Letter I. To a Friend

Way to live in peace. If you wish nothing to cross your life, desire not reputation or the glory of the world.

Attach yourself not to human consolations and friendships.

Love not your life, and despise all that may be painful to your natural inclinations.

Support generously the pains of the body and the most violent maladies, with acquiescence in the will of God.

Trouble not yourself about human judgments.

Keep silence about all things, and you shall have interior peace; because, for me and for you there is no other secret to acquire this peace save to suffer, a la rigueur, the judgments of men.

Disturb not yourself about what the world will say of you; await the judgment of God, and your patience i j 6 St Francis de Sales.

will then judge those who will have judged you. Those who run at the ring do not think of the company which is looking at them, but of running well in order to carry it off. Think for whom you labour, and those who wish to give you pain will hardly do so. Your humble, &c.