throughout an extent of two hundred leagues in length by one hundred in
breadth, we have twenty thousand square leagues of land which felt the
earthquake on the same day and at the same moment.

"The third circumstance concerns God's particular protection of our
homes, for we see near us great abysses and a prodigious extent of
country wholly ruined, without our having lost a child or even a hair of
our heads. We see ourselves surrounded by confusion and ruins, and yet
we have had only a few chimneys demolished, while the mountains around
us have been overturned."

From the point of view of conversions and returns to God the results
were marvellous. "One can scarcely believe," says Mother Mary of the
Incarnation, "the great number of conversions that God has brought
about, both among infidels who have embraced the faith, and on the part
of Christians who have abandoned their evil life. At the same time as
God has shaken the mountains and the marble rocks of these regions, it
would seem that He has taken pleasure in shaking consciences. Days of
carnival have been changed into days of penitence and sadness; public
prayers, processions and pilgrimages have been continual; fasts on bread
and water very frequent; the general confessions more sincere than they
would have been in the extremity of sickness. A single ecclesiastic,
who directs the parish of Château-Richer, has assured us that he has
procured more than eight hundred general confessions, and I leave you to
think what the reverend Fathers must have accomplished who were day and
night in the confessional. I do not think that in the whole country
there is a single inhabitant who has not made a general confession.
There have been inveterate sinners, who, to set their consciences at
rest, have repeated their confession more than three times. We have seen
admirable reconciliations, enemies falling on their knees before each