Still nothing; perhaps your letter is lost.... May God protect you! The _Univers_ pleases me. Mgr. Berthaud has had a triumph at Sant’ Andrea della Valle—the dear church where we have prayed. “His imagery is rich and abundant,” writes Louis Veuillot, “because his faith keeps alive in him a perpetual enthusiasm for the works, the mercies, and the love of God. His thoughts are an endless song. What he says he sees; what he sees he admires and adores. External things, enveloped and, as it were, transpierced by the rays of the divine Sun, appear to him as magnificent as he describes them to be. Things are the works of God; men are the children of God, divinities in flower, called by their adoption to the ineffable glory of the divine union. As soon as they are in their way, their vocation, their order, their accidental defects are effaced; there is no more ugliness, there are no more rags, no more miseries—all is already transfigured, already at the attainment of its end, and the lyre, vibrating to the touch of a sacred enthusiasm, gives forth sounds at once vehement and sublime.” What eulogy! What style! Mgr. Mermillod made a magnificent discourse at Saint Louis des Français, on the perpetuation in the church of the Gospel scene of the Magi. “The action of God in the world, the redemption of souls, the perpetuity and definition of the truth, all repose upon these three great weaknesses: a Child at Bethlehem, a Host in the tabernacle, an aged man at the Vatican.” Kate dearest, I admire, but nothing dispels my preoccupation, the dominant note of my thoughts—you! yourself! Why this silence? I must know it! Write to me; I am suffering.... JANUARY 31, 1870. It is here, on my writing-table, this white page on which you have traced but one word.... “It was not a dream!” We start at once; this note will precede us by a few hours. Oh! live for me, my beloved sister; ask God to cure you. My God, I have so often prayed thee to preserve her to me—to let her live as long as I! * * * * * JOURNAL OF GEORGINA AFTER HER SISTER’S DEATH. FEBRUARY 15, 1870. O amare! O perire tibi! O advenire ad Deum!