ployed all her moments to embellish and enrich her soul with all Christian virtues. By her regular attendance at the instructions, by her constant spirit of prayer, by the practice of every species of good work, she increased more and more in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and sweet Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Her last illness left her the use of all her faculties, which she preserved to her last breath. She thus prepared for death with all the tranquillity of the just. Her prayer was fervent and uninterrupted; her patience superior to every trial. Entirely taken up with the salvation of her soul, she seemed utterly unmindful of the sufferings of her body; she sought no relief, and never betrayed the least sign of impatience; she often tenderly kissed the cross, which she always carried around her neck. The desire of the Apostle " to be dissolved and to be with Christ " (Phil. i. 23), seemed to be during her illness her only motto and her only preoccupation.
"Always at the bedside of her who had so greatly aided me in my visits to the sick, and who had always served as my interpreter, and given me her aid with the ignorant - the spiritual directress, the guardian angel of her whole tribe - I had the happiness to witness this touching scene," says Father Gazzoli, the spiritual director of Louise. " Her virtues had shone like a brilliant torch amid the Indians; she had never sullied the white robe of innocence which she had received in baptism. I witnessed the great power of the cross, which displayed in the desert virtues till then unknown; which produces wherever it is planted so many holy martyrs, so many confessors, so many virgins and illustrious penitents. Here, amid these isolated mountains, appears a poor Indian woman, whose unshaken faith and firm hope render her superior to trials of every kind. I desired to relieve her in some way; she in obedience gratefully received what I offered, yet without seeking or asking the slightest relief or the slightest mitigation of her pains, which she accepted as so many special graces of our Lord."