she launches him forth in the most dangerous career, on the ocean, or else to that bloody war in Africa. She trembles, she is dying of uneasiness, and yet she persists. What can support her? Her belief that her child cannot perish, since he is destined to be a hero.

He returns. How much he is changed! What! is this fierce soldier my son? He departed a child, and he comes back a man: he seeks to be married. This is another sacrifice, which is not less serious. He loves another! And his mother, in whose heart he is, and ever will be the first, will possess the second place in his affections-alas! a very small place in the moments of his passion. She seeks for, and chooses her own rival: she loves her on his account; she adorns her; she becomes her attendant, and leads her to the altar; and all she asks for there is, that the mother may not be forgotten in the wife!

CHAPTER IV.

LOVE.

THE

LOVE WISHES TO RAISE, NOT TO ABSORB. FALSE THEORY OF OUR ADVERSARIES, AND THEIR DANGEROUS PRACTICE. LOVE WISHES TO FORM FOR ITSELF

AN EQUAL WHO MAY LOVE FREELY. LOVE IN THE WORLD, AND IN THE CIVIL WORLD. LOVE IN FAMILIES. -LITTLE UNDERSTOOD BY THE MIDDLE AGES. -FAMILY RELIGION.

WILL it be said that, in the preceding chapter, being seduced by a sweeter subject, I have lost sight of the whole subject in dispute hitherto pursued in my book?

I think I have, on the contrary, thrown much light upon the question. Maternal love (that miracle of God) and maternal education, enable us to understand what every education, direction, or initiation ought to be.

The singular advantage which the mother has in education is, that, being more than all others devoted and disinterested, she respects infantine personality in the fragile little thing which is becoming

a person.

She is, for the child, the defender of his original individuality. She wishes, even at the expense of her own feelings, that he should act according to his genius, and that he may grow up and

rise. What can education and true direction require? What love desires in its highest and most disinterested idea that the young creature may rise. Take this word in both its acceptations. She wishes the child may rise above herself, up to the level of him who helps her, and even above him, if he can. The stronger party, far from absorbing the weaker, wishes to make him strong, and put him on an equal footing. She endeavours to effect this by developing in him not only whatever is similar in their natures, but even whatever is characteristically distinctive between them, by exciting his free originality, provoking activity in this being born for action, and by appealing to the person, and what is most personal in the person, his will. The dearest wish of love is to excite the will, and the moral force of the person loved, to its highest degree to heroism!

The ideal of every mother, and it is the true one in education, is to make a hero, a man powerful in actions and fruitful in works, who may be endowed with will, power, and a creative genius. Let us compare with this ideal, that of ecclesiastical education and direction.

The latter wishes to make a saint, and not a hero : it believes these two words to be diametrically opposite. It is mistaken also in its idea of sanctity, in making it consist not in being in harmony with God, but in absorption in God.

All this priestly theology, as soon as we provoke

it a little, and do not allow it to remain in inconsistency, falls headlong down the irresistible declivity, right into this abyss. There it ended, as it was obliged to end, in the seventeenth century. The great directors of that time, who, by being the last, had the advantage of analysing the thing, show us perfectly well the bottom of it, which is annihilation, the art of annihilating activity, the will, and personality. "Annihilate ?"-"Yes, but in God.""But does God wish it ?" "His active and creating spirit must wish us to resemble him, to act, and to create. You have a wrong idea of God the Father."

This false theory is convicted in practice. By following it closely we have seen that it arrives at quite an opposite goal. It promises to absorb man in God; and it consoles him for this absorption, by promising him that he shall participate in the infinite existence which he is entering. But, in reality, it does nothing more than absorb man in man, in infinite littleness. The person directed being annihilated in the director, of two persons there remains but one; the other, as a person, has perished, and become a thing.

Devout direction, noticed in our first part among the most loyal directors, and among very pious women, gives me two results, which I state thus:

1st, A saint who discourses for a long time with

a female saint on the love of God, infallibly converts her to love.

2dly, If this love remain pure, it is a chance; it is because the man is a saint; for the person directed, losing gradually all her own will, must, in course of time, be at his mercy. We must suppose, also, that he who may do every thing will take no advantage of it, and that this miracle of abstinence will be renewed every day. The priest has always thought himself, in his interior strength, to be a great master in matters of love. Accustomed to control his own passions, to be deceitful, and to beat about the bush, he believes he is the exclusive possessor of the real secret, how passions are to be managed. He advances under cover of ambiguous expressions, and he advances in safety; for he is patient, and waits till he has gained a footing in habits and in customs. He laughs in his sleeve at our impassioned vivacity, imprudent frankness, and ungoverned impetuosity, which cause us to pass wide of the mark.

If love was the art of surprising the soul, of subjugating it by authority and insinuation, and of conquering it by fear, in order to gain it by indulgence, so that, when wearied and drowsy with exertion, it may allow itself to be enveloped and caught in an invisible net; if this were love, then certainly the priest would be its great teacher.

Clever masters! learn from ignorant and unskilful men, that, with all your little arts, you have never