When she was. . .
When she was four months pregnant, Mme. Martin announced to the Guérins “an event will probably take place toward the end of the year,” that is, in 1872. She writes also that she hopes the child will be born in good health. Such is the first mention of the existence of the one whom they were already calling “little Thérèse” in memory of a Thérèse who died when five months old.
And then comes the good news: “My little daughter was born yesterday, Thursday, at 11:30 at night. She is very strong and healthy, and they say she weighs eight pounds; let’s put it at six pounds, and that is not bad! She seems very nice. I suffered only a half-hour, and what I experienced before is not to be counted. She will be baptized on Saturday, and you will be the only ones missing to make the celebration complete. Marie will be the godmother, and a little boy, almost her age, the godfather” (January 3, 1873).
Everything went as announced by Mme. Martin. The only unexpected thing was this note brought to rue Saint-Blaise by a child: its father had written this short poem:
Souris et grandit vite
Au Bonheur, Tout t’invite,
Tendre soins, tendre Amour
Oui, souris à l’Aurore,
Bouton qui viens d’éclore
Tu seras Rose un jour.
Smile and grow quickly
Everything promises you happiness.
Tender care, tender love
Yes, smile at the Dawn,
Bud that just blossomed,
One day you will be a Rose.
She was hardly born when Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin knew suffering: at two weeks she just missed being carried off by intestinal troubles: at three months, there was still a more serious danger: “She is very bad and I have no hope whatsoever of saving her. The poor little thing suffers horribly since yesterday. It breaks your heart to see her” (March 1, 1873).
The crisis over, the mother was forced, on the doctor’s advice, to entrust Thérèse to a friendly nurse. For a whole year, nursed by the strong and vivacious Rose Taillé, the little one led the life of a little peasant. At Semallé she grew into a big baby, tanned by the sun. There she drank in a zest for life among the flowers and the animals. Her mother wrote on July 20, 1873: “Her nurse brings her out to the fields in a wheelbarrow, seated on top a load of hay; she hardly ever cries. Little Rose says that one could hardly find a better child.”
Blond, blue-eyed, very attractive, precocious, lively, very touchy, capable of violent outbursts of temper, stubborn, Thérèse very quickly became the favorite. She was “devoured by kisses” by the whole family, and this especially because they were deprived of her presence. “All my life God was pleased to surround me with love, and my first memories are imprinted with the most tender smiles and caresses!”
Thérèse was to write at the age of 23: “Ah! how rapidly the sunny years of my early childhood passed by, but what a sweet impression they left on my soul! Everything on earth smiled at me. I found flowers under each of my steps, and my happy disposition contributed also to making my life pleasing.”
Her mother’s death broke up this happiness and necessitated the departure of the family to Lisieux. But let Thérèse herself tell us.