May the sacred love of our divine Saviour be our eternal life! The little preface or pretended excuse in your letter is not quite in keeping with the simple confidence with which we have resolved to treat each other, which I believe God desires and ratifies, and with the profession you make of wishing to live in the entire simplicity and candour of the Visitation spirit, which one certainly cannot but see in you. I bless God for it with all my heart, and know not how to thank Him for His infinite Goodness in having given such a friend to our Congregation, and such a support to the new plant which Providence has set in the garden of the church of Angers. Now I say all this straight out from my heart; will you not receive it, then, in this wise, my very dear brother, and unite with me in praising God, for to Him we owe it all. He is the sole author of all good things, hence should all glory be referred to Him. Your whole bearing with our Sisters is extremely pleasing to me. Sister Mary Euphrasia Turpin has a good heart, a fine intelligence, and loves the Rule, which I advise her closely to follow, above all in the guidance of her Novices. Will you not also give her this advice? You will find her pliant, open, and easy to convince. We must let Mother Claire Madeleine de Pierre complete her three years,[B] and I hope by that time divine Providence will have provided a successor. It is a very serious matter in a new foundation when a superior is often ill, and cannot follow the common life. By seeking pretexts, without necessity, to dispense herself, however little, from the exercises, she does great harm to herself and her community. She who ought to be a model of good example to her Sisters. How miserable and dangerous is this false liberty. May God preserve us from it! What responsibility have not such superiors on their consciences, and what an account they will have to render, not only for their own faults but for those which have been committed in imitation of them, and for impeding their own perfection and that of those under their care. This is far-reaching, my dear brother, so speak of it occasionally, I beg of you. A true daughter of the Visitation is a great treasure--may God give us all the grace to become such. You do not tell me if the Sisters are still in your house. How good you are to them! I pray God to reward you with the glorious gift of His eternal City. To Him you owe much for having given you the heart and the generous soul you possess, wherein there is but the one desire, to serve Him. Go forward, dear brother, forward, always advancing and increasing in the purity and perfection of divine love, and may God give you the grace faithfully to correspond to the great favours He bestows upon you. This is, I know, your great wish, and I seem to see our Blessed Father looking down upon you as one of His most cherished children. God knows how I esteem you in His sight. But alas! my own poverty and misery are beyond description.