“‘They are very good,’ she said; ‘support them with all your love for me.’
“Then delirium coming on again, ‘How do you think they feel with respect to the house of Jacob?’
“I assured her that they entered into all her feelings.
“‘Ah!’ she replied, ‘my feelings are very moderate, except those I have for you.’
“Twice only her excitement became intense. It was then the wanderings of maternal love. One day George, to prevent her speaking too much, had for several hours kept away from her room. When he came in again, she evidently thought he had just returned from the army. The wildness of her joy on seeing him made her heart beat in a fearful manner. Another time she fell into an ecstasy of joy at the thought of an anniversary dear to our hearts—of the day when, twenty-eight years before, she had given me George. That anniversary was the day of her death.
“One cannot admire sufficiently the meekness, the patience, the unchanging kindness of that angelic woman during this long and cruel malady. In her delirium, which lasted a whole month, she was always thinking of us and fearing to weary her friends. ‘I am very troublesome,’ she would often say; ‘my children,’ she one day added, ‘must make up their mind to have a silly mother since you are willing to have such a silly wife.’ But never the slightest sign of impatience nor of ill humor. Even when it was most repugnant to her to drink anything, a word from me or from her children, or, in our absence, the idea that the nurse might be blamed, sufficed to decide her; and up to the last, each service was acknowledged by a kind word, a motion of the head or of the hand.
“‘Never,’ the doctor said, ‘have I seen in the course of a long practice anything to be compared to that adorable disposition and to delirium so extraordinary. No, never have I seen anything which could give me the idea that human perfection could go so far.’
“A few moments before she breathed her last she murmured to us that she was not suffering. ‘No doubt she does not suffer,’ exclaimed the nurse; ‘she is an angel.’
“It was very remarkable to what a degree her wanderings corresponded with the different shades of her affection. When I was concerned, her judgment was always sound. Though placing us all in the most fantastic situations, her mind was never at fault with respect to my principles and feelings. She would exclaim, ‘Decide; you are leader; it is our happy lot to obey you.’ One day I was attempting to calm her; she gayly repeated this verse:—
“‘A vos sages conseils, Seigneur, je m’abandonne.’