Leonie enters the Visitation for the second time, June 24, 1893
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Leonie in 1893, shortly before her second entrance into the Visitation/ She is about 30 years old.
June 24, 1893 is usually listed as the date on which Leonie Martin entered the Monastery of the Visitation at Caen for the second time. But thereby hangs a tale. In fact, Leonie arrived on June 24 with the intention of making a week’s retreat.
Louis Martin was released from the Bon Sauveur asylum on May 10, 1892. He joined his daughters at the home of his brother-in-law, Isidore Guerin, in Lisieux. On July 1, a small house on rue Labbey, just across from the back entrance to the Guerin mansion,was leased for Louis, Leonie, and Celine. There his daughters looked after him happily with the help of two servants, Marie and Desire Le Juif.
The Guerins spent part of each summer at La Musse, an estate near Evreux inherited from Madame Guerin’s family, the Fournets. In 1892 Louis remained in Lisieux, while Leonie took care of him, and Celine joined the Guerins at La Musse for a couple of weeks in August.
In April 1893, Celine and Marie Guerin traveled to Caen to stay with Jeanne Guerin (Celine’s cousin and Marie’s elder sister) and enjoy the big Caen Fair. This year the whole family planned to spend part of the summer at La Musse, bringing Louis with them. About this time Leonie suggested that, instead of joining them immediately, she might make a retreat at the Visitation of Caen,where she had been a postulant for six months in 1887. On April 23, 1893, Leonie received an angry letter from Celine, who was very upset by this plan. Madame Guerin’s letter of that date to her daughter Marie in Caen contains this passage:
Dear Léonie was very upset this morning when she received Céline’s letter. She gave it to me to read and I tried to comfort her, and she agrees with me that if the annoyance she was feeling about going to La Musse was more pleasing to God than the happiness she feels about going to the Visitation, she will readily make the sacrifice of the latter and doesn’t even want to hear anything more about it. The poor girl is no longer crying now, and I find she is really being very good. She wrote to Thérèse about what Céline had said to her.
Read Madame Guerin’s letter on the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.
In the end, Leonie did go to the Visitation for a week’s retreat, arriving on June 24. Three days later Celine left for La Musse with her father and the Guerin family. It seems that Leonie must have realized after only a few days at the Visitation that she wanted to enter again. Before June 30 she asked the superior for permission to enter, and she wrote M. Guerin, her uncle and guardian, for his consent. For the next chapter, stay tuned!