I have never gone through much suffering. I might even be tempted to
think that nature has more than once thrown down cushions to break the
fall for me. Upon one occasion, when my sister died, nature literally
put me under chloroform, to save me a sight which would perhaps have
created a severe lesion in my feelings, and have permanently affected
the serenity of my thought.
Thus, I have to thank some one; I do not exactly know whom. I have
had so much pleasure out of life that I am really not justified in
claiming a compensation beyond the grave. I have other reasons for
being irritated at death: he is levelling to a degree which annoys
me; he is a democrat, who attacks us with dynamite; he ought, at all
events, to await our convenience and be at our call. I receive many
times in the course of the year an anonymous letter, containing the
following words, always in the same handwriting: "If there should be
such a place as hell after all?" No doubt the pious person who
writes to me is anxious for the salvation of my soul, and I am deeply
thankful for the same. But hell is a hypothesis very far from being in
conformity with what we know from other sources of the divine mercy.
Moreover, I can lay my hand on my heart and say that if there is such
a place I do not think that I have done anything which would consign
me to it. A short stay in purgatory would, perhaps, be just; I would
take the chance of this, as there would be Paradise afterwards, and
there would be plenty of charitable persons to secure indulgences,
by which my sojourn would be shortened.
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