"You,kind Julia,you desire nothing else but to save me from the fate that awaits me;and you assure me in your own name and in that of you all,that you,like the others,would rejoice to endure it in my place;in that I recognise you fully,and I recognise,too,those sweet and tender relations in which we have been brought up from childhood.Oh,be comforted,dear Julia;thanks to the protection of God,I promise you:that it will be easy for me,much easier than I should have thought,to bear what falls to my lot.Receive,then,all of you,my warm and sincere thanks for having thus rejoiced my heart.
"Now that I know from these strengthening letters that,like the prodigal son,the love and goodness of my family are greater on my return than at my departure,I will,as carefully as possible,paint for you my physical and moral state,and I pray God to supplement my words by His strength,so that my letter may contain an equivalent of what yours brought to me,and may help you to reach that state of calm and serenity to which I have myself attained.
"Hardened,by having gained power over myself,against the good and ill of this earth,you knew already that of late years I have lived only for moral joys,and I must say that,touched by my efforts,doubtless,the Lord,who is the sacred fount of all that is good,has rendered me apt in seeking them and in tasting them to the full.God is ever near me,as formerly,and I find in Him the sovereign principle of the creation of all things;in Him,our holy Father,not only consolation and strength,but an unalterable Friend,full of the holiest love,who will accompany me in all places where I may need His consolations.Assuredly,if He had turned from me,or if I had turned away my eyes from Him,I should now find myself very unfortunate and wretched;but by His grace,on the contrary,lowly and weak creature as I am,He makes me strong and powerful against whatever can befall me.
"What I have hitherto revered as sacred,what I have desired as good what I have aspired to as heavenly,has in no respect changed now.
And I thank God for it,for I should now be in great despair if I were compelled to recognise that my heart had adored deceptive images and enwrapped itself in fugitive chimeras.Thus my faith in these ideas and my pure love far them,guardian angels of my spirit as they are,increase moment by moment,and will go on increasing to my end,and I hope that I may pass all the more easily from this world into eternity.I pass my silent life in Christian exaltation and humility,and I sometimes have those visions from above through which I have,from my birth,adored heaven upon earth,and which give me power to raise myself to the Lord upon the eager wings of my prayers.
My illness,though long,painful,and cruel,has always been sufficiently mastered by my will to let me busy myself to some result with history,positive sciences,and the finer parts of religious education,and when my suffering became more violent and for a time interrupted these occupations,I struggled successfully,nevertheless,against ennui;for the memories of the past,my resignation to the present,and my faith in the future were rich enough and strong enough in me and round me to prevent my falling from my terrestrial paradise.According to my principles,I would never,in the position in which I am and in which I have placed myself,have been willing to ask anything for my own comfort;but so much kindness and care have been lavished upon me,with so much delicacy and humanity,--which alas!I am unable to return--by every person with whom I have been brought into contact,that wishes which I should not have dared to frame in the mast private recesses of my heart have been more than exceeded.I have never been so much overcome by bodily pains that I could not say within myself,while I lifted my thoughts to heaven,'Come what may of this ray.'And great as these gains have been,I could not dream of comparing them with those sufferings of the soul that we feel so profoundly and poignantly in the recognition of our weaknesses and faults.
"Moreover,these pains seldom now cause me to lose consciousness;the swelling and inflammation never made great headway,and the fever has always been moderate,though for nearly ten months I have been forced to remain lying on my back,unable to raise myself,and although more than forty pints of matter have come from my chest at the place where the heart is.No,an the contrary,the wound,though still open,is in a good state;and I owe that not only to the excellent nursing around me,but also to the pure blood that I received from you,my mother.Thus I have lacked neither earthly assistance nor heavenly encouragement.Thus,on the anniversary of my birth,I had every reason--oh,not to curse the hour in which I was born,but,on the contrary,after serious contemplation of the world,to thank God and you,my dear parents,for the life that you have given me!I celebrated it,on the 18th of October,by a peaceful and ardent submission to the holy will of God.On Christmas Day I tried to put myself into the temper of children who are devoted to the Lord;and with God's help the new year will pass like its predecessor,in bodily pain,perhaps,but certainly in spiritual joy.And with this wish,the only one that I form,I address myself to you,my dear parents,and to you and yours,my dear brothers and sisters.
"I cannot hope to see a twenty-fifth new year;so may the prayer that I have just made be granted!May this picture of my present state afford you some tranquillity,and may this letter that I write to you from the depths of my heart not only prove to you that I am not unworthy of the inexpressible love that you all display,but,on the contrary,ensure this love to me for eternity.
