To make reparation to the outraged sanctity of God, and to honour the Passion of her Lord, as well as with the specific intention of disposing her soul for the yet unrevealed favour awaiting her, she redoubled the austerities already so rigorous. She allowed herself only as much sleep as was necessary for existence, taking that on the ground, with no covering but a hair-cloth. After a while, the bare floor appeared too luxurious a couch, so she spread a hair-cloth over it, and on that she stretched her weary limbs for a short part of the night. This mortification she looked on as the severest she had ever endured, the weight of the body and the hardness of the boards combining to press the sharp surface into the flesh, so that constant pain permitted only short and broken sleep. A considerable portion of the night was divided between prayer and corporal mortifications. She was familiar with instruments of penance of every kind, and used them with an unsparing hand. Ingenious in devising means of crucifying her senses, she mixed wormwood with her food, and between meals, kept the bitter herb a long time in her mouth, until forbidden, through regard for her health, to continue so mortifying a practice. She succeeded however in so completely destroying the sense of taste, as to be finally unable to distinguish one description of food from another. Many years after she went to Canada, this fact was decidedly ascertained by an unmistakable test. Yet she says she was never ill, but on the contrary, always vigorous, always cheerful, always ready for new mortifications, and so impressed with their value, that she would have counted the day lost, on which she had suffered nothing. In daily Communion, she renewed the strength so severely taxed by her appalling austerities and her fatiguing labours for her neighbour.