"I will give my castle in Lycilia, where we never go--my own castle and estate--to our Holy Church for a convent for Ursulines of gentle birth. I went there with the bishop the other day. Oh, the great gloomy rooms, the shadowy frescoes, the sombre park! And the chapel, when the new windows are added, through which the light will fall in a mystic medley of colour! My dearest wish is to be allowed to grow old there, and to die far away from the world: but shall I ever be permitted? Holy Mother of God, shall I ever be permitted? * * * * * "Am I sincere? Who knows? What do I myself know? Do I truly feel this purification of my soul, or do I remain the woman I am? A dreadful doubt rises in me; it is Satan entering into me! I will pray: Blessed Virgin, pray for me! * * * * * "I have become calmer; prayer has strengthened me. Oh, full of anguish are the doubts which tear me from my conviction! Then Satan says that I am deluding myself into this conviction, to console myself in my destitution, and that I have become religious for want of occupation. At such times I see myself in the glass, young, a young woman. But, when I pray, the doubts retire from my sinful mood and I look back shuddering upon my wicked past. And then the new life of my future once more shines up before me.... "Beloved prince, sovereign of my soul, here in these pages which none shall ever read I take leave of you, because it was not vouchsafed me to bid you farewell at a moment of tangible reality. Oh, I shall often, perhaps from day to day, still see you in the crush of the world, in the ceremonial of palaces; but you will never again belong to me and so I take leave of you! Whatever I may be--a twofold sinner perhaps, longing only for Heaven because the earth has lost its charm for me--I have been true to you, as I always have been, in love. I have seen you bowed down, you so frail, beneath your heavy yoke of empire; and I have felt my heart brimming over with pity for you. I have tried to give you my poor sinful consolation as best I could. May Heaven forgive me! I met you at a moment when the tears were flowing from your dear eyes with bitterness because people hated you and had dared with sacrilegious hands to strike at your imperial body; and I tried to give you what I could of sweetness, so as to make you forget that bitterness. Ah, perhaps I was even then not quite sincere; perhaps I am even not so now! But that would be too terrible; that would make me despise myself as I cannot do! And I will at least retain this illusion, that I was sincere, that I did wish to comfort you, that, sinful though it was, I did comfort you, that I did, in very truth, love you, that I still love you now, that I shall no longer love you--because I must not--as your mistress, but that I shall do so as your subject. The blood in my veins loves yours, your golden blood! And, when I myself have found peace and no longer doubt