His Last Illness and Death

It began with a strange distaste for food which came upon him two months before his death. His physician advised him to abstain from solid food and to take purges, and while he was in this state he performed a very remarkable act of charity. He had in his house a good man with his wife and his whole household, to whom he had given a room and whom he supplied with firewood, all of it out of charity, for he drew no other service from them than not being alone in his house. This good man had a son who, having fallen ill of smallpox at that time, gave my brother, who needed my help, cause to fear that I might be afraid to come to his house on account of my children. This obliged him to think of separating himself from the sick boy; but, as he feared the child would be in danger if he were carried out of the house in that condition, he chose rather to leave it himself, although he was already very ill, saying: “There is less danger for me in this change of lodging; that is why it must be I who leave.” So he left his house on the 29th of June to come to us, and he never returned to it; for three days later he began to be seized with a very violent colic which robbed him entirely of sleep. But as he had great strength of mind and great courage, he bore his pains with admirable patience. He nonetheless got up every day and took his remedies himself, refusing to let anyone render him the least service. The physicians who attended him saw that his pains were considerable; but because his pulse was very good, without any irregularity or sign of fever, they assured us that there was no danger at all, even using these words: “There is not the slightest shadow of danger.” Notwithstanding this, seeing that the continuance of his pains and his long sleepless nights were weakening him, on the very fourth day of his colic, and even before he had taken to his bed, he sent for the curé and made his confession. This caused a stir among his friends and brought several of them to see him, quite alarmed. The physicians themselves were so surprised that they could not help showing it, saying that it was a mark of apprehension they had not expected from him. My brother, seeing the disturbance this had caused, was vexed by it and said to me: “I should have liked to receive communion; but since I see that people are surprised at my confession, I fear they would be still more so; that is why it is better to put it off.” The curé being of the same opinion, he did not receive communion. Meanwhile his illness continued; and as the curé came to see him from time to time, he never let one of these occasions pass without confessing, and said nothing of it for fear of alarming people, because the physicians still maintained that there was no danger in his illness; and in fact his pains did abate somewhat, so that he sometimes got up in his room. They never left him entirely, however, and at times they even returned; he was also growing very thin, which did not much alarm the physicians. But whatever they might say, he always said that he was in danger, and never failed to confess each time the curé came to see him. During that time he even made his will, in which the poor were not forgotten, and he had to restrain himself from giving them more, for he told me that if M. Périer had been in Paris and had consented to it, he would have disposed of all his property in favour of the poor. In short, he had nothing in his mind and heart but the poor, and he would sometimes say to me: “How is it that I have never done anything for the poor, though I have always had so great a love for them?” I said to him: “It is because you have never had wealth enough to give them great help.” And he answered me: “Since I had no wealth to give them, I ought to have given them my time and my labour; that is where I have failed. And if the physicians are right, and if God allows me to rise from this illness, I am resolved to have no other employment and no other occupation for the rest of my life than the service of the poor.” These are the sentiments in which God took him.

To this ardent charity he joined, during his illness, a patience so admirable that he edified and astonished everyone around him. To those who showed distress at seeing the state he was in, he said that for his part he felt none, and that he was even afraid of getting well; and when he was asked the reason, he said: “It is because I know the dangers of health and the advantages of sickness.” At the height of his pains, too, when people grieved to see him suffer them, he would say: “Do not pity me; sickness is the natural state of Christians, because in it one is as one ought always to be: in the suffering of ills, in the privation of all goods and of all the pleasures of the senses, free from all the passions that work upon us throughout the whole course of life, without ambition, without avarice, in continual expectation of death. Is it not thus that Christians ought to spend their lives? And is it not a great happiness when one finds oneself by necessity in the state in which one is bound to be, and has nothing else to do but submit humbly and peaceably? That is why I ask for nothing else but to pray God to grant me this grace.” Such was the spirit in which he endured all his ills.

He greatly desired to receive communion; but the physicians opposed it, saying that he could not do so fasting unless it were done at night, which they did not think fitting without necessity, and that to receive communion as viaticum one must be in danger of death; and since that was not his case, they could not advise it. This resistance vexed him, but he was forced to yield to it. Meanwhile, as his colic still continued, he was ordered to drink the waters, which did in fact relieve him greatly. But on the sixth day of drinking them, which was the fourteenth of August, he felt a great dizziness with a severe pain in the head; and although the physicians were not surprised at this, and assured us that it was only the vapour of the waters, he nonetheless made his confession, and begged with incredible urgency that he be given communion, and that in God's name some means be found to remedy all the difficulties that had been put to him until then. He pressed so hard for it that a person who happened to be present reproached him with being restless, and told him that he ought to yield to the judgement of his friends; that he was better, and had almost no colic left; and that, since nothing remained but a vapour from the waters, it was not right for him to have the Blessed Sacrament brought to him; that it was better to wait and perform this act in church. He replied: “People do not feel my illness, and they will be deceived in it; my headache has something very extraordinary about it.” Nevertheless, seeing so great an opposition to his desire, he dared not speak of it any more; but he said: “Since they will not grant me this grace, I should like to make up for it by some good work, and, not being able to communicate in the Head, I should like to communicate in His members. To that end I have thought of having here a poor sick man, to whom the same services may be rendered as to me; let a nurse be engaged for him expressly, and in short let there be no difference between him and me, so that I may have the consolation of knowing that there is one poor man as well cared for as I am, in the shame I feel at seeing myself in the great abundance of all things in which I find myself. For when I think that, at the very time I am so well provided for, there are countless poor people who are sicker than I am and who lack the most necessary things, it gives me a pain I cannot bear; and so I beg you to ask the curé for a sick man for the purpose I have in mind.”

I sent to the curé that very hour, and he sent word that there was none in a condition to be moved; but that, as soon as my brother was cured, he would give him a means of exercising charity by taking charge of an old man whom he would care for the rest of his life: for the curé did not then doubt that he would recover.

When he saw that he could not have a poor man in the house with him, he begged me, then, to do him the kindness of having him carried to the Incurables, because he had a great desire to die in the company of the poor. I told him that the physicians did not think it advisable to move him in the state he was in, which vexed him greatly; he made me promise that if he had a little respite I would give him this satisfaction.

Meanwhile, as the pain in his head increased, he bore it as he bore all his other ills, that is, without complaining; and once, at the height of his pain, on the seventeenth of August, he asked me to call a consultation of physicians; but at the same moment he was seized with a scruple and said to me: “I fear there is too much seeking after my own comfort in this request.” I nonetheless had it held; and the physicians ordered him to drink whey, still assuring him that there was no danger, and that it was only migraine mixed with the vapour of the waters. Yet whatever they might say, he never believed them, and he asked me to have a priest spend the night beside him; and I myself found him so ill that, without saying anything, I gave orders for candles to be brought and everything needed for him to receive communion the next morning.

The preparations were not in vain, but they served sooner than we had thought: for about midnight he was seized with a convulsion so violent that, when it had passed, we thought he was dead; and we had, along with all the rest, the extreme grief of seeing him die without the Blessed Sacrament, after he had asked for it so often and so urgently. But God, who willed to reward so fervent and so just a desire, suspended this convulsion as though by a miracle, and restored his judgement entirely, as in perfect health; so that the curé, entering his room with the Blessed Sacrament, cried out to him: “Here is He whom you have so greatly desired.” These words roused him fully; and as the curé came near to give him communion, he made an effort and raised himself halfway up unaided, in order to receive it with greater reverence; and when the curé questioned him, according to custom, on the principal mysteries of the faith, he answered distinctly: “Yes, monsieur, I believe all that with all my heart.” He then received the holy viaticum and extreme unction with such tender feeling that he shed tears. He made all the responses and thanked the curé; and when the curé blessed him with the holy ciborium, he said: “May God never forsake me!” These were as it were his last words; for after he had made his thanksgiving, a moment later his convulsions seized him again, and they never left him again nor allowed him a single instant of clear mind. They lasted until his death, which came twenty-four hours later, on the nineteenth of August 1662, at one o'clock in the morning, at the age of thirty-nine years and two months.