1620-38.] BUSINESS TALENTS OF MARIE. 179 



boy, frenzied by his desertion, and urged on by 

 indignant relatives, watched his opportunity, and 

 made his way into the refectory of the convent, 

 screaming to the horrified nuns to give him back 

 his mother. As he grew older, her anxiety in- 

 creased ; and at length she heard in her seclusion 

 that he had fallen into bad company, had left the 

 relative who had sheltered him, and run off, no 

 one knew whither. The wretched mother, torn 

 wdth anguish, hastened for consolation to her con- 

 fessor, w^ho met her with stern upbraidings. Yet, 

 even in this her intensest ordeal, her enthusiasm 

 and her native fortitude enabled her to maintain a 

 semblance of calmness, till she learned that the boy 

 had been found and brought back. 



Strange as it may seem, this woman, whose 

 habitual state w^as one of mystical abstraction, was 

 gifted to a rare degree with the faculties most 

 useful in the practical affairs of life. She had 

 spent several years in the house of her brother-in- 

 law. Here, on the one hand, her vigils, visions, 

 and penances set utterly at nought the order of a 

 well-governed family; while, on the other, she made 

 amends to her impatient relative by able and effi- 

 cient aid in the conduct of his public and private 

 affairs. Her biographers say, and doubtless with 

 truth, that her heart was far away from these 

 mundane interests ; yet her talent for business was 

 not the less displayed. Her spiritual guides were 

 aware of it, and saw clearly that gifts so useful to 

 the world might be made equally useful to the 

 Church. Hence it was that she was chosen Supe- 



