The day Angélique had fixed for her flight had almost come when she fell very ill of a sort of nervous fever, chiefly the result of the trouble of mind she had been going through, though the unhealthy marshes round Port Royal may have had something to do with her illness. Monsieur and madame Arnauld at once sent a litter drawn by horses to fetch her to Paris, where the best doctors awaited her. Her mother hardly left her bedside, and for some time Angélique was at rest, feeling nothing except that she was at home, and that the old dismal life of the convent must be a dream. But as she grew stronger her perplexities came back. She could not bring such grief on her parents, who loved her so much, yet the sight of her aunts in their beautiful dresses with long pointed bodices, and the pretty hoods that covered their hair when they came to inquire after her, revived all her longings for the amusements of other girls. Again she kept silence, but secretly induced one of the maids to make her a pair of corsets, 'to improve her figure.'
It may have been the sight of the corsets which caused monsieur Arnauld, whose keen eyes nothing escaped, to take alarm. At any rate, one day he brought a paper, so ill-written that it could hardly be read, and thrust it with a pen into Angélique's hand, saying, 'Sign this, my daughter.'
The girl did not dare to refuse, or even to question her father, though she did manage to make out a word or two, which showed her that the paper contained a renewal of the vows she so bitterly regretted.
Though custom and respect kept her silent, Angélique's frank and straightforward nature must have felt bitterly ashamed as well as angry at the way her father had tried to trick her, and she seems on the whole to have been rather glad to return to her abbey. The nuns were delighted to have her back again, and as she remained very delicate all through the winter, she was a great deal indoors, too tired to do anything but rest, and read now and then a little book of meditations, which one of the sisters had given her.
Just at this time an event happened which turned the whole course of Angélique's life.
A Capuchin monk, father Basil by name, stopped at Port Royal one evening, and asked the abbess's leave to preach. At first she refused, saying it was too late; then she changed her mind, for she was fond of hearing sermons, which, even if they were bad, generally gave her something to think of. There does not seem to have been anything very striking about this one, but when it was ended 'I found myself,' says Angélique, 'happier to know myself a nun than before I had felt wretched at being one, and that there was nothing in the whole world that I would not do for God.'
Now Angélique's inward struggles took a different turn; she no longer desired to be free of her vows, but rather to carry them out to the utmost of her power, and to persuade her nuns to do so likewise. For some time she met with little encouragement. Another friar of the order of the Capuchins, to whom she opened her heart when he came to preach on Whit Sunday, was a man of no sense or tact, and urged such severe and instant reforms that the poor nuns were quite frightened. Then the prioress, whom Angélique also consulted, told her that she was not well, and excited, and that in three months' time she would think quite differently; all of which would have been true of a great many people, but was a mistake as regarded Angélique. Thus disappointed in both her counsellors, the abbess longed to resign her post, and to become a simple nun in some distant convent; but she dared not disobey her newly awakened conscience, which told her to stay where she was and do her work.