A religious of the Visitation wrote :
“Having always had the idea that the holy Curé d’Ars would tell me the time of my death, I had never wanted to go to him. His thought alone caused me dread; For death was for many years the terror of my soul, the specter that appeared in the midst of all my feasts to disturb them, of all my joys to darken them. When my proud heart was at last broken and humiliated enough to merit God speaking to it, I heard his voice, and the cloister, which had always seemed to me worse than death, seemed to me the only asylum where I could wait for it now and see it coming without fear. Thus disposed, I left for Ars.
<<I came to the holy parish priest with such a lively faith, so whole; I was so determined to receive like an oracle the words he would say to me, that he could not fail to be inspired by me. When I stood before him, I was seized with a feeling of religious terror mixed with veneration to the point that I no longer knew what I had come to ask him. Instead, I knelt down.
to give myself only to ask for his blessing; I really didn’t know where I was anymore. said to me, “What do you want<< my child? – My Father, I come to consult you on For whom? For me, my Father. -For a vocation.
So take four boards.
Four boards! << I exclaimed with a feeling of dread impossible to render. “Yes, four boards. But, Father, I do << not understand… >>And, by the fact, I was hardly able to understand; the earth seemed to flee under my feet; everything was turning in front of me; the holy Curé appeared to me at that moment as a being who no longer had anything human. I wish I could cling to something; It seemed to me that I was going to fall… He continued, “Well! It is as if there are already three boards, <“< and you take a fourth to cover yourself; << do you understand now? I let out a cry… My familiar spectre, death, was before me. He added, maintaining the serious and almost stern tone with which he had spoken to me hitherto: << Death scares you? Then, taking a softer voice and with a heavenly figure: “Ah!” he said, “death is the << union of the soul with God! But, I answered, I want to die in the <<< cloister. – And where? to the Visitation? Ah! Yes, it’s such a << good life! Very close to here there is a monastery waiting for you. <<Go ahead, my child, you will be fine. »
“Where had M. Vianney learned that I was thinking of the Visitation, that I had already made two retreats there? The strange thing is that I came out calm, as if the Saint had not spoken to me of the thing I feared most. And, walking alone in the small village, I said to myself: “It is to you that the parish priest has just announced that you will die soon… But nothing could disturb the truly supernatural peace that had been made in the upper part of my being.