We were interrupted a few days ago just as I was telling you, my dear
daughter, what I have already written elsewhere, namely: when you have
girls of high rank you must redouble your care for their education,
but in a manner imperceptible to the others--for the equality that you
keep is admirable. What I ask does not go further than wishing you to
speak to them oftener in private, employing them in all that can open
their minds, instilling into them a solid piety and whatever can form
their hearts to virtue. Those girls, when they go into the world, or
even into convents, can do greater good than others who are forced by
poverty to return to their parents. Mlle. de Rochechouart is a case
in point; it seems to me that you push her enough; I hope that her
inclinations respond to her birth.
You say you have had difficulty in combining two things that I asked
of you, and which you find opposed to each other: one, that you
ought to train, as much as you can, the consciences of your girls to
be simple, open and direct; and the other, that you must not make
them talkative. There is no contrariety, as I think, between the two
things; it is never the frank who have the most to say. Frankness
does not consist in saying much, but in saying all; and that all is
quickly said when it is sincere, because there are no preambles, and
no great number of words are needed to open the heart. A simple person
says naïvely what is in her mind; if she should chance to be a little
too diffuse, obedience calms her and four words are enough. Those who
are not simple cannot resolve either to speak or hold their tongues;
their confidences must be dragged from them; we lose ourselves in
their twists and turns; that is what makes such long conversations
and frequent confessions; they have said something, but not all; they
were not willing to tell perhaps one circumstance, and then they
are frightened at not having told it, and so they return to tell
it and perhaps much else. Now an honest heart tells at once all it
knows. Have you not observed that the frankest girls are the soonest
confessed? They hide nothing, and the confessor, who knows their
disposition, has little to say to them....
_To Mme. du Pérou_ [now Superior of Saint-Cyr].