sions (in the beginning); the sisters, while they
waited for the coming of the divine Bridegroom, went to visit Him in
the person of His poor and His sick, who are His living members.
Nothing was better calculated to calm the stormy passions within, than
this variety of active charity. Madame de Chantal, who had formerly
been a good mother, a prudent housekeeper, was happy in finding even in
mystic life employment for her economical and positive faculties in
devoting herself to the laborious detail of the establishment of a
great order, in travelling, according to the orders of her beloved
director, from one establishment to another. It was a twofold proof of
wisdom in the Saint: he made her useful, and kept her away.

With all this prudence, we must say that the happiness of working
together for the same end, of founding, and creating together,
strengthened still more the tie that was already so strong. It is
curious to see how they tighten the band in wishing to untie it. This
contradiction is affecting. At the very time he is prescribing to her
to detach herself from him who had been her nurse, he protests that
this nurse shall never fail her. The very day he lost his mother he
writes in these strong terms: "To you I speak, to you, I say, to whom I
have allotted my mother's place in my memorial of the mass, without
depriving you of the one you had, for I have not been able to do it, so
fast do you retain what you have in my heart; and so it is, _you
possess it first and last_."

I do not think a stronger expression ever escaped the heart on a more
solemn day. How burning must it have entered her heart, already
lacerated with passion! How can he be surprised after that, that she
should write to him, "Pray to God, that I survive you not!" Does he
not see, that at every instant he wounds, and heals only to renew the
pain?

The nuns of the Visitation, who published some of the letters of their
foundress, have prudently suppressed several, which, as they say
themselves, "are only fit to be kept under the lock and key of
charity." Those which are extant are, however, quite sufficient to
show the deep wound she bore with her to the grave.

The Visitation being supported neither by active charity, which was
soon prohibited, nor by the cultivation of the intellect, which had
given life to the Paraclet and other convents of the middle ages, had
no other choice, it would seem, than to adopt mystic asceticism. But