Volume 1 — CONCLUSION.

BRUGES, Sept. 26, 1859.

GENTLEMEN,—I write to you in deep affliction, for death hath this day deprived me of my blind mute, Anna Timmermans, whom you may remember to have seen at my establishment last year.

She was just forty-three years of age; and twenty-one of these had been passed at my asylum. God has taken her from this life to bestow upon her a better, and his holy will be done! It was a great mercy to her, but I shall regret her all my lifetime, even while rejoicing at her present happiness, and feeling most thankful for that love and knowledge of Almighty God to which, through all the physical difficulties of her position, he enabled her to attain. She loved him indeed with all the náiveté, and invoked him with the simple confidence of a child; and the last weeks of her life were almost entirely devoted to earnest entreaties that he would call her to himself.

You are the first to whom I announce my loss, because of all those persons who have visited my house, you seem best to have comprehended the painful position of a deaf-mute, and the exquisite sensibility which they are capable of feeling toward any one who shows them sympathy and affection. I have already described Anna as she was when she came first among us—a girl twenty-one years of age, with the stature of a woman and the habits of a child. I need not recall her to your remembrance as she appeared to you last year, a woman thoughtful beyond the common, and endowed with such true knowledge of God and of religion, that you deemed it no indignity to ask her prayers, and were pleased by her simple promise never to forget you.

Thanks be to God for his great goodness toward his poor, afflicted child! She not only learned to know him and to love him, but we were enabled by degrees to place her in still closer communication with him, by means of those sacraments which he has appointed to convey grace to the soul. The last confession which she made previous to receiving extreme unction reminds me of all the difficulty we had long ago experienced in persuading her to make her first.

"It will soon be Easter," said one day to her the sister appointed to prepare her for this duty. "It will soon be Easter, and then you and all of us will have to go to confession."

"What is confession?" asked Anna. "It is to tell our sins to the priest," explained the sister; "and to ask pardon of them from God."

"But why should we do that?" quoth Anna.

"Because," replied the sister, "God himself has commanded us to confess our sins. You will have to do it, therefore, like the rest of us; and when you go to confession, you must say in your heart to God, 'I am sorry for my sins. Forgive me, O my God; and I promise I will sin no more.'"

"And what are the sins I must confess?" asked Anna. She was standing in the midst of her class, who had all assembled to receive instruction, at the moment when she put the question.

"You have been in a passion," replied the sister; "you must confess {342} that. You have broken M. Carton's spectacles. You have torn the cap of Sister So-and-so. You have scratched one of the blind children;—and you must mention all these things when you go to confession."

"All these things are past and gone," replied Anna, resolutely; "when I broke M. Carton's spectacles, I was made, for my punishment, to kneel down; and," she continued, lightly passing one hand over the other, as if rubbing out something, "that was effaced. When I tore Sister So-and-so's cap, I was not allowed any coffee; and," repeating the action with her hands, "that was effaced. When I scratched the blind child, I went to bed without supper; and that was effaced. I will not, therefore, confess any of these things."

"But, Anna," replied the sister, "we are all obliged to go to confession. I am going myself, as well as you."

"Oui da! Have you, then, also, been in a passion, my sister? Have you broken M. Carton's spectacles, torn our sister's cap, and scratched a blind child?"

Anna asked these questions with an immense air of triumph, and waited the answer with a wicked smile, which seemed to say she had put the sister in a dilemma. Not one of the class misunderstood the little malice of her questions. Indeed, the uncharitable surmise as to the nature of their mistress's conduct appeared so piquant to all of them, that they unanimously insisted on its receiving a reply. It is not difficult, indeed, to imagine their amusement, for they were all daughters of Eve; and, beside, the best of children have an especial delight in embarrassing their superiors. Altogether it was a scene for a painter.

"I have not been in a passion; God forbid!" replied the poor sister, gently. "And I have not scratched or done injury to any one; but I have done so-and-so, and so-and-so." And here, with the greatest náiveté and humility, the sister mentioned some of her own shortcomings. "I have done so-and-so and so-and-so, and am going to confess them; for I know I have sinned by doing these things; but I hope God will pardon me, and give me grace not to offend him again in like manner."

When the children heard this humble confession, they one by one quietly left the class, like those in the gospel, beginning with the eldest; but Anna, even while acknowledging herself defeated, could not resist the small vengeance of giving the sister a lecture on her peccadilloes.

"Remember, my sister, you are never again to do so-and-so and so-and-so. You must be very sorry, and promise to be wiser another time. And above all other things, you must go to confession to obtain God's pardon."

"And you?" asked the sister, as her only answer to this grave exhortation.

"And I also will go to confession," replied Anna, completely vanquished at last by the tenderness and humility of the good religious.

From that time, in fact, Anna went regularly to confession; and so far from having any difficulty in persuading her to do so, she often reminded us herself when the time was approaching for the performance of that duty.

During the winter preceding her death she grew weaker from day to day; and her loss of appetite, extreme emaciation, and inability to exert herself, all convinced us that we were about to lose her. She herself often spoke about dying, though for a long time she would not permit any one else to address her on the subject. If any of the sisters even hinted at her danger, she would grow quite pale, and turn off the conversation; and even when she alluded of her own accord to the symptoms that alarmed her, it seemed as if, like many other invalids, she did so in order to be reassured as to her state. She became convinced at last, however, that she could not recover, and from that moment her life was one uninterrupted act of resignation {343} to the will of God, submission to his providence, and hope and confidence in his mercy. These sentiments never forsook her even for a moment. "I suffer," she used to say,—"I suffer a great deal; but Jesus suffered more;" and, embracing her crucifix, she would renew all her good resolutions to suffer patiently, and her earnest entreaties for grace to do so.

Previous to receiving the last sacraments, Anna disposed of everything belonging to her in favor of her companions, and then causing them all to be brought to her bedside, she kissed each one affectionately, and bade her adieu. After that she refused to see any of them again, seeking only the company of the sisters, and of that one in particular who best understood the silent language of the fingers. "Let us speak a little," the poor sufferer would often say, "of God and heaven;" and then would follow long and earnest conversations full of faith and hope and love, confidence in the mercies of Almighty God, and gratitude for his goodness.

During these communications Anna would become quite absorbed, as it were, in the love of God; her poor face would brighten into an expression of absolute beauty; and she seemed to lose all sense of present suffering in her certain hope and expectation of the joy that was about to come in on her soul.

"A little more," she would often say, when she fancied the conversation was about to finish; "speak to me a little more of God. I love him and he loves me. O my dear sister, will you not also come soon to heaven, and love him for evermore?"

Her agony commenced on the morning of the 26th of September, and she expired about noon, so quietly that we scarce perceived the moment in which she passed away (safe and happy, as I trust) to the presence of her God.

I recommend her to your good prayers; and I trust that she also will sometimes think of us and pray for us in heaven.