“Your letter, as well as the postal cards which you were good enough to send me, were received by me several days ago, and perhaps it is with the last mail that I send you this reply. Snow already covers the mountainous borders of the superb Lena, and frost will soon fill the waters with masses of ice, which will interrupt all communications for two or three weeks, leaving us isolated on our little island, entirely engulfed by cold, badly treated by the north wind. I hasten, therefore, to thank you for your indefatigable attention towards the old recluse who, habituated as she is to pass her days now and again imprisoned or exiled, rejoices, nevertheless, to find herself loved—to feel that the most noble hearts beat in unison with hers. “It is strange! Every time that I am asked to speak about myself I am always confused and find nothing to say. It is very likely that if I paid more attention to the exterior circumstances of my life there would be enough to talk about that would fill more than a book. But ever since my childhood I have had the habit of creating a spiritual life, an interior world, which responded better to my spiritual taste. This imaginary world has had the upper hand over the real world in its details, over all that is transient. “The aim of our existence, the perfecting of human nature, was always present to my vision, in my mind. The route, the direction that we ought to take in order to approach our ideal, was for me a problem, the solution of which absorbed the efforts of my entire life. I was implacable for myself, for my weaknesses, knowing that to serve a divine cause we must sincerely love the object of our devotion, that is to say, in this case, humanity. “These meditations, and a vigorous imagination, which always carried me far beyond the present, permitting me to inhabit the most longed-for regions, combined to attract very little of my attention to daily circumstances. “Without doubt, I have had suffering in my life, as I have had moments of joy, of happiness even. It is also true that the struggle with my failings, with the habits engrafted by a worldly education, have cost me more or less dearly. The misery of those near to me tore my heart to the extreme. In a word, life has passed in the same way as a bark thrown upon the mercy of a sea often stormy. But as the ideal was always there, present in my heart and in my mind, it guided me in my course, it absorbed me to such a degree that I did not feel in all their integrity the influences of passing events. _The duty to serve the divine cause of humanity in its entirety, that of my people in particular, was the law of my life_,—the supreme law, whose voice stilled my passions, my desires, in short, my weaknesses....