t I was entirely mad, and would have
increased his expensive and painful remedies tenfold. I have suffered
much in this way during the whole of my life, and particularly when I
was at the convent, from having unsuitable remedies administered to me.
Often, when my doctors and nurses had reduced me to the last agony, and
that I was near death, God took pity on me, and sent me some
supernatural assistance, which effected an entire cure.'

Four years before the suppression of her convent she went to Flamske
for two days to visit her parents. Whilst there she went once to kneel
and pray for some hours before the miraculous Cross of the Church of
St. Lambert, at Coesfeld. She besought the Almighty to bestow the gifts
of peace and unity upon her convent, offered him the Passion of Jesus
Christ for that intention, and implored him to allow her to feel a
portion of the sufferings which were endured by her Divine Spouse on
the Cross. From the time that she made this prayer her hands and feet
became burning and painful, and she suffered constantly from fever,
which she believed was the cause of the pain in her hands and feet, for
she did not dare to think that her prayer had been granted. Often she
was unable to walk, and the pain in her hands prevented her from
working as usual in the garden. On the 3rd December 1811, the convent
was suppressed, and the church closed. (Under the Government of Jerome
Bonaparte, King of Westphalia.) The nuns dispersed in all directions,
but Anne Catherine remained, poor and ill. A kindhearted servant
belonging to the monastery attended upon her out of charity, and an
aged emigrant priest, who said Mass in the convent, remained also with
her. These three individuals, being the poorest of the Community, did
not leave the convent until the spring of 1812. She was still very
unwell, and could not be moved without great difficulty. The priest
lodged with a poor widow who lived in the neighbourhood, and Anne
Catherine had in the same house a wretched little room on the
ground-floor, which looked on the street. There she lived, in poverty
and sickness, until the autumn of 1813. Her ecstasies in prayer, and
her spiritual intercourse with the invisible world, became more and
more frequent. She was about to be called to a state with which she was
herself but imperfectly acquainted, and in order to enter which she did
nothing but submissively abandon herself to the will of God. Our Lord
was pleased about this