The ardour of her studies and the rigour of her duties combined--but more than either that wearing away of the body by a restless mind--had begun to affect her health. Both were relaxed, and she was required to spend as much time as possible in the garden of the convent. It was like lifting a child that has become worn out with artificial playthings to an open window to see the flowers. With inexpressible relief she turned from mediaeval books to living nature; and her beautiful imagination, that last of all faculties to fail a human being in an unhappy lot, now began to bind nature to her with fellowships which quieted the need of human association. She had long been used to feign correspondences with the fathers of the Church; she now established intimacies with dumb companions, and poured out her heart to them in confidence. The distant woods slowly clothing themselves in green; the faint perfume of the wild rose, running riot over some rotting fence; the majestical clouds about the sunset; the moon dying in the spectral skies; the silken rustling of doves' wings parting the soft foliage of the sentinel elms; landscapes of frost on her window-pane; crumbs in winter for the sparrows on the sill; violets under the leaves in the convent garden; myrtle on the graves of the nuns--such objects as these became the means by which her imprisoned life was released. On the sensuous beauty of the world she spent the chaste ravishments of her virginal heart. Her love descended on all things as in the night the dew fills and bends down the cups of the flowers. A few of these confidences--written on slips of paper, and no sooner written than cast aside--are given here. They are addressed severally to a white violet, an English sparrow, and a butterfly. "I have taken the black veil, but thou wearest the white, and thou dwellest in dim cloisters of green leaves--in the domed and many-pillared little shrines that line the dusty roadside, or seem more fitly built in the depths of holy woodlands. How often have I drawn near with timid steps, and, opening the doors of thy tiny oratories, found thee bending at thy silent prayers--bending so low that thy lips touched the earth, while the slow wind rang thine Angelus! Wast thou blooming anywhere near when He came into the wood of the thorn and the olive? Didst thou press thy cool face against His bruised feet? Had I been thou, I would have bloomed at the foot of the Cross, and fed His failing lungs with my last breath. Time never destroys thee, little sister, or stains thy whiteness; and thou wilt be bending at thy prayers among the green graves on the twilight hillside ages after I who lie below have finished mine. Pray for me then, pray for thine erring sister, thou pure-souled violet!"