Letter XIV. To the Same

On the Love of God.

Anneey, February nth, 1607. I have been ten entire weeks without having a particle of news of you, my dear, my very dear, child, and your last letters were at the beginning of November; but the chief thing is that my fine patience almost disappeared from my heart, and I think would have disappeared altogether, if I had not remembered that I must keep it, in order to preach it to others. But at last, my dearest child, yesterday comes a packet, like a fleet from the Indies, rich in letters and spiritual songs. Oh! how welcome it was, and how I cherished it! There was one of the 22nd November, another of 30th December, and the third of the 1st January of this year; but if all the letters I have written you during this time were in one packet, they would be in far greater number, for as far as possible I have always written, both by Lyons and by Dijon: be this said to discharge my conscience, which would hold itself for ever guilty, did it not respond to the heart of a daughter so uniquely loved. I am going to tell you many things in a desultory fashion, according to the subject of your letters. My God! how rightly you act by depositing your desire to leave the world in the hands of divine Providence, that it may not uselessly engage your soul, as it indubitably would do if you let it act and move at its fancy. I will think very much about it, and will offer many masses to obtain the light of the Holy Spirit to decide about it properly, for, look you, my dear child, this is a principal affair, and must be tested by the weights of the sanctuary. Let us pray God, let us beg his will to make itself known, let us dispose ours to wish nothing but by his and for his, and let us remain at rest without eagerness or agitation of heart.

At our first meeting, God will, if he please, be merciful to us j but why then, my dear child, I beg you, should I put off your Saint-Claude journey? If there are no other inconveniences than those which now appear, I think there is no cause to put it off.

As to the journey I want to make yonder, what trouble to prepare it, and what risk to make it! But God who sees my intention will arrange it by his goodness, and we will talk of it before the time arrives. And about my little sister also; she went to Dijon with the good M. de Cressay, who would not too soon confide her to Madam Brulart, for fear she would make her a Carmelite.

I write now that she may be taken to you immediately after Easter; but write to me whether I shall send to meet you at Montelon or at Dijon, and if you will take this little one to Dijon; or if I shall have her taken to Dijon, and you take her to Montelon, or how? Come then for the Thursday before Pentecost, and go to Besancon, by all means, to see the holy Winding Sheet; all that is quite to my taste; you will see there Cordelier nuns of the 3rd Order, who are much praised. And perhaps an abbess of another order, who is four leagues from there, namely, at Baume,.... who is very virtuous, of one of the first families of my diocese, and who loves me singularly. Meantime our little Frances will accompany you, or you will leave her, according to your desire and the counsel of the good Father de Villars. This little Frances I love, because she is your little one and your Frances.

Well now, believe me, my child, I have been thinking for more than three months that I would write and tell you to give up your hoop this Lent. Do so, then, as God inspires it; you will not cease to look gay enough without it in the eyes of your spouse and your abbess.

We must, after the example of our St. Bernard, be quite clean and neat; but not particular or dainty. True simplicity is always good and agreeable to God. I see that all the seasons of the year meet in your soul, that sometimes you feel the winter, on the morrow drynesses, distractions, disgust, troubles, and wearinesses, sometimes the dews of May, with the perfume of holy flowrets, sometimes the ardours of desire to please our good God. There remains only autumn, of whose fruit, as you say, you do not see much; still it often happens that in threshing the corn, and pressing the grapes, there is found more than the harvest or vintage promised. You would like all to be spring and summer, but no, my dear child, there must be change in the interior, as in the exterior. It is in heaven that all will be spring as to beauty, autumn as to enjoyment, and summer as to love. There will be no winter, but here winter is wanted for abnegation and a thousand little virtues which are exercised in time of sterility. Let us always walk our little step; if we have a good and resolute affection we can never go otherwise than well. No, my dearest child, it is not needed for exercise of virtues that we should ever keep actually attentive to all. That would certainly too much entangle and hamper your thoughts and affections. Humility and charity are the mainstays, all the other ropes are attached to them. It needs only to keep ourselves well in these virtues; oue the lowest, the other the highest, as the preservation of the whole edifice depends on the foundation and the roof. Keeping the heart closely to the exercise of these, there is no great difficulty in getting the others. These are the mothers of the virtues, which follow them as little chickens their mother hens.

Oh! indeed I greatly approve your being schoolmistress. God will be pleased, for he loves little children, and as I said at catechism the other day to induce our ladies to take care of the girls, the angels of little children love with a special love those who bring up children in the fear of God, and who instil into their tender hearts true devotion, as on the contrary our Lord threatens those who scandalize them with the vengeance of their angels.

See, then, how well we are getting on. If you are not at Dijon for Lent, no matter. You will not cease to be near our good God, to hear him and serve him, in the very service of your father, to whom I owe so much honour and respect for the favour he does me in loving me. I praise God that you were willing to have your lawsuit arranged since my return. I have been so pressed and urged to make appointments that my room has been quite full of clients, who, by the grace of God, mostly returned in peace and repose. I confess that this dissipated my time, but there is no help for it; we must yield to the necessity of our neighbour.

How consoled am I with the cure of this good person hitherto attached to profane love or false friendship. These are maladies which are like light fevers; they leave after them excellent health. I am now going to speak to our Lord of our affairs at the altar, then I will write the rest. No, you will not go against obedience in not lifting your heart so often to God, and not practising perfectly the counsel I have given you. It is good and fit counsel, but no command. In a command, words are used which make themselves well understood; do you know what counsels require? They require us not to despise them, and to love them. That is quite enough, but they do not lay under any obligation. Courage, my sister, my child, make your heart very fervent this holy Lent. I have charged the bearer, who is M. Davre, my vicar general, to send you this as soon as he arrives, that you may have leisure to send him back your answer, as he will be at Dijon eight whole days.

I have not yet been able to revise the life of our good villager to complete it; but that you may know all I know, I may tell you that when I can get a quarter of an hour of spare time, I am writing an admirable life of a saint"* of whom you have not yet heard tell, and I pray you also not to say a word of it; but it is an affair of time, and one I should not have dared to undertake if some of my most confiden- # The Saint doubtless refers to the " Love of God."

tial friends had not urged me to it; you shall see a good pieee of it when you come. I shall be able to join that of our good villager to it, in some little corner, for it will be at least twice as large- as the great life of Mother (St.) Teresa; but as I say, I want nothing to be known of it until it is quite done, and I am only beginning it. It is to recreate myself, and to twirl, like you, my distaff.

I have received your hymns, which I like much, for though they are not of such good rhyme as many others, they are of good sentiments. And if I am not prevented I will have them sung at my catechism. And in exchange I send you this book, in which you will see many beautiful things, which were in part made from my first sermons by M. the President of this town, a man of rare virtue and a true Christian.

What more shall I tell you? I have just come from giving catechism where we have had a bit of merriment (debauche) with our children, making the congregation laugh a little by mocking at balls and masks, for I was in my best humour, and a great audience encouraged me with its applause to play the child with the children. They tell me it suits me well, and I believe it. May God make me a true child in innocence and simplicity; but am I not also a true simple (one) to say that to you? I can't help it, I make you see my heart as it is, and in the variety of its movements, that, as the Apostles say, you may think no more of me than is in me. Live joyful and courageous, my dear child. You must have no doubt that Jesus Christ is ours; yes, said once to rne a little girl, he is more mine than I am his, and more than I am my own.

I am going to take him for a little while into my arms, this sweet Jesus, to carry him in the processiou of the confraternity of the Lord, and I will say to him, the Nunc Ditnittis, with Simeon; for of a truth, if he is with me, I care not whither I go. I will speak to him of your heart, and believe me, with all my power, I will beg him to make you his dear, his well-beloved servant. Ah! my God! how am I indebted to this Saviour, who so loves us, and how would I, once for all, press and glue him on my breast.

I mean also on yours, as he has willed that we should be so inseparably all in him. Adieu, my most cherished, and truly most dear sister and daughter.

May Jesus ever be in our hearts, may he live and reign there eternally; may his holy name, and that of his glorious Mother, be ever blessed! Amen.

I am ever the servant of Monsieur, your father-inlaw.