My good paralytic showed much pleasure at seeing me again. It is arranged that Marcella and I are to go to her by turns, and Gertrude, who ardently desires some active occupation, claims her share of presents of poor. Not a minute is wasted here, dear Kate. We are keeping the twins, not wishing to place them under any external influence; and although Arthur has entered at the Jesuits’, the good
abbé has consented to remain permanently the guest of Mme. de T——, as preceptor to these lovable children, whom he finds so attractive. Marcella is giving them lessons in Italian. How learned they are already! Every month, in accordance with Adrien’s decision, there are solemn examinations. The delicate little Anna studies with zeal, finding herself very ignorant by the side of the twins.
I have knelt again before Notre Dame des Miracles, and have done the honors of Recouvrance to our fair Roman. Did I tell you that Margaret is a little jealous? “Keep me at least a tiny little corner in your heart, which I see invaded from so many quarters.” Her happiness has undergone no alteration; she is expecting and wishing for me.…
Read Emilia Paula, a story of the Catacombs. Mgr. La Carrière, formerly Bishop of Guadaloupe, will preach the Lent, and Mgr. Dupanloup will speak in the réunions of the Christian Mothers. It is also said, though it is not very likely, that the great bishop will this year deliver the panegyric of Joan of Arc.
Marcella is in a state of enthusiasm. Her heart opens out in the warm atmosphere created for her by our friendship. Anna is well—still a little shy; the delicate temperament of the dear orphan having for so long kept her at a distance from anything like noisy play. Marguérite and Alix teach her her
lessons. What pretty subjects for my brush!
We all communicated this morning, the anniversary of Mme. de T——’s marriage. O my God! what can the soul render to thee to whom thou givest thyself? Oh! how I pity those who know thee not, who never receive thee as their Guest, who never weep at thy feet like Magdalen, who return not to thee like the prodigal, who lean not upon thy heart like St. John. Oh! with the divine and fiery beams of thy bright dawn illuminate this earth, wherein the evil fights against the good.
Still more deaths, dear Kate. See what Isa writes to me: “My grandfather suffers continually more and more from fearful pain and extreme weakness. His patience and resignation are admirable. We pray together; I read him the Imitation; the Sick Man’s Day, by Ozanam, which Lizzy has translated for me, since your friendly kindness made me acquainted with Eugénie de Guérin; also a book most effectually consoling, and to which my grandfather listens with tears. We make Novenas. He has received the ‘Bread of the strong,’ and the help of Heaven cannot fail this manly soul, who has passed through life so nobly.” Jenny has lost her sister-in-law—another house disorganized and without its soul. The little nephew is given to the two sisters, who are going to bring him up and educate him; and Jenny, who had a horror of Latin, is going to learn it in order to lessen its difficulties to the pretty darling.
Mother St. André is in heaven. It makes my heart bleed to think of the grief of Mother St. Maurice. It is so cruel a sorrow to lose one’s mother, and such a mother—an
exceptionally holy soul, friend of the saintly foundress, destined by Providence to such great things; who has known the brightest joys and the most deadly sorrows, seeing her children die after she had given them up to God. What holy joy gladdened her soul on that day when, herself a religious, she beheld her two daughters clothed in the livery of Christ, and her son, her third treasure, the third pearl in her maternal crown, a priest! What a family of chosen ones, and what sorrows! Oh! when this mother, at the same time austere and tender, was called upon to close her children’s eyes, were there not, side by side with the feelings of the Christian and the saint, those also of the wife and mother? Dear Kate, I can understand that a religious loves more deeply than other women. The love of God, sanctifying her affections and rendering them almost divine, communicates to them something of the infinite, which is not broken without indescribable suffering.