The
correspondence between them ceased, and if Marie-Gaston had entered the
convent of La Trappe, he could not have been more completely lost to his
friend.

When Dorlange returned from Rome in 1836, the sequestration of
Marie-Gaston's person and affection was more than ever close and
inexorable. Dorlange had too much self-respect to endeavor to pass the
barriers thus opposed to him, and the old friends not only never saw
each other, but no communication passed between them.

But when the news of Madame Marie-Gaston's death reached him Dorlange
forgot all and hastened to Ville d'Avray to comfort his friend. Useless
eagerness! Two hours after that sad funeral was over, Marie-Gaston,
without a thought for his friends or for a sister-in-law and two nephews
who were dependent on him, flung himself into a post-chaise and started
for Italy. Dorlange felt that this egotism of sorrow filled the measure
of the wrong already done to him; and he endeavored to efface from
his heart even the recollection of a friendship which sympathy under
misfortune could not recall.

My husband and I loved Louise de Chaulieu too tenderly not to continue
our affection for the man who had been so much to her. Before leaving
France, Marie-Gaston had requested Monsieur de l'Estorade to take charge
of his affairs, and later he sent him a power-of-attorney to enable him
to do so properly.

Some weeks ago his grief, still living and active, suggested to him a
singular idea. In the midst of the beautiful park at Ville d'Avray is a
little lake, with an island upon it which Louise dearly loved. To that
island, a shady calm retreat, Marie-Gaston wished to remove the body of
his wife, after building a mausoleum of Carrara marble to receive it. He
wrote to us to communicate this idea, and, remembering Dorlange in this
connection, he requested my husband to see him and ask him to undertake
the work. At first Dorlange feigned not to remember even the name of
Marie-Gaston, and he made some civil pretext to decline the commission.
But see and admire the consistency of such determinations when people
love each other! That very evening, being at the opera, he heard the
Duc de Rhetore speak insultingly of his former friend, and he vehemently
resented the duke's words. A duel followed in which he was wounded; the
news of this affair has probably already reached you. So here is a man
facing death at night for a friend whose very name he pretended not to
know in