Serious Hours of a Young Lady | Page 5

seductive and deceitful veil which,
while presenting things to us in a false light, exposes us to most
deplorable illusions and inevitable dangers.
God permits that we should ignore many things, but He does not wish
that we should be deceived in anything. He is truth itself; error can
never claim His acquiescence.
If prudence and respect for God's work make it a duty for me to leave
intact the veil that He has drawn between you and the future, I would
consider it highly criminal in me if I did not endeavor to remove that by
which your imagination seeks to conceal its illusions and its errors. It is
not my wish or design to trouble the present by exaggerated anxiety;
but, on the other hand, I do not wish to leave you under a false
impression, fed by delusive hopes relative to the future. My desire is

that, while enjoying with gratitude and simplicity the happiness or
peace which God has bestowed upon you in the springtime of life, you
may profit by the calm and tranquillity it affords you to prepare for the
future, and to anticipate a means of soothing its sorrows and bitterness.
While the soil of your heart is yet untilled and moist, and while your
hands are yet filled with those heavenly seeds which God has given you
in abundance, I desire that you may sow them in the light and strength
of divine grace, to develop in them the heavenly germs which they
contain, that you may be enabled to reap at a later time an abundant
harvest of virtues, holy joy and merit before God and men. I desire that
you may learn to turn to good account all the natural resources that you
possess, and acquire that knowledge of yourself which enlightens the
mind without troubling the heart; I do not wish to discourage nor flatter
you, I only wish to instruct and fortify you.
Do not think that the river of life will always flow for you as it does at
present, broad, deep, calm and limpid, between two flowery banks. Age
will diminish those waters and deprive their banks of their charm and
freshness. The flame of passion, like a burning wind, will rise, and
more than once perhaps will bring to the surface the mud that rankles in
the bottom, and thus destroy its limpidity.
A day will come, and before long, when, stripped of all those exterior
advantages which please the senses, you will possess only those
qualities, less striking, but more solid, which satisfy the mind and heart
and attract the complaisant regard of God and the angels. Youth will
quickly pass, more quickly than you think, and the subsequent period
of life will last much longer, hence, in all justice to yourself, let its
preparation absorb your attention.
If you had a long sojourn to make in a place close by, would it be
reasonable on your part to pay less attention to the place of your
destination than to the few fleeting moments it would require to go
thither. Youth is not a stopping-place, it is a passage, a time of
preparation; it is to the whole life what the florid period is to the
gardener, or seed-time to the farmer.
Oh! if you did but fully comprehend the value of each hour during this
most important period of life, the value of each thought of your mind,
of each sentiment of your heart, with what extreme care you would
watch over all the movements of your soul, nay, even the external

movements of your body.
That fugitive thought which enters your mind, fanned by curiosity's
wing, may seem quite trivial; to dwell on and delight in it may be to
you something indifferent. That sentiment which, scarcely formed,
commences to germinate in your heart, and to produce therein emotions
so imperceptible that you are but imperfectly conscious of its presence,
seems insignificant at first sight; that unguarded glance seemed to you
a matter of no import, and which, at an earlier or later period of your
life, would have but little consequence. At an earlier age the impression,
it is true, would be lively but inconsistent, and the levity of childhood
would soon have replaced it by another; later it would be found so
superficial and trivial that it would be soon forgotten among the
multiplicity of thoughts which absorb the mind at the age of maturity;
but, during the youthful years, everything that comes under the notice
of the senses sinks deeply into the soul, penetrating its very substance,
the faculties still retain all the vivacity of youth, while already they
participate in that firmness which is characteristic of the age of
maturity.
That thought is, perhaps, the first link in a chain