Letter VII. To a Young Lady

On the cooliny of piety. {Danger of lawsuits.)

13th June, 1620. Will that amiable spirit which I saw in you during some months, while you were in this town, my dearest

• Matt, v.3,6.

14 S*/. Francis de Sales.

daughter, never come back into your heart? Truly, when I see how it has gone out, I am in great perplexity, not about your salvation, for I hope that you will still effect that; but about your perfection, to which God calls you, and has never ceased to call you since your youth.

For, I pray, my dearest daughter, how could I advise you to stay in the world? I know the excellent disposition which is at the bottom of your heart; but it is accompanied with so strong an inclination to the grandeur and dignity of life, and to natural, human prudence and wisdom, and with such great activity, subtlety and delicacy of mind, that I should fear infinitely to see you in the world; there being no condition more dangerous in that state than a good disposition accompanied by such qualities. If we add to this your incomparable aversion to obedience, there is nothing more to say except that on no consideration whatever must you remain in the world.

And yet how could I advise you to enter into religion, while not only do you not desire it, but your heart is entirely opposed to that kind of life?

A sort of life then must be sought neither of the world nor of religion, without the miseries of the world and the constraints of religion. We may just manage, I think, that you should have the entree to some house of the Visitation, to recollect yourself often in the religious life, and still that you should not be bound to it. You may even have a lodging near, for your retreat, with only the tie of some exercises of devotion useful for a good life. Thus you will have convenience for satisfying your spirit which so strangely dislikes submission and the tie of obedience, which finds it so hard to meet with souls made to its desire, and which is so clear-sighted in finding defects, and so sensitive in feeling them.

Oh! when I call to memory the happy time when I saw you, according to my wish, so entirely stripped of self, so desirous of mortifications, so attached to self-abnegation, I cannot but hope to see it again.

As to your dwelling, I leave you the choice of it: as for mine I think it will be in your country after my return from Rome, which will be about Easter, if I go. But make a good choice of place, where you can be well helped.

As you wish it I will treat with Monsieur N. O God, how ardently and unchangeably I desire that your affairs may be settled without lawsuits. For, you see, the money which your suits will cost, will be enough to live upon, and what certainty is there of the result? How do you know what the judges will say and decide about your cause? And then you pass your best days in this most wretched occupation, and will have few left to be usefully employed in your principal object; and God knows if, after a long quarrel, you will be able to recall your dissipated spirit to unite it to his divine goodness.

My child, those who live on the sea die on the sea; I have scarcely ever seen people embark in lawsuits who did not die in that entanglement. Now, think whether your soul is made for that; whether your time is rightly devoted to that; get M. Vincent,# examine well with him all this affair, and cut it short.

Do not wish to be rich, my dearest daughter; or at least if you can only be so by these miserable ways of lawsuits, be rather poor, my dearest child, than rich at the cost of your peace.

You should make a general confession since you cannot otherwise soothe your conscience, and since a learned and virtuous ecclesiastic advised it. But I have no time to write more to you, carried off by businesses, and hurried by the departure of this bearer. God be in the midst of your heart. Amen.