eived therein, though some were willing to
persuade me to think the contrary. I had used my utmost endeavors to
give myself other thoughts, which had caused me not a little pain. When
I told, or wrote to Father La Combe about the state of some souls,
which appeared to him more perfect and advanced than the knowledge
given to me of them, he attributed it to pride. He was angry with me,
and prejudiced against my state. I had no uneasiness on account of his
esteeming me the less, for I was not in a condition to reflect whether
he esteemed me or not. He could not reconcile my willing obedience in
most things, with so extraordinary a firmness, which in certain cases
he looked upon as criminal. He admitted a distrust of my grace; he was
not yet sufficiently confirmed in his way, nor did he duly comprehend,
that it did not in any wise depend on me to be one way or another. If I
had any such power I should have suited myself to what he said, to
spare myself the crosses which my firmness caused me. Or, at least, I
would have artfully dissembled my real sentiments. I could do neither.
Were all to perish by it, I was in such a manner constrained, that I
could not forbear telling him the things, just as our Lord directed me
to tell them to him. In this he had given me an inviolable fidelity to
the very last. No crosses or pains have ever made me fail a moment
therein. These things then, which appeared to him to be the strong
prejudice of a conceited opinion, set him at variance against me.
Though he did not openly show it, on the contrary tried to conceal it
from me; yet how far distant soever he were from me, I could not be
ignorant of it. My spirit felt it, and that more or less, as the
opposition was stronger or weaker; as soon as it abated or ended, my
pain, occasioned thereby, ceased. He also, on his side, experienced the
same. He has told me and written to me many times over, "When I stand
well with God, I find I am well with you. When I am otherwise with Him,
I then find myself to be so with you also." Thus he saw clearly that
when God received him, it was always in uniting him to me, as if He
would accept of nothing from him but in this union.

While he was at Turin, a widow who was a good servant of God, all in
the brightness of sensibility, came to him to confess. She uttered
wonderful things of her state. I was then at the other side of the
confessional. He told me, "He had met with a soul given up to God; that
it was sh