A melancholy course, yet perhaps an important lesson.  Who knows that, if I had trusted more to Him who rules the world, I should not have been spared all this anxiety?  It may be that happiness is not possible here below, except on condition of living like a child, giving ourselves up to the duties of each day as it comes, and trusting in the goodness of our heavenly Father for all besides.

This reminds me of my Uncle Maurice!  Whenever I have need to strengthen myself in all that is good, I turn my thoughts to him; I see again the gentle expression of his half-smiling, half-mournful face; I hear his voice, always soft and soothing as a breath of summer!  The remembrance of him protects my life, and gives it light.  He, too, was a saint and martyr here below.  Others have pointed out the path of heaven; he has taught us to see those of earth aright.

But, except the angels, who are charged with noting down the sacrifices performed in secret, and the virtues which are never known, who has ever heard of my Uncle Maurice?  Perhaps I alone remember his name, and still recall his history.

Well!  I will write it, not for others, but for myself!  They say that, at the sight of the Apollo, the body erects itself and assumes a more dignified attitude:  in the same way, the soul should feel itself raised and ennobled by the recollection of a good man’s life!

A ray of the rising sun lights up the little table on which I write; the breeze brings me in the scent of the mignonette, and the swallows wheel about my window with joyful twitterings.  The image of my Uncle Maurice will be in its proper place amid the songs, the sunshine, and the fragrance.

Seven o’clock.—­It is with men’s lives as with days:  some dawn radiant with a thousand colors, others dark with gloomy clouds.  That of my Uncle Maurice was one of the latter.  He was so sickly, when he came into the world, that they thought he must die; but notwithstanding these anticipations, which might be called hopes, he continued to live, suffering and deformed.

He was deprived of all joys as well as of all the attractions of childhood.  He was oppressed because he was weak, and laughed at for his deformity.  In vain the little hunchback opened his arms to the world:  the world scoffed at him, and went its way.

However, he still had his mother, and it was to her that the child directed all the feelings of a heart repelled by others.  With her he found shelter, and was happy, till he reached the age when a man must take his place in life; and Maurice had to content himself with that which others had refused with contempt.  His education would have qualified him for any course of life; and he became an octroi-clerk—­[The octroi is the tax on provisions levied at the entrance of the town]—­in one of the little toll-houses at the entrance of his native town.