Old Madame Sauviat was there, at her post, erect as she had been
for twenty years. This woman, heroic after her fashion, closed her
daughter's eyes--those eyes that had wept so much--and kissed them.
All the priests, followed by the choristers, surrounded the bed. By the
flaming light of the torches they chanted the terrible _De Profundis_,
the echoes of which told the population kneeling before the chateau, the
friends praying in the salon, the servants in the adjoining rooms, that
the mother of the canton was dead. The hymn was accompanied with moans
and tears. The confession of that grand woman had not been audible
beyond the threshold of the salon, and none but loving ears had heard
it.

When the peasants of the neighborhood, joining with those of Montegnac,
came, one by one, to lay upon their benefactress the customary palm,
together with their last farewell mingled with prayers and tears, they
saw the man of justice, crushed by grief, holding the hand of the woman
whom, without intending it, he had so cruelly but so justly stricken.

Two days later the _procureur-general_, Grossetete, the archbishop, and
the mayor, holding the corners of the black pall, conducted the body of
Madame Graslin to its last resting-place. It was laid in the grave in
deep silence; not a word was said; no one had strength to speak; all
eyes were full of tears. "She is now a saint!" was said by the peasants
as they went away along the roads of the canton to which she had given
prosperity,--saying the words to her creations as though they were
animate beings.

No one thought it strange that Madame Graslin was buried beside the body
of Jean-Francois Tascheron. She had not asked it; but the old mother,
as the last act of her tender pity, had requested the sexton to make the
grave there,--putting together those whom earth had so violently parted,
and whose souls were now reunited through repentance in purgatory.

Madame Graslin's will was found to be all that was expected of it.
She founded scholarships and hospital beds at Limoges solely for
working-men; she assigned a considerable sum--three hundred thousand
francs in six years--for the purchase of that part of the village called
Les Tascherons, where she directed that a hospital should be built. This
hospital, intended for the indigent old persons of the canton, for
the sick, for lying-in women if paupers, and for foundlings, was to
be called the Tascheron Hospital. Veronique ordered it