The Autobiography of Madame Guyon Part 18

While I was prisoner at Vincennes, and Monsieur De La Reine examined me, I pa.s.sed my time in great peace, content to pa.s.s the rest of my life there, if such were the will of G.o.d. I sang songs of joy, which the maid who served me learned by heart, as fast as I made them. We together sang thy praises, O, my G.o.d! The stones of my prison looked in my eyes like rubies; I esteemed them more than all the gaudy brilliancies of a vain world. My heart was full of that joy which Thou givest to them who love Thee, in the midst of their greatest crosses.

When things were carried to the greatest extremities, being then in the Bastile, I said, "O, my G.o.d, if thou art pleased to render me a new spectacle to men and angels, Thy holy will be done!"

DECEMBER, 1709.

Here she left off her narrative, though she lived a retired life above seven years after this date. What she had written being only done in obedience to the commands of her director. She died June 9, 1717, at Blois, in her seventieth year.