It is to-day that Betsy becomes madame. What a day for her! Yesterday she was still a young girl, to-morrow will begin her life as a wife; she will begin it by sacrifice. Oh! why must we quit the soft nests which have witnessed our childhood and our happiness? Why comes there an hour when we must bid adieu to those who, with their love and care, protected our first years? Poor mothers! you lose your much-loved treasures; they will some day belong to others.
Père Gratry was received at the Academy on the 26th of March. On his reception he made a magnificent discourse. He was presented by Mgr. Dupanloup.
“Gentlemen,” said the father on beginning his address, “it is not my humble person, it is the clergy of France, the memories of the Sorbonne and the Oratory, which you have intended to honor in deigning to call me to the seat occupied by Massillon.
“Voltaire, gentlemen, who occupied the same, thus finds himself, in your annals, between two priests of the Oratory, and his derision of mankind is enclosed between two prayers for the world, as his century itself will also be, one day in our history, enclosed between the great seventeenth century and the age of luminous faith which will love God and man in spirit and in truth.”
Kate, dearest, amica mia, pray for us.
April 26, 1868.
She is better; the ninth day was good. God be praised! Last night, while watching by the sweet child, I turned over Marcella’s manuscript. How the thorns have wounded her! Oh! it is a nameless grief, at the age of twenty years, when the soul is overflowing with life and love, to be forced to shrink within one’s self, to hide one’s sufferings and joys, and repress all the ardor of youth which is longing to break forth. Everywhere in these rapidly-written pages I find this prayer: “Lord, grant me the love of the cross; give me the science of salvation! St. Bonaventure used to say that he had learnt everything at the foot of the crucifix; St. Thomas, when he did not understand, was wont to go and lean his powerful head against the side of the tabernacle; and Suarez, who devoted eight hours a day to study and eight to prayer, loved to say that he would give all his learning for the merit of a single Ave Maria. My God, my God! will the desires which thou hast implanted within me never be realized? Must I lead always a wandering and isolated existence, beneath distant skies, mourning my country and my mother, and seeing around me nothing which could in some little measure replace these two blessings? Must the sensitiveness of my thoughts and feelings be hourly wounded? Lord, thy will be done! And if this is to be my cross, then give me strength to bear it lovingly, even to the end, until the blessed time when thy merciful Providence shall reunite me to my mother!”
My beloved Kate, René is writing to you, and I send this sheet
with his. Whenever I read anything beautiful, I long to show it to you.
God guard you, my second mother!