Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/412

398 sent her back to the Ursulines. She would fain have taken the habit; but they having promised her to a gentleman in the country, obliged her to marry him. At twenty-eight years of age she became a widow, being left with three young children, two sons and a daughter, of whom she was constituted guardian, and their education, with the management of her fortune, became her only employment. She had put her domestic affairs into such order, as shewed an uncommon capacity; when of a sudden she was struck with an impulse to abandon every worldly care, and give herself up to serious meditation, in which she thought the whole of religion was comprized.

In this disposition of mind she went first to Paris, where she became acquainted with M. d'Aranthon, bishop of Geneva, who persuaded her to go to his diocese, in order to perfect an establishment he had founded at Gex, for the reception of newly converted Catholics. She accordingly went in 1681, and took only her daughter with her. Some time afterwards, her parents desired her to resign the guardianship of her children to them, and all her fortune, which was 40,000 livres a-year. She readily complied with their request, reserving only a moderate pension for her own subsistence. Hereupon the new community desired their bishop to request her to bestow this remainder upon their house, and become herself the superior; but she refused to comply with the proposal, not approving their regulations; at which the bishop and his community took such offence, that he desired her to leave the house.

She then retired to the Ursulines at Thonon, and from thence to Turin, Grenoble, and at last to Verceil, by the invitation of that bishop, who had a great veneration for her piety. At length, after an absence of five years, her