not be fatigued, the party makes lengthened halts; the doctor is like a father to the poor little one. Lucy is installed, charmed to have Picciola. You understand that the dear and devoted Lucy is in our secret, and is going to attend carefully to this other beloved invalid. But Lucy is so lively; she has no experience, none of that sorrowful experience which gives one the habit of taking care of others, and therefore, in order to be quite at ease, I am sending Marianne, whom I have temporarily replaced by a young Bretonne. Will it not be better thus? And, then, I can count upon the doctor. Pray and get prayers for us, dear Kate! Picciola has been growing too fast. Berthe has not the shadow of a suspicion; she has seen in this an opportunity of doing good, and also of preparing the twins for the sacrifice which circumstances may demand of them later on. Teresa occupies her thoughts by study; the good abbé is alarmed at her progress. Alix and Marguérite are charming; but where are the absent? I do not like empty places.
The Annals publish some letters on the Catechism by Mgr. Dupanloup. They are the most delicate and beautiful revelations, and show in all its excellence this apostolic soul. He depicts in his unique style his emotions as catechist at Saint-Sulpice, and we find here that love of souls, and especially of the souls of children, which has produced his finest pages upon education. There is an admirable passage upon Albert de la Ferronays, speaking of his fervor. And then the great bishop returns to the subject of this child grown into a young man, and assisted by him in his last moments: “He had been always faithful. Possessing a mind
full of vivacity, and the most tender of hearts, he kept them both in subordination, giving them only to God and to a creature angelic as himself whom he met with on his way and married in Italy. She did not then belong to the Catholic Church, but, being led onward and persuaded by the virtues and example of her husband, and perhaps also by sorrow, she made her first communion by the death-bed of Albert, who thus had the ineffable and supreme consolation of making his last communion together with her whom he had loved best upon earth.” He adds that “these two souls were like two angels, and an apparition in this world of the beauty of heaven.” The Père Meillier, Superior of the Lazarists of Angers, is preaching the station at Sainte-Croix, and the Père de Chazournes, author of the admirable life of the Père Barrelle, preaches at St. Paterne.
Benoni is charmingly beautiful. I make him pray for our invalids, and go myself daily to Notre Dame des Miracles. Oh! surely no more death, dear Kate.
February 27, 1869.
Our Italians have again found their beautiful sunshine, and for two days past Anna has had no fever, and Picciola is less pale. Marianne has been charged to send me every three days an exact bulletin of every hour and every minute. The devoted attention of the doctor is unequalled; he regulates everything, meals, sleep, and the times of going out. Marcella says, “This man is to me, as it were, an apparition of Providence.” Think how she must suffer, especially when she reflects that so long a sojourn in the North has been injurious to the delicate chest of her child. Oh!
I cannot believe it, when she has so much loving care. Alas! what can affection do. Just now I was told about Madame de C——, left a widow a year ago, whose husband was insane, and who has now lost her child, the only happiness of her life. The angels who take flight are not those who are to be pitied.
March 5, 1869.
Tolerably good news of the exiles. But I have painful forebodings. René gently scolds me for my sadness. Pray for our sick ones, dear Kate.
The great poet Lamartine is just dead. Doubtless at his last hour his mother’s God, the God of his earliest years, consoled and softened his dying moments. Oh! these great minds misled, these sublime dreamers who wander out of the right way, what sorrowful pity they inspire. How everything passes away and dies! I was reading this evening that M. Guizot, writing to one of his friends, and telling him that he is teaching his little children to read, adds: “I know of only three lives here below: family life, political life, and Christian life; I am leading the first, with the memories of the second, and the hopes of the third.”