L E T T E R S

625Letter Nr. 155[To confreres in Rome]Mortagne, July 12, 1839The grace and peace of God be with you, my dearest brothers!Although my silence has dragged on excessively, I will not attempt tooffer you any explanations. You know my heart. Till now I have no reason todoubt that you are convinced of my love. And the fact that you have recognizedmy weakness and incompetence so visibly, clearly and irrefutably is a greatbenefit to me which, God grant, can be turned to our common good in the future.Moreover, you yourselves once freed me from making these explanations.Therefore, I will get right down to business; on this occasion I ampurposely limiting myself to a few words, a very few, if only that I might finallyget around to sending them to you. Until now one of the principal causes for thedelay in my response has been my desire to write everything that I wanted andneeded to write to you. Because of this I was constantly preparing to provide youwith a lengthy and very complete journal; and it was difficult to get down to a tasklike that. I was unable to do so until now.Undoubtedly it is with special and very great eagerness that you wait fornews from me about our present situation, seeking the last word, as it were, andthe conclusion of so much that you have heard about various changes that haveoccurred among us 833 . This is the primary reason for this letter; I am setting asidedetails and all other matters for later.The last word about where we stand today: Kneel down and let us thankGod together, very humbly and very fervently, for he has saved us from so manyand such serious dangers. His special, holy and most loving care for us should833 Jański has in mind the troubles experienced in the Spring of that year - the inner turmoil in theParis and Varsailles Houses that resulted from the infiltration of emigrant political differences -especially of the monarchist group with the democrats.