You must not forget that your husband's family, without being asked,
have been allowing you a yearly income which permitted you to live in
the same style as before Professor Wellmann's death. They placed no
restrictions upon you, and made no conditions. Now, the family--annoyed
by what reaches their ears--want to insist that you should conform to
their wishes; otherwise they will withdraw the money, or take from you
the custody of the children. This is a very arbitrary proceeding.

Reflect well what they are asking of you before you let yourself be
bound hand and foot.

Are you really capable, Magna, of being an absolutely irreproachable
widow?

Perhaps there ought to be a law by which penniless widows with children
to bring up should be incarcerated in some kind of nunnery, or burnt
alive at the obsequies of their husbands. But failing such a law, I do
not think a grown-up woman is obliged to promise that she will
henceforth take a vow of chastity. One must not give a promise only to
break it, and, my dear Magna, I do not think you are the woman to keep a
vow of that kind.

For this reason you ought never to have made yourself dependent upon
strangers by accepting their money for the education of your children.
At the same time I quite see how hard it would be to find yourself
empty-handed with a pack of children all in need of something. If you
had not courage to try to live on the small pension allowed by the
State, you would have done better to find some means of earning a
livelihood with the help of your own people.