January 20.
I have recovered my happiness: René is here. I never weary of hearing him, of rejoicing that I have him. Dearest, I am enchanted with what he tells me about you. Tell me if ever two sisters loved
each other as we do? No; it is not possible.
Lord William, Margaret, Lizzy, Isa, all our friends beyond the sea, are represented on my writing-table—under envelopes. Karl will come back to us; he “is burning to belong to God.” You know all the details: the father blessing the coffin of his daughter, the sister, abounding in consolation—all these miracles of grace and love. O dear Kate! how good God is.
What will you think of my boldness? Isa has often expressed regret at her inability to read Guérin, as Gerty used to say; so I thought I would attempt a translation. I write so rapidly that I shall soon be at the end of my task. The souls of Eugénie and of Isa are too much like those of sisters not to understand each other. These few days spent in the society of the Solitary of Cayla have more than ever attached me to that soul at the same time so ardent and so calm, a furnace of Jove, concentrated upon his brother Maurice, who was taken from him by death—alas! as if to prove once more that earth is the place of tears, and heaven alone that of happiness.
“Qu’est-ce donc que les jours pour valoir qu’on les pleure?”[31]
Hélène wrote to me on the 10th, Feast of St. Paul the Hermit, full of admiration for the poetic history of this saint: the raven daily bringing half a loaf to the solitary; the visit of St. Antony; St. Paul asking if houses were still built; St. Antony exclaiming when he returned to the monastery: “I have seen Elias; I have seen John in the desert; I have seen Paul in Paradise”; the lions digging the grave
of this friend of God—what a poem!
René has brought me back the Consolations of M. de Sainte-Beuve. How is it that the poets of our time have not remained Christian? In his Souvenirs d’Enfance (“Memories of Childhood”) the author of the Consolations says to God:
“Tu m’aimais entre tous, et ces dons qu’on désire,