with a sad and emaciated countenance; she placed herself on her knees next to the bed, and said to her, weeping, "My daughter, you see at your feet your mother overwhelmed with suffering. I come to implore you to multiply your suffrages, that Divine Mercy may deliver me from the frightful torments I endure. Oh! how much are those to be pitied who exercise authority over others? I expiate now the faults that I committed upon the throne. Oh! my daughter, I pray you by the pangs I endured when bringing you into the world, by the cares and anxieties which your education cost me, I conjure you to deliver me from my torments." Elizabeth, deeply touched, arose immediately, took the discipline to blood, and implored God, with tears, to have mercy on her mother, Gertrude, declaring that she would not cease to pray until she had obtained her deliverance. Her prayers were heard.
Let us here remark that, in the preceding example, there is spoken of a queen only; how much more severely will kings, magistrates, and all superiors be treated whose responsibility and influence are much greater!
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Matter of Expiation — Tepidity — St. Bernard and the Religious of Citeaux — Venerable Mother Agnes and Sister de Haut Villars — Father Sarin and the Religious of Loudun.
Good Christians, Priests, and Religious, who wish to serve God with their whole hearts, must avoid the rock of tepidity and negligence. God will be served with fervour; those who are tepid and careless excite His disgust; He even goes so far as to threaten with His malediction those who
