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195 ST. COLETTE 195 pleasure to my father. . . . Thy will be done." Immediately she began to grow, and soon became a good-looking girl of the ordinary size. When she was eighteen both her parents died. She gave away all her little property. As she was puzzled and distressed by her visions, and uncertain what to do, she applied for direction to Father Bassadan, a Celestine prior of Amiens. He saw in ber a great power of doing good in the religions world, and therefore insisted that she should restrain her mortifi- cations and save her health for useful work She joined successively the Beguines, Urbanists, and Benedictines. Failing in each case to find the perfection of piety she expected, she returned to Corbie. After two years of frequent prayer that she might know her vocation, Father Pinet, O.S.F., advised her to be- come a recluse. As soon as she had the necessary permissions, the neighbours, by whom she was much beloved, willingly helped to build and furnish her cell. It had a grated window, and a roia in the wall, so that the necessaries of life could be passed in. Her redusion was accom- plished with a solemn service and a touching sermon, which moved many of the hearers to reform their lives. After Mass she pronounced, in a loud voice, before the altar, in the hands of the Abbot of Corbie, the vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and perpetual se- clusion. She entered the hermitage in 1402. When Father Pinet died, she saw his soul go to paradise, but mourned deeply the loss of her holy director. A new friend and adviser was given her in the person of Henri de la Beaume, a nobleman of Savoy, and a Cordelier, of the strict observance of St. Francis. Miserable on account of the divisions and abuses in the Church which had two Popes, and in his own order which had two generals, he obtained permission to go to Jerusalem. At Avignon, on bis way to embark, a holy nun told him that God required his services not at Jerusa- lem, but at Corbie, where He had prepared Himself a servant named Colette, who was destined to reform the Order of St. Francis. He accordingly visited Colette. She refused to leave her cell. This re- sistance to the message of God was punished with six days of blindness and dumbness, after which she consented; and Henri obtained the necessary autho- rization, and her dispensation from her vow of seclusion. Colette went with him to Nice, and obtained an audience of Benedict XIII. She asked him that she, and all who choSe to join her, might be allowed to make their profession in the Order of St. Clara, with permission to observe the primitive rule in all its rigour. The Pope was convinced that Colette's calling was from God. He overruled the opposition of the cardinals, dispensed her from the year of her no- vitiate, received her vow to observe the rule of St. Clara as established by its holy founder, gave her the veil and cord, and constituted her Abbess and Reformer- general of the Order of St. Francis. He appointed P^re Henri de la Beaume superior-general of the reformed monks and nuns, under the authority of Sister Colette, recommending him to assist her in every way; and he gave them both his apostolic blessing. Before Colette left Nice, Benedict sent her a beautiful Breviary, and a book containing the rules and constitutions of St. Clara. After the Revolution this book was removed from the convent of Besangon to Poligny, with other relics of St. Colette. Colette resolved to begin her work at her native town, but had to abandon for the time her project of building a convent there, as the people received her so badly. King Charles VII., the Duchess of Bur- gundy, the Duchess of Yalentinois, the Duke and Duchess of Lorraine, the Princess of Orange, and many other illustrious personages gave the reformers ground, otherwise assisted and encouraged them, and begged their prayers; and Blanche of Savoy, the Countess of Geneva — whose castle at Rnmilly was one of the first convents of the reform — begged to be buried at the feet of Colette, wherever she might be laid. All this time she worked to the ut- most of her power towards healing the schism in the Church. In 1410, St. Vincent Ferrer was praying for the same great object in Saragossa. He had an ecstasy, in which he saw Colette at the