“_Lazaretto de Marseilles_, December 10,1612. “On board the _Capitaine_. “Can it be true, Emilie,--can it be true? My heart overflows with joy. “I do not know how to express my surprise to you. It is an intoxication of happiness, it is a flowering of the soul,--a foolish exaltation which borders on delirium, if each moment a holy, grateful thought did not lead me to God, the almighty author of our felicities! “Oh, if you only knew, Emilie, how I have prayed to him, as I have blessed him! with what profound fervour I have lifted to him my transported soul! Thanks to thee, my God, who hast heard our prayers. Thanks to thee, my God, who dost crown the sacred love which unites us by giving us a child. “Emilie--Emilie, I am crazy with joy. “As I write this word,--a child,--my hand trembles, my heart leaps. “Wait, for I am weeping. “Oh, I have wept with delight! “What sweet tears! How good it is to weep! “Emilie, my wife, soul of my soul, life of my life, pure treasure of the purest virtues! “It seems to me now that your beautiful brow must radiate majesty. I prostrate myself before you, there is something so divine in maternity. “Emilie, you know it, since the three years of our union, our love, never has a cloud troubled it. Each day has added a day to this life of delight. “Yet, in spite of myself, doubtless, I have caused you, perhaps, not some pain, not some displeasure, but some little contrariety, and you always so sweet, so good, you have no doubt hidden it from me. Ah, well! in this solemn day I come to you on both knees, to ask your forgiveness as I would ask forgiveness of God for having offended him. “You know, Emilie, that dear as you are to me, our ever reviving tenderness would change our solitude to paradise. Ah, well! this happiness of the past, which seemed then to go beyond all possible limits, is yet to be doubled. “Do you not find, Emilie, that in the happiness of two there is a sort of egotism, a sort of isolation, which disappears when a cherished child comes to double our pleasures by adding to them the most tender, most touching, most adorable duties? “Oh, these duties, how well you will understand them! “Have you not been a model of daughters? What sublime devotion to your father! What abnegation! What care! “Oh, yes! the best, the most adorable of daughters will be the best, the most adorable of mothers! “My God! how we love each other, Emilie! And as we love each other, how we shall love it, this poor little being! My God! how we shall love it! “My wife, my beloved angel, I weep again. “My reason is lost. Oh, forgive me, but I have had no news from you in so long a time, and then the first letter that you write me, after so many months of absence, comes to inform me of this. My God! how can I resist weeping? “I do not know how to tell you of my dreams, my plans, the visions that I caress.