Letter 859. To Mother Mane Aimée de Blonay, Superior of

the First Monastery of Lyons.

[Orleans, 1628.] Vive > Jésus!

My very dear Daughter,—-Thank God your election? has been to your satisfaction and, as I hope, to the glory of God. But, oh Heavens! what do you tell me?—that our sisters wished to re-elect you, and that notwithstanding all your opposition they almost succeeded in doing so! Certainly, if anyone but you had told me this, I should have found it difficult to believe. What! our sisters of Lyons thought of

• On June 8 Mother Catherine Charlotte de Crémaux de la Grange was elected Superior of the First Monastery of Lyons, Mother de Blonay’s full period of superiorship having been completed, doing such a thing! Here is news that has indeed pierced me to the heart with a pain so acute that the very thought of such infidelity makes me indignant and brings tears to my eyes. The house which I have looked upon as next after Annecy to preserve and maintain the Institute in its integrity, is the first to try to overthrow it! And what about conscience and the fear of God? Do they think that they can violate the fundamental laws of their Rule without offending God? Where is the reverence and the love for the wishes of their Founder they are so profuse in professing, seeing that they intended to cast to the winds the most important ordinance of his Institute? Are these the fruits with which they repay us for the thirteen and a-half years we have employed in training and nourishing them in their vocation? Have we ever taught anything so insistently as loyalty and steadfastness in preserving what they had received from their holy Founder? Do they not know that he predicted that ‘if the door is opened to the least relaxation all will go’; for, having lost the respect and loyalty that is due to those he has appointed to interpret to us his laws, by an infraction of them, what can result but disorder and the complete destruction of the Institute? I do indeed believe that they did not apprehend this evil nor that they intended so much mischief, yet their fault in this matter would have ended in that... .