The next day after this the physicians that attended my lord told him it was time for him to settle his worldly affairs, and prepare himself for a hereafter. I now found all was over, and I had no other hopes of his life than the physicians' declaration of his being near his death. For it often happens that the gentlemen of the faculty give out that a man is near his death, to make the cure appear to be the effect of their great skill in distempers and medicine; as others, when they cannot find out the real disease, give out that a man's end is near, rather than discover their want of judgment; and this I thought might be the case with our doctors of physic.
Our son was still kept from the university, and lodged at the house of one of his future guardians; but when he heard that his father was so near his end, he was very little out of his presence, for he dearly loved him. My lord sent the day before his death to lock and seal up all the doors in his dwelling house at The Hague; and the steward had orders, in case of my lord's decease, not to let anybody come in, not even his lady (who had for some time lodged in the same house with her lord), without an order from the executors.
The keys of the doors were carried to him, and as he saw his death approach, he prepared for it, and, in fact, resigned up the keys of everything to the executors, and having bid them all a farewell, they were dismissed. The physicians waited; but as the verge of life approached, and it was out of their power to do him any service, he gave them a bill of £100 for the care they had taken of him, and dismissed them.
I now went into the chamber, and kneeling by his bedside, kissed him with great earnestness, and begged of him, if ever I had disobliged him in any respect, to forgive me. He sighed, and said he most freely forgave me everything that I had reason to think I had offended him in; but he added, "If you had been so open in your conversation to me before our marriage as to discover your family and way of life, I know not but that I should have married you as I did. I might now have been in a good state of health, and you many years have lived with all the honours due to the Countess de Wintselsheim." These words drew tears from my eyes, and they being the last of any consequence he said, they had the greater impression upon me. He faintly bid me a long farewell, and said, as he had but a few moments to live, he hoped I would retire, and leave him with our son and chaplain. I withdrew into my own chamber, almost drowned in tears, and my son soon followed me out, leaving the chaplain with his father, offering up his prayers to Heaven for the receiving of his soul into the blessed mansions of eternal bliss.
A few minutes after our son went into the chamber with me again, and received his father's last blessing. The chaplain now saw him departing, and was reading the prayer ordered by the Church for that occasion; and while he was doing it, my lord laid his head gently on the pillow, and turning on his left side, departed this life with all the calmness of a composed mind, without so much as a groan, in the fifty-seventh year of his age.
As soon as he was dead an undertaker was sent for, by order of the executors, who met together immediately to open his will, and take care of all my son's effects. I was present when it was opened and read; but how terribly I was frightened at hearing the codicil repeated any person may imagine by the substance of it, which was to this effect; that if I had given me any more after his decease than the £500 he had left me, the £500 left to his executors, and the £1000 of my son's estate (which was now a year's interest), was to be given to such poor families at The Hague as were judged to be in the greatest want of it; not to be divided into equal sums, but every family to have according to their merit and necessity. But this was not all. My son was tied down much harder; for if it was known that he gave me any relief, let my condition be ever so bad, either by himself, by his order, or in any manner of way, device, or contrivance that he could think of, one-half of his estate, which was particularly mentioned, was to devolve to the executors for ever; and if they granted me ever so small a favour, that sum was to be equally divided among the several parishes where they lived, for the benefit of the poor.
Any person would have been surprised to have seen how we all sat staring at each other; for though it was signed by all the executors, yet they did not know the substance of it till it was publicly read, excepting the chaplain; and he, as I mentioned before, had told me the codicil had better never have been added.
I was now in a fine dilemma; had the title of a countess, with £500, and nothing else to subsist on but a very good wardrobe of clothes, which were not looked upon by my son and the executors to be my late lord's property, and which were worth, indeed, more than treble the sum I had left me.
I immediately removed from the lodgings, and left them to bury the body when they thought proper, and retired to a lodging at a private gentleman's house, about a mile from The Hague. I was now resolved to find out Amy, being, as it were, at liberty; and accordingly went to the house where she had lived, and finding that empty, inquired for her among the neighbours, who gave various accounts of what had become of her; but one of them had a direction left at his house where she might be found. I went to the place and found the house shut up, and all the windows broken, the sign taken down, and the rails and benches pulled from before the door. I was quite ashamed to ask for her there, for it was a very scandalous neighbourhood, and I concluded that Amy had been brought to low circumstances, and had kept a house of ill-fame, and was either run away herself, or was forced to it by the officers of justice. However, as nobody knew me here, I went into a shop to buy some trifles, and asked who had lived in the opposite house (meaning Amy's). "Really, madam," says the woman, "I do not well know; but it was a woman who kept girls for gentlemen; she went on in that wickedness for some time, till a gentleman was robbed there of his watch and a diamond ring, on which the women were all taken up, and committed to the house of correction; but the young ones are now at liberty, and keep about the town." "Pray," said I, "what may have become of the old beast that could be the ruin of those young creatures?" "Why, I do not well know," says she; "but I have heard that, as all her goods were seized upon, she was sent to the poorhouse; but it soon after appearing that she had the French disease to a violent degree, was removed to a hospital to be taken care of, but I believe she will never live to come out; and if she should be so fortunate, the gentleman that was robbed, finding that she was the guilty person, intends to prosecute her to the utmost rigour of the law."
I was sadly surprised to hear this character of Amy; for I thought whatever house she might keep, that the heyday of her blood had been over. But I found that she had not been willing to be taken for an old woman, though near sixty years of age; and my not seeing or hearing from her for some time past was a confirmation of what had been told me.