mother-in-law or the girl did to me, except the first year, when I was
not sufficiently touched with the power of God to suffer. My
mother-in-law and my husband often quarrelled. Then I was in favor, and
to me they made their mutual complaints. I never told the one what the
other had said. And though it might have been of service to me, humanly
speaking, to take advantage of such opportunities, I never made use of
them to complain of either. Nay, on the contrary, I did not rest till I
had reconciled them. I spoke many obliging things of the one to the
other, which made them friends again. I knew by frequent experience
that I should pay dear for their reunion. Scarcely were they reconciled
when they joined together against me.

I was so deeply engaged within, as often to forget things without, yet
not anything which was of consequence. My husband was hasty, and
inattention frequently irritated him. I walked into the garden, without
observing anything. When my husband, who could not go thither, asked me
about it, I knew not what to say, at which he was angry. I went thither
on purpose to notice everything, in order to tell him and yet when
there did not think of looking. I went ten times one day, to see and
bring him an account and yet forgot it. But when I did remember to
look, I was much pleased. Yet it happened I was then asked nothing
about them.

All my crosses to me would have seemed little, if I might have had
liberty to pray and to be alone, to indulge the interior attraction
which I felt. But I was obliged to continue in their presence, with
such a subjection as is scarcely conceivable. My husband looked at his
watch, if at any time I had liberty allowed me for prayer, to see if I
stayed more than half an hour. If I exceeded, he grew very uneasy.
Sometimes I said, "Grant me one hour to divert and employ myself as I
have a mind." Though he would have granted it to me for other
diversions, yet for prayer he would not. I confess that inexperience
caused me much trouble. I have often thereby given occasion for what
they made me suffer. For ought I not to have looked on my captivity as
an effect of the will of my God, to content myself and to make it my
only desire and prayer? But I often fell back again into the anxiety of
wishing to get time for prayer, which was not agreeable to my husband.
Those faults were more frequent in the beginning. Afterward I prayed to
God in His own retreat, in the temple of my heart,