The Story of a Soul | Page 5

care. Smile gladly at the dawn, Bud of an hour!--for thou
Shalt be a stately rose."
It was a charming prophecy, for the bud unfolded its petals and became
a rose--a rose of love--but not for long, "for the space of a morn!"
* * * * * *

On January 4, she was carried to the Church of Notre Dame to receive
the Sacrament of Baptism; her eldest sister, Marie, was her godmother,
and she was given the name of _Marie Françoise Thérèse._[1]
All was joy at first, but soon the tender bud drooped on its delicate
stem: little hope was held out--it must wither and die. "You must pray
to St. Francis de Sales," wrote her aunt from the convent at Le Mans,
"and you must promise, if the child recovers, to call her by her second
name, Frances." This was a sword-thrust for the Mother. Leaning over
the cradle of her Thérèse, she awaited the coming of the end, saying:
"Only when the last hope has gone, will I promise to call her Frances."
The gentle St. Francis waived his claim in favour of the great Reformer
of the Carmelite Order: the child recovered, and so retained her sweet
name of Thérèse. Sorrow, however, was mixed with the Mother's joy,
when it became necessary to send the babe to a foster-mother in the
country. There the "little rose-bud" grew in beauty, and after some
months had gained strength sufficient to allow of her being brought
back to Alençon. Her memory of this short but happy time spent with
her sainted Mother in the Rue St. Blaise was extraordinarily vivid.
To-day a tablet on the balcony of No. 42 informs the passers-by that
here was born a certain Carmelite, by name, Sister Teresa of the Child
Jesus and the Holy Face. Fifteen years have gone since the meeting in
Heaven of Madame Martin and her Carmelite child, and if the
pilgrimage to where the Little Flower first saw the light of day, be not
so large as that to the grave where her remains await their glorious
resurrection, it may nevertheless be numbered in thousands. And to the
English-speaking pilgrim there is an added pleasure in the fact that her
most notable convert, the first minister of the United Free Church of
Scotland to enter the True Fold, performs, with his convert wife, the
courteous duties of host.
* * * * * *
It will not be amiss to say a brief word here on the brother and sister of
Madame Martin. Her sister--in religion, Sister Marie Dosithea--led a
life so holy at Le Mans that she was cited by Dom Guéranger, perhaps
the most distinguished Benedictine of the nineteenth century, as the

model of a perfect nun. By her own confession, she had never been
guilty from earliest childhood of the smallest deliberate fault. She died
on February 24, 1877. It was in the convent made fragrant by such
holiness that her niece Pauline Martin, elder sister and "little mother" of
Thérèse, and for five years her Prioress at the Carmel, received her
education. And if the Little Flower may have imbibed the liturgical
spirit from her teachers, the daughters of St. Benedict in Lisieux, so
that she could say before her death: "I do not think it is possible for
anyone to have desired more than I to assist properly at choir and to
recite perfectly the Divine Office"--may it not be to the influences from
Le Mans that may be traced something of the honey-sweet spirit of St.
Francis de Sales which pervades the pages of the Autobiography?
With the brother of Zélie Guérin the reader will make acquaintance in
the narrative of Thérèse. He was a chemist in Lisieux, and it was there
his daughter Jeanne Guérin married Dr. La Néele and his younger child
Marie entered the Carmel. Our foreign missionaries had a warm friend
in the uncle of Thérèse--for his charities he was made godfather to an
African King; and to the Catholic Press--that home missionary--he was
ever most devoted. Founder, at Lisieux, of the Nocturnal Adoration of
the Blessed Sacrament, and a zealous member of the Society of St.
Vincent de Paul, he was called to his abundant reward on September 28,
1909. Verily the lamp of faith is not extinct in the land of the Norman.
The Father of Thérèse, after the death of his wife, likewise made his
home in the delightful town which lies amid the beautiful apple
orchards of the valley of the Touques. Lisieux is deeply interesting by
reason of its fine old churches of St. Jacques and St. Pierre, and its
wonderful specimens of quaint houses, some of which date from the
twelfth century. In matters of faith it is neither fervent nor hostile, and
in