Born to a poor farm family near Toulouse, France, Germaine was a sickly, ugly child with a withered arm. After her mother died, her father married a woman who was especially cruel to Germaine, forcing her to live in a stable and tend sheep. She made a rosary out of string, and when she left her sheep to attend mass, no harm from wolves ever came to them. She died on her pallet, and forty years after her death, when her body was accidentally exhumed, it was found to be incorrupt. Hundreds of miracles have been reported due to her intercession.