Letter XXV. To a Lady

Contempt of the grandeurs of this world. — Desires of Eternity.

Lyons, igth December, 1622. A Thousand Thanks to your well-beloved heart, my dearest daughter, for the favours it does to my soul, in giving it such sweet proofs of its affection. My God! How blessed are they who, with hearts disengaged from courts and from the forms which reign there, live peacefully in holy solitude at the foot of the crucifix. Truly, I never had a good opinion of vanity, but I find it much more vain amid the feeble grandeurs of the court.

My dearest daughter, the more I advance in this mortality, the more contemptible I find it, and ever more loveable the holy eternity to which we aspire, and for which only we must love one another. Let us live only for this eternal life, which alone deserves the name of life, in comparison with which the life of the great of this world is a very miserable death.

I am with ail my heart very truly all yours, my dearest daughter. Your, &c.