metimes to draw
them from the love of the world by her moving discourses, which were
attended with a singular blessing from almighty God. Humility was her
darling virtue; and her greatest delight seemed to be in seeing herself
contemned. She was so full of confusion at her own miseries and
baseness, and was so contemptible in her own eyes, that she was ashamed
to appear before any one, placed herself far below the greatest sinners,
and studied by all sorts of humiliations to prevent the least motion of
secret pride or self-conceit in her heart. She served the poor and the
sick with an affection that charmed and comforted them. She lived in
strict solitude in a small, poor, abandoned apartment in {521} her
father's house, and spent her time there in manual labor and prayer.
Being very beautiful, she begged of God to change her complexion, and
her face became so pale and thin, that she could scarce be known for the
same person. Yet a certain majesty of virtue, shining in her
countenance, gave her charms conducive to the edification of others by
the sweetness, modesty, and air of piety and divine love discernible in
her looks. Her parents, who, though poor, were virtuous, and exceeding
charitable, according to their abilities, and great peacemakers among
their neighbors, seeing her directed by the Spirit of God, allowed her
full liberty in her devotions. After their death she distributed the
little they left her among the poor, and retired among the Beguines,
devout societies of women, established in several parts of Flanders,
Picardy, and Lorrain, who maintain themselves by the work of their
hands, leading a middle kind of life between the secular and religious,
but make no solemn vows. Not finding this way of life austere enough,
she, by her confessor's advice, took the habit of the third order of St.
Francis, called the Penitents; and, three years after, that of the
mitigated Clares or Urbanists, with the view of reforming that order,
and reducing it to its primitive austerity. Having obtained of the abbot
of Corbie a small hermitage, she spent in it three years in
extraordinary austerity, near that abbey. After this, in order to
execute the project she had long formed of re-establishing the primitive
spirit and practice of her order, she went to the convent at Amiens, and
from thence to several others. To succeed in her undertaking, it was
necessary that she should be vested with proper authority: to procure
which she m