Not that her constitution showed any immediate sign of the shock it had sustained, or broke down at once. Her physical appearance remained unchanged, but death entered her soul and lurked there henceforward, as sometimes it lies under the depths of waters which flow calmly to outward seeming. She made her will.
From that moment Claire Pradier lived like those resigned invalids who, raising their gaze to the heaven above them, no longer heed the passing of the hours, while they await the supreme summons. She waited. Her mother, seeing her still apparently healthy, failed to realise her condition, and took the beginning of this mute colloquy with death for a mere return of her daughter’s former depression. Nevertheless, an incident which happened in the month of February 1846 gave to Juliette also one of those presentiments which cannot deceive. Like Claire, she waited.
It was not for long. On March 21st, 1846, having gone to St. Mandé to see the young assistant mistress, she took with her the design and material for a piece of work Victor Hugo had asked for. The idea was to embroider his family coat of arms on coarse canvas, in colours selected by himself. This complicated heraldic work was to adorn the backs of two Gothic arm-chairs in his rooms in the Place Royale.
Contrary to her usual habit, Claire showed very little interest in the poet’s plans; she listened absently and spoke very little. A dry cough shook her frame from time to time, her cheeks burned with fever. Juliette walked home by way of the Avenue de Bel-Air, the Barrière du Trône, and the Faubourg St. Antoine. Victor Hugo, who was always anxious about her, was to meet her half-way. He did so; she was walking slowly, with bent head, and when he asked for news of his embroidery, she burst into tears. The poet understood in an instant. By his instructions, Claire was removed to Rue St. Anastase the very next day; Triger, her mother’s doctor, was instructed to visit her daily. Not venturing to pronounce at once the dread name of consumption, he spoke of a chill and chlorosis. Claire scarcely heeded, and indicated by a feeble gesture that she was too spent to care. The head she tried to raise from the pillow, fell back as if too heavy for the frail neck. Her large dark eyes gazed through space at some melancholy vision. Her hands upon the white sheets hardly retained strength to clasp themselves in a caress or a prayer.
She begged that Pradier might be informed of her illness. He wrote first, and then came. He demonstrated his affection by theatrical gestures and well-chosen words. Then he placed a villa, which he said he possessed at Auteuil, at the disposal of the invalid and her mother. The so-called villa proved to be one floor in a tenement house, 57, Rue de La Fontaine. Claire was taken there in the early part of May. Her mother accompanied her. Victor Hugo visited them nearly every day, but neither the compliments of “Monsieur Toto” nor the roses he brought his ex-pupil, nor the exhortations of Doctor Louis, whom he brought with him one day, were successful in restoring colour to the countenance of one whose blood-spitting left her every day paler and more exhausted. Claire hardly dared raise herself in bed; icy sweats drenched her, and she moaned continuously, in a manner terribly painful to those who were forced to stand by, helpless.
On June 6th, she asked to see the Vicar of St. Mandé, her confessor. On the 16th, she received the Last Sacraments. On the 18th, delirium supervened, and she expired on the 21st. They buried the girl in the first place at Auteuil, but when her will was read, in which she had written, “I desire to be buried in the cemetery of Saint-Mandé. I also beg that Monsieur l’Abbé Chaussotte should celebrate my funeral Mass, and that green grass should be grown on my grave,” Victor Hugo and Pradier agreed to have the coffin exhumed. The ceremony took place on July 11th. Juliette, who was more dead than alive, was not present; but Victor Hugo and Pradier walked together behind the funeral car, leading the white procession of Claire’s young pupils and companions. The sculptor, always full of intentions, plans, and chatter, discoursed in a low voice of the magnificent tomb he would raise with his own hands to the memory of his daughter. It should be, he said, “a sacred debt; I shall execute it with so much love that my chisel will never before have fashioned anything so chaste or so beautiful.”