“I was thinking of our Lord, and of the touching comparison He chose in order to make us believe in His tenderness. That is just what He has done for me all my life: _He has wholly hidden me beneath His wings!_ I cannot express what passed within my heart. Ah! the good God does well to veil Himself from my sight, to show me the effects of His Mercy rarely, and as it were, ‘_through the lattices_;’[75] such consolations would, I feel, be more than I could bear.” HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XII “Oh! how _good_ is the good God!” ... she would sometimes exclaim. “Yes, He must indeed be good to give me the strength to endure all that I suffer.” HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XII One day she said to the Mother Prioress: “I would like to speak to you, Mother, of the state of my soul; but I cannot, I am too deeply moved just now.” And in the evening she sent these lines pencilled with a trembling hand: “O my God, how good Thou art to the little victim of Thy Merciful Love! Now even though Thou dost join physical suffering to the trials of my soul, I cannot say: ‘_The sorrows of death have encompassed me._’[76] But I cry out in my gratitude: ‘_I have gone down into the valley of the shadow of death, yet I fear no evil, because Thou, O Lord, art with me._’”[77] HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XII FOOTNOTES: [72] Ps., liv, 7. [73] Luke, vii, 47. [74] Luke, v, 32. [75] Cant., ii, 9. [76] Ps., xvii, 5. [77] _Cf._ Ps., xxii, 4. [Illustration] ZEAL The cry of Jesus agonizing, “I thirst!” re-echoed continually in my heart, firing it with an ardent zeal till then unknown to me. I longed to give to my Beloved to drink: I too felt myself consumed with the thirst for souls, and at all cost I would wrest sinners from the eternal flames. HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. V The Precious Blood of Jesus I poured on souls, to Him I offered these same souls renewed by the Dew of Calvary; thus I thought to quench His Thirst; but the more I gave Him to drink, the more ardently my poor little soul thirsted--and this I received as a most precious recompense. HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. V Like the Prophets and the Doctors I would fain enlighten souls. Fain would I travel the earth, O my Well-Beloved, to preach Thy Name and to set up Thy glorious Cross in Pagan lands. But one mission only would not suffice for me; would that I could at one and the same time proclaim the Gospel all the world over, even to the remotest of its islands. I would desire to be a Missionary not only for a few years, but to have been one from the creation of the world, and so to continue to the end of time. HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XI