Claude Alacoque

Within a century, that image would hang in cathedrals, cottages, and soldiers' pockets on every continent.

But the girl who would carry that message began her life in a tiny Burgundian village, in a house about to lose its father, in a world that had no use for her visions and no idea what to do with a child who prayed too much.

Part One: The Child of Hautecoeur.

Margaret was born on the twenty-second of July, sixteen forty-seven, in the hamlet of Hautecoeur, in the parish of Verosvres, in the rolling green hills of the Charolais region of Burgundy.

The King of France, Louis XIV, was a boy of nine, and the kingdom was about to be torn by the civil wars of the Fronde.

Famine, soldiers, and fear were never far from the roads of Burgundy.

Her father, Claude Alacoque, was a notary, which in a village of farmers made him a man of standing.

He drew up contracts, settled disputes, and kept the written memory of a whole district.