Part 10 (1/1)
ANNE DE MONTMORENCY
ANNE DE MONTMORENCY, THE SOLITARY OF THE PYRENEES
ABOUT the year 1666, a young lady of the family of Montmorency, one of the most ancient and illustrious in France, disappeared at the age of fifteen fro formed for her establishment, and she believed herself called to a different state of life After having in vain endeavoured to alter the views of her fa her, she entreated pere to Mount Valerian, near Paris, where were the stations of our Lord's Passion When she reached that which represents our Lord on the cross, she implored Him whom she had chosen for her spouse, withever unfaithful to Him, and to teach her how to live from thenceforth as His own bride, unknown, and crucified with Hie, and her whole being abandoned to the care of Providence
With her hts, she ca what she was going to do, she turned her steps towards the Bois de Boulogne; and when she reached the Abbey of Longcha impulse to enter the church, she dismissed for some hours the confidential attendants by who that she had still ly they left her without suspicion to finish her devotions No sooner were they out of sight than she left the church; and co herself to our Blessed Lord and His Holy Mother, plunged into the recesses of the wood She was following by mere chance an unfrequented path, when she met a poor woman, who asked alms of her This encounter appeared to her an indication of the will of Heaven: she foran to put it into execution, by taking the clothes of the poor beggar, and giving her own in exchange; and to couise, she stained her hands and face with clay, and tried to disfigure herself as much as possible She then turned in the direction contrary to that in which she thought pursuit would first be made; walked all the rest of the day, and found herself in the evening in a village situate on the Seine, soues from Paris There she was met by some charitable ecclesiastics, who, touched by her youth, and the dangers to which it exposed her, took an interest in her situation, and found her first a temporary asyluhbourhood, as very rich, and whose service was safe and respectable, as she was devout and regular in her conduct; but she was a difficult person to live with, being of a sharp and worrying te either a aret, by which name only she was known, entered as lady's-maid; but as no servant but herself could reed to be cook and housemaid and porteress all at once What consoled and even rejoiced her in this situation was the opportunity it afforded her of satisfying her thirst for crosses and humiliations, and also her freedom from all intrusion of idle curiosity, so that she felt her secret safe
She endured all the fatigues of so laborious a situation, and all the caprices of a harshness in temper, with unalterable patience and sweetness until her mistress's death; that is to say, for the space of ten years And so faultless was her, conduct during all this tied her pardon for all she hadher the sues, of which she had as yet scarcely received any thing Jane Margaret ith difficulty persuaded to accept this present, and when it was forced upon her, she distributed it a the poor, with the exception of a very s, however, that such extraordinary liberality on the part of a er her secret, she resolved to escape the peril as soon as possible
Accordingly, on her return fro the boat for Auxerre, she threw herself into it, without a moment's delay; and soon after her arrival in that town succeeded in finding another situation which she considered suitable It was in the house of a reatly esteeeneral probity, and as also clever in carving
The early education of Jane Margaret ht her how to handle the chisel, and she very soon became sufficiently expert to h to find a director experienced in the ways of God, who confirmed her in the resolution she had taken In about a year's ti another to whoive her entire confidence, she deteruide such as she required, believing herself sufficiently forgotten at this distance of tinised She set forth, therefore, on the road to the capital on foot, and asking alive to the poor all that she had earned
On her arrival in Paris she placed herself a the poor who ask the charity of the faithful at the church-doors; and begged every h to maintain her for the day, for which purpose very little sufficed All the rest of her time she passed in prayer in the churches, which she never left except at the approach of night One day as she was asking al to her custom, at the door of a church, it pleased Providence that she should address herself to a very pious and charitable lady, who kept a school at Chateau-Fort, and as under the direction of a holy religious na and ar, the virtuous school which did not accord with her apparent state of life, ventured to ask her whether it was froaret only replied that she believed herself to be fulfilling the will of God; which answer increased the interest she had already excited in the mind of the pious lady, who told her that in her state of weakness the air of the country would do her good, and offered to take her to Chateau-Fort At the same time she spoke to her of Father de Bray, whose name and merit ell known in Paris This last consideration was sufficient to deteraret to follow a person whose sentienial with her own
As soon as Father de Bray became acquainted with her, he discovered in her one of those wonders which are wrought frorace for the confusion of the world, and set hied soul She too, on her side, convinced that she had at last found a guide such as she had been long seeking, bestowed on him her confidence without reserve, and continued to correspond with hi as he lived
In process of time, drawn more than ever by the Spirit of God, she left Chateau-Fort to go and seek a solitude hidden from all men; but it was almost two years before she could find what she desired She traversed several provinces seeking for an asylum out of the reach of every human eye, until at last she arrived at the Pyrenees, where she established herself in a wild recess, which she names in her letters ”the solitude of the rocks” It was a little space of a pentagonal shape, shut in by five rocks, which forround which they enclosed not quite inaccessible, but altogether invisible froushed a spring of excellent water, and its summit was a kind of observatory, froht venture to approach her abode There were three grottoes at the base of the rocks, one of which was a deep and winding cavern; this she made her cell, and the two others her oratories This solitude was at least half a league from any road, and surrounded by a thick forest, or rather by a brake, so tangled that, to get through it, the travellerthistles and briers, by a path which seemed impracticable to any but wild beasts Our solitary, however, met with none of these, except a bear, as more afraid than she, and ran away She found in her retreat shrubs which bore a fruit much like damsons; and the rocks were covered with medlar-trees, the fruit of which was excellent The cold was not intense even in the heart of winter, while the heat of summer was tempered by the shade of the rocks, and of the woods which surrounded it All these details are given in the letters of the solitary herself to her director, Father de Bray
In this retireelic rather than huhts of heaven, and consecrating every pulsation of her heart to God For soe to ask alrees she weaned herself froetables and wild fruits which grew in the neighbourhood of her abode
Her spiritual necessities were nised, she was obliged to use many precautions whenever she allowed herself the consolation of participating in the divine mysteries; but Providence had prepared for her a resource At a little distance froious houses, one of men, the other of women There she went to hear Mass and receive holy communion; and, in order to escape remark, she went sometimes to the church of the convent, sometimes to that of the ood 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 theshe rose, winter and summer; continued in prayer till six, when she recited prime, and either went to Mass or heard it in spirit; and then read soht; after which she devoted two hours tosculpture, or cultivating a little garden which she had made round her habitation At ten she recited tierce, sext, and none; and then, prostrate at the foot of her crucifix, she examined her conscience, and irievousness 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 sureatness of God in His works, and praised and blessed His infinite perfections in pious songs which she knew by heart, or hich Divine love inspired her at the mo, usually from the Imitation, followed by an affectionate prayer, in which she poured out before God all the necessities of her soul; but asked of Hiood 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 then 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 workmanshi+p, which were admired by connoisseurs, le 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 sh, 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 suhest of the rocks which enclosed her habitation
For her cooner, who, from time to time, journeyed to and froht back to her the answers to theether with the small sums of money which her director sent her fros as were indispensably necessary to her, such as tools for her carving, needles, thread, worsted, and soarments, which were very simple, but always neat, especially when she appeared at church
Itto 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 Ie 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 ; while for her personal use she had a few hundreds of pins, sorey and white thread, a pair of scissors, and a copper thimble; tls and a cup, all in wood; a hair shi+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 retire before her evident sanctity 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 a 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 hbourhood, so that none dared approach the spot But when this barrier of rocks was once passed, which required good cli valley enamelled with flowers, and intersected with rivulets fro out from the ood taste, and a quantity of wild honey, which the solitary pronounced 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 pro on serpents and scorpions, and of chaining the mouths of lions; and in truth these aniain and again; it seeed to her, for they never approached her dwelling, and even spared a little squirrel which she had found in this wilderness, and taken hohbourhood of her first solitude, she found a convent of monks; but this was at a ues 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 herue and a half on the other side of the forest
When once fixed in this new abode, our solitary peaceably resued for herself two cells in the hollow of two rocks very near to each other, and in the space between the two she for with verdure and wild flowers She divided her time, as before, between labour and prayer, and her trances and ecstasies becareat humility made her distrust these extraordinary favours of Heaven, and she required to be set at rest concerning them by her director, hom 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 Roain the indulgence of the jubilee, but at the saarded as the interpreter of the will of Heaven in her regard Receiving no answer, she suspected that Father de Bray was no ht herself free to move, and set off for the Holy City, since which period it has been iather any trace of her Whether she accoe, whether she died in Roh it pleased Providence to second, even after her death, the earnest desire of His servant to be hidden froe of lory of the friends of God, 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