act prudently, and learn the will of God clearly regarding her vocation,
she addressed herself to M. Antoine Jandret, a virtuous and enlightened
priest, who was confessor to the Carmelites. Having heard her
attentively, he was struck with admiration at the manner in which God
was working in her soul. She continued for some time to be his penitent,
and after he had made trial of her virtue, he no longer hesitated to
propose her as a subject to the Carmelites.

The chapter met to discuss the matter, but some changes in her exterior
manner of living (the motives of which they did not know) led them to
suppose that her disposition was frivolous and volatile; and they
refused to admit her. But it was not there Almighty God intended her to
become a religieuse, and their refusal did not lessen her esteem for the
austerities practised by them, and on which she modelled her own
penances for the remainder of her life. Neither did a _first refusal_
discourage her; on the contrary, she redoubled her prayers to learn the
will of God, and it pleased His divine Majesty to unfold to the eyes of
her soul, gradually but clearly, his designs regarding her. Being
rejected by the Carmelites, she next sought admission into the extern
congregation of young girls, at Troyes. It will be necessary to give
some explanation of this society, as the singular graces accorded to
Sister Bourgeois while she was one of its members influenced her very
much in the formation of the congregation she afterwards founded.

There existed in Troyes another convent of religieuses known as the
"Congregation of Notre Dame," who were founded by Pere Fourier, cure of
Martincourt, a man eminent for piety. They were cloistered nuns, who
added to the ordinary duties of a religious life the education of young
girls. This duty they discharged within the cloister, and without
secular assistance. The Ursulines conducted their schools more publicly,