Chapter CXX: Letter CIX: PARIS, Ash-Wednesday, February 23, 1689

My dear child, the life you lead at Marseilles delights me. I love that city, which resembles no other in the world. Ah! how well I understand Paulina’s admiration! How natural, how just, how novel all her surprise must be! How pretty I think her! how pleasing to me is the mind which my fancy gives her! It seems to me that I love her, and that you do not love her enough. You want her to be all perfection. Did she engage for this when she left her convent? You are not just. Who is there without faults? Do you, in conscience, expect her to be free from them? Whence can this hope arise? It is not in nature. You wish her then to be a _prodigious_ prodigy, such as was never before seen. If I were with you, I think I should do her some good offices, merely by correcting your imagination a little, and by asking you, if a young girl, who thinks of nothing but pleasing you and improving herself, who loves and fears you, and who has a great share of understanding, is not in the first rank of excellence? These are the dictates of my heart in favor of my dear Paulina, whom I love, and whom I entreat you immediately to embrace for my sake. Add to this her good conscience, which makes her renounce the compact, when she sees the jugglers perform their necromancies. This life, though agreeable, must have fatigued you; it is too much for you, my dear child; you go to bed late, and you rise early, I have had apprehensions for your health. The reason I do not talk to you of mine is, that it is as I wish yours to be, and that I have nothing to say upon the subject.