transport of joy?  Shall I die of an accident?  How shall I stand before God?  What shall I have to offer Him?  Shall I return to Him in fear and necessity, and be conscious of no other feeling but terror?  What can I hope for?  Am I worthy of Paradise?  Or worthy only of Hell?  What an alternative!  What perplexity!  Nothing is so mad as to leave one’s safety thus in uncertainty; but nothing is more natural; and the foolish life I lead is perfectly easy to understand.  I plunge myself into these thoughts; and I find death so terrible, that I hate life more because it leads to death, than because it leads me through troublesome places.  You will say I wish to live for ever.  Not at all; but if I had been asked, I would willingly have died in my nurse’s arms, for I should thus have avoided many sorrows and would have secured heaven with certainty and ease.

The Order of God

Providence wills order; but if order is nothing other than the will of God, almost all that occurs is done against His will:  all the persecutions, for instance, against St. Athanasius; all the prosperity of ill-doers and tyrants—­all this is against order and therefore against the will of God.  We must surely hold to what St. Augustine says, that God permits all these things so that he may manifest His glory by means that are unknown to us.  St. Augustine knows no rule nor order but the will of God.  If we did not follow this doctrine, we should be forced to conclude that almost everything is contrary to the will of Him who made it, and this seems to me a dreadful conclusion.

I should like to complain to Father Malebranche about the mice which eat everything here; is that in order?  Sugar, fruit, preserves, everything is devoured by them.  And was it order last year, that miserable caterpillars destroyed the leaves of our forest-trees and gardens, and all the fruit in the country-side?  Father Payen, most peaceable of men, has his head broken; is that order?  Yes, Father, all that is doubtless good.  God knows how to dispose of it to His glory, though we know not how.  We must take it as true, for if we do not regard the will of God as equivalent to all law and order, we fall into great difficulties.

You are such a philosopher, my very dear child, that there is no way of being happy with you.  Your mind runs on beyond our hopes to picture to itself the loss of all we hope for; and you see, in our meetings, the inevitable separation that is to follow.  Surely that is not the way to deal with the good things Providence prepares for us; we should rather husband and enjoy them.  But after having made this little reproach, I must confess in all honesty that I deserve it just as much as you.  No one can be more daunted than I am by the flight of time, nor feel more keenly beforehand the griefs which ordinarily follow pleasures.  Indeed, my daughter, life mingles its good and ill:  when one has what one desires, one is all the nearer