town inspire me with that taste, so that I may rush to my
greenhouse with eager feet, as you go to yours to watch the
development of your plants, to bud and bloom with them, to admire
what you create,--the new colors, the unexpected varieties, which
expand and grow beneath your eyes by the virtue of your care.

"My greenhouse, the one I watch, is filled with suffering souls.
The miseries I try to lessen sadden my heart; and when I take them
upon myself, when, after finding some young woman without clothing
for her babe, some old man wanting bread, I have supplied their
needs, the emotions their distress and its relief have caused me
do not suffice my soul. Ah, friend, I feel within me untold powers
--for evil, possibly,--which nothing can lower, which the sternest
commands of our religion are unable to abase! Sometimes, when I go
to see my mother, walking alone among the fields, I want to cry
aloud, and I do so. It seems to me that my body is a prison in
which some evil genius is holding a shuddering creature while
awaiting the mysterious words which are to burst its obstructive
form.

"But that comparison is not a just one. In me it seems to be the
body that seeks escape, if I may say so. Religion fills my soul,
books and their riches occupy my mind. Why, then, do I desire some
anguish which shall destroy the enervating peace of my existence?

"Oh, if some sentiment, some mania that I could cultivate, does
not come into my life, I feel I shall sink at last into the gulf
where all ideas are dulled, where character deteriorates, motives
slacken, virtues lose their backbone, and all the forces of the
soul are scattered,--a gulf in which I shall no longer be the