speaks Greek and Latin, and wishes me to read Homer and Virgil in the original. Wish me good success, dear. A long walk; met a little beggar, whom Picciola fraternally embraced. What a pretty scene, and how I afterwards kissed my dear pet!
Love me always, dear Kate.
March 28, 1868.
Darling Kate, I send you my notes without adding anything, because we have Karl with us for only one more day. O these departures! Laus Deo always, nevertheless.
March 30, 1868.
Dear sister, Karl is gone! I am not sorry; I shall see him again, and he will then be nearer to God. How happy it is to feel that God is the bond of our souls! Yesterday, Sunday, his last in the life of the world, we went together to Sainte-Croix, where we heard a long sermon, a veritable encyclopædia: Godfrey de Bouillon at Jerusalem; Maria Theresa in Hungary, with the shout of the magnates in French and in Latin; the proud Sicambre listening to the Bishop Remy; St. Elizabeth on the throne, and then in penury; St. Thomas writing sublime pages before his crucifix; St. Francis of Assisi receiving the stigmata; St. Bernard; St. Catherine of Genoa; the Crusaders; Magdalen at the foot of the cross; Veronica wiping the face of our Saviour, etc., etc., appearing in it by turns. A day of unspeakable serenity. Karl sang the Lætatus for his adieu. Dearest sister, how happy Ellen must be!
You will see Karl. Tell me if you do not find him transfigured. We read, during his too short stay with us, the life of Mme. St. Notburg, by M. de Beauchesne—another
saint in Protestant Germany, a French saint, though her tomb is there. I have asked Karl to take you this book; read, and see how excellent it is!
And so the month of St. Joseph is ended! O protector of temporal things! guard well all whom I love.
Marcella, my winning Marcella, is a poet; I ought to have told you this. I gave her a surprise: her most feeling lines have been printed in a newspaper, which I managed to put before her eyes. She blushed and grew pale—the first emotion of authorship. Poor heart! for so long severed from love, and which so soon lost that whereon it leaned. “O Madonna mia! how good God is,” she often repeats with ecstasy in admiring her beautiful little Anna, who grows wonderfully. I think this child was too much kept in a hot-house, when she had need of air, space, and movement. I can understand how her mother may well doat on her: she has a way of looking at you, kissing you, and of bending her forehead to be kissed, quite irresistible. Carissima, how I love her, and how fondly I love my Kate!