extraordinary disgust that, with the exception of some fruit, I could not look at food. I had, moreover, continual faintings and very severe pain. I was extraordinarily ill at my accouchement. As my illness was very long and very severe, 1 had an opportunity of practising patience. I offered all that to our Lord, and as soon as I had a little freedom, it seemed to me I suffered with much content- ment. I was very long ill from this confinement, for besides the fever, I was so weak that after several weeks they could scarcely stir me to make my bed. When I was a little better, I had an abscess in the breast, which had to

Chap. VII.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 53

be opened in two places, and this caused me much pain. All these ills, though violent, seemed to me but the shadows of ill in comparison with the troubles I suffered in my family, which, far from diminishing, increased each day. I was also subject to a very violent headache. During this time you increased, 0 my God, both my love for you and my patience. It is true that, owing to my afflictions, I was so indifferent to life that all the ills, apparently mortal, did not frighten me.

This first confinement improved my appearance, and in consequence made me more vain, for although I would not have been willing to add art to nature, yet I was very com- plaisant to myself. I was glad to be looked at, and, far from avoiding occasions for it, I went to promenades ; rarely however, and when I was in the streets, I took off my mask from vanity, and my gloves, to show my hands. Could there be greater silliness ? When I had been thus carried away, which happened often enough, I wept inconsolably ; but that did not correct me. I also some- times went to a ball, where I displayed my vanity in dancing.

In our family there happened an affair of great import- ance as to w^orldly means. The loss was very considerable. This cost me strange crosses for more than a year ; not that I cared anything for the losses, but it seemed to me I was the mark for all the bad tempers of the family. An entire volume would be necessary to describe what I suffered during this time. 0 God, with what pleasure did I sacrifice to you that money! and how often have I abandoned myself to you, to beg my bread, if you wished it ! My mother-in- law was inconsolable. She told me, O my God, to pray to you for these things, but it was utterly impossible for me. On the contrary, I sacrificed myself to you, urgently praying you rather to reduce the family to beggary than permit it to offend you. I was vexed with myself for being so de- tached from this wealth. I excused my mother-in-law in

54 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

my mind, and I used to sav, " If you Lad taken the trouble to watch it, as she has, you would not be so indifferent at seeing it carried off. You enjoy what has cost you nothing, and you reap what you have not sown." All these thoughts could not make me feel these losses. I formed for myself agreeable ideas of going to the Alms House, for we also lost large sums which were in the Hotel de Yille at Paris. It seemed to me even that there was no state so i)cor and miserable that I would not have found sweet compared to the continual domestic persecution. It is incredible that my father, who loved me so tenderly, and whom I honoured more than I can say, never knew anything of what I suffered. God so permitted it that I should have him also opposed to me for some time ; for my mother used constantly to tell him I was ungrateful, that I cared nothing for them, that I was entirely devoted to the family of my husband. All appearances in truth condemned me, for I used not to see my father and my mother a quarter of what I ought ; but they were ignorant of the captivity I was in, and what I had to bear to defend them. This talk of my mother, and a disagreeable circumstance that happened, altered a little my father's friendship for me. This, however, did not continue long. My mother-in-law used to reproach me, that no afflictions had ever befallen them till I had entered their house ; that all their mis- fortunes had come with me. On the other hand, my mother wanted to speak to me against my husband, which I could not allow.

I declare it is not without extreme repugnance I tell these things of my mother-in-law, and especially of ray husband (for my husband is in heaven, and I am certain of it) ; I have even some scruples. I do not doubt that by indiscretions, by my provoking temper, by certain outbursts of hastiness which sometimes escaped me, I gave plenty of occasion for all my crosses, so they have not the value and merit they would have had had I been

Chap. VII.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 55

more perfect. Besides, though I then had what is called patience in the world, I had not yet either the taste for or love of the cross, and for this reason I committed many faults. We must not regard this conduct, which appears unreasonable, with purely human eyes. We must go higher, and see God thus permitted it for my good, and owing to my pride ; for had I been otherwise, I should have ruined myself. One cannot write these things with more unwillingness than I do, and if I did not fear to disobey, I declare I would not proceed further.

We continued losing in every way, the King cutting off several sources of income, besides that other of the Hotel de Ville, which I have mentioned. Meditation in which state I then was did not give me a true peace in the midst of such great troubles. It, indeed, procures resignation, but not peace and joy. I, however, practised it t"svice a day very exactly, and as I had not that rooted presence of God which I have since had, I was subject to many wanderings. My pride nevertheless subsisted, and sustained itself in spite of so many things which were calculated to crush it. I had no one either to console me or to counsel me, for the sister who had brought me up was then dead — she died two months after my marriage. I had no confidence in the other. Life was very tiresome to me, and the more so because my passions were very quick ; for however I tried to conquer myself, I could not avoid giving way to anger, no more than to wishing to please.

I did not curl my hair, or very little ; I did not even put anything on my face, yet I was not the less vain of it. I even very seldom looked in the looking-glass, in order not to encourage my vanity, and I made a practice of reading books of devotion, such as the " Imitation of Jesus Christ" and the works of St. Francis de Sales while my hair was being combed, so that as I read aloud the servants profited by it. Moreover, I let myself be dressed as they wished, remaining as they had arranged me — a thing which saves

56 MADAME GUYON. [Paut I.

trouble and material ' for vanity. I do not know how things were, but people always admired me, and the feelings of my vanity reawakened in everything. If on certain days I wished to look to better advantage, I failed, and the more I neglected myself the better I looked. It was a great stone of stumbling for me. How many times, 0 my God, have I gone to churches less to pray to you than to be seen there ! Other women, who were jealous of me, maintained that I painted, and said so to my confessor, who reproved me for it, although I assured him to the contrary. I often spoke to my own advantage, and I exalted myself with pride while lowering others. I sometimes still told lies, though I used all my efforts to free myself from this vice. These faults diminished slightly, for I pardoned nothing to myself, and I was very much afflicted at committing them. I wrote them all down, and I made very careful examinations to see from one week to another, from one month to another, how far I had corrected myself; but, alas! how little use was my laboin-, although fatiguing, because I placed almost all my confidence in my carefulness ! It is not, 0 my God, that I did not ask you with great urgency to deliver me from all these evils. I even prayed you to guard me, seeing the uselessness of my care, and I protested to you, if you did not do it, I should fall back into all my sins, and even into greater. My great crosses did not detach me from myself. They rendered me very indifferent to temporal wealth ; they even made me hate life ; but they did not take away those sentiments of vanity, that woke up with strength on all the occasions that I had of appearing. They were few, owing to the assiduity with which I attended on my husband. The church, 0 my God, was the place where I was most seen, and where I was most beset with sentiments of vanity. It appeared to me I would have wished to be otherwise, but it was a feeble and languishing will.

The long absence of my husband, my crosses and my

Chap. VII.] AUTOBIOGRAPBY. 57

vexations, made me resolve to go and see him where ho was. My mother-in-law opposed it strongly, but my father having wished it, I was let go. On my arrival, I found he had been near dying. He was greatly changed by the worry, for he was unable to finish his affairs, from not being at liberty to attend to them. He was even concealed in the Hotel de Longueville, where Madame de Longueville showed me great kindness, but as I was much remarked, he feared I would cause him to be discovered. That greatly troubled him, and he wished me to return home, playing the part of the aggrieved ; but love and the long time since he had seen me overcoming all other reasons, he made me remain with him. He kept me eight days without letting me leave his room, through this fear of discovery. This was a panic terror, for it had nothing to do with his business. But as he feared I would get ill in con- sequence, he begged me to go and walk in the garden, where I met Madame de Longueville, who remained a long time examining me thoroughl}'. I was suri^sed a person whose piety made so much noise should dwell so upon the exterior, and appear to make so much of it. She expressed great joy at seeing me. My husband was very pleased, for at bottom he loved me much, and I should have been very happy with him, but for the continual talk my mother-in-law entertained him with.

I cannot tell the kindness that was shown me in this house. All i\\e officials eagerly served me. Everywhere I found only persons who applauded me, owing to this miserable exterior. I was so scrupulous in not listening to any one on this point, I made myself ridiculous. I never spoke to a man alone, and never took one into my carriage unless my husband was there, although they might be my relatives. I never gave my hand without precaution, I never went into the carriages of men. In short, there was no possible measure I did not observe to avoid giving any umbrage to my husband, or any ground for my being

58 MADAME GUTON. [Part I.

talked of. So much precaution had I, 0 my God, for a vain point of honour, and I had bo little for the true honour, which is, not to displease j'ou. I -went so far in this, and my self-love Tvas so great, that if I had failed in any rule of politeness, I could not sleep at night. Every one wished to contribute to my diversion, and the outside life was only too agreeable for me ; but as to indoors, vexation had so depressed my husband, that each day I had to put up with something new, and that very often. Sometimes he threatened to throw the supper out of the window, and I told him it would be very unfair to me ; I had a good appetite. I laughed with him to win him, and oftentimes he quieted down at once, and the manner in which I spoke to him touched him. At other times melancholy got the upper hand, in spite of all I could do, and the love he had for me. He wished me to return home, but I could not desire it, owing to what I had suffered in his absence. I remarked that generally after I had been to the Mass, or had communicated, it was then he was seized with the most vexatious tempers, which often lasted very long. You gave me, 0 my God, much patience, and you enabled me to make no answer to him, or else some very trifling thing with gentleness, and thus the Devil, who hoped only to lead me thereby to offend 3'ou, went off in confusion, owing to the singular assistance of your grace, which, despite the rebellion of nature I keenly felt, did not permit me to get into a passion.

I became quite languishing, for I loved you, 0 my God, and I would not have wished to displease you. This vanity which I felt, and I could not destroy, caused me much trouble. That, joined to a long succession of vexations, made me fall ill. As I did not wish to cause trouble in the Hotel de Longueville, I had myself carried elsewhere, and I was so ill and reduced to such extremity that, after they had in seven days taken from me forty-eight pallets of blood, and they could get no more, the doctors despaired

Chap. VIL] AUTOBIOGRAPnY. 59

of ray life, and this state was protracted. There was no probability I could recover. The priest who confessed me, and who had much piety and discernment, for he had been an intimate friend of St. Francis de Sales, appeared so satisfied with me that he said I would die like a saint. It was only I, 0 my God, who was not satisfied with myself. My sins were too present to my mind, and too painful to my heart, to allow this presumption. They brought mo the Holy Viaticum at midnight. There was general desolation among the family and all those who knew me. I was the only person to whom death was indifferent. I regarded it without fear. I had no grief at leaving this miserable body, whose vanity was more insupportable to me than death. My crosses greatly contributed to rendering me unconcerned at its approach. My husband was in- consolable, and was so afilicted he was near dying. When he saw there was no hope ; that the disease increased as well as my weakness ; that the remedies irritated it ; that they found no more blood in my veins, which were drained by the profuse bleedings they had subjected me to, — on the Festival of St. Francis de Sales he vowed me to this saint, and caused many Masses to be said. It was no sooner done than I began to improve. But v;hat is strange is, that in spite of all his love, hardly was I out of danger when he commenced to be vexed with me. Scarcely could I move about when I had to endure new assaults. This illness was very useful to me, for besides a very great patience in the midst of severe pain, it threw a great light for me on the worthlessness of the things of the world. It detached me much from myself. It gave me a new courage to suffer better than I had done in the past. I even felt that your love, 0 my God, was strengthening itself in my heart, with the desire to please you and to be faithful to you in my condition, and many other benefits it conferred on me which it would be useless to detail. I was still six months dragging on with a slow fever and a hepatic tiux.

<J0 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

They thought this "vvould ultimately carry me off. But, 0 my God, you were not yet willing to take me to you. The designs you had for me were far other than that. You were not satisfied with making me the object of your mercy ; you willed I should be the victim of your justice.

Chap. VIH.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 61

CHAPTER VIII.

At last, after long debility, I recovered my former health, and I lost my mother, who died like au angel. For God, "who willed to commence even in this life to recompense her great almsgiving, gave her such a grace of detach- ment, that, although she was only twenty-four hours ill, she left all that was most dear to her without grief. Many things happened during this time that I suppress, Sir, as being of no utility either in making me known to you, or for your own use. It was a continuation of daily crosses and occasions for vanity. However, I still pursued my little course of prayer, which I never failed to offer twice a day. I watched over myself, continually conquering myself, and I gave much alms. I went to the houses of the poor, and I assisted them in their illnesses. I did, according to my light, all the good I knew, being punctual at church and remaining before the Holy Sacrament, having adopted for it a perpetual adoration. You in- creased, 0 my God, my love and my patience in proportion as you increased my sufferings. The temporal advantages that my mother procured for my brother above me, at which I was no way vexed, nevertheless caused me crosses, for at home they blamed me for everything. I was also much indisposed in a second pregnancy, and even some- time ill of a double-tertian fever. I was still weak, and

-62 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

I did not yet serve you, 0 my God, "^itb that vigour that you soon afterwards gave me. I would have liked to reconcile your love with the love of myself and of creatures ; for I was so unfortunate that I still found persons who loved me and whom I could not hinder m3'sclf from wishing to please — not that I loved them, hut from the love I hore myself.

You permitted, 0 my God, that Madame de Ch , who

was exiled, came to my father, and he offered her a portion of the house, which she accepted, and she lived there some time. This lady was of singular piety and very spiritual. As I often used to see her, and she had a friendship for me, because she saw I wished to love God, and that I employed myself in external works of charity, she remarked that I had the virtues of the active and complex life, but that it was not in the simplicity of prayer in which she was. She sometimes dropped a word to me on this subject, but as the hour was not yet come, I did not understand her. She vras more useful to me from her example than from her •words. I saw on her face something that showed a very great presence of God, and I remarked in her what I had never yet seen in any one. I endeavoured, through my head and thoughts, to give m3'self a continual presence of God. I gave myself much trouble, and made no advance. I wished to have by an effort what I could not acquire save in ceasing all effort. This worthy lady charmed me by her virtue, which I saw to be far above the ordinary. Seeing me so complex, she often said something to me ; but it was not time — I did not understand her. I spoke of it to my confessor, who told me the exact opposite, and as I discovered to her what my confessor had said thereon, she did not venture to open herself to me.

My father's nephew, of whom I have spoken, who had gone to Cochin China with M. de Heliopolis, arrived. He came to Europe to fetch priests. I was delighted to see him, for I remembered the good his former visit had

Chap. VIII.] AUTOBIOGRAPUY. G3

brought me. Madame de Ch was no less pleased than

I to see liim, for they quickly understood each other, and they had one and the same spiritual language, which was also known to the prioress of a convent of Benedictines, named Genevieve Granger, one of the holiest women of her time. The virtue of this excellent relative charmed me, and I admired his continual prayer, without being able to understand it. I forced myself to meditate continually, to think unceasingly of you, 0 my God, to repeat prayers and utter ejaculations ; but I could not by all these various things give myself what you yourself give, and which is experienced only in simplicity. I was surprised at his telling me that he thought of nothing in prayer, and I wondered at what I could not comprehend. He did all he could to attach me more strongly to you, 0 my God. He assured me, if he was so happy as to endure martyrdom — as, in fact, he endured it — he would oJBfer it to you to obtain for me a great gift of prayer. "We used to repeat together the Office of the Holy Virgin. Often he stopped quite short, because the violence of the attraction closed his mouth, and then he ceased those vocal prayers. I did not at that time know what it was. He had an incredible affection for me. The alienation from the corruption of the century which he saw in me, the horror of sin at an age when others only commence to taste its i)leasures (for I was not eighteen years old), gave him tenderness for me. I complained of my faults with much ingenuousness, for I have always been clear enough thereon ; but as the difficulty I found in entirely correcting them made me lose courage, he sup- ported me, and exhorted me to support myself, and he would have liked to give me another method of prayer, which would have been more efficacious to rid me of myself; but I gave no opening for that. I believe his prayers were more efficacious than his words, for he was no sooner out of my father's house than you had compassion on me, 0 my Divine Love. The desire I had to please you,

64 MADAME GUYON. [Pabt I.

the tears I shed, my great labour and the little fruit I reaped from it, moved your compassion. You gave me in a moment, through your grace and through your goodness alone, vrhat I had been unable to give myself through all my efforts. In this state was my soul, when by a goodness the greater in proportion as I had rendered myself un- worthy of it, without paying regard either to yom* graces rejected, or to my sins, any more than to my extreme ingratitude, seeing me rowing with so much toil, helpless, you sent, 0 my Divine Saviour, the favourable wind of your divine working to make me proceed at full sail upon that sea of afflictions. The thing happened as I am about to tell.

I often spoke to my confessor of the trouble I had at not being able to meditate or imagine anything to myself. Subjects of prayer too extended were useless to me, and I did not comprehend anything in them. Those that were very short and full of unction suited me better. This worthy Father did not understand me. At last God per- mitted that a monk, very spiritual, of the Order of St. Francis, travelled by where we were. He wanted to go by another way, as well to shorten the journey as to avail himself of the ease of water-carriage, but a secret force made him change his plan, and obliged him to pass through the place where I dwelt. He at once saw there was there something for him to do. He fancied that God called him for the conversion of a man of consideration in this neigh- bourhood, but his efforts were useless. It was the conquest of my soul that you wished to effect through him. 0 my God, it seems that you forgot all the rest to think only of this ungrateful and faithless heart. As soon as this worthy monk had arrived in the country, he went to see my father, who was very glad of it, and who about that time being ill, was near dying. I was then laid up with my second son. For some time they concealed from mo my father's illness, through fear for my health, yet an

Chap. VIII.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 65

indiscreet person having informed me, ill as I was, I got up and -went to see him. The haste with which I had gone about after my confinement caused me a dangerous illness. My father recovered, not perfectly, hut enough to give me new marks of his affection. I told him my desire to love you, 0 my God, and the grief I was in at not being able to do it according to my desire. My father, who singularly loved me, thought he could not give me a more solid proof of it than in procuring for me the acquaintance of this monk. He told me what he knew of this holy man, and that he wished me to see him. I at first made much difficulty, because I never used to go to see monks. I believed I was bound so to act in order to observe the rules of the most scrupulous prudence ; yet my father's urgency took with me the place of an absolute command. I thouglit no harm could come to me from a thing I did only to obey him.

I took with me one of my relatives and went there. When he saw me at a distance he was quite confused ; for he was very particular in never seeing women, and a solitude of five years, which he had just left, had made them not a little strangers to him. He was then very much surprised that I was the first who addressed herself to him, and what I told him increased his surprise, as he has since acknowledged to me, assuring me that my appearance and manner of saying things had confused him, so that he did not know if he was dreaming. He hardly advanced, and was a long time without being able to speak to mo. I knew not to what to attribute his silence. I continued to speak to him, and to tell him in a few words my difficulties about prayer. He answered me at once : " It is, Madame, because you seek outside what 3 ou have within. Accustom yourself to seek God in your heart, and you will find him there." On finishing these words, he left me.

The next morning he was very greatly astonished when I went to see him, and when I told him the effect his words VOL. I. r

6G MADAME GUYON. [rAr.x I.

had produced in 1113' soul ; for it is true they -were for me hke an arrow that pierced my heart through and through. I felt in that moment a very deep wound, as delicious, as full of love, a wound so sweet, I desired never to be healed of it. Those words put into my heart what I was seeking so many years, or rather they made me discover what was there, and which I did not enjoy for want of knowing it. 0 my Lord, you were in my heart, and you asked from me only a simple turning inward to make me feel your presence. O Infinite Goodness, you were so near, and I went running here and there to look for j-ou, and I did not find you. My life was miserable, and my happiness was within me. I was in poverty in the midst of riches, and I was dying of hunger near a table spread and a continual feast. 0 Beauty ancient and new, why have I known you so late ? Alas ! I was seeking you where you were not, and I did not seek you where you were. It was for want of understand- ing those words of your Gospel when you say, ** The kingdom of God is not licre or there, but the kingdom of God is within you." I experienced it at once, since hence- forth you were my King, and my heart was your kingdom, where you commanded as Sovereign, and where you carried out all your wills ; for v.'hat you do in a soul when you come there as a King, is the same which you did when you came into the world to be King of the Jews. " It is written of me," said that divine King, "at the head of the book, that I will do your will." It is v/hat he writes at once on the entrance of the heart where he comes to reign.

I told this worthy Father that I did not know what he had done to me ; that my heart was quite changed ; that God was there, and I had no longer any trouble to find him ; for from that moment I was given an experience of his presence in my central depth, not through thought or appli- cation of the mind, but as a thing one possesses really in a very sweet manner. I experienced those words of the spouse of the Canticles, " Your name is like oil poured

CiiAi'. VII r.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 67

out ; therefore the young girls have loved you." For I experienced in my soul an unction which, like a soothing balm, healed all my wounds, and which even spread itself so powerfully over my senses, that I could hardly open my mouth or my eyes. I did not sleep at all the whole of that night, because your love, 0 my God, was not only for me like a delightful oil, but also like a devouring fire, which kindled in my soul such a flame that it seemed bound to devour everything in an instant. I was all of a sudden so changed that I was no longer recognizable either by myself or by others. I no longer found cither those faults or those dislikes. All appeared to mo consumed like straw in a great fire.

This worthy Father, however, could not make up his mind to undertake my direction, although he had seen so surprising a change eflected by God. Many reasons led him to decline it : my appearance, which gave him much apprehension ; my extreme youth, for I was only nineteen years old ; and a promise he had made to God, through distrust of himself, never to undertake the direction of any female unless our Lord imposed it upon him by a special providence. On my urging him, then, to take me under Ids direction, he told me to pray to God about it ; that he would do so on his side. When he was in prayer, it was said to him, " Do not fear to take charge of her : she is my spouse." 0 my God, permit me to say to you, that you did not mean it. What ? your spouse ! this frightful monster of filth and iniquity, who had done nothing but offend you, abuse your graces, and pay your goodness with ingratitude? This worthy Father then told me that he was willing to direct me.

Nothing was now more easy for me than to pray. Hours were to me no more than moments, and I was unable not to do it. Love left me not a moment of respite. I said to him, " 0 my Love, it is enough : leave me." My prayer was, from the moment of which I have spoken, void

68 MADAME GUYON. [Part 1.

of all forms, species, and images. Nothing of my prayer passed into my head, but it was a prayer ofenjoj^ment and possession in the will, where the delight of God was so great, so pure, and so simple, that it attracted and absorbed the other two powers of the soul in profound concentration, without act or speech. I had, however, sometimes freedom to say some words of love to my Beloved, but then every- thing was taken from me. It was a prayer of faith, which excluded all distinction ; for I had not any view of Jesus Christ or the divine attributes. Everything was absorbed in a delicious faith, where all distinctions were lost to give love room for loving with more expansion, without motives or reasons for loving. That sovereign of the powers — the will — swallowed up the two others, and took from them every distinct object to unite them the better in it, in order that the distinct should not arrest them, and thus take from them the uniting force and hinder them from losing them- selves in love. It is not that they did not subsist in their unconscious and passive operations, but it is that the light of faith, like a general light, similar to that of the sun, absorbs all distinct lights, and throws them into obscurity to our eyes, because the excess of his light surpasses them all.

Chap. JX.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 69

CHAPTER IX.

This, then, was the prayer which was communicated to me at once, which is far above ecstasies, ravishments, visions, etc. ; for all those graces are far less pure. Visions are in the powers inferior to the will, and their effect must always terminate at the will, and in the sequel they must he lost in the experience of what one sees, knows, and hears in those states ; otherwise the soul would never arrive at the perfect union. What she would then have that she would even give the name of union to, would he a mediated union, and a flowing of the gifts of God into the powers ; but it is not God himself; so that it is very important to prevent souls from dwelling upon visions and ecstasies, because this arrests them almost all their life; besides, those graces are very subject to illusion, for that which has form, image, and distinctness, the Devil may imitate, together with the sensible delight, but that which is detached from all images, forms, species, and above things sensible, the Devil cannot enter these. Of these kinds of gifts the less pure and lierfect, and the most subject to illusion, are visions and ecstasies. Eavishments and revelations are not at all so much, although they are not a little so. The vision is never of God himself, nor almost ever of Jesus Christ, as those who have them imagine. It is an angel of light, who, according to the power which is given him by God, causes the soul to see his representation, which he himself

70 MADAME GUYON. [Part L

takes. It appears to me that the apparitions that people believe to be of Jesus Christ himself are something like the sun, which paints itself in a cloud -with such vivid colours, that he ^Yho does not know this secret, believes it is the sun itself, 3'et it is only its image. Jesus Christ in that way pictures himself in the intelligence, and those arc called intellectual visions, and are the most perfect; or that is done by angels, which, being pure intelligences, may thus be imprinted, and thus show themselves. St. Francis d'Assisi, very enlightened on visions, has never attributed to Jesus Christ himself tlie impression of his stigmata, but to a Seraph, who, taking the appearance of Jesus Christ, impressed them upon him. The imagination impresses itself also with phantoms and holy represen- tations. There are, further, corporal ones ; both sorts are the most gross and the most subject to illusion. It is of these sorts of things St. Paul speaks when he says that the Angel of Darkness transfigures himself to an Angel of Light — a thing that ordinarily happens when one attaches importance to visions, esteems them, dwells upon them, because all these things excite vanity in the soul, or at least hinder her from running in blind faith, which is above all sight, knowledge, and light, as St. Denis explains.

Ecstasy comes from a sensible delight which is a spiritual sensuality, where the soul, letting herself go too far, in con- sequence of the sweetness she finds there, falls into faintness. The Devil gives this kind of sensible sweetness to entice the soul, make her hate the cross, to render her sensual, and to fill her with vanity and love of self, to arrest her at the gifts of God, and to hinder her from following Jesus Christ by renunciation and death to all things. Distinct interior utterances are also very subject to illusion. The Devil forms many of them, and, though they should bo from the good angel — for God never speaks in this way — they do not always mean all that they seem to say, and very seldom does one sec that hajipen which is in this way

Chap. IX.] .AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 71

spoken ; for wlieii God sends this kind of message by bis angels, be understands tbings in bis ^vay, and we take tbem in ours, and it is tbis wbicb misleads us. Tbc im- mediate utterance of God is none otbcr tban tbe expression of bis Word in tbc soul — speecb substantial, wbicb bas no sound or articulation ; speech vivifying and operative, as it is written, "He spoke, and tbey are made ;" speech which is never for a moment mute or fruitless ; speech which never ceases in tbe centre of tbe soul when she is fitted for it, and which returns as pure to its principle as it left it ; speech where there is never any mistake ; speech which makes Jesus Christ become the life of the soul, since it is none other than himself as the Word ; speech which has a wonderful cfticacj", not only in the soul where it is received, but which communicates itself to other souls through that one, as a divine germ which makes them fructify for eternal life; speech always mute and always eloquent ; speech that is none other than yourself, 0 my God, the Word made flesh ; speech which is the kiss of tbe mouth, and the union, immediate and essential, that you are, infinitely elevated above those utterances that are created, limited, and intelligible.

Revelations of the future are also very dangerous, and the Devil can counterfeit them with auguries, as he once did in the heathen temples, where he rendered oracles. Even though tbey should be from God tbrough tbe ministry of bis angels, we must get beyond them, without dwelling upon tbem, because we do not understand what tbey signify, true revelations being always very obscure. A further reason is that tbis amuses tbe soul extremely, binders her from living in total abandonment to tbe Divine Providence, gives false assurances and frivolous hopes, fills tbe mind with future thing?, and binders from dying to all and passing beyond all things to follow Jesus Christ, naked, despoiled of all.

The Eevelation of Jesus Christ, of which St. Paul speaks,

72 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

is very different from all that. It is manifested to the soul when the eternal Word is communicated to her — revelation ■which makes us become second Jesus Christs on earth through participation, and which brings to pass that he expresses himself in us ; it is this revelation which is always true, and which the Devil cannot counterfeit.

Ravishments come from another principle. God attracts the soul powerfully to make her go out of herself and to absorb her in him ; and of all the gifts I have described, it is the most perfect. But the soul being still arrested by her self-hood, she can not go out of herself, so that being attracted on the one hand, and kept back on the other, it is this which operates the ravishment, or flight of the spirit, which is more violent than ecstasy, and sometimes raises the body from the earth. However, that which men admire so extraordinarily is an imperfection and a defect in the creature.

True ravishment and perfect ecstasy are operated by total annihilation, where the soul, losing all self-hood, passes into God without effort and without violence, as into the place which is proper and natural to her. For God is the centre of the soul, and when once the soul is disengaged from the self-hood which arrested her in herself or in other creatures, she infallibly passes into God, where she dwells hidden with Jesus Christ. But this ecstasy is operated only by simple faith, death to all things created, even to the gifts of God, which, being creatures, hinder the soul from falling into the One uncreated. It is for this reason, I say, it is of great importance to make her pass beyond all his gifts, howsoever sublime they may appear, because, as long as the soul dwells in them, she does not veritably renounce herself, and so never passes into God himself, although she may be in those gifts in a very sublime manner. But resting thus in the gifts, she loses the real enjoyment of the Giver, which is an in- estimable loss.

Cjiap. IX.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 73

Through an inconceivable goodness, 0 my God, you introduced me into a state very pure, very firm, and very soHd. You took possession of my will, and you there established your throne, and in order that I should not let myself aim at those gifts and withdraw myself from your love, you put me at once into a union of the powers and into a continual adherence to you. I was unable to do anything else but to love you with a love as profound as it was tranquil, which absorbed everything else. Souls that are taken this way are the most favoured, and they have a shorter road to travel. It is true when you advance them so quickly, 0 my God, they must expect violent crosses and cruel deaths, especially if they are from the first touched with much faith, abandonment, pure love, disinterestedness, and love of the sole interest of God alone, without any self-regard. These M'cre the dispositions you from the first placed in me, with so vehement a desire of suffering for you, that I was quite languishing from it. I was on a sudden disgusted with all creatures ; all that was not my Love was insupportable to me ; the cross I had till then borne through resignation became my delight and the object of my complaisance.

74 MADAME GUYON. [Paet I.

CHAPTEE X.

I WROTE all this to that worthy Father, who was filled with joy and astonishment. 0 God, what penances did not the love of suffering make me practise ! I practised all the austerities I could imagine, but all was too feeble to satisfy the desire I had of suffering. Although my body was very delicate, the instruments of penance tore me without causing me pain, as it appeared to me. Every day I took long scourgings, which were with iron points. They drew much blood from me, and bruised me, but they did not satisfy me, and I regarded them with scorn and indignation, for they could not content me ; and as I had little strength, and my chest was extremely delicate, I wearied my arms and lost my voice without hurting myself. I wore girdles of hair and iron points. The former appeared to me a play of self-love, and the latter caused me extreme pain, putting on and taking off, and yet, when I had them on, they did not cause me pain. I tore myself with brambles, thorns, and nettles, which I kept on me. Tlie pain of these latter caused my heart to fail, and entirely deprived me of sleep, without my being able to remain sitting or lying, in consequence of the points remaining in my flesh. It was these last I used when I could get them, for they satisfied me more than any. I very often kept absinthe in my mouth, colocynth in my food ; although I ate so little that I am astonished how I could live ; besides, I was always ill or

Chap. X.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 75

languishing. If I walked, I placed stones in my shoes. It was, 0 my God, what you inspired mo from the first to do, as well as to deprive myself of all the most innocent gratifications. All that could flatter my taste was refused to it. All that was most disagreeable to it was given to it. My stomach, which up to this time was so delicate that it would be most violently upset at the least dirt, no longer dared manifest a dislike, but it saw itself at once compelled to take what made it ready to die, until it ceased to have any dislike. My taste, which up to that could hardly eat anything, was forced to eat everything without distinguish- ing, until it seemed to be unable even to make a choice. I did not do this through practice, nor study, nor with premeditation. You were continually in me, 0 my God, and you were so severe in your exactions that you did not allow me to pass the least thing. When I thought to do something, you suddenly stopped me, and made mo do, without thinking of it, all your wills and all that was repugnant to my senses, until they were so supple that they had not the least inclination nor the least repugnance. I dressed the wounds of all who came to me, and gave remedies to the sick. This mortification lasted for a long time, but as soon as my disgust ceased, and took alike the most horrible things and the best, the thought of it was entirely taken away from me, and I have since paid no attention to it ; for I did nothing of myself, but I allowed myself to be led by my King, who governed all as Sovereign. For many years I practised the former austerities, but as for these things, in less than a year my senses were reduced to subjection. Nothing extinguishes them so quickly as to refuse them all they desire, and to give them what they dislike. Nothing else kills so effectually ; and austerities, however great they be, if they are not accom- panied by what I have just said, still leave the senses in vigour and never deaden them, but this, joined with concentration, entirely deprives them of life.

76 MADAME GUYON. [Fart I.

When the worthy Father, whom I have mentioned, asked me how I loved God, I told him that I loved him more than the most passionate lover loved his mistress ; that this comparison was yet improper, since the love of creatures can never attain to that either in force or depth. This love was so continual, and always occupied me, and so powerful, I could not think of anything else. This pro- found stroke, this delicious and amorous wound, was inflicted on me on the Magdalen's Day, 1GG8 ; and that Father, who was a very good preacher, had been asked to preach in my parish, which was under the invocation of the Magdalen. He made three admirable sermons on this subject. I then perceived an effect which his sermons produced on me, namely, that I could hardly hear the words and what was said ; they at once made impression on my heart, and so powerfully absorbed me in God, that I could neither open my eyes nor hear what was said. To hear your name mentioned, 0 my God, or your love, was enough to throw me into profound prayer, and I experienced that your word made an impression directly on my heart, and that it pro- duced all its effect without the intervention of reflection and intellect ; and I have ever since experienced this, although in a different manner, according to the different degrees and states through which I have passed. It was, then, more perceptible to me. I could hardly any more l')rouounce vocal prayers.

That absorption in God in which I was, absorbed every- thing. I could no more see the saints or the Holy Virgin out of God, but I saw them all in him, without being able to distinguish them from him, save with trouble, and although I tenderly loved certain saints, as St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Magdalen, St. Theresa, all those who were spiritual, I could not yet make distinctions in them, nor invoke them out of God.

The 2nd of August the same year, which was only some weeks after my wound, the Fete of Notre Dame de Portion-

Chap. X.] AUTOBIOGEAPHY. 77

cule was celebrated in the convent in which this worthy Father, my director, was. I went in the morning to gain the indulgences. I was greatly surprised when I saw I could not succeed. I used every effort for that purpose, but in vain. I remained more than five hours continuously in the church without any advance. I was penetrated by a ray of pure love, so living that I could not make up my mind to shorten the pains due to my sins by indulgences. If they bad brought penalties and crosses I would have gained them. I said to you, 0 my Love, " I wish to suffer for you ; do not shorten my pains ; it would be to shorten my pleasures. I only find them in suffering for you. In- dulgences are good for those who do not know the value of suffering, who do not wish that your divine justice should be satisfied, and who, having a mercenary soul, are less afraid of displeasing you than apprehensive of the penalty which is attached to sin." But fearing I might be mistaken and commit a fault in not gaining indulgences — for I had never heard tell that one might be in this state — I made new efforts to gain them, but uselessly. At last, not knowing what to do, I said to our Lord, "If it is absolutely neces- sary to gain indulgences, transfer the penalties of the other life into this." As soon as I returned home, I wrote to that worthy Father an account of my disposition and my feel- ings, with so much facility and such ease of expression that, when preaching that day, he made it the third part of his sermon, repeating word for word what I had written.

I gave up all society. I renounced for ever games and amusements, the dance, and all useless promenades. Nearly two years before I had given up curling my hair. I was, however, very well dressed, for my husband wished it BO. My only diversion was to snatch moments to be alone with you, 0 my only Love. All other pleasure was for me a pain, not a pleasure. I did not lose your presence, which was given me by a divine and continual influx, not, as I had imagined, through an effort of the head, nor through

78 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

thinking of you, my divine Love, but in the depths of the will, where I tasted with ineffable sweetness the real enjoy- ment of the object loved — not, however, as afterwards, through an essential union, but through a true union in the will, which made me taste by happy experience that the soul is created to enjoy you, 0 my God. This union is the most perfect of all those which are operated in the powers. Its effect is also much greater, for the unions of the other powers enlighten the intellect and absorb the memory, but if they are not accompanied with this, they are of little use, because they produce only temporary effects. The union of the will carries with it, in essence and in reality, what the others have only in distinction. ]\Ioreover, it submits the soul to her God, conforms her to all his wills, gradually kills in her all " oicn " will, and at last, drawing with it the other powers by means of charity, of which it is full, gradually makes them unite in that centre, and there lose themselves so far as their operation is "oivn" and natural.

This loss is called " Annihilation of the powers," which must not be understood of a physical annihilation — that would be ridiculous, but they appear annihilated as re- gards us, although they still remain subsisting. This annihilation or loss of the powers takes place in this way : In proportion as Charity fills and inflames the Will in the manner we have said, this Charity becomes so powerful that it gradually overcomes all the activity of this Will to subject it to that of God, so that when the soul is docile in allowing herself to be perfected and purified by it, and to be emptied of all that she has of the " ou-n " and o2)jjosed to the will of God, she finds herself gradually void of all "oivn " will, and placed in a holy indifl'erence, to will only that which God does and wills. This never can be consum- mated through the activity of our Will, even though it should be employed in continual resignations, because they are so many "own" acts, which, although very virtuous,

Chap. X.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 79

make the Will still subsist in itself, and consequently bold it in multiplicity, in distinction, in unlikeness with that of God. But when the soul remains submissive, and only suffers freely and voluntarily, bringing her concurrence, which is her submission, to allow herself to be conquered and destroyed by the activity of Charity, — this, while absorbing the Will in itself, perfects it in that of God, first purifying it from all restriction, unlikeness, and *' owniiess."

It is the same with the two other powers, where, by means of Charity, the two other theological virtues are in- troduced. Faith seizes so pov/erfully on the Understanding that it makes it die away to all reasoning, to all distinct light, to all particular illuminations, be they the most sublime ; which shows how much visions, revelations, ecstasies, etc., are contrary to this, and hinder the loss of the soul in God, although in this way she may appear lost for moments ; but it is not a true loss, since the soul which is truly lost in God never recovers herself. It is rather a simple absorption, if the thing is in the will, or a dazzling if it is in the intellect, than a loss. I say, then, that Faith makes the soul lose all distinct light, and absorbs her while con- quering, to place her in its light, which is above all light — a light general and indistinct, which appears darkness to the self-hood on which it shines, because its excessive clearness prevents one from discerning or recognizing it ; as we are unable to discern the sun and his light, although by means of this light we so perfectly discern objects that it even hinders us from making mistakes. As we see that the sun absorbs in his general light all the little distinct lights of the stars, but that these little lights in themselves are very easily discerned, without, however, being able to give light to us ; in the same way, these visions, ecstasies, etc., are very well discerned, owing to their smallness of extent. But yet, while making themselves distinct, they can- not, however, place us in the truth, nor make us see objects

80 lilADA^IE GUYON. [Part I.

such as the}'' are ; on the contrary, they would rather mislead us by their false light. It is similar with all lights which are not those of passive Faith — infused light — Faith the gift of the Holy Spirit, which has the power to undeceive the intellect, and, while obscuring the"o2tvi" lights of the Understanding, to place it in the light of truth ; which, although less satisf3ang for it, is, however, a thousand times more sure than any other, and is properly the true light of this life, until Jesus Christ, the eternal Light, arises in the soul and enlightens her wdth himself — "He who enlightens every man coming into the world " with the new life in God. This is abstruse, but I allow myself to be carried away by the spirit who makes me write.

In the same way, the Memory finds itself conquered and absorbed by Hope, and at last everything loses itself in pure Charity, which absorbs the whole soul, through means of the Will that, as sovereign of the powers, has the ability to destroy the others in itself, like as Charitj', queen of the virtues, reunites in itself all the other virtues. This reunion which then takes place is called Unity, central union, because everything finds itself united through the will and charity in the centre of the soul and in God our ultimate end, according to those words of St. John, "He who dwells in charity, dwells in God ; for God is charity." This union of my will to yours, 0 my God, and this in- effable presence, was so powerful and so sweet at the same time, that I could not wish to resist it, nor to defend myself from it. This dear Possessor of my heart made me see even my smallest faults.

Chap. XL] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 81

CHAPTER XI.

My senses were, as I have said, under a continual mortifi- cation, and I gave them no Hbert}' ; for it should be known that, in order to kill them utterly, one must during a certain time give them no respite, until they are entirely dead. Otherwise they are in danger of never dying, as happens with persons who are content to practise great external austerities, and who nevertheless give their senses certain indulgences, which they call innocent and neces- sary, and thereby they give them life; for it is not austerities, however great they be, which make the senses die. We have seen very ascetic persons feel their revolts all their life. What more effectually destroys them is to refuse them generally all that pleases them and to give them all which is disagreeable to them, and this without relaxation and as long as is necessary, to render them void of appetite and repugnance. But if before that one pretends to give them a little relaxation, one does what would happen to a person who had been condemned to die of hunger, should any one give him from time to time a little nourishment, under pretext of strengthening him ; one would prolong his torture and hinder him from dying. It is the same with the death of the senses, the powers, the "own" intellect, and the '* o/r;i " will ; because if one does not tear from them all subsistence, however small it be, one maintains them to the end in a dying life, which is very

VOL. I. G

82 MADAME GUYON. [Part I.

well named mortification — what St. Paul has perfectly well distinguished when he says, " We bear in our body the mortifications of Jesus Christ ; " that is, jDroperly, the dying state. But afterwards, to make us see we must not end there, he adds elsewhere, ** We are dead, and our life is hid with Jesus Christ in God." We never can lose ourselves in God, save by total death.

He who is dead in this way has no longer need of mortification, but all that is over for him — everything is become new. There is a great fault which persons of good intention commit ; after they have attained the extinction of their senses by this continual and unrelaxing death, to remain all their life attached to that, and not to leave this work through a perfect indiflerence, taking alike the good and the bad, the sweet and the bitter, in order to enter upon a more useful toil, which is the mortification of the " oicn " intellect and the " oivti'' will, commencing by the loss of their " okii" activities. This is never effected without profound prayer, no more than the death of the senses will ever be entire without profound concentration joined to mortification. Because otherwise the soul, remaining still turned towards the senses, maintains them in a strong