as far too intellectual to give a form to her
God; she truly loved a spirit; hence sprang her confidence and
unlimited courage. She attempts bravely, but without suspecting
herself to be brave, the most perilous paths, now ascending, now
descending into regions that others had most avoided; she presses
boldly forward past the point where every one had stopped through fear,
like the luminary which brightens everything and remains unsullied
itself. These courageous efforts, though innocent in so pure a woman,
had nevertheless a dangerous effect upon the weak-minded. Her
confessor, Father Lacombe, was wrecked in this dangerous gulf, where he
was swallowed up and drowned. The person and the doctrine had equally
deranged his faculties. All we know of his intercourse with her
betrays a strange weakness, which she, in her sublime aspirations,
seems hardly to have condescended to notice. The very first time he
saw her, then young, and tending her aged husband, he was so affected
by the sight that he fainted. Afterwards, having become her humble
disciple, under the name of her director, he followed her everywhere in
her adventurous life, both in France and Savoy. He never left her
side, "and could not dine without her." He had succeeded in getting
her portrait taken. Being arrested at the same time as herself, in
1687, he was for ten years a prisoner in the fortresses of the
Pyrenees. In 1698, they took advantage of the weakness of his mind to
make him write to Madame Guyon a compromising letter: "The poor man,"
said she, laughing, "is become mad." He certainly was so, and, a few
days after, he died at Charenton.

This madness little surprises me, when I read Madame Guyon's
_Torrents_, that fantastic, charming, but fearful book. It must not be
passed over in silence.

When she composed the book, she was at Annecy, in the convent of the
_newly converted_. She had bestowed her wealth upon her family, and
the small income she reserved for herself was also given away by her to
this religious establishment, where she was very ill used. This
delicate woman, who had passed her life in luxury, was forced to work
with her hands beyond her strength; her employment was washing and
sweeping. Father Lacombe, then in Rome, had recommended her to write
whatever came into her mind. "It is to obey you," says she, "that I am
beginning to write what I do not know myself." She takes a ream of
paper, and writes down the title of