One day a bright
idea occurred to her: taking a mussel-shell from her painting
table, and, holding my hands lest I should prevent her, she
gathered my tears in the shell, and soon they were turned into
merry laughter.

"There," she said, "from this onwards I permit you to cry as much
as you like on condition that it is into the shell!"

A week, however, before her death I spent a whole evening in tears
at the thought of her fast-approaching end. She knew it, and said:
"You have been crying. Was it into the shell?" I was unable to
tell an untruth, and my answer grieved her. "I am going to die,"
she continued, "and I shall not be at rest about you unless you
promise to follow faithfully my advice. I consider it of the
utmost importance for the good of your soul."

I promised what she asked, begging leave, however, as a favour, to
be allowed to cry at her death. "But," she answered, "why cry at
my death? Those tears will certainly be useless. You will be
bewailing my happiness! Still I have pity on your weakness, and
for the first few days you have leave to cry, though afterwards
you must again take up the shell."

It has cost me some heroic efforts, but I have been faithful. I
have kept the shell at hand, and each time the wish to cry
overcame me, I laid hold of the pitiless thing. However urgent the
tears, the trouble of passing it from one eye to the other so
distracted my thoughts, that before very long this ingenious
method entirely cured me of my sensibility.

* * * * * *

Owing to a fault which had caused Soeur Therese much pain, but of
which I had deeply repented, I intended to deprive myself of Holy
Communion. I wrote to her of my resolution, and this was her
reply: "Little flower, most dear to Jesus, by this humiliation
your roots are feeding upon the earth. You must now open wide your
petals, or rather lift high your head, so that the Manna of the
Angels may, like a divine dew, come down to strengthen you and
supply all your wants. Good-night, poor little flower! Ask of
Jesus that all the prayers offered for my cure may serve to
increase the fire which ought to consume me."

* * * * * *

"At the moment of Communion I sometimes liken my soul to that of a
little child of three or four, whose hair has been ruffled and
clothes soiled at play. This is a picture of what befalls me in my
struggling with souls. But Our Blessed Lady comes promptly to the
rescue, takes off _my soiled pinaf