One day, while she was contemplating the beautiful heavens, some one said to her:  “soon your home will be there, beyond the blue sky.  How lovingly you gaze at it!” She only smiled, but afterwards she said to the Mother Prioress:  “Dear Mother, the Sisters do not realise my sufferings.  Just now, when looking at the sky, I merely admired the beauty of the material heaven—­the true Heaven seems more than ever closed against me.  At first their words troubled me, but an interior voice whispered:  ’Yes, you were looking to Heaven out of love.  Since your soul is entirely delivered up to love, all your actions, even the most indifferent, are marked with this divine seal.’  At once I was consoled.”

In spite of the darkness which enveloped her, her Divine Saviour sometimes left the door of her prison ajar.  Those were moments in which her soul lost itself in transports of confidence and love.  Thus it happened that on a certain day, when walking in the garden supported by one of her own sisters, she stopped at the charming spectacle of a hen sheltering its pretty little ones under its wing.  Her eyes filled with tears, and, turning to her companion, she said:  “I cannot remain here any longer, let us go in!” And even when she reached her cell, her tears continued to fall, and it was some time before she could speak.  At last she looked at her sister with a heavenly expression, and said:  “I was thinking of Our Lord, and the beautiful comparison He chose in order to make us understand His ineffable tenderness.  This is what He has done for me all the days of my life.  He has completely hidden me under His Wing.  I cannot express all that has just stirred my heart; it is well for me that God conceals Himself, and lets me see the effects of His Mercy but rarely, and as it were from ’behind the lattices.’  Were it not so I could never bear such sweetness.”

. . . . . . .

Disconsolate at the prospect of losing their treasure, the Community began a novena to Our Lady of Victories on June 5, 1897, in the fervent hope that she would once again miraculously raise the drooping Little Flower.  But her answer was the same as that given by the blessed Martyr, Theophane Venard, and they were forced to accept with generosity the bitterness of the coming separation.

At the beginning of July, her state became very serious, and she was at last removed to the Infirmary.  Seeing her empty cell, and knowing she would never return to it, Mother Agnes of Jesus said to her:  “When you are no longer with us, how sad I shall feel when I look at this cell!”

“For consolation, little Mother, you can think how happy I am up there, and remember that much of my happiness was acquired in that little cell; for,” she added, raising her beautiful eyes to Heaven, “I have suffered so much there, and I should have been happy to die there.”

As she entered the Infirmary she looked towards the miraculous statue of Our Lady, which had been brought thither.  It would be impossible to describe that look.  “What is it you see?” said her sister Marie, the witness of her miraculous cure as a child.  And Therese answered:  “Never has she seemed to me so beautiful . . . but to-day it is the statue, whereas that other day, as you well know, it was not the statue!” And from that time she often received similar consolations.