The marriage was a secret, kept until disclosed in her will after her death. We gain a glimpse of the morals of the day that is a shock to our ideas of decorum, when we read in the same paragraph of his residence at Coppet; his companionship in her travels, and that their son was born without the revelation of their relation as husband and wife.
It was not until our third trip to Coppet that we were able to see the bust of De Rocca in one of the upper rooms not shown to strangers while the family are at home. It is a beautiful head, with a sweet manliness of look that excuses the seemingly absurd union, to susceptible lady-visitors.
Neither then, nor at any other time, could we prevail upon any employé of the De Broglies (Madame de Staël’s grandson now owns the estate) to unlock the rusty gate of the family cemetery across the road. It is environed by neglected commons, and the brick wall is, at least, ten feet high. It looks like a fortified forest, so dense is the unpruned foliage of the tall trees. We walked all around it, each recalling something he, or she had heard or read of the burial-chapel of the Neckars so safely hidden in the heart of the wood. Of Neckar’s tomb and recumbent statue, and his wife’s at his side. Of their daughter’s request that her grave might not be made a show-place, and the pious respect accorded by her son and daughter and their descendants to a wish so incongruous with the passion for notoriety that swayed her from the nursery to the death-bed.
She had suffered intensely in her latest years. Natural nervousness was aggravated by the use of opium in such quantities to dull severe paroxysms of pain, that it lost its effect as a sedative. She seemed to have forgotten how to sleep. But her mind retained its strength and clearness.
“I know now,” she said, “what the passage from life to death is. The goodness of God makes it easy. Our thoughts become indistinct. The pain is not great.”
The habit of analytical thought was strong to the last.
In spite of the sternly-barred gates, prying curiosity has found its way to the sequestered chapel. At one angle of the wall, out of sight of the house, bricks have been picked out at intervals to supply a foothold for the climber, and the coping is fractured. A gentleman of our party put his toe into a crevice and looked over.
“More than one person has passed in this way,” he said. “The grass is trampled and the underbrush broken. The place is a jungle of matted bushes and large trees.”
He stepped back gently to the ground, and we strolled on.
“Hic tandem quiescit, quæ nunquam quievit,” reads her tombstone. The embosoming trees; the lofty wall; the locked gate are not without their meaning.