Letter from Mrs. Martin to Mrs. Guérin CF 39
7 September 1868.
I am really touched by the affectionate interest you have shown me and am very grateful to you. I'm sorry that poor Isidore is sick, but you have to be reasonable and resign yourself to the will of God.
I preach to others, and I'm not very reasonable myself. Saturday, I was looking for my father everywhere; it seemed to me that I was going to find it, I could not imagine that I was separated from it forever. Yesterday I went to the cemetery; to see me, you would have said: here is the most indifferent person in the world. I was on my knees at the foot of his grave, I could not pray. A few steps further, I knelt on that of my two little angels; same apparent indifference...
I traveled a path that I had followed five weeks ago with my little child and my father, I could not tell you all that I experienced! I paid no attention to anything that was going on around me; I looked at the places where my father had sat. I just stood there, almost thoughtless. Never in my life had I felt such pangs of heart. Arriving home, I could not eat, it seemed to me that any misfortunes would now find me insensitive.
If you only knew, my dear sister, how much I loved my father! He was always with me, I had never left him, he did me all the services he could.
This morning I received a letter from Elise. She tells me that at the first moment she cried so much that her voice was drowned out, but now her soul rejoices at the thought of the grace that the good Lord has bestowed upon us for the holy death of our father. It seems that, in the Community, Ways of the Cross are made, general communions for the repose of one's soul. I propose to ask at once for one hundred and fifty masses for my father and my mother and as I know very well that, in the course of the years that I have yet to live, I would not be at peace if I did not have any more celebrated, I plan to come back to it later. Well, if my brother wants more, we'll work it out together.
