vation, that having retired to pray, in a very ardent
frame of mind, he was filled with joy, and seized with a powerful
emotion, which made him enter into what I had told him of the way of
faith. I give these things, as they happen to come to my remembrance,
without carrying them on in order.

After Easter, in 1682, the bishop came to Tonon. I had occasion to
speak to him, which when I had done, our Lord so pointed my words that
he appeared thoroughly convinced. But the persons who had influenced
him before returned. He then pressed me very much to return to Gex and
to take the place of Prioress. I gave him the reasons against it. I
then appealed to him, as a bishop, desiring him to take care to regard
nothing but God in what he should say to me. He was struck into a kind
of confusion; and then said to me, "Since you speak to me in such a
manner, I cannot advise you to it. It is not for us to go contrary to
our vocations; but do good, I pray you, to this house." I promised him
to do it. Having received my pension, I sent them a hundred pistoles,
with a design of doing the same as long as I should be in the diocese.
The bishop said to me, "I love Father La Combe. He is a true servant of
God and he has told me many things to which I was forced to assent for
I felt them in myself. But," added he, "when I say so, they tell me I
am mistaken, and that before the end of six months he will run mad." He
told me, "he approved of the nuns, which had been under the care and
instruction of Father La Combe, finding them to come up fully to what
he had heard of them." From thence I took occasion to tell him "that in
everything he ought to refer himself to his own breast, or to the
instructions there immediately received, and not to others." He agreed
to what I said, and acknowledged it to be right; yet no sooner was he
returned, than, so great was his weakness that he re-entered into his
former dispositions. He sent the same ecclesiastic to tell me that I
must engage myself at Gex; that it was his sentiment. I answered, that
I was determined to follow the counsel he had given me, when he had
spoken to me as from God, since now they made him speak only as man.

CHAPTER 8

My soul was in a state of entire resignation and very great content, in
the midst of such violent tempests. Those persons came to tell me a
hundred extravagant stories against Father La Combe. The more they said
to me to his disadvantage, the more esteem I f