I cannot tell you to what an extent I am spoilt and made much of here, and it is this which grieves me so. Did they but know what is passing in my heart! I am fearful at times lest my conduct may be hypocritical, but I have satisfied my conscience in this respect. God forbid that I should be a cause of scandal to these simple souls! When I see in what an inextricable net God has involved me while I was asleep, I am unable to resist fatalistic thoughts, and I may often have sinned in that respect; yet I never have doubted my Father which is in Heaven or His goodness. Upon the contrary, I have always given Him thanks, and have never felt myself nearer to Him than at moments like those. The heart learns only by suffering, and I believe with Kant that God is only to be known through the heart. Then too I was a Christian, and resolved ever to remain one. But can orthodoxy be critical? Had I but been born a German Protestant, for then I should have been in my proper place! Herder ended his days a bishop, and he was only just a Christian; but in the Catholic religion you must be orthodox. Catholicism is a bar of iron, and will not admit anything like reasoning. Forgive me, my dear friend, the wish which I have just expressed and which does not even come from that part in me which still believes without knowing. You must, in order to be orthodox, believe that I am reduced to my present condition by my own fault; and that is very hard. Nevertheless, I am quite disposed to think that it is to a great extent my own fault. He who knows his own heart will always answer, "Yes," when he is told, "It is your own fault." Nothing of all that has happened to me is easier for me to admit than that. I will not be as obstinate as Job with regard to my own innocence. However pure of offence I might believe myself to be, I would only pray God to have pity on me. The perusal of the Book of Job delights me; for in this Book is to be found poetry in its most divine form. The Book of Job renders palpable the mysteries which one feels within one's own heart, and to which one has been painfully endeavouring to give tangible shape.