( this story was told to us by a friend of therese 's sister , emilie blanchard , who died in 1935 an abbreviated version was passed on to us by a nonrelative who overheard the conversation at the cemetery and made inquiries about it yet a third version was repeated to us by a nun who was present at the cemetery and the agreement among the three as to mary beth 's statements makes this one of our most powerful pictures of her , albeit small the two deaths involved were reported in the papers ) there are countless other stories about mary beth 's predictions , advice , and the like they are all very similar mary beth advised against certain marriages , and her advice always turned out to be correct or mary beth advised people to enter into certain ventures and it worked out wonderfully but everything points to the fact that mary beth was very cautious about the power , and disliked direct prediction we have one other quote from her on the matter , and this was made to the parish priest who later told it to his brother , a police officer , who apparently remembered it because he thought it was interesting mary beth is rumored to have told the priest that any one strong individual could change the future for countless others , that it happened all the time given the number of human beings alive in this world , such persons were so rare that predicting the future was deceptively simple 'then we are possessed of free will , you grant that much , ' the priest had said , to which mary beth replied , 'indeed we are , in fact , it is absolutely crucial that we exercise our free will nothing is predetermined and thank god there are n't many strong people who upset the predictable scheme , for there are as many bad ones who bring on war and disaster as there are visionaries who do good for others ' ( it is worth noting that these statements are interesting in light of richard llewellyn 's description of juhen coming to him in a dream and telling him that nothing is predetermined and it is also worth noting that two hundred years before , lasher , according to petyr van abel , made a mysterious prediction which deeply disturbed petyr if only we had more direct quotations regarding this and other subjects from the powerful psychic members of the mayfair family ' but alas we do not , and this immediate connection between two quotes makes us painfully aware of it ) .