Orne et visite à chaque instant,
Charme des songes d’épouse
Doux nid, où l’espérance attend.[82]
has received the little stranger sent by Heaven. Let us bless God, dear Kate! Alleluia! Christ is risen! Happy they who live and die in his love! Alleluia!
April 16, 1868.
Thanks, dear sister! I have translated Mgr. Dupanloup at Saint-Euverte for Isa. Lizzy is better; they had been too much alarmed about her, but they are expecting us there. Lord William sends us the most pressing and affectionate appeals. Sarah also writes to me, gravely this time: “My sister’s marriage will separate her from us. Two sisters will henceforth be wanting to this family group; the one, and that the happiest, enkindled with love for the Best-Beloved of her soul, left the world for God and his poor, and, shortly afterwards, the poor for eternity; the other is going into Spain.”
Imagine Margaret’s joy! Dear, sweet friend, how, with her, I bless God! “No baptism without Georgina.” Oh! how I long to embrace the dear little creature, to whom I send my guardian angel a hundred times a day. I am so anxious he should live!
Walk in the country, alone with René, who read me some letters from Karl, George, and Amaury; the latter will write to their uncles no more. What detachment! René read to me also this beautiful passage from Madame Swetchine from the notes of Hélène: “The day of the Lord is not of those days which pass away. Wait for it without impatience; wait, that God may bless the desires which lead you toward a better life, more meritorious and less perilous; wait, that he may give abundant work to your hands from henceforth laborious, for the opportunity of labor is also a grace by which the good-will of the laborer is recompensed. Let not your delays and miseries trouble you; wait, learn how to wait. Efforts and will, means and end—submit all to God.”
It is not Monsignor who will preach the panegyric. The great bishop waits until next year. It appears that various beatifications are about to be taken under consideration, amongst others those of Christopher Columbus and Joan of Arc. The first discovered a world, the second saved France by delivering it from a foreign yoke—living as a saint and dying as a martyr; the former, a marvellous genius, was tried and persecuted, like everything which is specially marked with the seal of God in this world. I have seen persons smile when any one spoke before them of the possibility of the canonization of Joan of Arc. What life, however, was more extraordinary and more miraculous? Would this shepherdess of sixteen years old, so humble, gentle, and pious, have quitted her hamlet and her family for the stormy life of camps, without the express will of God, manifested to her by the voices? Poor Joan! How
often have I pictured her to myself, after the saving of the gentil dauphin who had trusted in her words, weeping because the king insisted on her remaining. From that moment her life was a preparation for martyrdom. She knew that shortly she should die.