January 22, 1869.
Listen to what my brother is reading to me: “Learn to dwell in the Wound of the Heart of Jesus. Would you develop your desires, and bring forth good works? It is the nest of the dove. Do you love meditation? It is the retreat of the solitary sparrow. Do you love tears and sighs? It is there that the turtle-dove makes her moan. Are you hungry? You will there find the heavenly manna which fell in the desert. Are you athirst? There you will find the fountain of living water which flows out of Paradise, and sheds itself abundantly in the heart of the faithful.”
Kate dearest, my heart is always with you. We shall be at Orleans on the 1st of February. It is a great pity to leave the country, where everything is green and flourishing. My brothers wish to go to Paris, and I wished very much also to go thither with them; but René has asked me to employ the money that this journey would have cost in clothing a whole family from the South, just arrived here in a pitiable condition. To refuse would have been to show myself unworthy of him or of you. Thus our meeting again is indefinitely postponed. A saint once said: “Not to do good enough is to do a great harm.”
Anna, the attractive Anna, is feverish again, and it is partly on her account that my mother presses us to go to Orleans, where we shall consult several physicians. May not our temperature disagree with this southern flower? What a poor thing is life, in which anxiety is always at the side of happiness!
Would you like to have the following
from Gertrude’s journal? It was written at the time when she was beginning to divine Hélène’s desire: “Grant, O my God! that this sacrifice may be possible to us; place my child at a distance from her cup of sorrow, take her in the morning of her life, all white, young, fair, loving, and beloved, my God—so ardently and piously beloved!”
Read Alix, a beautiful book by Mlle. Fleuriot. It is a book which gives one repose—a story of our Brittany: Paula, Mme. de Guenharic, two strong-minded women, the Beatitudes, so attractive, the grave Raymond, the fiery Tugdual, interested me intensely. Then this beautiful and poetic Alix, the lily of Goasgarello, too early plucked; this sweet young girl who was too well loved to die—how much her story touched me! And this book is fact. Alix personifies the lily of St. Brieuc, the beloved pupil of Mlle. Fleuriot, the chosen one of her heart. Ah! how death is everywhere snapping the purest affections.
Picciola spends part of her recreation-time with The Children of Captain Grant. She praised the book so much that it made me wish to read it, and truly I find it full of interest from beginning to end. What a talent for description and contrasts!
Dear Kate, pray for us and for Anna, that there may not be another violent separation. My mother is writing to you. I have news of Margaret from Lord William, who is like another brother to us.
I have made Marcella, who did not know any of Lady Georgiana Fullerton’s works, read Ladybird. This book has astonished our dear Italian, because she did not expect to find in it so much powerful emotion, but she considers it admirably