thing, if I had not at the same time been compelled to tear out part of my heart, or, to speak more accurately, to pierce another to which my own was so deeply attached.  Filial love had grown in proportion as so many other affections were crushed out.  Well, it is in this part of my being that duty exacts from me the most painful sacrifice.  My leaving the seminary will be an inexplicable enigma to my mother; she will believe that I have killed her out of sheer caprice.

“Truly may I say that when I envisage the inextricable mesh in which God has ensnared me while my reason and freedom were asleep, while I was following with docile steps the path He had Himself traced out for me, distracting thoughts crowd themselves upon me.  God knows that I was simple-minded and pure; I took nothing upon myself; I walked with free and unflagging steps in the path which He disclosed before me, and behold this path has led me to the brink of a precipice!  God has betrayed me!  I never doubted but that a wise and merciful Providence governed the universe and governed me in the course which I was to take.  It is not, however, without considerable effort that I have been able to apply so formal a contradiction to apparent facts.  I often say to myself that vulgar common sense is little capable of appreciating the providential government whether of humanity, of the universe, or of the individual.  The isolated consideration of facts would scarcely tend to optimism.  It requires a strong dose of optimism to credit God with this generosity in spite of experience.  I hope that I shall never feel any hesitation upon this point, and that whatever may be the ills which Providence yet has in store for me I shall ever believe that it is guiding me to the highest possible good through the least possible evil.

“According to what I hear from Germany, the situation which was offered me there is still open;[1] only I cannot enter upon it before the spring.  This makes my journey thither very doubtful, and throws me back into fresh perplexities.  I am also advised to go through a year of free study in Paris, during which time I should be able to reflect upon my future career, and also take my university degrees.  I am very much inclined to adopt this last-named course, for though I have made up my mind to come back to the seminary and confer with you and the superiors, I should nevertheless be very reluctant to make a long stay there in my present condition of mind.  It is with the utmost apprehension that I mark the near approach of the time when my inward irresolution must find expression in a most decided course of action.  Hard it is to have thus to reascend the stream down which one has for so long been gently floated!  If only I could be sure of the future, and of being one day able to secure for my ideas their due place, and follow up at my ease and free from all external preoccupations the work of my intellectual and moral improvement!  But even could I be sure of myself, how could I be of the circumstances which force themselves so pitilessly upon us?  In truth, I am driven to regret the paltry store of liberty which God has given us; we have enough to make us struggle; not enough to master destiny, just enough to insure suffering.