poignant grief, hence we see it turning to Him in its joys and
sorrows, like the magnet to the pole that attracts it. He has made
the heart of woman broad and deep, so that its devotedness may
suffice for all the exigencies it is called upon to meet, whether in
society or in the family, yet finding no created object able to
exhaust it.

When, forgetting the sublime end for which she has been created,
woman lives for the world and not for heaven, lavishing her love on
creatures instead of giving it to God, her Creator, her soul becomes
the prey of inexpressible anguish and despondency, which admonish her
of her mistake and induce her to correct it.

You can easily judge from this of what great importance it is to you
to keep a vigilant watch over your heart and its movements, since the
heart is, so to speak, the citadel of your whole being, and hence
when it is captured all the powers and faculties of your soul are
forced to surrender. The heart is the agent that furnishes woman with
the greater part of her ideas, and the object of its predilection
inevitably becomes the only object of all her thoughts. This is the
artist that furnishes the imagination with those images which remain
substantially the same under forms constantly varying, but absorbing
the soul to such a degree that a person is often tempted to look upon
their action as the result of obsession.

It is the heart that governs and shapes the will, giving it that
flexibility and at the same time that constancy so prevalent among
the greater part of women, leading them, with unflinching
stubbornness of determination to the accomplishment of the end
proposed. All difficulties vanish that stand between them and the