His Sufferings and His Virtues

This return of his ailments began with a toothache that took away his sleep entirely. During his long wakeful hours, one night, without any intention on his part, some thoughts came into his mind concerning the problem of the cycloid (the roulette). That thought was followed by another, and that one by another, until at last a multitude of thoughts, succeeding one another, revealed to him almost in spite of himself the demonstration of all these things, at which he himself was surprised. But as he had long since renounced all such knowledge, it did not even occur to him to write it down. Nevertheless, having happened to mention it to a person to whom he owed every kind of deference, both out of respect and out of gratitude for the affection with which that person honoured him, this person—who is as distinguished for piety as for eminent qualities of mind and greatness of birth—conceived on this a plan that looked only to the glory of God, and thought it fitting that he should make use of it as he did, and afterwards have it printed. Only then did he write it out, and with extreme haste, in eight days; for it was while the printers were at work, and he was supplying two of them at once with two different treatises, without ever having any other copy than the one made for the press; and this was not known until six months later, when the matter was discovered.

Meanwhile his infirmities, continuing without giving him a single moment's respite, reduced him, as I have said, to being unable to work any longer and to seeing almost no one. But if they prevented him from serving the public and private persons, they were by no means useless to himself, and he bore them with such peace and such patience that there is reason to believe God meant by them to complete the work of making him such as He wished him to be in order to appear before Him. For during this long illness he never turned aside from these aims, keeping always in mind those two great maxims, to renounce all pleasure and all superfluity. He practised them in the very worst of his sickness, with a continual watch over his senses, absolutely refusing them everything that was agreeable to them; and when necessity forced him to do something that might give him some satisfaction, he had a wonderful skill in turning his mind away from it, so that it should take no part in it. For example, as his constant illnesses obliged him to eat delicate food, he took very great care not to taste what he ate; and we noticed that, however much trouble we took to find him some pleasant dish, because of the distaste for food to which he was subject, he never once said, “That is good”; and again, when he was served something new in its season, if he was asked after the meal whether he had enjoyed it, he would say simply, “You should have told me beforehand, for I confess I did not notice it.” And when it happened that someone in his presence admired the excellence of some dish, he could not bear it; he called that being sensual, even if it was only ordinary food, because, he said, it was a sign that one ate to please the palate, which was always wrong.

To avoid falling into this, he would never allow any sauce or ragout to be made for him, not even orange or verjuice, nor anything at all that stimulates the appetite, although by nature he was fond of all these things. And to keep himself within fixed limits, he had observed from the beginning of his retirement what his stomach required; and from then on he had settled everything he was to eat, so that, however great his appetite, he never went beyond it, and however great his distaste, he made himself eat it. And when he was asked why he constrained himself in this way, he said that it was the need of the stomach that must be satisfied, and not the appetite. The mortification of his senses went not only so far as to cut off from them everything that might be agreeable to them, but also to refuse them nothing on the ground that it might be disagreeable to them, whether in his food or in his remedies. For four years together he took broths without showing the least distaste; he took all the things prescribed for his health without any difficulty, however hard they might be; and when I was astonished that he showed not the slightest reluctance in taking them, he laughed at me and told me that he could not himself understand how anyone could show reluctance in taking a medicine voluntarily, after being warned that it was unpleasant, and that only force or surprise ought to produce that effect. It was in this way that he laboured unceasingly at mortification.

He had so great a love for poverty that it was always present to him; so that as soon as he wished to undertake anything, or someone asked his advice, the first thought that came to his mind was to see whether poverty could be practised in it. One of the things on which he examined himself most was that fancy of wishing to excel in everything, such as employing the best workmen for everything, and other things of the kind. Nor could he bear that people should carefully seek out every convenience, such as having everything close at hand, and a thousand other things that people do without scruple because they do not think there is any harm in them. But he did not judge so, and told us that there was nothing so apt to extinguish the spirit of poverty as this studied pursuit of one's comforts, and of that seemliness which makes one always want to have the best and the best made; and he told us that as for workmen, one should always choose the poorest and the most upright, and not that excellence which is never necessary and can never be of use. He would sometimes exclaim, “If my heart were as poor as my mind, I should be very happy; for I am wonderfully persuaded that poverty is a great means of working out one's salvation.”

This love he had for poverty led him to love the poor with such tenderness that he never refused alms, even though he gave only out of what he himself needed, having little property and being obliged, because of his infirmities, to incur expenses that exceeded his income. But when anyone tried to point this out to him as he was giving some considerable alms, he grew vexed and said, “I have noticed one thing: however poor one may be, one always leaves something behind at death.” Thus he closed their mouths; and he sometimes went so far that he was reduced to borrowing money at interest, having given to the poor all he had and not wishing after that to trouble his friends. As soon as the business of the coaches was established, he told me that he meant to ask a thousand francs in advance on his share from the contractors with whom terms were being negotiated, if agreement could be reached with them, since they were acquaintances of his, in order to send it to the poor of Blois; and when I told him that the business was not yet secure enough for that, and that he should wait for another year, he at once gave me this answer: that he saw no great difficulty in it, because if they lost, he would repay them out of his own property, and that he would take good care not to wait for another year, because the need was too pressing to put off charity. And as no agreement was reached with these persons, he could not carry out this resolution, by which he showed us the truth of what he had so often told us, that he wished to have wealth only in order to help the poor with it; since at the very moment when God gave him the hope of having some, he began to distribute it in advance, before he was even sure of it.

His charity toward the poor had always been very great; but it was so much redoubled at the end of his life that I could give him no greater pleasure than to talk with him about it. For four years he had been exhorting me with great earnestness to devote myself to the service of the poor, and to bring my children to it. And when I told him I feared that this might distract me from the care of my family, he told me that this was only a want of good will, and that, as there are various degrees in this virtue, one may well practise it in such a way that it does no harm to domestic affairs. He said that it was the general vocation of Christians, and that no particular sign was needed to know whether one was called to it, because it was certain; that it is on this that Jesus Christ will judge the world; and that when one considered that the mere omission of this virtue is a cause of damnation, this thought alone was enough to bring us to strip ourselves of everything, if we had faith. He told us further that visiting the poor is extremely profitable, in that, seeing continually the miseries with which they are overwhelmed, and that even in the extremity of their illnesses they lacked the most necessary things, one would have to be very hard after that not to deprive oneself willingly of useless comforts and superfluous finery.

All these talks stirred us up and sometimes led us to make proposals for finding means toward general regulations that would provide for every need; but he did not approve of this, and said that we were not called to the general, but to the particular; and that he believed the way most pleasing to God was to serve the poor poorly, that is to say, each according to his means, without filling one's mind with those grand designs that smack of that excellence whose pursuit he condemned in all things. Not that he disapproved of the founding of general hospitals; on the contrary, he had a great love for them, as he clearly showed by his will; but he said that these great undertakings were reserved for certain persons whom God destined for them and whom He guided almost visibly, but that they were not the general vocation of everyone, as the daily and personal relief of the poor is.

These are some of the instructions he gave us to lead us to the practice of this virtue, which held so great a place in his heart; it is a small sample that shows us the greatness of his charity. His purity was no less; and he had so great a reverence for this virtue that he was continually on guard to keep it from being wounded, either in himself or in others; and it is not to be believed how strict he was on this point. I was even afraid on account of it, for he found fault with things I said which I thought quite innocent, and afterwards showed me their faults, which I should never have recognised without his counsel. If I sometimes said that I had seen a beautiful woman, he grew vexed and told me that one should never say such a thing before lackeys or young people, because I did not know what thoughts I might arouse in them by it. Nor could he bear the caresses I received from my children, and he told me that they should be broken of the habit, that it could only do them harm, and that one could show them tenderness in a thousand other ways. Such were the instructions he gave me on this subject, and such was his vigilance for the preservation of purity in himself and in others.

An incident befell him about three months before his death which was a very striking proof of this, and which shows at the same time the greatness of his charity. As he was returning one day from Mass at Saint-Sulpice, a young girl of about fifteen, very beautiful, came up to him and asked for alms. He was moved to see this person exposed to so evident a danger; he asked her who she was and what obliged her thus to beg; and having learned that she was from the country, that her father was dead, and that her mother, having fallen ill, had been carried to the Hôtel-Dieu that very day, he believed that God had sent her to him the moment she was in need; so that within the hour he took her to the seminary, where he placed her in the hands of a good priest, to whom he gave money, asking him to take care of her and to find her a situation where, because of her youth, she might receive guidance and where her person would be safe. And to relieve him in this charge, he told him that he would send him a woman the next day to buy her clothes and everything she needed to fit her to serve a mistress. The next day he sent him a woman, who worked so well with this good priest that, after having her clothed, they placed her in a good situation. And when this clergyman asked the woman the name of the one who was doing this charity, she told him that she had no leave to tell it, but that she would come to see him from time to time to provide for the girl's needs; and he begged her to obtain his permission to tell him his name: “I promise you that I will never speak of it during his lifetime; but if God should allow him to die before me, it would be a comfort to me to make this deed known; for I find it so beautiful that I cannot bear for it to remain forgotten.” Thus from this single incident that good clergyman, without knowing him, judged how much charity he had and how much love for purity. He had an extreme tenderness for us; but this affection did not go as far as attachment. He gave a very striking proof of it at the death of my sister, which preceded his own by ten months. When he received this news he said nothing except, “God grant us the grace to die as well!” And ever afterwards he kept himself in an admirable submission to the orders of God's providence, never reflecting on anything but the great graces God had given my sister during her life and the circumstances of the time of her death; which made him say continually, “Blessed are those who die, provided they die in the Lord!” When he saw me in continual grief over this loss, which I felt so keenly, he grew vexed and told me that this was not right, that one ought not to have such feelings about the death of the righteous, and that on the contrary we should praise God for having so richly rewarded her for the small services she had rendered Him.

It was thus that he showed he had no attachment to those he loved; for if he had been capable of having any, it would doubtless have been for my sister, since she was certainly the person in the world he loved most. But he did not stop there; for not only did he have no attachment to others, but he would not at all have others be attached to him. I do not speak of those criminal and dangerous attachments, for that is gross and everyone sees it plainly; I speak of the most innocent friendships. And this was one of the things on which he watched himself most regularly, so as to give no occasion for it, and even to prevent it; and as I did not know this, I was quite taken aback at the rebuffs he sometimes gave me, and I told my sister so, complaining to her that my brother did not love me and that I seemed to vex him, even when I was rendering him my most affectionate services in his infirmities. My sister told me on this that I was mistaken, that she knew the contrary, that he had for me as great an affection as I could wish. It was thus that my sister set my mind at rest, and I was not long in seeing proofs of it; for as soon as any occasion arose in which I needed my brother's help, he took it up with such care and such marks of affection that I had no reason to doubt that he loved me very much; so that I attributed to the weariness of his illness the cold manner in which he received the attentions I paid him to relieve his tedium. And this riddle was not explained to me until the very day of his death, when a person among the most eminent for greatness of mind and piety, with whom he had had much converse about the practice of virtue, told me that he had given him this instruction among others: that he should never allow anyone whatever to love him with attachment; that this was a fault on which people do not examine themselves enough, because they do not sufficiently grasp its seriousness, and they did not consider that by fostering and permitting such attachments they were occupying a heart that ought to belong to God alone; that it was robbing Him of the thing in the world that was most precious to Him. We saw clearly afterwards that this principle lay deep in his heart; for, in order to have it always before him, he had written it in his own hand on a little slip of paper, on which were these words: “It is unjust that anyone should attach himself to me, even though he does so with pleasure and of his own free will. I should deceive those in whom I aroused the desire; for I am no one's end, and I have not the means to satisfy them. Am I not ready to die? And so the object of their attachment will die. Just as I should be guilty of making someone believe a falsehood, even though I persuaded him of it gently, and he believed it with pleasure, and in so doing gave me pleasure: so am I guilty of making myself loved, and if I draw people to attach themselves to me. I must warn those who might be ready to consent to the lie that they ought not to believe it, whatever advantage might come to me from it; and likewise that they ought not to attach themselves to me; for they must spend their lives and their efforts in pleasing God or in seeking Him.”

That is how he instructed himself, and he practised his instructions so well that I myself had been deceived by them. By these signs of his practices, which came to our knowledge only by chance, one may see something of the light God gave him for the perfection of the Christian life.

He had so great a zeal for the glory of God that he could not bear for it to be violated in anything whatever; it was this that made him so ardent in the service of the king that he stood against everyone during the troubles in Paris, and ever afterwards he called all the reasons given to excuse that rebellion mere pretexts. He said that in a state established as a republic, like Venice, it was a great evil to help set up a king there and to oppress the liberty of a people to whom God has given it; but that in a state where royal power is established, one could not violate the respect owed to it except by a kind of sacrilege, since it is not only an image of the power of God but a participation in that very power, which one could not oppose without visibly resisting the ordinance of God; and that therefore the gravity of this fault could not be overstated, besides the fact that it is always accompanied by civil war, which is the greatest sin one can commit against charity toward one's neighbour. And he kept this maxim so sincerely that at that time he refused very considerable advantages rather than fail in it. He used to say that he had as great an aversion to that sin as to murdering people or robbing on the highway, and that, in short, there was nothing more contrary to his nature or by which he was less tempted.

Such were his sentiments regarding the service of the king; and so he was irreconcilable with all who opposed it. And what showed that this was not from temperament or from attachment to his own opinions was that he had a wonderful gentleness toward those who offended him personally, so that he never made any difference between them and others; and he forgot so completely whatever concerned only himself that it was hard to make him remember it, and for that one had to go into the details. And when people sometimes admired this, he would say, “Do not be surprised at it; it is not from virtue, it is from real forgetfulness; I do not remember it at all.” Yet it is certain that one sees from this that offenses which concerned only his own person made no great impression on him, since he forgot them so easily; for he had so excellent a memory that he often said he had never forgotten anything he had wished to retain.

He practised this gentleness in bearing disobliging things to the very end; for shortly before his death, having been offended in a matter to which he was very sensitive, by a person who was under great obligations to him, and having at the same time received a service from that person, he thanked him with so many compliments and courtesies that the man was quite confounded. Yet this was not from forgetfulness, since it was at the very same time; it was that he truly felt no resentment for offenses that concerned only himself.

All these inclinations, whose particulars I have noted, will be better seen in brief in a portrait he drew of himself on a little paper written in his own hand, in this manner:

“I love poverty, because Jesus Christ loved it. I love wealth, because it gives the means of helping the wretched. I keep faith with everyone. I do not return evil to those who do me evil, but I wish them a condition like my own, in which one receives neither evil nor good at the hands of men. And I have a tenderness of heart for those whom God has joined to me most closely; and whether I am alone or in the sight of men, in all my actions I have in view God, who is to judge them and to whom I have consecrated them all. These are my sentiments; and every day of my life I bless my Redeemer, who placed them in me, and who, out of a man full of weakness, misery, concupiscence, pride and ambition, has made a man free of all these evils by the power of His grace, to which all the glory is due, since of myself I have only misery and error.”

He had thus portrayed himself so that, having continually before his eyes the way by which God was leading him, he might never turn aside from it. The extraordinary light joined to the greatness of his mind did not prevent a wonderful simplicity which appeared throughout the whole course of his life and which made him exact in all the practices of religion. He had a deep love for the divine office, but above all for the Little Hours, because they are composed of Psalm CXVIII, in which he found so many admirable things that he felt delight in reciting it. When he talked with his friends about the beauty of this psalm, he was so carried away that he seemed beside himself; and this meditation had made him so sensitive to all the ways in which people try to honour God that he neglected not one of them. When the monthly slips were sent to him, as is done in many places, he received them with admirable reverence and recited the sentence on them every day; and in the last four years of his life, as he could not work, his chief recreation was to go and visit the churches where relics were exposed or some feast was being kept; and for this he had a spiritual almanac that told him the places where there were particular devotions. And he did all this so devoutly and so simply that those who saw him were astonished; which gave rise to this fine saying of a very virtuous and very enlightened person, that the grace of God makes itself known in great minds by little things, and in ordinary minds by great ones.

This great simplicity appeared when anyone spoke to him of God or of himself; so that on the eve of his death, a clergyman, a man of very great virtue, having come to see him as he had wished, and having stayed an hour with him, came away so edified that he said to me, “Go, take comfort; if God calls him, you have every reason to praise Him for the graces He is giving him. I had always admired many great things in him, but I had never noticed the great simplicity I have just seen; that is incomparable in a mind such as his; I would with all my heart be in his place.”

The curé of Saint-Étienne, who saw him during his illness, saw the same thing in him, and said again and again, “He is a child; he is humble, he is submissive as a child.” It was through this same simplicity that one had complete freedom to point out his faults to him, and he yielded to the advice he was given without resistance. The extreme liveliness of his mind sometimes made him so impatient that it was hard to satisfy him; but when he was told of it, or when he perceived that he had vexed someone in his impatience, he at once made amends by such gentle treatment and so many kindnesses that he never lost anyone's friendship on that account. I am abridging as much as I can; otherwise I should have many particulars to relate about each of the things I have noted; but as I do not wish to be long, I come to his last illness.