and venerate the dignity of your vocation; I regard you as an august
and sacred being. I admire the great designs that God has over you; I
pray Him to have you participate in the sovereign esteem and respect
with which your condition inspires me. You are as yet free from all
engagements, in the bloom of youth, adorned with the treasures of
innocence and candor, standing like a queen upon the threshold of the
future which opens before you like a spacious temple. The past is
immaculate and free from the sting of remorse; with a vigorous mind
and will you behold the future's perspective without anxiety or
dismay,--rich in pious souvenirs, saintly hopes, heavenly thoughts
and merits acquired by prayer and the practice of virtue, ignorant of
vice and its bitter consequences, save by the pictures that have been
painted in order to inspire you with horror for it; your liberty is
such that every Christian soul envies your happy state. You possess a
power--I would almost say, a majesty--that no one can help admiring
and revering. As there is no one freer than he who has never been the
slave of sin, so there is no man stronger than he who has never
succumbed to the allurements of pleasure. The woof of your life is
there spread out before you intact and flexible, you can dispose and
weave it as you please; you will now find none of those knotty or
broken threads which, in after life, must sometimes be met with.

You are now at the period of life at which all the roads of life
meet. You can choose the one that pleases you most, and enter on the
good way with all that generous ardor so natural to youth. But,
whatever you do, whatever the choice you may make, you will occasion
the future weal or woe of many, perhaps for many generations. Whether
spouse of Jesus Christ or of man, whether mother of a family or of
the poor, whether a cloistered nun or a celibate in the world, you
will neither save nor lose your soul alone; the effects of your