Yet of all her personal virtues none was more extraordinary than her spirit of mortification. She seemed to live for the express purpose of afflicting her body, using her food always too hot or too cold, mixing ashes with her drink, sitting at meals in a painful position, sleeping on the bare earth with a wooden plank for her pillow, and taking little sleep at that. She never approached the fire in winter, and frequently made use of disciplines, hair-shirts, and a frightful crown of thorns, that she concealed on her head. How truly she hated her flesh such severe penances as these prove. When summoned to Quebec by her bishop, she made the journey on foot, through ice and snow, often wading across Canadian swamps. When she undertook a foundation she carried the furniture on her own shoulders, saying with Solomon: "I do not ask for the community either wealth, honors, or the pleasures of this life." Of her holy resignation also we have many striking instances. When all was ready to build the church of Bon Secours, knowing that nothing could be more useful to the young colony than such a work, and that unnecessary delays would ruin the material, yet when ecclesiastical superiors forbade her to continue, she instantly obeyed, without murmur or reply. The Bishop refusing for many years to approve her rule, which was nevertheless an epitome of divine wisdom, she ceased importuning, and silently awaited the time appointed by Divine Providence. In one short hour she lost by fire her convent, and everything it contained, the bodies of two dear Sisters being consumed in the flames. Yet her resignation triumphed over fire and death. For several years she experienced the most frightful interior desolation, neither prayers, reflections, communions, nor spiritual advice affording her the least relief. Yet in silent submission she drank the chalice to the dregs, without one atom of human consolation.