e de Lenoncourt, her two brothers, and her mother arrived. The
coolness which Louise's second marriage had caused between herself and
her family disappeared. Every day since that evening, Louise's father
and both her brothers have ridden over in the morning, and the two
duchesses spend all their evenings at the chalet. Death unites as well
as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.

Louise is perfection in her charm, her grace, her good sense, her wit,
and her tenderness. She has retained to the last that perfect tact for
which she has been so famous, and she lavishes on us the treasures of
her brilliant mind, which made her one of the queens of Paris.

"I should like to look well even in my coffin," she said with her
matchless smile, as she lay down on the bed where she was to linger for
a fortnight.

Her room has nothing of the sick-chamber in it; medicines, ointments,
the whole apparatus of nursing, is carefully concealed.

"Is not my deathbed pretty!" she said to the Sevres priest who came to
confess her.

We gloated over her like misers. All this anxiety, and the terrible
truths which dawned on him, have prepared Gaston for the worst. He is
full of courage, but the blow has gone home. It would not surprise me
to see him follow his wife in the natural course. Yesterday, as we were
walking round the lake, he said to me:

"I must be a father to those two children," and he pointed to his
sister-in-law, who was taking the boys for a walk. "But though I shall
do nothing to hasten my end, I want your promise that you will be a
second mother to them, and will persuade your husband to accept the
office of guardian, which I shall depute to him in conjunction with my
sister-in-law."

He said this quite simply, like a man who knows he is not long for this
world. He has smiles on his face to meet Louise's, and it is only I whom
he does not deceive. He is a mate for her in courage.

Louise has expressed a wish to see her godson, but I am not sorry he
should be in Provence; she might want to remember him generously, and I
should be in a great difficulty.

Good-bye, my love.

August 25th (her birthday).

Yesterday evening Louise was delirious for a short time; but her
delirium was the prettiest babbling, which shows that even the madness
of gifted people is not that of fools or nobodies. In a mere thread of
a voice she sang some Italian airs from _I Puritani, La Sonnambula,
Moise_, while we stood round the bed in