L E T T E R S

600Hube. Among all of us, he is outstanding in spiritual recollection, unshaken innerpeace, and life in the presence of God. And, if at first I voted for him to stay here,I did so mainly aside from the difficulty expected on his father’s side because Iwanted him to be engaged in the formation of new members, who would laterenter the seminary for we do have such hopes.Whoever goes, it will be better for them to wait here until the end of theschool year, just as the others, the ―Romans‖, must also await vacation time. Ourfundamental principle must always be that in Rome something very important ishappening for us; and, while we can, before the Russians set up any obstacles, wemust send as many tried and sure men there as we can.I return to Paris. My first bit of information about Adam Mickiewicz isthat he is in good health. A while ago he suspended his work on a history ofPoland. Nevertheless, hasn’t he been putting out some poetry? This would besomething tremendous! For, he is full of life, and strength, and spirit.Your wrote once, asking about his financial condition. N.B. Everything Iwrite here is a secret, under the seal of the confessional, God forbid that he shouldever learn that I wrote anything about this. I even encourage you to burn this bit ofwritten information.First: I dont’t know whether you know that for the past year he has beenreceiving a pension from the government: 1,000 francs a year, not as an emigrant,but from a special fund to support ―men of letters‖. Last year the rumor wasspread about among many people, unknown to him, that he was in very direcircumstances. But the rumors were grossly exaggerated. Adam never had, andstill does not have, any special patrons; he has to count every sou. However, for awhile now it has seemed that things were going better for him; he received varioussmall allocations from Poland.You should know that I am the confidant of his poverty, and his agentwho, in time of ultimate need, pawns his wife’s jewels which are fairly valuable.For a while, everything was redeemed. But just today, this is why I wrote such ashort letter previously, and why I had no time during the day, he called me, andasked me to pawn a portion of the jewels for 700 francs. This is surely a bad sign.