Bossuet relates with inimitable art the Princess's two dreams; the simple anecdotes are dramatised, poetised--one might almost say sanctified--in proceeding from his lips. But, in short, whether Anne de Gonzagua saw or thought that she saw that mystical mendicant, and those symbolical animals, in her slumbers, the truth is that in soul she was touched, agitated, shaken, overcome. An ardent faith, an invincible longing for prayer and penitence, had obtained the mastery over that rebellious soul. She felt once more the enthusiasm of her early youth; she felt beating once more, at the Divine Master's name, that heart which had too often throbbed for His creatures only. Her scepticism vanished; she had no other ambition left save that of gaining heaven, and holy tears were seen to dim those eyes wherein it once seemed as though the source of such emotion was dried up for ever. It was done. A great thing was accomplished, whatsoever had been the cause. A soul which incredulity had frozen into apathy became fervent before its Creator. Anne de Gonzagua did not fear to let her repentance be seen; she desired that the publicity of her penitence might obliterate, if it were possible, the scandal of her past life. Her conscience became tender, even scrupulous. "_Plus elle etait clairvoyante,_" says Bossuet; "_plus elle etait tourmentee._" Henceforward she devoted herself wholly to charity and prayer. She became as humble as she had hitherto been proud. She cherished a life of seclusion as much as she had once loved mundane notoriety. She became as sincerely a Christian as she had formerly been an infidel. During the lapse of twelve years this startling confession of faith did not belie itself for a single day. "Everything became poor about her house and person," says her illustrious panegyrist. "She saw with sensible delight the relics of the pomps of this world disappear one after another, and alms-giving taught her to retrench daily something fresh.... A person so delicate and sensible had suffered for twelve entire years, and almost without an interval, either the most vivid anguish or languor exhausting alike to mind and body; and notwithstanding, during the whole of that time, and in the unheard-of torments of her last illness, in which her sufferings were increased to the utmost excess, she had not to repent of having once wished for an easier death. Again and again did she suppress that weak wish by uttering, so soon as she felt it arising, with the Saviour, the prayer of the Sacred Mystery of the Garden, 'Father, thy will, not mine, be done!'"