Letter XXVI. To a Superioress of the Visitation. the Visitation Not Founded for the Education of Young Girls

anuary 1618.

MY DEAR DAUGHTER — We must remain at peace in what God disposes and ordains; we on our part have done so to-day; at seven in the morning we lost for this life the good Father Dom Simplician, and at three the good M. de Sainte Catherine, two great servants of God, while there was scarcely a single person ill in this city. 0 heavenly Providence! without scrutinising the effects you cause, I adore and embrace them with all my heart, and acquiesce in all the events which proceed from them by your will.

My dear daughter, you must entirely avoid receiving girls before the age; because God has not chosen your institute for the education of little girls, but for the perfection of matrons and maidens who at such an age as to be able to discern what they are doing are called thereto; and not only experience but reason teaches us that such young girls placed under the discipline of a monastery, too much out of proportion with their

LM. XXXIL] Earlier Letters to Visitation. 155 childishness, dislike it and receive it reluctantly; and if they afterwards desire to take the habit it is not from the true and pure motive which the sanctity of the institute requires. And it does not follow that what is done for one time must be done at other times, any more than it follows that when a man has burdened himself with a just charge for one friend, he must over burden himself with a second charge for a second friend; and those who would be friends of our institute will have patience till their children are of suit able age.

0 my dear daughter, how inconsistent are the thoughts of men! How many cry out when we take their children grown up, mature and settled, and how many would wish to give them from the cradle!