The whole town is in consternation.
Margaret is inconsolable; all our friends are weeping. What a death! God has spared her all suffering. Let us pray for her, or rather for her unhappy mother; for I cannot believe that Nelly is not in heaven. Do you recollect that she used to be called the Angel in prayer?
René wishes me to stop here. Adieu, dear Kate.
March 5, 1868.
I have been rather ill, dear Kate, and to-day I am beginning to get up. The doctor forbids me emotion, but as soon might he forbid me to live. Marcella has nursed me like a sister. Anna is growing stronger. How pretty she was, playing with her doll near my bed, silently and gravely, without any demonstrative gayety, but often raising her beautiful eyes to look at me!
I have thus missed the two first Lenten sermons. René has never left me a moment. Dear, kind René! how thoughtful he is, even about the smallest details.
A letter from Isa: still in bed; weak, very weak, but wishing to live, that she may be a comfort to her much-tried family. “Aunt D—— finds no peace but when she is with me. Oh! I can truly say with St. Augustine that the Christian’s life is a cross and martyrdom!”
Hear what René was reading to me this morning: “Every Christian,” says Mgr. de Ségur, “receives in baptism the all-powerful lever of faith and love, capable of moving more than the world. Its fulcrum is heaven; it is Jesus Christ himself, the King of Heaven, whose love brings him down into the heart of each one of his faithful. The prospect of eternity keeps us from fainting. How everything there will change its aspect! Tears will
be turned into joy—a joy divine, eternal, infinite, ineffable, of which none can deprive us for ever.”
May God guard you, dear Kate, and may he guard our Ireland, her cradles and her tombs!