François MAURIAC. L.A.S. "Fr. M.", Paris Pentecost 1941, to his friend Jacques Laval; 3 pages in-8. Beautiful letter, returning from Pentecost mass. "Dear Jacques. Only love can save love. I hope you feel it today more than any other day, as you read the first gospel". He writes to her after mass, "with such a deep, strange feeling of the obvious. That I, this novelist, this playwright, this sick person, the being I am and that you know, should have received this host with confidence, abandon, without any fear - and that there should be so much peace in him, all of a sudden! "I give you my peace"... It's not an empty promise, - but you're at the height of your youth, of "that long, dark storm". You must be suffering a great deal, all the more so as you still sometimes seek consolation where none is to be found. Your consolation is to console others. You are the born comforter"... In this increasingly gloomy world, nothing is more important than "this current of grace which flows between us: the kingdom which is not of this world and against which this world can do nothing, is ours, James, and you play an immense role in it, because in spite of your weak heart, which is too loving, or rather because of this weak heart, you have charity"...