.

I do not believe that it would be easy for me to fall into a lapse from
virtue so shameful and unexpected as the one you fear. I do not confide
in myself; I confide in the mercy of God and in his grace; and I trust
they will not fail me.

Nevertheless, you are altogether right in advising me to abstain from
forming ties of friendship with Pepita Ximenez; I am far enough from
being bound to her by any tie.

I am not ignorant that, when those holy men and saints, who should serve
us as models and examples, were bound in close intimacy and affection
with women, it was in their old age, or when they were already proved
and disciplined by penitence, or when there existed a noticeable
disproportion in years between them and the pious women they elected to
be their friends; as is related of St. Jerome and St. Paulina, and of
St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa. And even thus, even with a purely
spiritual affection, I know it is possible to sin through excess. For
God only should occupy the soul as Lord and Spouse, and any other being
who dwells in it should do so but as the friend, the servant, the
creation of the Spouse, and as one in whom the Spouse delights.

Do not think, however, that I vaunt myself on being invincible, that I
despise danger, and defy and seek it. He who loves danger shall perish
therein. And if the prophet-king, though so agreeable in the sight of
God and so favored of him, and Solomon, notwithstanding his supernatural
and God-given wisdom, were troubled and fell into sin because God turned
his face away from them, what have not I to fear, miserable sinner that
I am, so young, so inexperienced in the wiles of the devil, and so
wavering and unpracticed in the combats of virtue!

Filled with a salutary fear of God, and imbued with a fitting distrust
of my own weakness, I shall not be forgetful of your counsels and your
prudent admonitions; and I shall pray, meantime, with fervor, and
meditate on holy things, in order to abhor the things of the world, in
so far as they deserve abhorrence; but of this I may assure you: that,
however deeply I penetrate into the depths of my conscience, however
carefully I search its inmost recesses, I have thus far discovered
nothing to make me share your fears.

If my former letters are full of encomiums on the virtue of Pepita, it
is the fault of my father and of the reverend vicar, and not mine; for,
at first, far from being friendly to this woman, I was unjustl