Such were the sad thoughts of the young man thus stopped short in the beginning of his career. He was not, however, permitted to leave Paris; he returned to his little convent of the Visitandines, where he lived, strengthening himself “in prayer and labour, in charity, in solitude—in a life grave, simple, unknown, truly hidden in God;” but where that sadness and wistful uneasiness which so often tries to persuade itself into contentment, by dwelling upon the advantages of solitude, betrays itself in his utterances. “How happy are they,” he writes, “who are born and die under one roof without ever having quitted it.” Then he congratulates himself on his retirement. “I have always needed solitude, if only to say how much I loved it.... My days all resemble each other. I work regularly in the morning and afternoon. I see no one, save some country ecclesiastics, who come to see me now and then. I feel with joy the solitude which encircles me—it is my element, my life. Nothing can be done but with solitude—it is my great axiom.... A man makes himself from within and not from without!” “Nevertheless,” adds the biographer, “a certain instinct of the future which awaited him combined with this passionate inclination for solitude, and disclosed itself now and then in his soul like a gleam in the night. To speak and to write, to live solitary and in study, this is my whole desire,” he wrote. “However, the future will justify me, and still more the judgment of God. A man has always his hour; he must wait for it, and do nothing contrary to Providence.” All this was the natural language of a young and exuberant life, whose hour had not yet come, and which was fully occupied in the endeavour to content and satisfy itself in its compulsory calm. During this interval he preached his first sermon, which, after all the brilliant orations which he had made at the bar and before the public courts, was a failure. “He is a man of talent, but he will never be a preacher,” said his disappointed friends; and he acknowledged and tried to reconcile himself to the fact. “But I may one day be called to a work which requires youth, and which will be devoted solely to youth,” says the preacher, with a sigh of disappointment, yet hope. But soon the skies opened, and the work for which he longed presented itself at last.