’One day, Catherine told me that the lake was frozen over, and, as I had been within doors a long while, she advised me to go out and see the boys sliding on the ice.  Her advice put an idea into my head, that I might take out my skates and skate recklessly without trying to avoid the deeper portions where the ice was likely to be thin, for I was weary of life, and knowing that I could not go back upon the past, and that no one would ever love me, I wished to bring my suffering to an end.  You will wonder why I did not think of the sufferings that I might have earned for myself in the next world.  I had suffered so much that I could think of nothing but the present moment.  God was good, and he saved me, for as I stood irresolute before a piece of ice which I knew wouldn’t bear me, I felt a great sickness creeping over me.  I returned home, and for several days the doctor could not say whether I would live or die.  You remember Catherine, my servant?  She told me that the only answer the doctor would give her was that if I were not better within a certain time there would be no hope of my recovery.  At the end of the week he came into my room.  Catherine was waiting outside, and I hear that she fell on her knees to thank God when the doctor said:  “Yes, he is a little better; if there’s no relapse he’ll live.”

’After a severe illness one is alone with one’s self, the whole of one’s life sings in one’s head like a song, and listening to it, I learned that it was jealousy that prompted me to speak against you, and not any real care for the morality of my parish.  I discovered, too, that my moral ideas were not my own.  They were borrowed from others, and badly assimilated.  I remembered, too, how at Maynooth the tradition was always to despise women, and in order to convince myself I used to exaggerate this view, and say things that made my fellow-students look at me askance, if not with suspicion.  But while dozing through long convalescent hours many things hitherto obscure to me became clear, and it seems now to me to be clearly wrong to withhold our sympathy from any side of life.  It seems to me that it is only by our sympathy we can do any good at all.  God gave us our human nature; we may misuse and degrade our nature, but we must never forget that it came originally from God.

’What I am saying may not be in accordance with current theology, but I am not thinking of theology, but of the things that were revealed to me during my sickness.  It was through my fault that you met Mr. Walter Poole, and I must pray to God that he will bring you back to the fold.  I shall pray for you both.  I wish you all happiness, and I thank you for the many kind things you have said, for the good advice you have given me.  You are quite right:  I want a change.  You advise me to go to Italy, and you are right to advise me to go there, for my heart yearns for Italy.  But I dare not go; for I still feel that if I left my parish I should never return to it; and if I were to go away and not return a great scandal would be caused, and I am more than ever resolved not to do anything to grieve the poor people, who have been very good to me, and whose interests I have neglected this long while.