In dreams that come like blessed balm,
We see her heaven’s unshaken calm.
I go, I go! Sweet friends, good-by;
For you to Paradise I fly.
Dearest, the French is not equal to the naive language of the brown little Neapolitan girl.
June 12, 1868.
I have been ill, my beloved sister. What trouble they have all been giving themselves on my account! Happily, it was nothing—fever, headache, and general indisposition. The doctor orders much exercise, and from to-morrow we organize a cavalcade. Adrien has had some superb horses brought here; what riding parties we shall have!
But sadness mingles with joy. Lucy’s mother is very ill. They have just set out; will they arrive too late? Oh! this journey, how full it will be of anxiety and apprehension.
A despatch.… Poor Lucy! the goodness of God has spared her that last moment, so full of cruel distress and yet of ineffable hope—she did not see her mother die! What mourning! Why is death like our shadow, pitilessly mowing down the existences which are dearer to us than our own? But to what purpose is it to ask why? There is more true wisdom in a fiat than in curious researches. On Whitsunday, at the “drawing” of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, my lot was the Gift of Piety—love of God and of all that belongs to his service; and the Fruit of Patience—generous acceptance of the crosses God sends us. Must I own to you that this gift made me afraid? Oh! if my happiness were to be destroyed. You will be scolding me for this dreaming, and you will say to me with Mgr. Landriot: “If you would keep mind and body in a healthy condition, avoid with extreme care these states of reverie—the habit of taking aerial flights in which the heart and understanding exhaust themselves on emptiness.” Dear Kate, my dreams speak but of heaven.
Marcella, so long a captive beneath the yoke of others, regards independence as the first of terrestrial benefits; on this subject our opinions differ. The poor Prisoner was quite right when he said to the swallows: