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STRAIT IS THE GATE 224

little girl , who could not go to sleep before every thing in her room was tidy and the clothes she had taken off neatly folded beside her bed . . . That is how I should like to get ready to die.


13th October. Re-read my journal before destroying it. “It is unworthy of noble natures to spread round them the disturbance they feel.” It is, I think, Clotilde de Vaux who says this so finely. Just as I was going to throw this journal into the fire, I felt a kind of warning which held me back. It seemed to me that it no longer belonged to me, that I had no right to deprive Jerome of it, that I had never written it except for him. My anxieties, my doubts seem to me now so foolish that I can no longer attach any importance to them , or believe that they will disturb Jerome. My God, grant that he may at times catch in these lines the unskilled accent of a heart, passionately desirous of urging him to those heights of virtue which I myself despaired of reaching. “ My God, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”


15th October . "Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy ..."

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