Her letters during this period give animated testimony to what extent, and with what daily increase, this joy was experienced. A jubilant rapture pervades the letters which announce the event to distant friends, particularly those addressed to Overbeck in Rome and Steinle in Frankfort; both friends and companions in art. These and a few others had been admitted to her confidence in spiritual matters. To the latter, whom, of her younger friends, she particularly prized and respected, she thus announces the circumstance, "This time I come to you with but few words; words no longer conditional, but right conclusive. I am a Catholic. Could I have written to you, as I wished, to ask your prayers for me before the eventful hour, even then you might have been taken by surprise; but now the news has doubtless reached you from Munich, and I write this letter simply as confirmation, and because I wish that you should be informed of it by me personally. You have lately hardly thought, I suppose, that it would come so soon; and yet I was long prepared for it. After many a struggle, particularly of late, it had become to me a positive necessity, a natural and necessary development of my spiritual life. When I had once announced my determination to the clergyman who for some time had been instructing me, my desire was to take the step right quickly. My good Apollonia left Regensburg immediately for Munich, to be present at my reception into the church; and the day following this I was confirmed. I have now accompanied my friend hither to escape from all excitement and pass some days in retirement; needed opportunity of fortifying myself against much that must necescessarily come, that is hard and disagreeable. {228} Yet has God been inexpressibly kind and gentle in his dealings with me thus far." A letter to the same friend on the 19th of January thus reads: