Observe, he remarks, how religion is understood by the majority of Christians; it is only as an ignorant and persecuting partiality, a superstitious and stupid stubbornness, and fear—base fear—above all. Why is this? Because those who profess it have not the woman-heart, because they are foreign to the divine enthusiasms of that mother-love which explains all religion. The power that has invaded the brain and binds the spirit is not that of the good, understanding and longsuffering God; it is of the wicked, imbecile and cowardly Satan. It comes about in this manner that there is far more fear of the devil than love for the Divine. The frozen and shrivelled brain weighs on the dead heart like a tombstone. What an awakening will it be for understanding, what a rebirth for reason, what a victory for truth when the heart shall be raised by grace. Why am I the first and almost the only person to comprehend this, and what can one who has attained resurrection perform alone among the dead who can hear nothing? Come therefore and come quickly, O mother-spirit, who appeared to me at Venice in the soul of a virgin inspired by God; descend and teach the women of the new world their redeeming mission and their apostolate of holy and spiritual life. It is a fact that Postel owed these noble inspirations to a pious woman named Jeanne, whose acquaintance he had made at Venice. He was the spiritual adviser of this elect soul and was drawn into the current of mystic poetry which eddied about her. When he administered the Eucharist to her she became radiant and transfigured in his eyes, and although she was more than fifty years old, the poor priest confesses innocently that he would have taken her for less than fifteen: so did the sympathy of their hearts transform her in his eyes. One must have followed the life of asceticism to understand such celestial hallucinations and lyrical puerilities, such a mystic marriage between two virginal beings, such extraordinary enthusiasms of love in two pure souls. In her he discerned the living spirit of Jesus Christ by which the world would be regenerated. I have seen, says he, this light of the heart which will drive the hideous spectre of Satan from all minds; it is no chimera of my dreams; she has appeared in the world, has taken flesh in a maid, in whom I have hailed the mother of the world to come. This is analysing rather than translating Postel, but the rapid abridgment of his sentiments and language will make plain that he spoke figuratively and, as maintained by the learned Jesuit Desbillons, in his notice on the life and works of Postel, that nothing was further from his thoughts than to represent, as some have pretended, a second incarnation of divinity in this poor hospital sister who had only drawn him by the brightness of her humble virtues. We are utterly certain that all those who have slandered and ridiculed Postel are not worth one Mère Jeanne.