language said to
her, "Put yourself in my hands; yield yourself up to me altogether."
Without a blush she answered, in the fulness of her angelic purity,
"Yes;" meaning nought else than to have him for her sole director.

What were his plans concerning her? Would he make her a mistress or
the tool of his charlatanry? Girard doubtless swayed to and fro, but
he leant, I think, most towards the latter idea. He had to make his
choice, might manage to seek out pleasures free from risk. But Mdlle.
Cadiere was under a pious mother. She lived with her family, a married
brother and the two churchmen, in a very confined house, whose only
entrance lay through the shop of the elder brother. She went no
whither except to church. With all her simplicity she knew
instinctively what things were impure, what houses dangerous. The
Jesuit penitents were fond of meeting together at the top of a house,
to eat, and play the fool, and cry out, in their Provencial tongue,
"Vivent les _Jesuitons_!" A neighbour, disturbed by their noise, went
and found them lying on their faces, singing and eating fritters, all
paid for, it was said, out of the alms-money. Cadiere was also
invited, but taking a disgust to the thing she never went a second
time.

She was assailable only through her soul. And it was only her soul
that Girard seemed to desire. That she should accept those lessons of
passive faith which he had taught at Marseilles, this apparently was
all his aim. Hoping that example would do more for him than precept,
he charged his tool Guiol to escort the young saint to Marseilles,
where lived the friend of Cadiere's childhood, a Carmelite nun, a
daughter of Guiol's. The artful woman sought to win her trust by
pretending that she, too, was sometimes ecstatic. She crammed her with
absurd stories. She told her, for instance, that on finding a cask of
wine spoilt in her cellar, she began to pray, and immediately the wine
became good. Another time she felt herself pierced by a crown of
thorns, but the angels had comforted her by serving up a good dinner,
of which she partook with Father Girard.

Cadiere gained her mother's leave to go with this worthy Guiol to
Marseilles, and Madame Cadiere paid her expenses. It was now the most
scorching month--that of August, 1729--in a scorching climate, when
the country was all dried up, and the eye could see nothing but a
rugged mirror of rocks and flintstone. The weak, parched brain of a
sick girl sufferin