Your humble and unworthy Mother. LV. _To Sister Françoise Gasparde de la Grave,[A] Assistant to the Superior at Belley._ Vive [+] Jésus! ANNECY, 1623. MY DEAREST DAUGHTER, Do you know that these fears and self-torturings about your past confessions are pure temptations of the devil? Make a firm stand and take no heed of them, dear daughter, for the devil is only trying in his malice to deceive you. Bear with his attacks and the suffering that comes of them gently and humbly, submitting to the good pleasure of God, who permits them to test your fidelity and confidence. Pay no regard to anything the tempter suggests. Never let your mind argue about it; but suffer it without yielding consent. Throw yourself upon the mercy of the divine Mercy. Leave to it the care of your salvation and of everything regarding you. Tell God that you have entire trust in His goodness, and although it may seem to you that you have not any, never cease to assure Him that you have, and always will have with the assistance of His grace. This I command you to do. And bear patiently the burden without desiring to be delivered from it; for that would be a brave sort of virtue which never wished to be attacked, and a grand fidelity that which would surrender at the first approach of the enemy! Remain firm without wishing ever to confess past sins a second time, or ever swerving from your duty of patience and confidence in God: and you will see how God draws His glory and your good out of this temptation, for which may He in His infinite goodness be blessed. FOOTNOTE: [A] Sister Françoise-Gasparde de la Grave, professed of the first Monastery of Annecy in 1617, was specially loved and trained by St. Francis de Sales, and always showed herself worthy of her great master. She was chiefly remarkable for her calm and unalterable sweetness in the midst of the contradictions of all kinds with which she was surrounded. "My Blessed Father has taught me," she would say on such occasions, "that the love of one's own abjection ought never to be one step distant from our hearts." She was successively Superior at Belley, Bourges, and Perigueux, from which last house she contributed to the foundation at Tulle. Having governed the Monastery of Seyssel for three years, she returned to the house of her profession, where she died in 1638. After her decease they found she had carefully written down all the humiliating things that had ever been said to her. On the corner of this packet was written: "The enclosed are to perfume my heart with the precious odour of humiliation." LVI. _To Mgr. the Bishop of Autun._ Vive [+] Jésus! ANNECY, 1623. MY LORD,