Thirty-seventh point. His interior peace, and his efforts to settle lawsuits and make peace

Her answer on the thirty -seventh point was :

Our Blessed Founder was a very great lover of peace. In this, no one came up to him; peace had taken so deep a root in his heart that nothing could shake it; he often said : " Come what may, I will not lose one atom of peace, the grace of God assisting me." He used to say that nothing ought to be able to deprive us of peace, even should all things be turned upside down, for what is the whole world compared to peace of heart ? What he said he also practised, and was

1 74 Saint Sane J. tre (ffjantal's depositions regarded by all as the most peaceable soul ever known.

Monseigneur de Berulle, a Prelate distinguished by his rare virtue, piety, and learning, General of the Fathers of the Oratory in France, told a very worthy Nun, who in her turn told ine, that our Blessed Founder possessed an imperturbable peace, and it is a fact that, having this treasure in him self, he communicated it to those who approached him. Indeed it is impossible to say how many, who came to him troubled and anxious, went away tranquil and at peace. I speak from experience : this has happened to me many times, as well as to persons of my acquaintance.

It was generally said that he had received the special gift of being able to impart peace to those who held intercourse with him. I remember an instance of two men who were disputing most violently in our parlour. The holy Bishop looked at them with exceeding gentleness, now at one, now at the other, speaking at the same time so pleasantly, that at last his sweetness touched them; they calmed down and he dismissed them in peace.

To all the souls under his direction he recom mended this holy peace, and incessantly, as far as he could, laboured to give it to them.

He was almost always busied in settling dis putes between would-be litigants, little as he liked the task; for he had, as he once told me, the most heartfelt dislike of lawsuits and of all kinds of contentions. A great part of his time was, however, occupied by labours of this sort, for he was always being chosen as arbitrator between all kinds of people. To the complaints of each and all he listened calmly without the least sign of weariness, not showing more bias towards one than towards another, and in the end sending them all away well satisfied.

The same day, July 31, at three o'clock in the afternoon :

In continuation of my deposition with regard to the same thirty-seventh point I may tell you that a lawyer in this town of Annecy had griev ously offended a member of the holy Bishop's household, striking him and even drawing blood, the injured person being a distinguished Ecclesi astic. The Senate of Savoy would probably have condemned the offender to death, had not the Bishop, putting aside the insult offered to his own dignity, persuaded the Priest to pardon this outrage, and interceded for the culprit with the dispenser of justice, getting him by this means acquitted, to the great admiration of every one.

On another occasion he was entreated, by a man of high position in the city of Geneva, to arbitrate in a difference which he had with M. le Comte de Saint-Alban, a nobleman in Savoy : this he did with so much prudence that, preserving the rights of both, he satisfied the Catholic nobleman as much as the heretic, from which fact we may gather how strong a belief

176 Saint Sane ff. tie ffifjantal's Impositions even the enemies of our religion had in his probity. The lawsuits to which he put an end and the differences which he reconciled were innumer able; indeed he was almost constantly occupied with such matters.

I have heard it said that in the midst of all the tumult and commotion stirred up round about him by attorneys, advocates, and disputing parties, the holy Bishop remained perfectly calm, showing not the slightest sign of impatience or weariness in face or words; undisturbed even when things went the wrong way. Indeed, though he might have wasted his whole day and undergone much inconvenience to himself and in his affairs, he proceeded to take them up again with the same sweetness and devotion that he would have brought with him to his religious exercises. This I know from what his Confessor has told me.

He was very careful to keep himself recollected in God in the midst of all those occupations; indeed he used to say that we ought to deal with the affairs of earth with our eyes fixed on heaven; that all that is done for love's sake is love; that neither toil nor death itself are anything but love, when it is for the love of God that we accept them.

M. de la Roche, a gentleman of exemplary life, of rare piety, and great learning, told me that he had been present with our Blessed Founder at more than a hundred cases of arbitration, and had seen and heard him conversing with an immense number of people on all sorts of business matters; and that, having considered his actions closely, he had never seen him do, or heard him say, anything approaching a venial sin. The President Flocard, a most excellent man, who saw him also on all sorts of occasions, told me the same thing, although in different terms, and both of them assured me how greatly they admired the conduct, the virtue, and the extraordinarily calm and equable temper of our Blessed Founder. All this is true, &c.