out like a
taper. Three days ago she confessed, received the sacrament and
extreme unction; but since that time she has been constantly
delirious and rambling, until this afternoon at twenty-one minutes
after five, when she was seized with convulsions, and immediately
lost all perception and feeling. I pressed her hand and spoke to
her; but she neither saw me, heard me, nor seemed in the least
sensible; and in this state she lay for five hours, namely, till
twenty-one minutes past ten, when she departed, no one being
present but myself, M. Haine, a good friend of ours whom my father
knows, and the nurse.

"I cannot at present write you the whole particulars of the
illness; but my belief is, that she was to die--that it was the
will of God. Let me now beg the friendly service of you, to
prepare my poor father by gentle degrees for the melancholy
tidings. I wrote to him by the same post, but told him no more
than that she was very ill; and I now await his answer, by which I
shall be guided. May God support and strengthen him! Oh, my
friend! through the especial grace of God I have been enabled to
endure the whole with fortitude and resignation, and have long
since been consoled under this great loss. In her extremity I
prayed for two things: a blessed dying hour for my mother, and
courage and strength for myself; and the gracious God heard my
prayer, and richly bestowed those blessings upon me. Pray,
therefore, dear friend, support my father. Say what you can to
him, in order that when he knows the worst, he may not feel it too
bitterly. I commend my sister also to you from the bottom of my
heart. Call on both of them soon, but say no word of the
death--only prepare them. You can do and say what you will; but
let me be so far at ease as to have no new misfortune to expect.
Comfort my dear father and my dear sister, and pray send me a
speedy answer."

The letter to his father is curiously circumstantial; but if on such
occasion it is allowable to deceive at all, it is allowable to make
the deception complete.

"The cause of my having left your letter of the 11th of June so
long unanswered is, that I have very unpleasant and melancholy
intelligence to communicate. My dear mother is very ill. At the
beginning of her illness she was, as usual, bled, and this seemed
to relieve an