s self certain ideas and reasoning
much. This difficulty gave me no small trouble, for a long time. I was
very assiduous and prayed earnestly to God to give me the gift of
prayer. All that I saw in the life of M. de Chantal charmed me. I was
so much a child, that I thought I ought to do everything I saw in it.
All the vows she had made I made also. One day as I was reading that
she had put the name of Jesus on her heart, to follow the counsel, "Set
me as a seal upon thy heart." For this purpose she had taken a hot
iron, whereupon the holy name was engraven. I was very much afflicted
that I could not do the same. I decided to write that sacred and
adorable name, in large characters, on paper, then with ribbons and a
needle I fastened it to my skin in four places. In that position it
continued a long time.

After this, I turned all my thoughts to become a nun. Because the love
which I had for St. Francis de Sales did not permit me to think of any
other community than the one of which he was the founder, I frequently
went to beg the nuns there to receive me into their convent. Often I
stole out of my father's house to go and repeatedly solicit my
admission there. Though it was what they eagerly desired, even as a
temporal advantage, yet they never dared let me enter, as they very
much feared my father, to whose fondness for me they were no strangers.

There was at that house a niece of my father's, to whom I am under
great obligations. Fortune had not been very favorable to her father.
It had reduced her in some measure to depend on mine, to whom she made
known my desire. Although he would not for anything in the world have
hindered a right vocation, yet he could not hear of my design without
shedding tears. As he happened at this time to be abroad, my cousin
went to my confessor, to desire him to forbid my going to the
visitation. He dared not, however, do it plainly, for fear of drawing
on himself the resentment of that community. I still wanted to be a
nun, and importuned my mother excessively to take me to that house. She
would not do it, for fear of grieving my father, who was absent.

CHAPTER 5

No sooner was my father returned home, than he became violently ill. My
mother was at the same time indisposed in another part of the house. I
was all alone with him, ready to render him every kind of service I was
capable of, and to give him all the dutiful marks of a most sincere
affection. I do not doubt but my