Then, in 1610, the first three aspirants began their novitiate in Annecy, which they completed a year later, on June 6, 1611. In 1613, the founder gave the nuns their first constitutions.
The community grew day by day. Although it was planned and erected very simply in Annecy, as a congregation of diocesan right, in a very few years it became an order of pontifical right. In this rapid process of transformation, it always maintained its own physiognomy of meekness and gentleness, of humility and asceticism, of prayer and contemplation.
From Annecy, while Francis de Sales was still alive, the Order spread to Lyon, Moulins, Grenoble, Bourges, Turin, Montpellier, Valence, Clermont, and Paris.
