Il n’est dans cette vie
Qu’un bien digne d’envie:
La liberté![118]
Yes, assuredly, liberty is a great good, and therefore it is that our soul has been made free, perfectly free. And how sweet it is to feel one’s self free, and to bend generously beneath the yoke of love and sacrifice! One of our first instincts is
the need of liberty, and even the word alone has in it a magic which carries the mind away with it, and at critical times becomes the rallying word of revolutions. O my God! grant that I may love only the holy freedom of thy children—that freedom which can never be taken from me. Deliver the captives—the captives of the world, and above all of sin! Deliver also Ireland!
Visits: an entire family, antique in dress and appearance, but modern in language, grace, and heart. Good Bretons!—I love them. This valiant faith, this sublime indignation, these courageous protestations for the church and her Head in a race of granite, is an incomparable spectacle. Brittany has indeed done well to preserve its customs, its manners, and its ancient faith eternally young and living. One of these ladies questioned us about Paris, whither she wishes to accompany her son, who is attacked by the fever of the times. I admire her maternal devotion. Imagine the astonishment of this Bretonne in the capital of mud and gold!
Dear Kate, Marcella and René have some secrets to tell you. Love from us all.
June 16, 1868.
Our first ride has been most prosperous, dear sister. It was a nineteen—an unlucky day, declares the superstitious Marianne. What matters?—God protects us. “Who loves me follows me!” cried Adrien, and away we went, cantering after him through the thickets. Don’t suppose our expedition was for nothing but pleasure, however legitimate, but to make a wide circuit of poor. What store of benedictions we gathered on our way! A worthy tad coz[119] in his enthusiasm kissed the
hem of Marcella’s riding-habit, saying: “It is certainly a saint who is come to us.” (Marcella already speaks Breton as if it were Italian.)