ception and
uncommon powers of direction and persuasion, she reduced the complicated
tangle to order, and then retired to a house of her own, where she was
free from the annoying devices of her irreconcilable mother-in-law, and
could devote herself to the education of her children, the perfecting of
her own education, and the visitation of the sick and poor.

It was in 1680, after nearly seven years of comparative darkness and
depression, that her spiritual gloom was broken in upon by a letter
from Father La Combe, in which he took the sensible view that by this
sore deprivation God was teaching her not to lean on her state of
feeling, but to look to Him alone for comfort and strength. On the 22nd
of July--a day several times marked in her history as one of signal
blessing--her prayers were heard, and God again lifted up the light of
His countenance upon her. "On that happy day," she writes, "my soul was
fully delivered from all its distresses. It began a new life," a life of
steady peace and joy, guarded from dependence on the joy itself by the
painful experience from which she had just emerged.

From this time forth she devoted her life to the spread of the knowledge
of the love of God. After much deliberation and consultation with
others, she left Paris in July, 1681, to commence work in the south-east
of France. The preceding winter had been passed in making necessary
preparations, in relieving the necessities of the famished poor of
Paris, and in other works of charity.

V.

HER PUBLIC WORK.

On that July morning, when Madame Guyon embarked on the Seine secretly,
for fear of the interference of her half-brother, she was really
embarking on the chief business of her life, the work of spreading the
doctrine of inward holiness. She had felt drawn to the district of
Geneva by a desire to give temporal and spiritual help to the poor
people at the foot of the Jura range. And now, having consulted at Paris
the Bishop of Geneva, she was making her way, in company with her little
daughter, a nun, and two servants, to the little town of Gex. Passing
through Annecy and Geneva, she reached her destination on July 23, and
took up her residence at the house of the Sisters of Charity. This was
for a time the centre of her labours of love. Besides her works of
charity, she felt impelled to tell others of the spiritual blessings
which she herself enjoyed.

Situated as she was, a Protestant without herself suspecting it