me probation upon the virtue of our friend, if the world
were to disown him and Providence were to became to that, degree his
debtor,--yet in that case there are, believe me, supreme compensations:
all the things and all the events that occur around us and that act upon
us are but machines set in motion by a Higher Hand, so as to complete our
education for a higher world, in which alone we shall take our true
place. Apply yourself, therefore, my dear child, to watch over yourself
unceasingly and always, so that you may not take great and fine isolated
actions for real virtue, and may be ready every moment to do all that
your duty may require of you. Fundamentally nothing is great, you see,
and nothing small, when things are, looked at apart from one another, and
it is only the putting of things together that produces the unity of evil
or of good.

"Moreover, God only sends the trial to the heart where He has put
strength, and the manner in which you tell me that your master has borne
the misfortune that has befallen him is a fresh proof of this great and
eternal truth. You must form yourself upon him, my dear child, and if
you are obliged to leave Hof for Bamberg you must resign yourself to it
courageously. Man has three educations: that which he receives from his
parents, that which circumstances impose upon him, and lastly that which
he gives himself; if that misfortune should occur, pray to God that you
may yourself worthily complete that last education, the most important of
all.

"I will give you as an example the life and conduct of my father, of whom
you have not heard very much, for he died before you were born, but whose
mind and likeness are reproduced in you only among all your brothers and
sisters. The disastrous fire which reduced his native town to ashes
destroyed his fortune and that of his relatives; grief at having lost
everything--for the fire broke out in the next house to his--cost his
father his life; and while his mother, who for six years had been
stretched an a bed of pain, where horrible convulsions held her fast,
supported her three little girls by the needlework that she did in the
intervals of suffering, he went as a mere clerk into one of the leading
mercantile houses of Augsburg, where his lively and yet even temper made
him welcome; there he learned a calling, for which, however, he was not
naturally adapted, and came back to the home of his birth with a pure and
stainless heart, in