Devotion

You ask me if I am devout.  Alas!  No, which is a sorrow to me; but I am in a way detached from what is called the world.  Old age, and a little sickness give one time to reflect.  But, my dear child, what I do not give to the world, I give to you; so that I hardly advance in the region of detachment; and you know the true way towards a devout life lies in some degree of effacement, first of all, of that which our heart holds dearest.

One of my great desires is to become devout.  Every day I am tormented by this idea.  I do not belong to God, neither do I belong to the Devil; this indecision is a perpetual torment to me, although between ourselves, I believe this state to be a most natural one.  One does not belong to the Devil, because one fears God:  also, one does not belong to God, because His law is hard, and one does not like to renounce oneself.  These are the luke-warm, and their great number does not surprise me at all; I can enter into their reasonings; but God hates them; therefore we must cease to serve in this state—­and there is the difficulty.

I am overwhelmed by the death of M. du Mans; I had never thought of death in connection with him.  Yet he has died of a trifling fever, without having had time to think either of heaven or of earth.  Providence sometimes shows its authority by sudden visitations, from which we should profit.

What you say as to the anxieties which we so often and so naturally feel about the future, and as to how our inclinations are insensibly changed by necessity, is a subject worthy of a book like Pascal’s; nothing is so satisfying, nothing so useful as meditations of this kind.  But how many people of your age think this?  I know of none; and I honour your sound reasoning and courage.  With me it is not so, especially when my heart afflicts me; my words are indifferently good; I write as those who speak well; but the depth of my feeling kills me.  This I feel when I write to you of the pain of separation.  I have not myself found the proverb true, “To cloak oneself according to the cold.”  I have no cloak against cold like this.  Yet I manage to find occupation, and the time passes somehow.  But in general it is true that our thoughts and inclinations turn into other channels, and our sorrows cease to be such.

Love of Life

You ask me, dear child, if I am still in love with life.  I must confess that I find its sorrows grievous, but my distaste for death is even stronger.  It is sad to think I must finish my life with death, and if it were possible I would retrace my steps.  I find myself embarked on life without my consent, and am in a perplexing situation.  I shall have to take leave of life, and the fact overwhelms me:  for how, or by what gate, shall I pass away?  When will death come, and in what disposition will it find me?  Shall I suffer a thousand pains which will make me die in despair?  Shall I die in a