the trial, after prayer, I felt myself strongly pressed to
go to the judges. I was wonderfully assisted even so as to discover and
unravel all the turns and artifices of this affair, without knowing how
I could have been able to do it. The first judge was so surprised to
see the affair so different from what he had thought it before, that he
himself exhorted me to go to the other judges, and especially to the
intendant, who was just then going to court. He was quite misinformed
about the matter. God enabled me to manifest the truth in so clear a
light, and gave such power to my words, that the intendant thanked me
for having so seasonably come to undeceive, and set him right. Had I
not done this, he assured me the cause had been lost. As they saw the
falsehood of every point, they would have condemned the plaintiff to
pay the costs, if he had not been so great a prince, who lent his name
to the scheme. To save the honor of the prince they ordered us to pay
him fifty crowns. Hereby the two hundred thousand livres were reduced
to only one hundred and fifty. My husband was exceedingly pleased at
what I had done. My brother appeared as outrageous against me, as if I
had caused him some great loss. Thus moderately and at once ended an
affair, which had at first appeared so very weighty and alarming.

CHAPTER 21

About this time I fell into a state of total privation which lasted
nearly seven years. I seemed to myself cast down like Nebuchadnezzar,
to live among beasts; a deplorable state, yet of the greatest advantage
to me, by the use which divine wisdom made of it. This state of
emptiness, darkness, and impotency, went far beyond any trials I had
ever yet met. I have since experienced, that the prayer of the heart
when it appears most dry and barren, nevertheless is not ineffectual
nor offered in vain. God gives what is best for us, though not what we
most relish or wish for. Were people but convinced of this truth, they
would be far from complaining all their lives. By causing us death He
would procure us life; for all our happiness, spiritual, temporal and
eternal, consists in resigning ourselves to God, leaving it to Him to
do in us and with us as He pleases, and with so much the more
submission; as things please us less. By this pure dependence on His
Spirit, everything is given us admirably. Our very weaknesses, in His
hand, prove a source of humilition. If the soul were faithful to leave
itself in the hand o