Margaret’s mother-in-law is better, and all the dear tribe will arrive this evening. Impossible to live apart when the ocean is not between us!
The expectation and preparations please the twins, who are placing bouquets everywhere. Poetry, youth, and flowers go together. I did not tell you that René had brought Margaret the volumes which have appeared of the Monks of the West. Dear Kate, all our memories of Ireland there find a voice. Do you recollect the touching manner in which our mother used to relate the story of St. Columba? I have been this week with René on a pilgrimage to Gartan. “The love of Ireland was one of the greatnesses and one of the passions of Columba. Even in the present day, after so many centuries, they who fear to be unable to do without their native air ask help from him who required special assistance from God to be able to live far from Ireland, her mountains and her seas.” These are the words of a French writer quoted to me by René. And we looked at the salt sea and the sea-gulls, and spoke of the stork, which is not forgotten by the sailors of the Hebrides.… Delightful journey! My mother had advised us to take it alone. However much I enjoy the lively gambols
of the children, I have still more enjoyed this, our intimate solitude, together. Thus I am delivered from the fear of nostalgia. It was this terrible home-sickness which undermined the health of Edith. Thanks to prompt treatment, we shall save her, I trust. Already she is less pale, more cheerful and resigned. She has been making some projects on the score of her talents as an artist, but all her scruples of obligations have been forced to yield to my solicitations. She is not and cannot be here otherwise than as my mother’s friend, and as such she ought to be treated.
The two Australiennes are gradually becoming civilized, and consent to take part in the lessons with the twins. The good abbé herborizes with great enjoyment, takes long walks, makes acquaintances among the clergy of the country, makes himself a doctor to the poor, and announces his intention of settling near Gartan, against which we protest loudly.
Let me quote you a few more pages from St. Monica, this perfectly beautiful book, which you will not read, since it is for mothers; but the passages I take from it are good for all souls possessed by the only veritable love.
When, immediately after his conversion, St. Augustine retired to Cassiacum with his mother and so select an assemblage of friends, it was at the close of summer. “The autumn sun shed its warm rays over the campagna. The leaves were not yet falling, but they were already beginning to take those glowing tints of red and yellow which in the month of September give the country so rich a splendor. It was the moment when the whole of nature appeared to clothe itself in something
more grave and almost sad, as though preparing to die. There are certain states of soul in which one finds an infinite charm in contemplating nature at such a time.” Have we not felt this charm, dear Kate, a hundred times in our own Ireland, and also in the Roman Campagna and at Sorrento?
Listen to this admirable comparison between the disciple of Socrates and the son of St. Monica: “Plato and Augustine are two brothers, but of unequal ages. The first, at the dawn of life, in his sweet and poetic spring, has more flowers than fruits; he dreams of more than he possesses. He has glimpses of a sublime ideal, which fill him with enthusiasm, but he does not attain it. He seeks the way, he sees and describes it, but knows not how to enter; and he dies without bearing in his soul the fruit of which his youth had the flowers. The second, after painful struggles, after years of toil and courage, enters resolutely on the road which the former had pointed out. Plato had said: ‘To be a philosopher is to learn to die’; and again: ‘What is needful in order to see God?—to be pure and to die.’ Augustine studied this great art; he put it in practice at Cassiacum, and the light, like a river whose embankments have been broken down, flooded his vast intellect. What Plato hoped for and conjectured he saw. That which passed in the rich imagination of the philosopher as a confused though sublime presentiment existed with clearness and precision in the luminous intelligence of the saint, and sprang forth from his heart in accents such as Plato never imagined. He who would know Augustine when first trying his wings, before his full strength of flight, should study the
conversations and conferences of Cassiacum. There is in these a first flower of youth which is not to be found again; something softened in the light, like that of the dawn of day; a freshness of thoughts and sentiments, a tranquil enthusiasm, and a gentle gayety. His mind, imprisoned until then, had recovered its powers, and with a joyous elasticity mounted upwards to the true, the good, and the beautiful.”
May God keep you, my best beloved!