How strange the association of our thoughts!  A day of the month recalls my infancy, and see, all the recollections of my former years are growing up around me!  Why was I so happy then?  I consider well, and nothing is sensibly changed in my condition.  I possess, as I did then, health and my daily bread; the only difference is, that I am now responsible for myself!  As a child, I accepted life when it came; another cared and provided for me.  So long as I fulfilled my present duties I was at peace within, and I left the future to the prudence of my father!  My destiny was a ship, in the directing of which I had no share, and in which I sailed as a common passenger.  There was the whole secret of childhood’s happy security.  Since then worldly wisdom has deprived me of it.  When my lot was intrusted to my own and sole keeping, I thought to make myself master of it by means of a long insight into the future.  I have filled the present hour with anxieties, by occupying my thoughts with the future; I have put my judgment in the place of Providence, and the happy child is changed into the anxious man.

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.