Letter X. To Madame de Chantal

Means of passing Lent well.

Chamber yy 21st February, 1606. This can only be a short letter, for I am just going into the pulpit, my dearest child. You are now at Dijon, and I wrote thither a few days ago; there you abound, by the grace of God, in many consolations, which I share in spirit. Lent is the autumn of the spiritual life, in which we should gather the fruits, and store them for the whole year. Enrich yourself, I beg you, with those precious treasures which nothing can deprive you of or spoil. Remember what I am accustomed to say: we shall never spend one good Lent, as long as we expect to make two. Let us then make this as the last, and we shall make it well. I know that at Dijon there will be some excellent preacher; holy words are pearls, and pearls of the true Eastern ocean, the abyss of mercy; get together many round your neck, hang plenty from your ears, encircle your arms with them; these ornaments are not forbidden to widows: for they do not make them vain, but humble.

As for me, I am here, where, as yet, I see no more than a slight movement of souls towards true devotion. God will increase it, if he please, for his holy glory. I am going now to tell my audience that their souls are the vineyard of God: the cistern is faith, the tower is hope, and the press holy charity; the hedge is the law of God which separates from other people who are infidels. To you, my dear child, I say that your good will is your vineyard; the cistern is the holy inspirations of perfection which God rains down from heaven; the tower is holy chastity, which, as is said of David's, should be of ivory; the press is obedience, which produces great merit in the actions it squeezes out; the hedge is your vows. Oh! may God preserve this vineyard which he has planted with his hand! May God make more and more abound the salutary waters of grace in his cistern! May God be for ever the protector of his tower! May God will to give all the turns to the press which are necessary for squeezing out good wine, and keep always thick and close that beautiful hedge with which he has environed this vineyard, and may he make the angels its immortal husbandmen.

Adieu, my dear child, the bell urges me; I am going to the wine-press of the Church, to the holy altar, where distils perpetually the sacred wine of the blood of those delicious and unique grapes which our holy Abbess, as a heavenly vine, has happily brought forth for us. There, and you know I cannot do otherwise, I will present and represent you to the Father, in tht union of his Son, in whom, for whom, and by whom I am solely and entirely your, &c.