René has had three attacks of fever. O this dear invalid, this son of liberty and space, restless as a lion! in repose. Dear, good friend! Come, then, and see him, dear Kate, when three times a day he attends to an unfortunate child whose wounds horrify everybody. “The hand of M. René passes over my sores like the wing of an angel!” What charming praise, and especially in Breton, in the mouth of this frightful little lad, who is distressed at his own ugliness! Gertrude is teaching him the catechism; Mary and Ellen prepare his meals with their little white hands. Ellen has lovely eyes of sea-blue, very dark.
July 24.
The Univers of Wednesday, the 20th, is splendid: “The Infallibility is proclaimed! Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia! The times are hard; war, pestilence, famine; but the year 1870 will be none the less immortal. This will be called the Century of Pius IX., the Pope of the Immaculate Conception and of the Infallibility.” Great joy in the Catholic world.
Here is war with Prussia—that power which, whatever may be said, is truly redoubtable. Happy the people whose history is wearisome! Misfortune to those who depart from the path traced for them by Providence! What a magnificent page might France have added to her history had she so willed! “Archimedes asked but a lever and a fulcrum to move the world,” said the Père Lacordaire at Notre Dame; “but in his time this lever and this fulcrum were unknown. They are known now: faith is the lever; and the point of support, the Breast of the Lord Jesus.”
Who, then, will lift this lever? My God! may they who seek thee find gladness and joy in thee. Tristis es, anima mea!
Arthur is better; our dear Parisians are returning to us; the horizon is so dark to those who see things rightly! Berthe is gone to the town for the funeral of a friend of her childhood who passed through the greatest trials in the world. She made a most edifying death, preserving the fulness of her faculties to the last, blessing her children, and putting all her soul into her last directions. And when she had said all, and was asked if she desired nothing, she answered with her failing voice: “I desire nothing but God!” The long agony of her heart, the suffering which has killed her, this painful martyrdom—all is over, and the Blessed Virgin, whom she so loved, must have welcomed her into glory. Amen! The two little children, alarmingly pale, followed the coffin. How one would pity them, if God were not the Father of orphans!
Spain in a state of revolution. Queen Isabella has abdicated in favor of Prince Alphonso. Poor Spain! Where is Isabella the Great, the Catholic?
Adrien is reading to us the tenth volume of the Histoire du Monde, by De Riancey. The illustrious and lamented author wrote from Rome, after receiving from the Pope and the Comte de Chambord precious tokens of affection: “Now I am almost ready to sing my Nunc Dimittis, and there remain only the joys of heaven to be added.“ Dearest Kate, I said something like this when I still possessed you....
[TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.]