At this Ursuline seminary she remained, under her sister's care, until she was ten years old, when she was taken home again, and then placed in a Dominican convent, where she stayed eight months. Here she was left much to herself, but was so happy as to find an abiding companion, a heaven-sent gift, in a copy of the Bible, which had been "providentially" left in the apartment assigned to her. "I read it," she says, "from morning to night; and having a very good memory, I learnt by heart all the historical parts." Whatever were the immediate results of this close acquaintance with the Book of books, it is certain that in after years, when the true light had shined into her soul, her early intimacy with the Bible was of great service to her progress, and helped to qualify her in some measure for writing her Explanations and Reflections on the sacred volume. On her return home once more her religious state seems to have fluctuated considerably. Family jealousies and jars deadened the fervour of her devotion. Preparations for her first Sacrament under her sister's guidance, and the actual participation in that ordinance, had for a time a beneficial effect. But the solemnity of the Supper passed away without permanent influence on her heart.
She was now growing up a fine tall girl, of remarkable beauty and of equal fascination of speech and manner. Her mother became proud of her loveliness, and took great interest in her dress and appearance. Accomplished and attractive, she was welcome in every circle, and her wit and gaiety made her company much sought after. Her serious impressions passed away, and her heart was hot in the chase after pleasure. That it was still tender and susceptible we learn from a little incident at this period. She had gone for a walk with her youthful companions, and during her absence a young cousin, De Toissi, who was going as a missionary to Cochin China, called for a short time at her father's house. On her return home she found that he had already departed, and she heard such an account of his sanctity and of his pious utterances that she was deeply affected and was overcome with sorrow, crying all the rest of the day and night. Once more she sought earnestly "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding," but sought it by deeds of charity and by bodily austerities, instead of by the simple way of faith. At this time, in the fervour of her devotion, she resolved to enter a convent and become a nun. Her father, however, believed that his daughter, whom he tenderly loved, might be truly religious without taking such an irrevocable step. But soon—whether through some juvenile attachment or not we cannot tell—her good desires and resolves grew faint, she left off prayer, and lost such comfort and blessing as had been granted her from above. "I began," she says, "to seek in the creature what I had found in God. And Thou, O my God, didst leave me to myself, because I had first left Thee, and Thou wast pleased, in permitting me to sink into the abyss, to make me feel the necessity I was under of maintaining communion with Thyself in prayer."
In 1663 her father removed his household to Paris, and Jeanne Marie was transferred to a larger and more brilliant arena for the display of her beauty and accomplishments. Louis XIV. was on the throne, and Paris was at the very height of its gaiety and celebrity. The influence of its dissipation and distraction on the spirit of Mademoiselle de la Mothe was of course unfavourable to religion. Her parents found themselves not merely in a fashionable circle, but in a highly-intellectual centre. The grand monarque posed as the great patron of literature and the arts; and society presented splendid opportunities for the exercise of the young lady's conversational powers. She tells us that she began to entertain extravagant notions of herself, and that her vanity increased. In such surroundings it could hardly be otherwise. Her faith and love, such as they were, had died away, and her devotion had dwindled down to nothing. The dazzling world before her was in her eyes something worth conquering; and she set herself to gain its acclamation, and was to a great extent successful. From this high state of worldly gratification, and low state of religious principle and enjoyment, she was aroused and rescued in a very rough and painful manner.
II.
MARRIED LIFE.
Early in 1664, when not quite sixteen, Jeanne Marie de la Mothe was given in marriage to M. Jacques Guyon, a man of thirty-eight, possessed of great wealth, whom she had seen for the first time only a few days before the ceremony took place. Many ladies no doubt envied her, but for her it was an unhappy change. Several suitors had appeared, with whom she felt she could have been content and happy; but M. Guyon's riches and perseverance had carried the day with her parents, and marriage, to which she had looked forward as the period of liberation from restraint, and of freer enjoyment of the gay Parisian life, proved but the commencement of a dreary spell of dulness and misery. Her friends, who came to congratulate her the next day after the wedding, were surprised to find her weeping bitterly, and, in answer to their raillery, were told by her, "Alas! I used to have such a desire to be a nun: why, then, am I married now? and by what fatality has this happened to me?" She was overwhelmed with this regret, this longing to be a religieuse. The sudden transition from being the admired of all beholders, "the cynosure of neighbouring eyes," the witty belle whose every word and look were treasured up, to the hopeless condition of a bird pining in a gilded cage, was very hard to bear.
The details of the poor girl's sufferings in her new home are painful to read; but as Madame Guyon relates these early trials, she devoutly regards them as the means employed by her Heavenly Father to wean her affections from the world and turn them towards Himself. Beset with sore afflictions, guarded and illtreated by a servant devoted to her mother-in-law, cut off from the innocent pleasures of friendly intercourse, perpetually thwarted and misrepresented, she bethought herself of the possibility of getting help from above, and once more turned her mind towards God and heavenly things, doing her best, according to her imperfect light, to propitiate the Divine favour. She gave up entirely the reading of romances, of which formerly she had been passionately fond. The penchant for them had already been deadened, some time before her marriage, by reading the Gospel, which she found "so beautiful," and in which she discerned a character of truth which disgusted her with all other books. She resumed the practice of private prayer; she had masses said, in order to obtain Divine grace to enable her to find favour with her husband and his mother, and to ascertain the Divine will; she consulted her looking-glass very seldom; she regularly studied books of devotion, such as The Initiation of Jesus Christ, and the works of St. Francis de Sales, and read them aloud, so that the servants might profit by them. She endeavoured in all things not to offend God.
Her mind, shut off from all earthly comfort, was now driven in upon itself. Her lengthy meditation, though it helped to give her some degree of resignation, did not produce true peace and joy Though quite natural under the circumstances, it was an unhealthy habit, and doubtless tended to foster the mystic dreaming which grew upon her in riper years. Changes of circumstances now came to her relief. Soon after the birth of her first child, a heavy loss of property called her husband to Paris, to look after his affairs; and she, after a while, was permitted to join him there. This made a pleasant break in the dreary round of her married life. She cared nothing for losses, so long as she could gain from her stern and surly mate some token of affection and acknowledgment; and this, though in very small fragments, she had now occasionally the satisfaction of getting. While at Paris she had a severe illness, and the learned doctors of the city brought her to death's door by draining her of "forty-eight pullets" of blood.
Sad to say, as she regained her health, her husband resumed his moroseness and violent tempers, and her feeble strength was tried to its utmost. But she records, "This illness was of great use to me, for, besides teaching me patience under very severe pains, it enlightened me much as to the worthlessness of the things of this world. While detaching me to a great extent from myself, it gave me fresh courage to bear suffering better than I had done in the past." When at last she regained her health, the loss of her mother and the crosses of every-day life served still further to solemnize her mind, and to turn her aspirations heavenwards. She followed strictly her plan for private prayer twice a day; she kept watch over herself continually, and in almsgiving and other ways endeavoured to do as much good as she could.