understood it, and never could explain it; and so I was resolved,
when I should come thus far in my story, to say very little or
nothing at all." [22] In the following chapter she adds: "You,
my father, will be delighted greatly to find an account of the
matter in writing, and to understand it; for it is one grace that
our Lord gives grace; and it is another grace to understand what
grace and what gift it is; and it is another and further grace to
have the power to describe and explain it to others. Though it
does not seem that more than the first of these--the giving of
grace--is necessary, it is a great advantage and a great grace to
understand it." [23] These words contain the clue to much that
otherwise would be obscure in the life of our Saint: great graces
were bestowed upon her, but at first she neither understood them
herself nor was she able to describe them. Hence the inability
of her confessors and spiritual advisers to guide her.
Her natural gifts, great though they were, did not help her much.
"Though you, my father, may think that I have a quick
understanding, it is not so; for I have found out in many ways
that my understanding can take in only, as they say, what is
given it to eat. Sometimes my confessor used to be amazed at my
ignorance: and he never explained to me--nor, indeed, did I
desire to understand--how God did this, nor how it could be.
Nor did I ever ask." [24] At first she was simply bewildered by
the favours shown her, afterwards she could not help knowing,
despite the fears of over anxious friends, that they did come
from God, and that so far from imperilling her soul made a
different woman of her, but even then she was not able to explain
to others what she experienced in herself. But shortly before
the foundation of St. Joseph's convent she received the last of
the three graces mentioned above, the Gift of Wisdom, and the