“My God!” she said at last, “when wilt thou cease to strike me down on all sides?”

Then she took up the letter and continued reading it: 

Gerard seems to me to have a cool head and an ardent heart; that’s the sort of man you want.  Paris is just now a hotbed of new doctrines; I should be delighted to have the lad removed from the traps which ambitious minds are setting for the generous youth of France.  While I do not altogether approve of the narrow and stupefying life of the provinces, neither do I like the passionate life of Paris, with its ardor of reformation, which is driving youth into so many unknown ways.  You alone know my opinions; to my mind the moral world revolves upon its own axis, like the material world.  My poor protege demands (as you will see from his letter) things impossible.  No power can resist ambitions so violent, so imperious, so absolute, as those of to-day.  I am in favor of low levels and slowness in political change; I dislike these social overturns to which ambitious minds subject us.

To you I confide these principles of a monarchical and prejudiced old man, because you are discreet.  Here I hold my tongue in the midst of worthy people, who the more they fail the more they believe in progress; but I suffer deeply at the irreparable evils already inflicted on our dear country.

I have replied to the enclosed letter, telling my young man that a worthy task awaits him.  He will go to see you, and though his letter will enable you to judge of him, you had better study him still further before committing yourself,—­though you women understand many things from the mere look of a man.  However, all the men whom you employ, even the most insignificant, ought to be thoroughly satisfactory to you.  If you don’t like him don’t take him; but if he suits you, my dear child, I beg you to cure him of his ill-disguised ambition.  Make him take to a peaceful, happy, rural life, where true beneficence is perpetually exercised; where the capacities of great and strong souls find continual exercise, and they themselves discover daily fresh sources of admiration in the works of Nature, and in real ameliorations, real progress, an occupation worthy of any man.

I am not oblivious of the fact that great ideas give birth to great actions; but as those ideas are necessarily few and far between, I think it may be said that usually things are more useful than ideas.  He who fertilizes a corner of the earth, who brings to perfection a fruit-tree, who makes a turf on a thankless soil, is far more useful in his generation than he who seeks new theories for humanity.  How, I ask you, has Newton’s science changed the condition of the country districts?  Oh! my dear, I have always loved you; but to-day I, who fully understand what you are about to attempt, I adore you.

No one at Limoges forgets you; we all admire your grand resolution to benefit Montegnac.  Be a little grateful to us for having soul enough to admire a noble action, and do not forget that the first of your admirers is also your first friend.

F. Grossetete.