A sister novice once asked her to explain the passage of the Canticles, "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth," which she had happened to meet in her prayer-book. Their mistress was present, and to mortify her, as she declared, ordered her to take a chair and proceed. No sooner had she commenced, as desired, than her subject transported her as it were out of herself. A torrent of sacred eloquence flowed from her heart to her lips. She spoke with a fluency than amazed her hearers, and at the same time, with an unction that penetrated, and a charm that fascinated them. Suddenly she stopped, as if the remainder of the effusion were meant to be reserved for the ear of her Lord alone. Her sisters dared not interrupt the colloquy, which only the angels were privileged to hear.
But this ray from Thabor, served as usual but to light her back to her ordinary abiding place on Calvary. Again her soul was plunged into an apparently fathomless abyss of desolation, and inundated as by a deluge of temptations; temptations to despair and blasphemy; temptations to pride and vanity; temptations against faith, against charity, against obedience, and against the angelic virtue,--sometimes assailing her one by one, sometimes overwhelming her all at once. She was in constant apprehension of having consented to the enemy's most extravagant and most impious suggestions. The passing comfort which she derived from her director's counsels, was counteracted by the after dread of having deceived him. Even this, her only sensible succour, was taken from her when she seemed to need it most, Dom Raymond of St. Bernard, who had helped her through so many difficulties; being appointed Superior of his Order, and obliged in consequence to change his residence. The spiritual guide into whose hands she nest fell, increased her perplexities by assuring her that she had hitherto been ill-advised, and pronouncing her heavenly favours delusions. Finally, as the climax to her trials, she seemed to have lost trust in the superintendence of Providence, that strong anchor of the troubled soul. It was the most painful form in which despair had yet assailed her, and as an apparent encroachment on one of the attributes of God, the supreme Object of her love, it caused her intense affliction.