ou hast made with me, I brought with
me nothing but weakness, sin and misery. How I rejoice to owe all to
Thee, and that Thou favorest my heart with a sight of the treasures and
boundless riches of Thy grace and love! Thou hast dealt by me, as if a
magnificent king should marry a poor slave, forget her slavery, give
her all the ornaments which may render her pleasing in his eyes, and
freely pardon her all the faults and ill qualities which her ignorance
and bad education had given her. This Thou hast made my case. My
poverty is become my riches, and in the extremity of my weakness I have
found my strength. Oh, if any knew, with what confusion the indulgent
favors of God cover the soul after its faults! Such a soul would wish
with all its power to satisfy the divine justice. I made verses and
little songs to bewail myself. I exercised austerities, but they did
not satisfy my heart. They were like those drops of water which only
serve to make the fire hotter. When I take a view of God, and myself, I
am obliged to cry out, "Oh, admirable conduct of Love toward an
ungrateful wretch! Oh, horrible ingratitude toward such unparalleled
goodness." A great part of my life is only a mixture of such things as
might be enough to sink me to the grave between grief and love.

CHAPTER 15

On my arrival at home, I found my husband taken with the gout, and his
other complaints. My little daughter ill, and like to die of the
smallpox; my eldest son, too, took it; and it was of so malignant a
type, that it rendered him as disfigured, as before he was beautiful.
As soon as I perceived the smallpox was in the house, I had no doubt
but I should take it. Mrs. Granger advised me to leave if I could. My
father offered to take me home, with my second son, whom I tenderly
loved. My mother-in-law would not suffer it. She persuaded my husband
it was useless, and sent for a physician, who seconded her in it,
saying, "I should as readily take it at a distance as here, if I were
disposed to take it." I may say, she proved at that time a second
Jephtha, and that she sacrificed us both, though innocently. Had she
known what followed, I doubt not but she would have acted otherwise.
All the town stirred in this affair. Everyone begged her to send me out
of the house, and cried out that it was cruel to expose me thus. They
set upon me, too, imagining I was unwilling to go. I had not told that
she was so averse to it. I had at that time no other dis