I have received your card of the 1st. What joy it gives me that we
should be at last in touch with each other. Certainly, our thoughts have
never been apart. You tell me of Marthe's misfortune, and I am happy
that you can be useful to her. Dear mother, that is the task that
belongs to us both: to be useful at the present moment without reference
to the moment that is to follow.

Yes, indeed, I feel deeply with you that I have a mission in life. But
one must act in each instant as though that mission was having immediate
fulfilment. Do not let us keep back one single small corner of our
hearts for our small hopes. We must attain to this--that no catastrophe
whatsoever shall have power to cripple our lives, to interrupt them, to
set them out of tune. That is the finest work, and it is the work of
this moment. The rest, that future which we must not question--you will
see, mother dear, what it holds of beauty and goodness and truth. Not
one of our faculties must be used in vain, and all useless anxiety is a
harmful expense.

Be happy in this great assurance that I give you--that up till now I
have raised my soul to a height where events have had no empire over it,
and I promise you that my effort will be still to make ready my soul as
much as I can.

Tell M---- that if fate strikes down the best, there is no injustice:
those who survive will be the better men. Let her accept the sacrifice,
knowing that it is not in vain. You do not know the things that are
taught by him who falls. I do know.

To him who can read life, present events have broken all habit of