At length she quitted the Mauritius. During the tedious passage she experienced no attack of fever, and at the beginning of the month of June arrived in London, where she, however, only remained a few weeks. From London she betook herself to Hamburg; but there, too, she could not find rest; and in the month of July she went to Berlin, on the invitation of her friend, the wife of Privy Councilor Weisz, in whose house she was nursed with the tenderest care.
Her brothers sent urgent letters, begging her to come home to her native Vienna, and Madame Maria Reyer, the wife of her brother, Cæsar Reyer, wished to proceed to Berlin for the express purpose of fetching her. But she positively declined this proposal. Although her strength was waning from day to day, she seems to have considered her illness as only temporary, and in this belief she wrote to her brother, expressing a hope that she should soon recover, or at least be in a better condition for traveling, and promised them to come to Vienna.
Still she seemed to yearn secretly for home; and when week after week elapsed without bringing any improvement in her health, she had herself conveyed to the residence of a friend, Baroness Stem, who lived on an estate in the neighborhood of Cracow.
Her illness unhappily increased, and at last, abandoning the hope of a speedy recovery, she consented to be removed to Vienna. Her sister-in-law came for her; and sad indeed was the meeting with her affectionate friend and relative, who found her in such a weak condition as to despair of the possibility of proceeding to Vienna. But as the physician declared that she might undertake the journey, and the sick lady herself showed the greatest anxiety to behold her home once more, she was taken with the greatest care, in a separate railway carriage, to Vienna, to the house of her brother, Charles Reyer, where she arrived in September.
Here several medical consultations were held upon her case, to which her brother summoned the most distinguished physicians of the capital. One and all pronounced that she was suffering from cancer in the liver—a consequence probably of the Madagascar fever; that the disease had deranged and was destroying the internal organs, and that her malady was incurable.
Her native air seemed to do her good; for a few weeks she suffered but little pain, and new hope awoke within her; she even spoke of undertaking short journeys, and visiting her friends in Grätz, Trieste, and other places. But this restlessness was probably only a symptom of her disease, for her strength gave way more and more; violent pains came on, which continued almost without intermission during the last four weeks of her life, and frequently she sank into delirium.
She was most affectionately tended and nursed in her brother’s house, under the especial supervision of her sister-in-law, whose affection for her was so great as to keep her continually by the sufferer’s bedside; and a few days before her death she had the happiness to embrace her eldest son, who lived in Steyermark, and hastened to Vienna upon the first intelligence of his mother’s serious illness.
During the last days of her life opiates were administered to lessen her sufferings, and in the night between the 27th and 28th of October she expired peacefully, and apparently without pain.
Her funeral took place on the 30th of the same month. Besides a very numerous gathering of relations and personal friends, many scientific notabilities and other distinguished inhabitants of Vienna followed her to the grave. Peace be to her ashes!