Letter I. To Mother de Chantal

On entire devotion of self to God.- St. Francis's extreme affection for her.

To-MORROW, then, you will have thoughts and cares, for I am beginning to have very particular ones about your future house, as regards temporal things; as to the spiritual, it seems to me that Our Lord will have care of them without our solicitude, and that he will pour out over them a thousand blessings.

My daughter, I must tell you that I never saw so clearly how much you are my daughter as I see it now; but I say that I see it in the heart of Our Lord; so do not fancy there is any failure of confidence in those few words which I wrote to you the other day — but we will talk of them another time.

0 my daughter! what a desire have I that we be one day annihilated in ourselves to live wholly to God, and that our life be hidden with Christ in God / * Oh! when shall we live, now not we, and when shall Christ live wholly in us? t I am going to make a little prayer on this, and I will beseech the royal heart of Our Saviour for our heart.

1 am ever more yours in Jesus Christ, and I marvel at this growth of affection. Yes, I say it in earnest, I did not know that I could do what I can do in this, and I find a source which ever supplies me more abundant waters. Ah! it is God, undoubtedly. We must certainly put ourselves on our highest mettle, to serve

• Col. iii. 3. t Gal. ii. 20.

God as nobly and valiantly as we can, for why do we think he has willed to make one sole heart out of two except that this heart might be extraordinarily bold, brave, spirited, constant and loving in its Creator and its Saviour? — by whom and in whom I am, yours, &c.