Few events of importance have occurred, but many thoughts and feelings have crowded in upon me since the day we parted. I am all the more glad to impart them to you because there is no one else to whom I can confide them. I am not alone, it is true, when I am with my mother; but there are many things that my tender regard for her compels me to keep back, and which, for the matter of that, she would not understand. Nothing has occurred to advance the solution of the important problem of which, as is only natural, my mind is full. I have learnt nothing more, unless it be the immensity of the sacrifice which God required of me. A thousand painful details which I had never thought of have cropped up, with the effect of complicating the situation, and of showing me that the course dictated me by my conscience opened up a future of endless trouble. I should have to enter into long and painful details to make you understand exactly what I mean; and it must suffice if I tell you that the obstacles of which we have on various occasions spoken are as nothing by comparison with those which have suddenly started up before me. It was no small thing to brave an opinion which would, one knew, be very hard upon one, and to live on for long years an arduous life leading to one knew not what; but the sacrifice was not then consummated. God enjoins me to pierce with my own hand a heart upon which all the affection there is in my own has been poured out. Filial love had absorbed in me all the other affections of which I was capable, and which God did not bring into play within me. Moreover, there existed between my mother and myself many ties arising from a thousand impalpable details which can be better felt than described. This was the most painful part of the sacrifice which God required of me. I have hitherto only spoken to her about Germany, and that is enough to make her very unhappy. I tremble to think of what will happen when she knows all. Her tender caresses go to my very heart, as do her plans for my future, of which she is ever talking to me, and in which I have not the courage to disappoint her. She is standing close to me as I write this to you. Did she but know! I would sacrifice everything to her except my duty and my conscience. Yes, if God exacted of me, in order to spare her this pain, that I should extinguish my thought and condemn myself to a plodding, vulgar existence, I would submit. Many a time I have endeavoured to deceive myself, but it is not in human power to believe or not to believe at will. I wish that I could stifle within me the faculty of self-examination, for it is this which has caused all my unhappiness. Fortunate are the children who all their life long do but sleep and dream! I see around me men of pure and simple lives whom Christianity has had the power to make virtuous and happy. But I have noticed that none of them have the critical faculty; for which let them bless God!