“The foreboding of her loss had before never crossed my mind until I received a note from Madame de Tessé as I was leaving Chavaniac with George. I was struck to the heart. On arriving in Paris after a rapid journey, we found her very ill; there was a slight improvement the next day, which I attributed to the pleasure of seeing us; but soon afterwards her head was affected. She said to Madame de Simiane, ‘I was going to have a malignant fever, but I shall be well attended to, and shall get the better of it.’
“It was not a malignant fever; but unhappily it was something still worse. One day only Corvisart had great hopes. Our dear invalid was already beginning to wander when her confessor came to see her. In the evening she told me: ‘If I go to another dwelling, you know how much I shall think of you there. Although I shall leave you with reluctance, the sacrifice of my life would be little if it could insure your eternal happiness.’
“The day she received the sacrament she was anxious to see me near her. Delirium came on afterwards; you never saw anything so extraordinary and so touching. Imagine, my dear friend, a mind completely disordered, thinking itself in Egypt, in Syria, amongst the events of the reign of Athalie, which Celestine’s lessons had left in her imagination, strangely blending every idea that was not from the heart; in short, the most constant delirium, and withal that kindness which always seeks for something pleasing to say. There was also a refinement in the way she expressed herself, a loftiness of thought which astonished every one. But what was admirable above all was that tenderness of heart which she was incessantly showing to her six children, to her sister, to her aunt, to M. de Tessé: she thought she was with them at Memphis; for, by a miracle of feeling, her mind was never invariably fixed but where I was concerned. It seemed as if that impression was too deep to be obliterated, was stronger than sickness, stronger than death itself. Life had already fled; feeling, warmth, existence, all had taken refuge in the hand which pressed mine. Perhaps she did even yield to her affection and her tenderness more completely than if she had had the full possession of her faculties.
“Do not imagine that the dear angel was alarmed at the thought of a future world. Her religion was all love and confidence; the fear of hell never came near her mind. She did not believe in it for beings good, sincere, and virtuous, whatever their opinions might be. ‘I do not know what will happen at the moment of their death,’ she would say; ‘but God will enlighten them.’
“However, had her mind been clear, she would have thought of what she called her péchés, though she did not believe in any other divine punishment than that of being deprived of the sight of the Supreme Being.
“And how often have you heard me joking her about her aimables hérésies. Who knows whether the fear of increasing my regret would not have partly restrained the outpouring of her feelings, in the same manner as when, during our married life, her utter unselfishness prevented her from yielding to what was most impassioned in her nature? ‘There was a period,’ she said a few months ago, ‘when, after one of your returns from America, I felt myself so forcibly attracted to you that I thought I should faint every time you came into the room. I was possessed with the fear of annoying you, and tried to moderate my feelings. You can scarcely be dissatisfied with what remains.’
“‘What gratitude I owe to God,’ she would repeat during her illness, ‘that such passionate feelings should have been a duty. How happy I have been!’ she said the day of her death. ‘What a lot to be your wife!’ And when I spoke to her of my tenderness, she answered in a touching tone: ‘Is it true? Is it indeed true? How good you are! Repeat it again; it does me so much good to hear you. If you do not find yourself sufficiently loved, lay the fault upon God; He has not given me more faculties than that I love you,’ she said, in the midst of her delirium, ‘Christianly, humanly, passionately.’
“When she was pitied for her sufferings, the fear of exaggerating them to herself and to others would come upon her. One day as I was watching her with a look of pity, ‘Oh! I am overpaid,’ she said, ‘by that kind look.’
“She often begged of me to remain in the room, because my presence calmed her. Sometimes, however, she would ask me to go and attend to my business; and when I answered that I had nothing else to do than to take care of her, ‘How good you are,’ she would exclaim with her feeble though pénétrante voice; ‘you are too kind; you spoil me; I do not deserve all that; I am too happy!’
“Her delirium was intense. It bore principally on the reign of Athalie, on the family of Jacob, in which she liked to persuade herself that I was tenderly beloved, on the contentions of Israel and Judah. ‘Would it not be strange,’ she said, ‘if, being your wife, I were obliged to sacrifice myself for a king?’