During all this trying period the love of Eugénie for her brother did not wane, nor did her confidence in him, in his genius and ultimate success, become abated. Troubled as she herself was with mental conflicts, with a constitutional melancholy which made her peculiarly sensitive to the pangs of bereavement, to the sorrows of all around her, and all the weariness of daily life, she never forgot her brother. Her journal, written as it was to him, discloses a life of the most tender solicitude and most pathetic interest on the part of a sister towards a brother on record. She poured out to him her heart's most inmost feelings. If his correspondence flagged, she became anxious, and, as it has been seen, tenderly expostulated, lovingly upbraided, gently warned. A new source of anxiety to her at this time was what she conceived to be a growing indifference on the part of her brother to religion. It appears that Maurice had for a time lost the devotion of his youth. His brooding melancholy and want of success had so far embittered his spirit that a cold and cynical philosophy was fast taking the place of his early faith and love. His long silences troubled his sister, and she braced herself to helpful and loving counsel. Opening her journal almost at hazard, we find such entries as the following:--"When every one is occupied and I am not needed, I retreat early and come here to write, read, or pray. I put here both what passes in my soul and in the house, and in that way we shall find day by day all the past. For me it is nothing, and I would not write it, but I say to myself, 'Maurice will be very glad to see what we are doing whilst he is far away, and thus enter into the family life,' and I mark it for you."