"He was hungry and faint, and asked me for his cordial, which I brought him. As he perspired much, I said to him, 'My dear, do not put out your arm; I will feed you like an infant.' A smile came upon his lips, where I laid the spoon, where I made to pass the last food he took. Thus I have been able to serve him once more, to give him my care another time. He was given back to me dying. I marked it as a favour of God, granted to my love as a sister, that I have rendered to this dear brother the last services to the soul and body, since I prepared him for the last sacraments, and made his last nourishment: food for both lives. This seems nothing, is nothing, in fact, for any one else. It is for me alone to observe it, and to thank Providence for these relations taken up again with my dear Maurice before he left us. Sad and indefinable compensation for so many months of passive friendship! Was I wrong in wishing to serve him? Who knows?…
"The invalid, it seemed to me, was better. His eyes, open again, had not the startling fixed appearance of the morning, nor was his intellect feeble; he appeared morally revived, and in full enjoyment of his faculties throughout the ceremonies. He followed everything with his heart, very devoutly…. He pressed the hand of the Curé, who continued to speak to him of heaven, put to his lips a cross that his wife offered him, and then began to sink. We all kissed him, and he died, Friday morning, July 19, 1839, at half-past eleven. It was eleven days after our arrival at Le Cayla—eight months after his marriage."
With the life of her brother the brightness of that of Eugénie passed away. Though they had been destined to be so much separated, she had lived for him. After he was gone she was possessed by thoughts of him, and a desire to do justice to his memory and genius became the dominating power of her life. Returning from his graveside, she sits down to open a fresh page in her journal, heading it: "Still to him—to Maurice dead, to Maurice in heaven. He was the glory and the joy of my heart. Oh, it is a sweet name and full of dilection, the name of brother." On this, his burial day, she writes: "No, my brother, death shall not separate us, nor take thee from my thought: death separates only the body; the soul instead of being there is in heaven, but this change of abode takes away nothing of its affections. They are far from that, I hope; they love better in heaven, where all is glorified. Oh, my dear Maurice, Maurice! Art thou far from me? Dost thou hear me?"
In the midst of her profound grief it was a source of great consolation to Eugénie that her brother had returned to the faith and love of his early days. Her letters to her friends are henceforth full of Maurice. Memories of him throng her thought, and find outlet only in outpourings of tender love; reflections on the sadness, the partings of life, the hopes of reunion in the life to come, which alone sustained her; prayers for the peace of the departed soul. Her life for the future was to be more intensely spiritual. One earthly care only was left—her brother's memory. She continued her journal for some months, still writing to Maurice as if for his eye. This may seem to be unnatural, arising from an oversensitive and morbid state of mind. She, indeed, came to this conclusion herself; and, after a time, addressed her journal no longer to her brother, but to his latest friend at Paris.
The genius of Maurice de Guérin, so slowly recognised during his life, began to be acknowledged after his death. Madame Georges Sand wrote an appreciative review in an essay upon his life, poems, and letters in the Revue des Deux Mondes of May, 1840. Other articles followed. His contributions, journal, letters, and fragments were collected, as far as possible, with the idea of publishing a book of his literary remains. Eugénie herself made a journey to Paris for the purpose of furthering the design. She rejoiced in the idea of justice being done to her brother's memory, and the true side of his character presented to the world. Her hopes were, however, doomed to disappointment. The latest entry in her journal is made the last day of the year 1840, and is: "My God, how sad is time, whether it be that which goes or that which comes! And how right the saint was when he said, Let us throw our hearts in eternity."
Difficulties in the way of the publication of her brother's writings arose from one cause or another, and, after a long sojourn in Paris and Nevers, she was obliged to return home to Le Cayla with the remaining ambition of her life unfulfilled. A large collection of papers, which had been placed in the hands of her brother's friend, were neglected, and difficulty was experienced in getting them returned. When eventually, through the intervention of a friend, they were restored, the design had been abandoned.
Time, meanwhile, brought its inevitable changes in the quiet home of Le Cayla. Her friend Louise de Bayne left her home among the mountains to be married to a husband whom she accompanied to Algiers, Caroline returned to India; her brother Erembert married, and baby feet came again to resound within the old walls. But Eugénie's heart was in the tomb with her dead brother and her buried hopes. Her health declined. She died at Le Cayla on May 31, 1848. A short time before she died, it is said that she gave the key of a certain drawer to her sister, requesting her to burn the papers she would find there, and adding, "All is but vanity."
What the devoted sister failed to see accomplished during her life has, happily, been done since. The surviving sister, with the help of friends, set herself to the task not only of rescuing from oblivion the writings of Maurice, but also those of the gifted Eugénie herself. The "Journal, Letters, and Poems" of Maurice published in 1860, has passed through many editions. This was followed by the journal of Eugénie, and afterwards by her letters, both of which have had a still greater popularity than the works of Maurice. These books contain truly the record of a soul's life. Their character is to some extent shown by the extracts contained herein; but their real value is only to be seen, and their charm enjoyed, by a loving perusal. Her letters have a grace entirely their own. Her journal reveals a depth of thought, a wonderful insight into and appreciation of truth and beauty, a store of devotional reflection, which render it a work of rare worth. Literary fame was far from her thoughts. If she wrote at all it must be gracefully. She says: "I often ask myself, of what profit is all this writing, but that it pleases Maurice, who finds his sister there. Still, if it affords me innocent amusement; pauses of rest in the day's work. If I garner these my flowers, gathered in solitude, my thoughts, my reflections, that God sends me for instruction and comfort, there is no harm in it. And if some one finds here and there a true thought, and feels it, and is better for it, though only for a moment, I shall have done good—the good I want to do."
It is, however, in Eugénie's memory as a sister that this record of her is here given. And she stands out for all time as an example of one of the world's most devoted sisters. Her depth of love, her intense sympathy, her self-sacrificing zeal, her unswerving purpose, her deep piety, were all directed or intensified by the master passion of her soul—the love of her brother—and we cannot but believe that such love brings its reward, that is not only for time, but that, immortal as its origin, it has, at last, been fully satisfied.
W. Speaight & Sons, Printers, Fetter Lane, London.