“May 12, 1805.--Our fortunes are improving. My husband has just bought M. d’Osenay’s hôtel at Mâcon. The garden is small, but the house is immense. We are furnishing it, and shall take possession of it this summer. My husband allows me six hundred francs a month, and all the provisions from our two estates, for the household expenses, and to pay for Alphonse’s board [at school]. This is more than sufficient. I cannot cease to admire the providence of God toward us, and am ever ready to give up all he bestows on me when he wishes and as he wishes.” There is an interesting description of this new home in the _Nouvelles Confidences_, and of the circle of friends whom they drew around them. Madame de Lamartine desired this change for the benefit of her daughters, but her own tastes inclined her to the retirement of the country. She thus writes September 7: “I am again at St. Point, which I prefer to any other residence in spite of the dilapidation of the château. I long for a still more profound retreat--a moral one. We must from time to time enter into the solitude and silence of our own hearts.”--“It seems to me if I were free I would consecrate myself entirely to God, apart from the world. But we are always wishing for something different from the will of God. Is it not better to desire only his will?” She describes the life she leads with her daughters as almost conventual. They all go to Mass every morning. After breakfast they read the Bible or some religious book, and then resume their studies--history, grammar, etc. After dinner and an hour’s recreation, they sew and study. At nightfall they say the Rosary together, and in the evening she plays chess with her husband, and sometimes reads one of Molière’s comedies. “I see no harm in it,” she says with her characteristic delicacy of conscience. “I skip every dangerous word.” They finally have family prayers, at which she improvises a short meditation aloud. Her great object, she says, is to cultivate a genuine spirit of piety in her children, and to keep them constantly occupied. “September, 1807.--I am enjoying the seclusion at Milly alone with my children. Madame de Sévigné is my society. I took a long walk to-night on Mount Craz, above the vineyard back of the house. I was all alone. I take pleasure in such long strolls at this hour in the evening. I love the autumn time, and these walks with no other company but my own thoughts. They are as boundless as the horizon and full of God. Nature elevates my heart, and fills it with a thousand thoughts and a certain melancholy which I enjoy. I know not what it is, unless a secret consonance of the infinite soul with the infinity of the divine creation. When I turn back and see from the heights of the mountain the little lights burning in my children’s chamber, I bless Divine Providence for having given me this peaceful, hidden nest in which to shelter them!