Page:Life and life-work of Mother Theodore Guerin Foundress.djvu/62

50 the most austere; without any encouragement for the future, they devoted themselves heroically to the service of God in comforting the poor and guarding the lambs of His flock.

But devotion and the spirit of sacrifice could not suffice alone to found a religious Community. M. l'Abbé Dujarié was not slow to perceive that his spiritual daughters had need of a rule and of a specified time of novitiate; that they should be formed to a Community spirit and to the exercises of the spiritual life. For this purpose he arranged to place some of them under the care of Madame de la Girouardière, foundress of the House of Incurables at Beaugé, in order to initiate them into the practices of the interior life.

Madame de la Girouardière lent herself willingly to the plans of Abbé Dujarié, and received under her instruction seven novices whom she retained long enough to introduce them to the various practices of the religious life. Having given assurance of their dispositions during six or seven months of novitiate, they were given a religious costume closely resembling that worn at present by the Sisters of Providence. They then returned to "Little Providence " to teach their companions what they had learned in the spiritual life. This preparation gave a new impetus to the work: subjects offered themselves and neighboring cures began to solicit establishments for their parishes. Several were soon formed. In 1808 M. Delahaye, curé of Savigny, the zealous and learned ecclesiastic under whom Abbé Dujarié had made his theological studies, obtained a foundation for his native parish, Ternay.