They also knew how to respect quiet times and give each other space to accommodate their differences: Louis would regularly go to the Pavilion property or leave on pilgrimage. Zélie in turn would take time to write letters to her brother and sister or to attend devotional meetings.
In terms of daily worries, large or small, they handled them together. Louis often reassured Zélie, who ever since her childhood had a propensity to worry. “Once again, do not torment yourself so much,” he would say. At the end of her life she wrote about her husband, “He was always my consoler and my support.”21 Zélie herself was also a support for him—for example, when Louis was concerned about her health: “I have seen my husband often torment himself on this issue for my sake, while I stayed very calm. I would say to him, ‘Don’t be afraid, God is with us.’”22 When worries entered the household, it was she, as the heart of that home, who cheered everybody up. Louis and Zélie were pillars for each other in a wonderfully harmonious way.
Of course, the couple had frictions that created small, unforeseen annoyances. Louis, for example, despite being a seasoned traveler, forgot one day to get off the train with his daughters when they were coming back to Alençon from Lisieux, which left his wife waiting eagerly at home with the uneaten meal that she had spent the morning preparing. Once the initial annoyance was over, she quickly laughed about it when she wrote about the incident to Isidore. Although they sometimes argued, it didn’t poison their relationship, as seen in the following anecdote. Pauline, who was seven years old at the time, approached her mother after hearing voices raised and asked if that was what people meant by “getting along poorly together.” Zélie burst out laughing and quickly told her husband who also laughed. From that time on Pauline’s inquiry became a family joke.
As with many couples, the major topic of disagreement concerned the children. Although Louis and Zélie were perfectly in accord on the general topic of education for their children, their opinions could diverge when it came to minor decisions. When Zélie took Céline to Lisieux with her when she was a baby, Louis thought it was madness. He himself sent Marie off to boarding school when she was sick, against Zélie’s advice (which caused an outbreak of measles throughout the whole school). Zélie’s accounts carry no resentment about all that and, on the contrary, show a healthy balance.
Louis made most of the decisions, as a man of his time and as a biblical man, so to speak: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife as Christ is head of the church…. As the Church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband” (Eph 5:22-24, 33). The Martins perfectly embodied this model of a Gospel couple, giving it a human face.
Louis didn’t exercise his authority in a unilateral manner. He was open to discussion, and even when he didn’t adopt his wife’s views, he let her do things her own way. As the old saying goes, “What the woman wants is what God wants.” That was true in the Martin family as seen in this delightful story that Zélie related to Pauline:
As for Marie’s retreat at the Visitation Monastery, you know how he doesn’t like to be separated from any of you, and he had first expressly said that she could not go. I saw that he was adamant about this, so I didn’t try to plead her case. I just determined very resolutely to come back to the subject. Last night, Marie was complaining about this issue. I told her, “Let me take care of it; I always get what I want without having to fight. There is still a month to go and that is enough time to persuade your father ten times over.”
I wasn’t wrong because hardly an hour afterward when he came home, he started talking to your sister in a friendly way as she was energetically working. I said to myself, “Good, this is the right time.”… So I brought up the issue. Your father asked Marie, “Do you really want to go on this retreat?” When she said yes, he said, “Ok, then, you can go.” And you know he is someone who doesn’t like our absences and unplanned expenses, so he was telling me just yesterday, “If I don’t want her to go there, she will of course not go. There seems to be no end to all these trips to Le Mans and Lisieux.” I agreed with him then, but I had an ulterior motive because for a long time I’ve known how these things work. When I tell someone, “My husband does not want it,” it is because I don’t want the thing any more than he does. But when I have a good reason on my side, I know how to help him decide, and I found I had a good reason for wanting Marie to go on the retreat.
It’s true that it’s an expense, but money is nothing when it comes to the sanctification and perfection of one’s soul. Last year, Marie came back to me all transformed with fruit that lasted, but she needs to renew her supply now. Besides, that is also what your father essentially believes and why he yielded so nicely.23
Notice that if Zélie can so sweetly “manipulate” her husband it’s because they are essentially in agreement deep down. Besides, “manipulate” is the wrong word for a woman who, a few days later in writing to her daughter, picked up right where she had left off in her letter: “My dear Pauline, I stopped at that last sentence. Sunday night at 7:00 your father asked me to go out with him, and since I am very obedient, I didn’t finish the sentence!”24 These incidents emphasize Zélie’s feminine character, Louis’s flexibility, and above all their good mutual understanding.
To understand the life of the Martin couple we need to know about their relatives and their surroundings. Zélie’s closest relatives were her brother and sister. Although Louis rarely visited Sister Marie-Dosithée because she lived too far away, he was aware of her influence on his wife. Linked by blood and a deep friendship, the two women were also linked by a genuine spiritual sisterhood: “If you saw the letter I wrote to my sister in Le Mans, you would be jealous because it is five pages long,” she wrote teasingly to Isidore. “But I tell her things I do not tell you. She and I share together about the mysterious, angelic world, but I have to talk to you about earthly things.”25
What a shame that those letters weren’t preserved. They’ve disappeared, along with the letters to her daughters to prepare them for their first Communion that were so admired by the Visitation sisters. The letters that we have from Zélie only show her with a needle and a baby in each arm. But even this depiction reveals her deep interior life, and the major role her sister had on her path. As a confidant to her sorrows as well as joys, Sister Marie-Dosithée knew how to help Zélie discover God’s hand, as we shall see. Zélie never undertook any step in her affairs without entrusting it to the prayer of “the saint of Le Mans,”26 as she called her. This was especially true for family affairs.
As for Isidore, he was always the little brother they coddled. Zélie, together with Sister Marie-Dosithée, played a somewhat maternal role in his life. From Le Mans to Alençon, pious advice rained down on Isidore’s head. He pretended to mock it, but he appreciated it and ended up following it. In 1866, Isidore married Céline Fournet, a spouse completely along the lines prescribed by his sisters—good, pious, simple, and hardworking. The people in Thérèse’s circle said little about this quiet woman, but she was well loved by all the Martins. In 1875, Zélie wrote: “I have a sister-in-law who is incomparably good and sweet. Marie says she can find no faults in her, and I