gards 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, a