Cardinal's article ...

My dear little son,

Let us stop wanting what we wanted. 

For me, in my old age, I apply myself to no longer desire what I wanted in my childhood.

I think of it all night, I think of it all day; My only occupation, my only thought is to cure the bad ills of my soul.

I try that every day will be a shorten version of my whole life. Not that I seize it as if it were the last; But I consider it as if it could be.

I am writing this letter with the idea that death may call me while I write it. I am quite prepared to leave  life, and I enjoy it more because I do not worry about the time it should last.

Before old age, I thought about living well. Today I think about dying well.

For it is indeed death to die without regret.

Strive to do nothing against your will. What must be, you will live it whatever you do, the resigned man never undergoes the necessity.

Yes, I repeat, whoever willingly submits to the command, spares himself the most painful task of servitude, that is, of doing what he does not want.

The truly unhappy man is not he who is condemned to obey, but he who obeys in spite of himself.

Let us therefore bend our minds in such a way that we always want what circumstances require, and above all let us consider the end of our career without sadness.

Reason requires that one prepares oneself for death before preparing oneself for life.

Life is sufficiently supplied, but it is little for our greed: it always seems to us that something is wanting, and it will be the same until the end.

It is not the years, nor the days, that will make us live enough, but the qualities of our soul.

For my part, my dear love I have lived long enough, and I await death as a satisfied man.