I did not observe to avoid any ground
for my being talked of.

* * * * *

So much precaution had I, O my God! for a vain point of honor, and I
had so little of true honor, which is not to displease you. I went
so far in this, and my self-love was so great, that if I had failed
in any rule of politeness, I could not sleep at night. Every one
wished to contribute to my diversion, and the outside life was only
too agreeable for me; but as to indoors, vexation had so depressed
my husband that each day I had to put up with something new, and
that very often.

Sometimes he threatened to throw the supper out of the window, and I
told him it would be very unfair to me--I had a good appetite.

* * * * *

It will be seen, from these frank outpourings of the heart, that Madame
Guyon was suffering from an overwrought sex-nature.

Steeped in superstition, hypersthenia, God to her was a man--her lover.

Her one thought was to do His will. God is her ideal of all that is
strong, powerful and farseeing. In her imagination she continually
communicates with this all-powerful man. She calls Him "My Love," and
occasionally forgetting herself addresses him as "Sir." She evades her
husband, and deceives that worthy gentleman into believing she is asleep
when she is all the time secretly praying to God. She goes to confession
in a kimono. She gets up at daylight to go to mass, and this mass to her
heated imagination is a tryst, and the fact that she can go to mass and
get back safely and find her husband still sleeping adds the sweets of
secrecy to her passion. In love the illicit seems the normal.

Her children are nothing to her, compared to this love, the ratio of a
woman's love for her children having a direct relationship to the
mother's love for their father. Madame Guyon's regard for her husband is
covered by the word "duty," but to deceive the man never occurs to her
as a fault. She prides herself on being an honest wife.

[Illustration: MADAME GUYON]

Of course her children turn from her, because she has turned from them.
She thinks their ingratitude is a trial and a cross sent to her by God,
just as she regards her husband's gout as a calamity for herself,
never seemingly thinking of how it affects the gentleman himself. Simple
people might say the gout was his affair, not hers, but she does not
view it so. In he