I am convinced of your zeal and your capacity; and both must be employed for our dear house. It is true that I am very keen for all its interests; I think I sometimes go as far as impatience; but it seems to me that there are reasons why we should hasten, and use well the favourable moment in which we now are. God knows that I never thought to make so grand an establishment as yours, and that I had no other view than to do a few good works during my lifetime; not feeling myself obliged to do more, and thinking that there were already too many nunneries. The less part I had in this plan, the more I see in it the will of God; which makes me love it much more than if it were my own work. God has led the king to found this school, as you know, although he does not like new institutions. It is true that just as much as I should have trembled in governing Saint-Cyr had it been my own work, so much on the other hand do I find myself emboldened by the sense that it is done by the will of God, and that that same will has laid this duty upon me. Therefore I can say to you with truth that I regard it as the means God has granted me for my salvation, and that I would sacrifice my life with joy to make it glorious. What is now urging me on, sometimes perhaps too eagerly, is the desire I have that all should be firmly established before the death of Mme. de Brinon, my own, and that of the Abbé de Gobelin, so that the spirit of the house may always last, in spite of oppositions it may meet with in the future. You will never have an abler or more commanding Superior than Mme. de Brinon, a friend more zealous for the house than I, a director more saintly than the one you have now. We have, moreover, all authority, temporal and spiritual, in our hands. The king and the bishop [Godet of Chartres] are ready to do all that we desire; it is for us to put things in that state of perfection in which we desire them to remain forever.