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Rh "But if their reproaches cut me to the heart, how much more did I suffer from their entreaties? Yet I persevered even to the end, and was permitted to begin my year of noviciate in the hope that my resolution would falter when put to the trial. They knew not in what entire sincerity it had been taken. I remember a letter of remonstrance I received from Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and among other arguments, was this; 'I implore you to marry the King of Poland, if it were only to mortify Mademoiselle de Guise.' She was little aware that forgiveness of even her enmity had been the earliest offering of my heart above.

"I have never repented my choice; every hour I have felt my belief more perfect, and my hope more exalted. Had I remained in the world, experience could but have brought me added discontent, and more utter weariness. I had been too profoundly disabused of life's dearest illusions ever again to allow of their sweet engrossment. Only those who have looked hopelessly upon life, and turned again to the restless and gloomy depths of their own heart with a despair which is as the shadow of the valley of death,—only they can know the peace that is of heaven, and the faith that looks beyond the portals of the grave.

"Once only since my abode in this convent