his news, I confess it was the most afflicting stroke
I had ever felt. I thought that had I been with her at her death I
might have spoken to her and received her last instructions. God has so
ordered it that I was deprived of her assistance in almost all my
losses, in order to render the strokes more painful. Some months indeed
before her death, it was shown to me, that though I could not see her
but with difficulty, and suffering for it, yet she was still some
support to me. The Lord let me know that it would be profitable for me
to be deprived of her. But at the time she died I did not think so. It
was in that trying season when my paths were all blocked up, she was
taken from me. She who might have guided me in my lonesome and
difficult road, bounded as it were with precipices, and entangled with
briars and thorns.

Adorable conduct of my God! there must be no guide for the person whom
Thou art leading into the regions of darkness and death, no conductor
for the man whom thou art determined to destroy, (that is, to cause to
die totally to himself). After having saved me with much mercy, after
having led me by the hand in rugged paths, it seems Thou wast bent on
my destruction. May it not be said that Thou dost not save but to
destroy, nor go to seek the lost sheep, but to cause it to be yet more
lost; that Thou art pleased in building what is demolished, and in
demolishing what is built. Thou wouldst overturn the temple built by
human endeavors, with so much care and industry, in order as it were
miraculously to erect a divine structure, a house not built with hands,
eternal in the Heavens. Secrets of the incomprehensible wisdom of God,
unknown to any besides Himself! Man, sprung up only of a few days,
wants to penetrate, and to set bounds to it. Who is it that hath known
the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counselor? Is it a wisdom
only to be known through death to everything, and through the entire
loss of all self?

My brother now openly showed his hatred for me. He married at Orleans
and my husband had the complaisance to go to his marriage. He was in a
poor state of health, the roads bad, and so covered over with snow,
that we had like to have been overturned twelve or fifteen times. Yet
far from appearing obliged by his politeness, my brother quarreled with
him more than ever, and without reason. I was the butt of both their
resentments. While I was at Orleans, meeting with one whom at that time
I tho