how can you believe that the care you took in your attire can cause you to merit hell; above all if there was nothing excessive in your attire? She said that she had loved her sister too well, by preferring her pleasure to God's will, and then recommenced her tears. On my deciding that there might be imperfection, but that there was no violation of a formal precept, she exclaimed, "O dear Lord, see I my spiritual father excuses my sins. Can a creature so vile and contemptible, who has received so many graces from her Creator, without having ever merited them, have thus passed her precious time innocently in adorning her miserable body, and that to please a mere creature ?"
This conversation proves how that beautiful soul was ever preserved from mortal sin, that she guarded her virginity spiritually and corporeally, and never tarnished her purity either by word or action. In all her general confessions, and in all her particular ones, I have found no other faults than those which I have just related. Her whole time was consecrated to prayer, meditation and the edification of her neighbor. She granted herself but a quarter of an hour of sleep daily. During her repast, (if the little food she took could be called by that name,) she prayed and meditated on what our Lord had taught her. I know, and can attest before the Church, that during the period of my acquaintance with her, it was more painful for her to take food, than it is painful for one who is fainting with hunger to be deprived of it, and that she suffered more when she took any, than others endure in a violent fever — hence eating became to her a cruel penance. It would be difficult to imagine what fault a soul could commit which was so continually occupied with God, and yet she accused herself with so much
