What a day, dearest! At High Mass the Passion was sung as in the Sistine Chapel. What memories it awoke within me! It was wonderfully beautiful, and every word found an echo in my heart. O flowery Easter! the children’s festival, how I loved formerly to see its return. It was spring, bright days, verdure and flowers; but this year we have a sort of recommencement of winter instead of spring; for some days we have had snow and stormy gales, which have made it sometimes impossible to go out.
René has been reading us a beautiful fragment of the Monks of the West on religious vocations; Gertrude had suggested this reading. My mother wept, and I envied the heavenly calm of the happy Gertrude.
The beautiful new-born has quite the air of a seraph; he is so fair, rosy, and silent. Adrien will be his godfather, and the honor of godmother, dear Kate, will devolve upon your Georgina. “This little last one,” Johanna said to me, “shall be quite your own, dear sister!” How good they all are! Brothers and sisters so united and happy together! The baptism is deferred, that it may take place in Brittany, and we shall have Margaret. How I love this beautiful little soul over which I shall have sacred rights!
Berthe regrets her Mad, whom Thérèse misses sadly.
22d.—The Père Meillier preaches the retreat—two sermons a day.
This morning upon the retreat itself: “I will lead her into the wilderness, and there will I speak to her heart. Perfection, according to St. Bernard, is an ardent zeal always to be advancing. During this retreat God desires to soften, detach, and fix our heart. We must be converted. Conversion is turning again to God. The means of conversion are time, grace, and will. The time God gives us; he himself says this: ‘Behold, now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation.’ Grace—this is given to us in superabundance. The will must come from ourselves; St. Bernard says that this will must be constant, courageous, and sometimes heroic.” He ended by exhorting us “not to resist God, who is standing at the door of our heart, who knocks and waits”; and faithfully to follow this retreat. “I know neither the day nor the hour, but there will be a moment in which God will speak to you; and beware, Christian souls, lest Jesus pass by and return no more!” At three o’clock on tepidity, its causes and its remedy, the whole very practical and very holy.
The same agreement as last year between René and me. Little Alix accompanied me on a visit to the worthy Mr. Crossman, as the children call him. Finding him more calm than usual while I was dressing his leg, I was inwardly congratulating myself, when an energetic oath, and a sudden movement more energetic still, repulsed and overthrew me: and a scene of
anger followed, which made Alix tremble like a rose-leaf in a storm, and I tried in vain to appease the sick man. What is to be done to-morrow? God will help me.
23d.—Letters. Marianne is anxious. Picciola eats nothing and scarcely sleeps. “It is my belief that she is home-sick.” Anna is constantly improving in health, and the doctor forbids them to go away. Oh! how I fear the future. Marcella is radiant: “Dear Georgina, how grateful I am to this warm sun, and the vivifying breeze which Anna breathes in with delight! No more fever, no more pallor; not that her cheeks are rosy—my darling would need rouge for that—but her whiteness is living, and I like her thus. But what should we have done here without Lucy and Picciola and this kind Edouard? What gratitude my heart cherishes towards yours for this arrangement!”
Mistress Annah says that Edith will be completely cured when we see her again. Mary and Ellen are much beloved in the village.