d on its
delicate stem: little hope was held out--it must wither and die.
"You must pray to St. Francis de Sales," wrote her aunt from the
convent at Le Mans, "and you must promise, if the child recovers,
to call her by her second name, Frances." This was a sword-thrust
for the Mother. Leaning over the cradle of her Therese, she
awaited the coming of the end, saying: "Only when the last hope
has gone, will I promise to call her Frances."

The gentle St. Francis waived his claim in favour of the great
Reformer of the Carmelite Order: the child recovered, and so
retained her sweet name of Therese. Sorrow, however, was mixed
with the Mother's joy, when it became necessary to send the babe
to a foster-mother in the country. There the "little rose-bud"
grew in beauty, and after some months had gained strength
sufficient to allow of her being brought back to Alencon. Her
memory of this short but happy time spent with her sainted Mother
in the Rue St. Blaise was extraordinarily vivid. To-day a tablet
on the balcony of No. 42 informs the passers-by that here was born
a certain Carmelite, by name, Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus and
the Holy Face. Fifteen years have gone since the meeting in Heaven
of Madame Martin and her Carmelite child, and if the pilgrimage to
where the Little Flower first saw the light of day, be not so
large as that to the grave where her remains await their glorious
resurrection, it may nevertheless be numbered in thousands. And to
the English-speaking pilgrim there is an added pleasure in the
fact that her most notable convert, the first minister of the
United Free Church of Scotland to enter the True Fold, performs,
with his convert wife, the courteous duties of host.

* * * * * *

It will not be amiss to say a brief word here on the brother and
sister of Madame Martin. Her sister--in religion, Sister Marie
Dosithea--led a life so holy at Le Mans that she was cited by Dom
Gueranger, perhaps the most distinguished Benedictine of the
nineteenth century, as the model of a perfect nun. By her own
confession, she had never been guilty from earliest childhood of
the smallest deliberate fault. She died on February 24, 1877. It
was in the convent made fragrant by such holiness that her niece
Pauline Martin, elder sister and "little mother" of Therese, and
for five years her Prioress at the Carmel, received her education.
And if the Little Flower may have imbibed the liturgical spirit
from her t