No sooner had her spotless soul taken its flight than the joy of that last rapture imprinted itself on her brow, and a radiant smile illumined her face.  We placed a palm-branch in her hand; and the lilies and roses that adorned her in death were figures of her white robe of baptism made red by her Martyrdom of Love.

On the Saturday and Sunday a large crowd passed before the grating of the nuns’ chapel, to gaze on the mortal remains of the “Little Flower of Jesus.”  Hundreds of medals and rosaries were brought to touch the “Little Queen” as she lay in the triumphant beauty of her last sleep.

. . . . . . .

On October 4, the day of the funeral, there gathered in the Chapel of the Carmel a goodly company of Priests.  The honour was surely due to one who had prayed so earnestly for those called to that sacred office.  After a last solemn blessing, this grain of priceless wheat was cast into the furrow by the hands of Holy Mother Church.

Who shall tell how many ripened ears have sprung forth since, how many the sheaves that are yet to come?  “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless the grain of wheat, falling into the ground, die, itself remaineth alone.  But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."[17] Once more the word of the Divine Reaper has been magnificently fulfilled.

THE PRIORESS OF THE CARMEL.
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[1] Dom Gueranger.

[2] Mother Mary of Gonzaga died Dec. 17, 1904, at the age of 71.  Mother Agnes of Jesus (Pauline) was at that time Prioress.  The former—­herself of the line of St. Antony of Padua—­recognized in Soeur Therese “an heroic soul, filled with holiness, and capable of becoming one day an excellent Prioress.”  With this end in view, she trained her with a strictness for which the young Saint was most grateful.  In the arms of Mother Mary of Gonzaga the “Little Flower of Jesus” was welcomed to the Carmel, and in those arms she died—­“happy,” she declared, “not to have in that hour as Superioress her ‘little Mother,’ in order the better to exercise her spirit of faith in authority.” [Ed.]

[3] As will be remembered, this was Marie, her eldest sister. [Ed.]

[4] The Blessed Theophane Venard was born at St. Loup, in the diocese of Poitiers, on the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lady, Nov. 21, 1829.  He was martyred at Kecho, Tong-King, on the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord, Feb. 2, 1861, at the age of 32.  A long and delightful correspondence with his family, begun in his college days and completed from his “cage” at Kecho, reveals a kinship of poesy as well as of sanctity and of the love of home, between the two “spring flowers.”  The beauty of his soul was so visible in his boyish face that he was spared all torture during his two months in the “cage.”  In 1909, the year in which Therese became “Servant of God” by the commencement of the Episcopal Process, her patron received the honours of Beatification.  Another child of France—­Joan, its “Martyr-Maid”—­whose praises have been sung in affectionate verse by the Saints of St. Loup and Lisieux, was beatified that same year. [Ed.]