She had now labored for a quarter of a century in the exercise of all sorts of good works. Her body was lacerated by the rudest austerities. She was a martyr to mental anxiety, and had but one beacon-light during her long spiritual darkness, viz., the certainty that she loved God and was loved by Him. Nevertheless her chalice was not yet full. In 1689, on the night of November 3d, one of the Sisters remained up long after the others had retired to rest. Suddenly a Sister who had died about sixteen months before stood before her (as she affirmed), and said slowly and distinctly, "I am sent by God to warn the superior of this Congregation that she is in mortal sin," naming at the same time the person who was the cause of her guilt. The astonished listener related the apparition to Sister Bourgeois, who regarded it as the wanderings of a diseased imagination. But two months after, January 3d, 1690, the deceased again appearing to the same Sister, said, "The superior has not done what she ought to do; it is the last warning I can give her, for I am now going to Paradise," and so saying, disappeared. The visionary (for as such, only should she be regarded) went again to inform the Foundress of what had transpired, and at this second blow the poor superior succumbed, appearing to be indeed stricken by the anger of God. It seems strange that her strong mind could be deceived, even for a season. Perhaps her great age made her more susceptible to the influence of an asserted vision, than she would have been at an earlier period of life. To declare that she was at enmity with God, was to inflict a grievous wound on her heart, and this warning reduced her almost to a state of despair. She felt that she was a reproach among her Sisters. She dared not speak to them, and hardly raised her eyes before them. The Sacraments she regarded with extreme repugnance, believing that they had hitherto been useless to her, and that her receiving them now would be profanation. It happened, however, by the dispensation of God, that her director was a wise and skilful ascetic, who narrowly watched the operations of grace in her soul, and treated her accordingly, and as she blindly followed his directions during the time of trial, she daily sanctified herself more and more.