Because he had acquired a perfect mastery of his passions, there reigned in his soul complete submission to God, and in his heart an imperturbable peace. "What is there that could disturb our peace?" he said to me at Lyons. "When all is in confusion around me it does not trouble me, for what is all the world besides in comparison with peace of heart?" This power was the outcome of his intense and virile faith, for he regarded all things, the least and the greatest, as ordained by that divine Providence in which he reposed with more tranquility than a child on its mother's bosom. He used to say that Our Lord taught him this lesson from his youth, and that if he could be born again he would despise human prudence more than ever, and would let himself be still more entirely governed by divine Providence. He had very great illumination on this subject, and conveyed it forcibly to the souls he counselled and governed. All the undertakings God committed to him he placed under the protection of this supreme government, and never was he more certain of an affair or more content amidst vicissitudes than when he had no other support than God. On the contrary, when human prudence foresaw the impossibility of the execution of a design his firm confidence in God alone remained unshaken. Therefore did he live without solicitude. I remarked this to him when he had made up his mind to establish our Congregation, and he replied: "I have no light as to how to do it, but I am sure that God will do it"; and so it came about, and that far more quickly than he anticipated. Speaking of this confidence in God, I remember once many years ago, when attacked with a violent temptation, which he bravely resisted, he wrote to me: "I feel very much under its pressure. It seems to me that I have no strength to resist and that I should succumb if the occasion were presented to me, but the weaker I feel the more do I trust in God, and I assure myself that were the object to present itself, I should be invested with the power of God, and that my enemies would be as lambkins before me." Our Saint was not exempt from the stirrings of passions nor did he wish nor think it desirable to be so. Except for the purpose of governing and checking them, which he said gave him pleasure, they were disregarded by him; and he looked upon them as excellent opportunities for practising virtue and establishing it more solidly in the soul. His own were so absolutely under his control that they obeyed him as slaves, and in the end hardly showed themselves at all. His was a manifestly bold and generous soul, very dear Father, strong to bear burdens and responsibilities and to carry out the undertakings with which God inspired him. Nothing, as he said, could induce him to abandon these; not an inch would he abate, and he had a courage that conquered all difficulties.