was for a long time his very life, his joy, his
grief, his summer and winter. But the finest thing of this class is,
after all, but a book, a dumb, inanimate thing, which, though you may
call it as animate as you please, does not hear, and cannot answer; it
has no words with which it may answer yours, nor eyes to reflect your
own.

Away, then, with books, those cold paper images!

Imagine in a monastery, where nothing else intrudes, the only living
object, the only person who has a right to enter, who monopolises all
the influences of which we have spoken, who is, in himself, their
society, newspaper, novel, and sermon; a person whose visit is the only
interruption to the deadly monotony of a life devoid of employment.
Before he comes, and after he has been, is the only division of time in
this life of profound monotony.

We said a person, we ought to have said a man. Whoever will be candid
would confess that a woman would never have this influence; that the
circumstance of his being of the opposite sex has much to do with it,
even with the purest and with those who had never dreamed of sex.

To be the only one, without either comparison or contradiction, to be
the whole world of a soul, to wean it, at pleasure, from every
reminiscence that might cause any rivalry, and efface from this docile
heart even the thought of a mother that might still[2] be cherished
within it! To inherit everything, and remain alone and be master of
this heart by the extinction of all natural sentiments!

_The only one_! But this is the good, the perfect, the amiable, the
beloved! Enumerate every good quality, and they will all be found to
be contained in this one term. A thing even (not to say a person), a
thing, if it be the only one, will in time captivate our hearts.
Charlemagne, seeing from his palace always the same sight, a lake with
its verdant border, at last fell in love with it.

Habit certainly contributes much; but also that great necessity of the
heart to tell everything to what we are always in the habit of seeing:
whether it be man or thing, we must speak. Even if it were a stone, we
should tell it everything, for our thoughts must be told, and our
griefs be poured out from an overflowing heart.

Do you believe that this poor nun is tranquil in this life so
monotonous? How many sad, but, alas! too true confessions I could
relate here, that have been communicated to me by tender female
friends, who had gone and