We are now in comparative solitude; for Margaret is to every one like a ray of sunshine.
God alone—he alone suffices to the soul. It is in him that I love you.
October 8, 1868.
Long walks with René all this week among our good farmers. Made presents everywhere. Held at the font a little flower of Ireland whom I named Kate. Old Jack is very ill, without any hope of cure. All the tribe of Margaret send us most affectionate letters almost daily. In the evenings, under the great trees, Adrien reads to us St. Monica, by the Abbé Bougaud, while the children play at a little distance. What say you to this page: “The perfection of sacrifice, and the extremity of suffering, is to give up the life of those whom one loves. The greatest martyrdom, to a mother, is not to sacrifice herself for her child: it is to sacrifice even the very life of her child; it is so highly to
prize truth, virtue, honor, true beauty of soul, the eternal salvation of her child, that, rather than see these holy things fade and wither in his soul, she would see him die.” Edith listened nervously to these words, and then said: “This sacrifice may be required of me!” Poor mother! “St. Augustine,” writes M. Bougaud, “passionately loved his mother, and constantly spoke of her. Almost all the writings which have issued from his pen are embalmed with the memory of her. More than twenty years after her death, when he had become aged by labors yet more than in years, and had attained the time when it seems that the love of God, having broken down every embankment and inundated the heart, must have destroyed within it every other love, the name and memory of his mother never recurred to him, even when preaching, without a tear mounting from his heart to his eyes. He would then abandon himself to the charm of this remembrance and allow himself to speak of it to his people of Hippo, and even in the sermons where one would scarcely expect to find them we meet with words of touching beauty in which breathe at the same time the faith and grateful piety of the son and the double elevation of the genius and the saint”—noble and beautiful words which delight me. To love one’s mother—is not this one of the happinesses of this earth, where so few are true? M. Bougaud is admirable, whether in defining eloquence, “the sound given by a soul charmed out of herself by the sight of the good and true,” or in speaking of the complaint of Job, “this song of death which we all sing, and which makes us better, even when we have but wept its first notes—this
song of two parts, the first sad, where all passes, all fades away, all dries up from the lips of those who wish to drink and slake their thirst; the first song which does good to the soul, even when we know but this one note, and cast on the world only this sorrowful look. What is it, then, when we rise to a loftier height, to the second part of this song of death, where sorrow is absorbed in joy? Yes, everything passes away, but to return; everything fades, but that it may bloom again; everything dies, to return to life transfigured.” Kate, in the beauty of this book there is to me incomparable splendor. Would you like a few more fragments from it—precious pearls which I would enshrine in my heart and memory, there to ruminate upon and enjoy them? I will send you the definition of Rome: “That delectable land full of holy images and tranquil domes, whither one goes in order to forget the world and rest the soul in the memories and associations which are there alone to be found.” Again, this about the second age of life: “In which, after having tasted every other love, we return to that of our mother; and seeing the years which accumulate upon her venerable head, not venturing to contemplate the future, desiring still to enjoy that which remains of a life so dear, we feel in ourselves the renewal of an indescribable affection which rises in the soul to something akin to worship.” Or this portrait of Plato: “There was in ancient times, in the palmiest days of Greece, a young man of incredible loftiness of mind, and of a beauty of speech which has never been surpassed; the disciple of Socrates, whom he immortalized by lending him his own wings; and the master of Aristotle,
whose power he would have tripled could he have communicated to him some of his own fire!”
A letter from Isa, a Nunc Dimittis. She would like us to be present when she takes the veil. Will it be possible? Oh! how much it will cost me to quit my own Ireland—our lakes, mountains, and mists, all the poetry of our green Erin. Where shall I find it in France?
Adieu and à Dieu, dear sister of my life.
October 12, 1868.