Part 10 (2/2)

Her spiritual necessities were more difficult to supply. Not wis.h.i.+ng to risk being recognised, she was obliged to use many precautions whenever she allowed herself the consolation of partic.i.p.ating in the divine mysteries; but Providence had prepared for her a resource. At a little distance from the forest were two religious houses, one of men, the other of women. There she went to hear Ma.s.s and receive holy communion; and, in order to escape remark, she went sometimes to the church of the convent, sometimes to that of the monastery; and for her confessor she selected a good curate of the neighbourhood, who simply heard what she had to say, and asked her no questions. She had fixed for herself a rule of life, which she followed exactly: at five in the morning she rose, winter and summer; continued in prayer till six, when she recited prime, and either went to Ma.s.s or heard it in spirit; and then read some chapters of Holy Scripture. These exercises lasted till eight; after which she devoted two hours to manual labour, either mending her clothes, or practising sculpture, or cultivating a little garden which she had made round her habitation. At ten she recited tierce, s.e.xt, and none; and then, prostrate at the foot of her crucifix, she examined her conscience, and imposed on herself penances in proportion to the number and grievousness of her faults. All this lasted till about noon, when she took the only meal of the day, and after it her recreation, which consisted, in fine weather, of a walk to the summit of the rocks, where she contemplated the greatness of G.o.d in His works, and praised and blessed His infinite perfections in pious songs which she knew by heart, or with which Divine love inspired her at the moment.

On her return home she made her spiritual reading, usually from the Imitation, followed by an affectionate prayer, in which she poured out before G.o.d all the necessities of her soul; but asked of Him nothing but the accomplishment of His own good pleasure. Then she resumed her manual labour until four in the afternoon, after which she recited Vespers and the entire Rosary, accompanied or followed by pious considerations. This exercise brought her on to eight o'clock, when she went through the devotion of the Stations in a Calvary which she had built herself, and performed the penances and mortifications which she had imposed upon herself. At nine she retired to her cell, and, after a short examination of conscience, and some vocal prayers, slept till eleven, when she rose to recite matins, which she knew by heart, and to pray till two, when she retired again to rest till five. In order to regulate this distribution of her time, she had made herself a wooden clock. She made also several other pieces of workmans.h.i.+p, which were admired by connoisseurs, more especially a Crucifix made out of a single piece of corneil wood, which she presented to Father de Bray, and which afterwards fell into the hands of Madaine de Maintenon, who valued it as a precious relic. She wrought also three other crucifixes, one very small, which she wore round her neck; another, three feet high, which, she placed in her cell; and a third, six feet high, which she carved out of the wood of a fir-tree, which had been struck down by lightning in the forest, and which she placed in the Calvary she had arranged on the summit of one of the highest of the rocks which enclosed her habitation.

For her communications with Father de Bray she made use of a wagoner, who, from time to time, journeyed to and from Paris, and who faithfully carried her letters, and brought back to her the answers to them, together with the small sums of money which her director sent her from time to time, and which she used to procure such things as were indispensably necessary to her, such as tools for her carving, needles, thread, worsted, and some pieces of calico and stuff to repair her garments, which were very simple, but always neat, especially when she appeared at church.

It may not be uninteresting to see an inventory of her few possessions which she sent to her spiritual director. A Roman Breviary, which she recited daily, and which she understood, having learnt Latin in her childhood; an Imitation; an abridgment of the Saints' Lives; a little book culled Horloge du Coeur, and another of Devotions to the Blessed Sacrament. Such was her library. Her workshop contained a supply of ordinary carpenters' tools, and a few more delicate implements for carving; while for her personal use she had a few hundreds of pins, some needles, some grey and white thread, a pair of scissors, and a copper thimble; two bowls and a cup, all in wood; a hair s.h.i.+rt, and a discipline. Her wardrobe, as may be supposed, was of the most simple description, but sufficient for decency and neatness.

Our solitary had but one fear in this peaceful retirement, that of being discovered; and it was long before her evident sanct.i.ty drew the attention of the people of the village, and excited the curiosity of so many people, that, in spite of all her precautions, they succeeded, by dint of constant watching, in finding out, if not absolutely her abode, at least the rocks which surrounded it. This was quite enough to force her to seek a more distant solitude.

Impelled, as she said in one of her letters, by an irresistible force, she transported herself to a distance of twenty leagues, still further among the Pyrenees, in the direction of Spain. She had dwelt for four years in the solitude of the rocks, and for three years more she abode in that which she called the Grot of the Rivulets. It was a place full of rocks and caverns, the retreat of wild beasts, enormous serpents, and monstrous lizards, which were the terror of the neighbourhood, so that none dared approach the spot. But when this barrier of rocks was once pa.s.sed, which required good climbing, there was a little smiling valley enamelled with flowers, and intersected with rivulets from several springs of living water gus.h.i.+ng out from the mountains; there, too, were several sorts of fruit of very good taste, and a quant.i.ty of wild honey, which the solitary p.r.o.nounced to be excellent; so that altogether this abode would have been preferable to her former one of the rocks, if it had not been for the presence of the wild beasts. But of these Jane Margaret had no fear, depending on the help of the Lord, who has promised to give His servants the power of treading on serpents and scorpions, and of chaining the mouths of lions; and in truth these animals never disturbed her, though she pa.s.sed their dens again and again; it seemed as though they respected her and all that belonged to her, for they never approached her dwelling, and even spared a little squirrel which she had found in this wilderness, and taken home with her for company.

Here, too, as in the neighbourhood of her first solitude, she found a convent of monks; but this was at a more considerable distance, for she had three leagues and a half to walk before she could reach it, and that through tangled thickets; but in this convent she sought a confessor; the Superior received her with great kindness, believing her to be a poor country girl, and asking her no questions but such as were suitable to the rural life he supposed her to be leading. For the holy sacrifice she went to the hermitage of St. Antony, a league and a half on the other side of the forest.

When once fixed in this new abode, our solitary peaceably resumed the course of her accustomed exercises. She arranged for herself two cells in the hollow of two rocks very near to each other, and in the s.p.a.ce between the two she formed a little chapel, which she delighted in adorning with verdure and wild flowers. She divided her time, as before, between labour and prayer, and her trances and ecstasies became more frequent and more sublime than ever; but her great humility made her distrust these extraordinary favours of Heaven, and she required to be set at rest concerning them by her director, with whom she continued to correspond, and to whom she continued, even to the end, to pour forth all the secrets of her soul with the simplicity of a child. Her last letter is dated the 17th of Sept. 1699, and in it she expresses a great desire to go to Rome in the course of the following year, in order to gain the indulgence of the jubilee, but at the same time submits her own judgment entirely to that of him whom she regarded as the interpreter of the will of Heaven in her regard. Receiving no answer, she suspected that Father de Bray was no more; and in fact he had died that very year.

She thought herself free to move, and set off for the Holy City, since which period it has been impossible to gather any trace of her. Whether she accomplished her pilgrimage, whether she died in Rome or in some solitude, has never been discovered; as though it pleased Providence to second, even after her death, the earnest desire of His servant to be hidden from the sight and knowledge of men; for the tomb, which often becomes the glory of the friends of G.o.d, only set the seal to her obscurity. At the last day, when the secrets of all hearts shall be made known, this treasure will stand revealed in the face of the universe.

<script>