SELECTED LETTERS OF ST. JANE FRANCES DE CHANTAL Nihil Obstat. F. THOMAS BERGH, O.S.B., CENSOR DEPUTATUS. Imprimatur. EDM. CAN. SURMONT, VICARIUS GENERALIS. WESTMONASTERII, _Die 6 Novembris, 1917._ [Illustration: ST. JANE FRANCES DE CHANTAL. (_Foundress of the Order of the Visitation._)] SELECTED LETTERS OF SAINT JANE FRANCES DE CHANTAL TRANSLATED BY THE SISTERS OF THE VISITATION HARROW WITH A PREFACE BY HIS EMINENCE CARDINAL BOURNE ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER R. & T. WASHBOURNE, LTD. PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON AND AT MANCHESTER, BIRMINGHAM, AND GLASGOW _All rights reserved_ 1918 PREFACE We are all apt so to idealise the Saints whom we love to study and honour, and strive to imitate, that we are in danger of forgetting that they possessed a human nature like our own, subject to many trials, weaknesses and frailties. They had to struggle as we have to struggle. The only difference is that their constancy and perseverance were greater far than ours. Biographers are often responsible for the false tendency to which we allude. They like to give us the finished portrait of the Saints, and only too often they omit in great part the details of the long and weary toil that went to make the picture which they delight to paint. In the case of some of the Saints we are able to come nearer to the reality by reading the letters which have been preserved, in which in their own handwriting they have set down, without thought of those who in later days might read their words, the details of their daily life and struggle. Thus in the few selected Letters of the holy foundress of the Visitation which are now being published in an English translation we get glimpses of her real character and spiritual growth which may be more helpful to us than many pages of formal biography. In one place she excuses the brevity of a letter because she is "feeling the cold to-day and pressed for time." In another she tells a Sister, "do everything to get well, for it is only your nerves." Nerves are evidently not a new malady nor a lately devised excuse. She knew the weariness of delay: "still no news from Rome.... I think His Grace the Archbishop would be glad to help us.... Beg him, I beseech you, to push on the matter." Haste and weather had their effect on her as on us: "I write in such haste that I forget half of what I want to say.... We will make a chalice veil for you, but not until the very hot weather is over, for one cannot work properly while it lasts."