Only two convents existed at that period in the city of Tours; one of Carmelites, quite recently founded; the other of Benedictines, governed just then by a near relative of her mother's. This latter monastery she frequently visited, and as might have been expected, the oftener she breathed its atmosphere of peace and prayer, the more she longed to make it the place of her rest for ever. Her inclination for the religious life gradually settled into a desire so strong and irrepressible, that even before she had reached her sixteenth year, with its renewed call to perfection, she had confided her wishes to her mother. While rejoicing at the intelligence, and giving the project every reasonable encouragement, that good mother suggested, that although the step was undeniably a holy and a happy one, it was very important too, consequently, that it would he better to delay it until time and reflection had more fully manifested its wisdom. Had the youthful Mary been at that time under regular spiritual direction, there can be no doubt that she would have been advised to follow her attraction for the cloister, but she knew nothing whatever about direction, imagining that spiritual communications even to a confessor were limited to the accusation of sins at confession. Being very timid, she did not venture to press the matter, so her mother, hearing nothing more of it, naturally concluded that her inclination for religion had been the result of some passing fit of fervour, or perhaps only a childish fancy, forgotten as soon as formed, an idea apparently so much the more reasonable, as her natural gaiety of character seemed to dispose her rather for the world than for a convent. The seeming mistake was in reality a step to the development of the particular designs of God over His faithful servant, for although His general design is alike in all the saints, the especial destiny of each varies, and while the great outline of sanctity is universally the same, there are minute shades of difference in the characteristic virtues of individuals. The saints form the beautiful garden of the Church, redolent of every variety of sweetest fragrance, and enamelled with every shade of fairest tinting. The day was to come, when the Mother of the Incarnation would be bound to her Lord by the vows of religion, but before becoming a guide for His consecrated Spouses, she was to pass through married life and widowhood, that she might first furnish an example of perfection in both conditions, and thus serve as a model for woman in every state. Her ultimate destiny involved a species of apostolate among the savages of Canada, and for this, the novitiate awaiting her in the world would prove a more effectual preparation, than would the novitiate of the cloister. There she would have ample opportunities of practically learning the lesson of the cross, and at the same time of consolidating the virtues which were to be the distinguishing characteristics of her sanctity. Her zeal and charity would find a wider field, and her gentle patience reap a richer harvest, her union with God would be strengthened, while tested, by exposure to the distracting cares of life, and her purity of soul would shine out with brighter lustre amidst hitherto unknown difficulties and dangers. And so, when in after years, the voice of the Spouse would bid her arise, and leave her home and country, and follow Him to the distant land which He would show her, she would be prepared to answer, "My heart, O Lord, is ready; my heart is ready and my work is done!"
The first page of the history of her life,-which we are about to close, has not been without its practical teaching. It is the page of the young; happy those who study well the record! They will discover, that "it is good for a man when he hath borne the yoke from his youth." (Lam. iii. 27). They will learn to admire the heavenly beauty of a pure soul, and fascinated by its unearthly charms, they will resolve to close their own hearts against sin, excluding even the smallest, as a security against the entrance of the greater. They will learn to appreciate the happiness of knowing and loving our Lord, like the blessed child who found her sweetest joy before the altar, and they will surely ask her to beg for them a share in her love of Jesus and her spirit of prayer, courageously checking the propensity for idle talking and still idler reading which, are so great an obstacle to recollection. Studying her love of retirement, they will pray for grace to resist worldly influences, and following her to the miserable homes of the destitute, they will aspire to become, like her, angels of comfort to the desolate and sorrowing. Thus will their childhood and youth be saintly, as, were those of the model now presented to them.
CHAPTER II.
HER MARRIED LIFE, WITH ITS TRIALS AND VIRTUES.
Mary Guyart was just entering on her seventeenth year, when her parents proposed to her a matrimonial alliance apparently calculated to insure her happiness. Such an engagement was utterly repugnant to her inclinations; it was inconsistent with the high hopes she had cherished of consecrating herself wholly to God in religion; its duties and solicitudes seemed a decided obstacle to the cultivation of that spirit of prayer and recollection which had become as her life-breath. Drawn daily more and more forcibly to an interior life in God, she shrank with her whole soul from a position which must necessarily immerse her in he distracting occupations and harassing cares of the world. But accustomed to look on her parents as the representatives of God, and therefore seeing only His will in the impending project, she submitted with the respectful docility habitual to her, and none but the interior witness of. the sacrifice to obedience, could have suspected the cost at which it was offered. She simply assured her mother of her readiness to obey, adding the, almost prophetic promise, that if God should bless her with a son, she would dedicate him to the Divine service, and that if He should ever restore her own liberty, she would consecrate it also to Him alone.
Her only object now became to prepare so fervently for the holy sacrament of marriage, that she might receive with it the abundant supply of grace needed for the due fulfilment of the difficult and responsible obligations soon to be hers.
Few indeed have ever brought to it more admirable dispositions than did that reluctant, yet in one sense, willing bride, therefore it followed, that although the absence of pomp and show may have divested the ceremonial of all charm for worldlings, the perfection: of her interior preparation rendered it one of rare beauty in the eyes of heaven. She wore no costly attire, it is true, but in compensation, her soul was arrayed in that fairest of garments, her white baptismal robe, free still from spot or wrinkle, as on the day when it was first assumed. She displayed no sparkling gems, but many a virtue shone instead with a glorious light, before whose lustre that of flashing diamond and gilded coronet fades away, and as she thus stood before the altar in all the freshness of her innocence and the radiance of her spiritual beauty, must she not have won the smiles. of angels? Must she not have attracted the complacency of the angels' Lord?
The duties of her new state came to her marked with the sign of the cross, nevertheless she set about them with an energy and devotedness which clearly manifested the singleness of her views, the purity of her motives, and the enlightened character of her piety. Knowing that perfection is in the accomplishment of God's will, and believing that as long as she faithfully complied with the duties of her condition in life, she should walk in the sure, straight path of obedience to that holy will, she took immediate measures for the discharge of its fourfold obligations to God, her husband, her servants and herself. The spirit of prayer conferred on her at the early visit of our Lord, had been ever since developing itself more and more strongly, and her first precaution in arranging her role of life, was that no worldly interests should ever be permitted to interfere with her spiritual exercises, whence alone she could derive strength to fulfil her daily duties and courage to bear her daily crosses. Yet she never allowed them to encroach on domestic arrangements, her well-regulated piety having taught her, that when these latter required the sacrifice of her love of prayer and solitude she was doing God's will more perfectly in substituting active work for the enjoyment of immediate communion with Himself. Prolonged meditations, holy Mass, the sacraments and the word of God,—these were the four sources whence she drew the waters of grace to refresh and invigorate her soul. The holy Communion was above all, her joy and her life. As she herself tells us, it replenished her with sweetness, enlivened her faith, fortified her inclination for virtue, strengthened her confidence in God, intensified her love of her neighbour, and supported her under the weight of the cross. In one of her letters of after years, she remarks that a single communion well made, is sufficient to sanctify a soul, since it unites, her to the Saint of Saints, adding, that the reason why it does not produce this result, is, that the soul after having given herself to our Lord, in return for His having given Himself to her, too soon revokes the offering in practice, nature shrinking from the total renunciation of self which the divine Sanctifier requires as a preliminary to His action. It was not so, her son remarks, with the holy Mother. Bringing to the heavenly Banquet a disengaged heart, an almost annihilated will, and an entire abandonment to the Spirit of God, she not only co-operated with, but facilitated the operation of the sacramental grace, which meeting in her no obstacle to its freedom of action, bore her with marvellous rapidity along the path of solid virtue. Of such Communions it was, that she says, "The more frequently I received the sacraments, the more ardently I desired to receive them, because the more clearly I saw that they were to me the source of all spiritual blessings."
The love and reverence for God's word which she had manifested from earliest childhood, had but gained strength with years. To listen to it was still her delight, as it had been in her young days. She loved it for its own sake, irrespectively of the manner in which it might be announced, looking on every preacher as a herald of the great King, charged with the divine message of salvation. She says that her assiduity in attending sermons was rewarded by a great abundance of light and love, an increase of attraction and facility for prayer, and a renewal of fervour in the practice of the virtues of her state. With the enlarged experience of the spiritual life acquired at a later date, she recognised that He who never tries His creatures beyond their strength, had imparted to her in these benedictions of His sweetness, the particular graces needed to support her under the crosses with which it had been His will to surround her in the troubled days of her married life.
Her veneration for the preachers of God's word extended to all the ceremonies of Divine worship. Enchanted with their beauty and grandeur, and at the same time supernaturally enlightened to understand their mysterious signification, she was filled with gratitude to her eternal Benefactor for the signal favour of having been born of Catholic parents, and thus made a child of the one true Church long before she could appreciate, or even comprehend the blessing. She was always eager to be among the first to enter the church, that securing a place where no part of the sublime ceremonial could escape her, she might be free to meditate on, and enter into the spirit of all.