bances of the soul that robbed her of sleep and cast her into deep spiritual distress... We see her, when persecution falls upon her convent, stiffening the resolve of the sisters to stand against the unjust current and hold firm in the face of the harsh authority... And here she is, at the same moment, in a violent spiritual struggle that all but destroys her faith, for doubt has begun to creep into her soul with its cold iron grip... And all the elements of the universe conspire to create this agonizing crisis — where is the escape? The religious authority demands obedience; the King stretches out the rod of his overwhelming power; the sisters flounder in emotions of every kind — among them the hesitant and the fearful, and among them the traitor... And the month is August... blazing August, heavy of tread, wrecking

the nerves... And the hour: a decisive noon that seals the fate...

Sister Angélique confides her anx-iety and her fear to Mother Agnès:

— Open to me the depths of your thought, Mother... What is destined for us? Persecution? Dispersion? Prison?...

— Do you believe in God, and yet fear anything?

— I fear myself, and I fear everything else... It seems to me that I carry my soul and rock it to make it forget its pains, as a weaned child is rocked to make him forget his nurse...

— The Church has preserved its truths by its sufferings more than it has preserved them by the truths themselves. So it is with individuals: the sufferings of their souls are fertile...

— And I tell you there are barren sufferings — dead sufferings that drag toward death everything they find in the soul, until that soul imagines it no longer believes in its Creator...

And she pours forth, like a terrifying volcano, a confession of anxiety mounting steadily until she says:

— I have passed through the gates of hell with a disgust and a shudder you cannot conceive...

Over against this suffering soul stands Sister Françoise, her pupil — nay, her spiritual nursling — who loved her greatly and looked upon her with admiration and esteem, finding in her the sound mind and the luminous richness of spirit. She would try to be guided by her wisdom, and had long received her correction and