Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/139

 gentle, sincere; help me; grant that every night, when my mother gives me her last kiss, I may be able to say to her, ‘You kiss this night a nobler and more worthy boy than you kissed last night.’”

Keep always in your thoughts that other supernatural and blessed Enrico which you may be after this life. And pray. You cannot imagine the sweetness that you experience,—how much better a mother feels when she sees her child with hands clasped in prayer. When I behold you praying, it seems impossible to me that there should not be some one there gazing at you and listening to you. Then I believe more firmly that there is a Supreme goodness and an Infinite pity; I love you more, I work with more ardor, I endure with more force, I forgive with all my heart, and I think of death with serenity.

O great and good God! To hear once more after death the voice of my mother, to meet my children again, to see my Enrico once more, my Enrico, blessed and immortal, and to clasp him in an embrace which shall nevermore be loosed, nevermore, nevermore to all eternity! Oh, pray! let us pray, let us love each other, let us be good, let us bear this celestial hope in our hearts and souls, my adored child!

Y M.