Our Lady saves from the flames a young boy wearing the Brown Scapular

My parents had sent me to the minor seminary to complete my education. I studied philosophy there. On Assumption Day in 1811, I had the good fortune to receive the Brown Scapular. 

As the ceremony took place in the evening, the various house duties prevented me from reciting the prayers we are used to saying every day. Bedtime arrived, and I only remembered my omission when, already in bed, I was about to blow out my candle. I put it down at my bedside, without thinking of the consequences of this imprudence, and began to recite the scapular prayers. It was about nine o'clock...

At about 9:45 pm, I awoke from a deep sleep. A strong feeling of fear, caused by the memory of the lighted candle, made me sit up in my bed, and I was turning to extinguish it, when I saw myself in the middle of fire and smoke! 

It was undoubtedly the movement I made to lie down as I said my prayers, when I was seized by sleep, that caused the candle to fall on my pillow: it was burning, my mattress was burning too, the wood of the bed on the side of my head was a glowing coal; my little room was filled with such thick smoke that as soon as I opened the door to call for help, the whole house was instantly filled with it. 

As for me, I didn't feel the slightest pain. I didn't lose a single hair from my head, and when the doctor saw the traces of the fire on the walls and the bed the next day, which we'd struggled to extinguish, he was astonished that, even though the flames had spared me, I hadn't at least been suffocated by the smoke. I can't believe how calm I felt. 

I thanked Our Lady of the Scapular, and I have no doubt that it was this good Mistress who deigned to protect my life, out of respect for the intention I had to pray to Her, an intention which I nevertheless fulfilled so poorly.

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