Chapter 26

I resolve to lead  a sober and restrained life, to keep evil spirits away

Along with my new vows and obligations, I took on a new diet to make them easier to keep. I stopped going to restaurants and made my own meals, plain food to sustain me, two simple meals of lightly seasoned vegetables, one in the afternoon at 1:00, the other at two in the morning, when I was usually meditating on my day, to ensure that it was a worthy offering to God. I deprived myself of many of the joys of life, even as I do now, hoping that these slight sacrifices would free myself from any involuntary, unknown transgressions I may have committed. 

Still, a man needs some relaxation to avoid falling into the trap of a life that is too severe, and kept a few of my most innocent occupations to bring me a little pleasure. I purchased a young squirrel, two months old, young enough to train and raise…but my enemies would not allow me even this little pleasure. Dr. Pinel, who would not let me any joy if a monster like him could possibly deprive me of it, went invisibly to my house to torment the little animal, to make it unruly and ill-behaved, and spoil what entertainment it might bring me. There was nothing they wouldn’t do, and much they did. 

Seeing that I still had a little bit of vanity and enjoyed checking myself in a mirror over the fireplace. They smeared a landscape over it in some fatty, oily substance. My servant tried to make the stain disappear, but it was impossible to remove it. As proof for my visitors of the tactics my enemies used to make my life difficult, I wrote at the bottom of the landscape, “Do not touch, this is the work of Dr. Pinel.” 

These are the methods of the goblins: they look at what brings pleasure and flatter our senses, and make dreadful things appear before us. They do everything they can to call the wrath of God down on us. But as for myself, they could try, but they would have no effect. I would not swerve from the path of my duties and religion. Rain, snow, and hail would not stop me from spending three hours a day at Saint-Roch, asking for God and his holy mother for the grace to deliver me from my troubles, if I was worthy, or give me the strength to resist their temptations and their wickedness. I attended a Rosary each week at the Chapel of the Virgin there, and I believe no one has experienced the blessings of that exercise as I did. Four times I had visions that the others could not see: the child Jesus surrounded by a garland of fire in his mother’s arms. They remained for five minutes! Was this the grace of god given to me, as a mark of favor for what I’d given up for him? 

I can’t imagine making that kind of sacrifice for M. Pinel, whose diabolical appearances only shook my faith and threatened to drag me into the abyss along with him. He should have realized, long ago, that everything he does and hopes to do is in vain. I am on the right path, and I shall not take another. Still he does everything he can to annoy me. When I was walking to Saint-Roch one rainy day, not even halfway there, he grabbed my umbrella in his invisible form and broke it, hoping that its loss would drive me in some other direction. Make no mistake, you infernal spirits and devious rogues: I am prepared to suffer, because I know that God suffer. I’ll never surrender to you. If you attack, I’ll strike back. 

But those pleasant apparitions I’d seen inspired me to light a candle in the Virgin’s chapel as an offering. A particularly large one caught my eye that cost five pounds, but I thought it might draw too much of the wrong sort of attention. Instead, I decided to commit to an ongoing gift of a pound, to make a sort of foundation, at least as long as I would stay in the capital.