Note A — XIX. To Sister Marie Aimée de Blonay, Mistress of Novices at Lyons.[A]

We are told in the "History of the Foundation of Annecy" that Sister Marie Aimée de Blonay fulfilled her duties as Mistress of Novices with such submission and reverence as entirely to justify the beautiful name of "The Living Rule," by which she is known throughout the Order; for her actions and her teaching were a faithful carrying out of what she had learned from its two holy Founders. She often inculcated the following doctrine: "Just as the Gospel of Jesus Christ is, and always must be, the universal foundation of our obedience and of our belief, even though there were a million new worlds, so should the particular maxims of the Visitation of Annecy be common to all houses of the Institute, even though it should increase to millions upon millions of monasteries." It gave St. Francis such pleasure to hear this ingenious comparison of the Rule to the Gospel that he ordered the following to be inserted in the acts and conditions of establishment for every new foundation: "That the Sisters undertake to live according to the Rules, Constitutions, and customs of the Monastery of Annecy." And in answer to a letter about this time from his dear "Cadette," he says: "My daughter, make use of this light all your life. Tell what you have seen, teach what you have heard at Annecy. This root is indeed little, insignificant, and hidden, but the branch that separates from it is fit for nothing but to be cut down and cast into the fire."

The life of Mother Marie Aimée de Blonay was written by Charles Auguste de Sales, nephew and one of the successors of St. Francis de Sales in the See of Geneva.