ver,
pity this good Father, remarking herein the conducting of God, who
desired to annihilate him.

At the commencement I committed faults by a too great anxiety and
eagerness to justify him, conceiving it simple justice. I did not
the same for myself, for I did not justify myself; but our Lord made
me understand I should do for the Father what I did for myself, and
allow him to be destroyed and annihilated; for thereby he would
derive a far greater glory than he had done from all his reputation.

After Father La Combe arrived, he came to see me, and wrote to the
Bishop to know if he approved of my making use of him, and
confessing to him as I had done before. The Bishop sent me word to
do so, and thus I did it in all possible submissiveness.

In his absence I always confessed to the confessor of the House. The
first thing he said to me was that all his lights were deceptions,
and that I might return. I did not know why he said this. He added
that he could not see an opening to anything, and therefore it was
not probable God had anything for me to do in that country. These
words were the first greeting he gave me.

When Father La Combe proposed me to return, I felt some slight
repugnance in the senses, which did not last long. The soul can not
but allow herself to be led by obedience, not that she regards
obedience as a virtue, but it is that she can not be otherwise, nor
wish to do otherwise; she allows herself to be drawn along without
knowing why or how, as a person who should allow himself to be
carried along by the current of a rapid river. She can not apprehend
deception, nor even make a reflection thereon. Formerly it was by
self-surrender; but in her present state it is without even knowing
or understanding what she does, like a child whom its mother might
hold over the waves of a disturbed sea, and who fears nothing,
because it neither sees nor knows the danger; or like a madman who
casts himself into the sea without fear of destroying himself. It is
not that exactly, for to cast one's self is an "own" action, which
here the soul is without. She finds herself there, and she sleeps in
the vessel without dreading the danger. It was a long time since any
means of support had been sent me. Untroubled and without any
anxiety for the future, unable to fear poverty and fami