n me. Moreover, there existed
between my mother and myself many ties arising from a thousand
impalpable details which can be better felt than described. This was the
most painful part of the sacrifice which God required of me. I have
hitherto only spoken to her about Germany, and that is enough to make
her very unhappy. I tremble to think of what will happen when she knows
all. Her tender caresses go to my very heart, as do her plans for my
future, of which she is ever talking to me, and in which I have not the
courage to disappoint her. She is standing close to me as I write this
to you. Did she but know! I would sacrifice everything to her except my
duty and my conscience. Yes, if God exacted of me, in order to spare her
this pain, that I should extinguish my thought and condemn myself to a
plodding, vulgar existence, I would submit. Many a time I have
endeavoured to deceive myself, but it is not in human power to believe
or not to believe at will. I wish that I could stifle within me the
faculty of self-examination, for it is this which has caused all my
unhappiness. Fortunate are the children who all their life long do but
sleep and dream! I see around me men of pure and simple lives whom
Christianity has had the power to make virtuous and happy. But I have
noticed that none of them have the critical faculty; for which let them
bless God!

I cannot tell you to what an extent I am spoilt and made much of here,
and it is this which grieves me so. Did they but know what is
passing in my heart! I am fearful at times lest my conduct may be
hypocritical, but I have satisfied my conscience in this respect. God
forbid that I should be a cause of scandal to these simple souls!

When I see in what an inextricable net God has involved me while I
was asleep, I am unable to resist fatalistic thoughts, and I may often
have sinned in that respect; yet I never have doubted my Father which
is in Heaven or His goodness. Upon the contrary, I have always given
Him thanks, and have never felt myself nearer to Him than at moments
like those. The heart learns only by suffering, and I believe with
Kant that God is only to be known through the heart. Then too I was
a Christian, and resolved ever to remain one. But can orthodoxy be
critical? Had I but been born a German Protestant, for then I should
have been in my proper place! Herder ended his days a bishop, and he
was only just a Christian; but in the Catholic religion you must be
ortho