108.

Paris, July 9, 1778.

I hope you are prepared to receive with firmness most melancholy and painful intelligence.  My last letter of the 3d must have shown you that no good news could be hoped for.  That very same day, the 3d, at twenty minutes past ten at night, my mother fell asleep peacefully in the Lord; indeed, when I wrote to you she was already in the enjoyment of heavenly bliss, for all was then over.  I wrote to you in the night, and I hope you and my dear sister will forgive me for this slight but very necessary deception; for, judging of your grief and sorrow by my own, I could not prevail on myself to startle you suddenly by such dreadful intelligence; but I hope you have now summoned up courage to hear the worst, and that, after at first giving way to natural and only too just anguish and tears, you will eventually submit to the will of God, and adore His inscrutable, unfathomable, and all-wise providence.  You can easily conceive what I have had to endure, and what courage and fortitude I required to bear with composure seeing her become daily worse and worse; and yet our gracious God bestowed this boon on me.  I have, indeed, suffered and wept, but what did it avail?  So I strove to be comforted, and I do hope, my dear father, that my dear sister and you will do likewise.  Weep, weep, as you cannot fail to weep, but take comfort at last; remember that God Almighty has ordained it, and how can we rebel against Him?  Let us rather pray to Him and thank Him for His goodness, for she died a happy death.  Under these heart-rending circumstances there were three things that consoled me—­my entire and steadfast submission to the will of God, and the sight of her easy and blessed death, which made me feel that in a moment she had become so happy; for how far happier is she now than we are!  Indeed, I would fain at that moment have gone with her.  From this wish and longing proceeded my third source of consolation—­namely, that she is not lost to us forever, that we shall see her again, and live together far more happily and blessedly than in this world.  The time as yet we know not, but that does not disturb me; when God wills it I am ready.  His heavenly and holy will has been fulfilled.  Let us therefore pray a pious Vater unser for her soul, and turn our thoughts to other matters, for there is a time for everything.

I write this in the house of Madame d’Epinay and M. Grimm, with whom I now live; I have a pretty little room with a very agreeable prospect, and am as happy as it is possible to be under my present circumstances.  It will be a great aid in restoring my tranquillity, to hear that my dear father and sister submit with calmness and fortitude to the will of God, and trust Him with their whole heart, in the entire belief that He orders all for the best.  My dearest father, do not give way!  My dearest sister, be firm!  You do not as yet know your brother’s kind heart, because he has not yet