her subject:--_Torrents_.

As the torrents of the Alps, the rivers, rivulets, and mountain
streams, which tumble from their heights, rush with all their force
towards the sea, even so our souls, by the effect of their spiritual
inclination, hasten to return towards God to be blended with Him. This
comparison of living waters is not a simple text that serves her for a
starting-point; she follows it up almost throughout the volume with
renewed graces. One would suppose that this pleasing light style would
tire us at last; but it does not: we feel that it is not mere words and
language, but that it springs and flows like life-blood from the heart.
She is evidently an uninformed woman, who has read only the Imitation,
the Philothea of Saint Francois, some few stories, and Don Quixote;
knows nothing at all, and has not seen much. Even these _Torrents_,
which she describes, are not seen by her in the Alps, where she then
is; she sees them within herself; she sees nature in the mirror of her
heart.

In reading this book we seem absolutely as if we were on the brink of a
cascade, pensively listening to the murmuring of the waters. They fall
for ever and ever gently and charmingly, varying their uniformity by a
thousand changes of sound and colour. Thence you see the approach of
waters of every sort (images of human souls), rivers that flow only to
reach other broad majestic streams, all loaded with boats, goods, and
passengers, and that are admired and blessed for the services they
render. These streams are the souls of the saints and great doctors.
There are also more rapid and eager waters which are good for nothing,
on which no one dares to float, that rush forward, in headlong
impatience, to reach the ocean. Such waters have terrible falls, and
occasionally grow impure. Sometimes they disappear.--Alas! poor
torrent, what has become of thee? It is not lost; it returns to the
surface, but only to be lost again; it is yet far from its goal; it
will have first to be dashed against rocks, scattered abroad, and, as
it were, annihilated!

When the writer has brought her torrent to this supreme fall, she is at
fault about the simile of the living waters; she then leaves it, and
the torrent becomes a soul again. No image taken from nature could
express what this soul is about to suffer. Here begins a strange
drama, where it seems no one before had dared to venture--that of
mystic death. We certainly find in earlier bo