He also considered that it was a species of incivility when seated at a meal to ask for some dish which was at the other end of the table, instead of taking what was close at hand. He said that such practices were evidence of a mind too keen about viands, sauces, and condiments; too much absorbed in mere eating and drinking. If, he added, this careful picking out of dishes is not done from greediness or gluttony, but from a desire to choose the worst food, it smacks of affectation, which is as inseparable from ostentation as smoke from fire. The conduct of people who do this is not unlike that of guests who take the lowest seats at the table, in order that they may, with the greater _éclat_, be summoned to the higher places. The following incident will show his own indifference. One day poached eggs were served to him, and when he had eaten them, he continued to dip his bread in the water in which they had been cooked, apparently without noticing what he was doing. The guests were all smiling. Upon discovering the cause of their amusement, he told them it was too bad of them to undeceive him, as he was taking the sauce with much relish, verifying the proverb that "Hunger is the best sauce"!
The degree of perfection to which our Blessed Father brought his Religious he makes manifest to us in one of his letters.
"Do you know," he says, "what the cloister is? It is the school of exact correction, in which each individual soul must learn the lesson of allowing itself to be so disciplined, planed, and polished that at length, being quite smooth and even, it may be fit to be joined, united, and absolutely assimilated with the Will of God.
"To wish to be corrected is an evident sign of perfection, for the principal point of humility is realizing our need of it.
"A convent is a hospital for the spiritually sick. The sick wish to be cured, and, therefore, they willingly submit to be lanced, probed, cut, cauterized, and subjected to any and every pain and discomfort which medicine or surgery may suggest.
"In the early days of the Church, religious were called by a name which signifies healers. Oh! my daughter, be truly your own healer, and pay no heed to what self-love may whisper to the contrary. Say to yourself, since I do not wish to die spiritually, I will be healed, and in order to be healed I will submit to treatment and correction, and I will entreat the doctors to spare me nothing which may be required to effect my cure."