It has remained almost completely a secret what supernatural consolations were vouchsafed to the blessed cure. On that subject he always preserved a strict silence. He prayed practically throughout the whole night, for his sufferings, as mentioned above, allowed him only a few minutes rest at a time. What he recommended to others in the catechism lessons, he himself constantly practiced. He was wont to say, for instance: "See now, dear children, should you wake up during the night, go quickly in spirit before the tabernacle and say to our Saviour: "Here am I, O Lord, I adore Thee, I praise Thee, I thank Thee, I love Thee and with the Angels let me keep Thee company."" During the day all his spare time was devoted to prayer. In visiting the sick his thoughts were always with God. But his prayers were of the most simple kind. He favored simplicity in every action. In the church, before the Blessed Sacrament, the pious cure's sense of the Real Presence was so vivid that a colleague, who noticed his radiant look, regarded him with astonishment, thinking Father Vianney with his corporal eyes, beheld some one there. This intuition of the Divine Presence the pious man referred to, one day, saying: "That is faith when we speak to God as a fellow man!" Despite the ardor of his desire for God's blissful vision, he had to struggle for many decades in the exile of this life, persevering in work and prayer. Only when his venerable age and increasing infirmities disabled him from further laboring in the conversion of sinners, did our Divine Lord see fit to take this soul to Himself. The cure was then in his seventy-fourth year. CHAPTER VII. DEATH AND BEATIFICATION OF THE BLESSED CURE. IT was in the summer of 1859, that the venerable cure showed that his energies were nearly spent. He was then heard repeatedly to exclaim: "Alas, the sinners will kill the sinner." On Friday, July 29th, after having as usual spent from sixteen to seventeen hours in the confessional, he returned to the rectory completely exhausted. He sank into a chair saying: "I can do no more." The priest who saw him, immediately put him to bed. On the following morning his illness was so pronounced that a fatal termination was feared. In the village and among the numerous visitors to Ars the greatest sorrow was felt. For three days the church was crowded with the faithful, praying that their cure might not be taken from them.