They
brought a cord with which they tied me to a beam in the kitchen.
They drew the cord tight with all their strength and asked me,
'Does it hurt you?' and then they discharged their fury upon me,
exclaiming as they struck me, 'Pray now to your God.' It was the
Roulette woman who held this language. But at this moment I
received the greatest consolation that I can ever receive in my
life, since I had the honor of being whipped for the name of
Christ, and in addition of being crowned with his mercy and his
consolations. Why can I not write down the inconceivable
influences, consolations, and peace which I felt interiorly? To
understand them one must have passed by the same trial; they were
so great that I was ravished, for there where afflictions abound
grace is given superabundantly. In vain the women cried, 'We
must double our blows; she does not feel them, for she neither
speaks nor cries.' And how should I have cried, since I was
swooning with happiness within?"[173]
[173] Claparede et Goty: Deux Heroines de la Foi, Paris, 1880,
p. 112.
The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to
equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all
those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the
personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and
the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by
doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down.
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