E. H. Bearne
AMSTERDAM
M. de Genlis, who had also a post at the Palais Royal, was nursing her, and her mother came every day to see her.
The child died at five o’clock one morning. “At the same hour,” she writes, “of the same day, I was alone with my nurse, and, raising my eyes to the canopy of my bed, I distinctly saw my son in the form of an angel ... holding out his arms to me. This vision, without exciting any suspicions, caused me great surprise. I rubbed my eyes several times, but always saw the same figure. My mother and M. de Genlis came at about eleven; they were overcome with grief, but I was not surprised, for I knew I was ill enough to make them very anxious. I could not help looking always at the canopy of my bed with a sort of shudder, and my mother, knowing that I was afraid of spiders, asked if I saw one ... at last I said I would not tell them what I saw lest they should think my brain was deranged, but they pressed me until I told them.”
They concealed the calamity for five weeks, and then brought her a miniature of the child as an angel.
Félicité recovered, and went to Spa, and to travel in Belgium. After her return, as she was walking one day in the Palais Royal gardens, she met a young girl with a woman of seven or eight and thirty, who stopped and gazed at her with an earnest look. Suddenly she exclaimed—
“It is Mlle. Mars!” Embracing each other with joy, they arranged to meet the following day, and Mlle. Mars presented herself accordingly at the Palais Royal, where they spent the morning talking of old times and of present circumstances. Mlle. Mars was not very happy where she now lived, and Félicité succeeded in placing her as governess to the children of the Princess Louise de Condé, meanwhile seeing her every day. She married soon afterwards.
About this time she arranged for her brother an excellent marriage which turned out very happily. She had the young people to live with her at first, and M. de Genlis was extremely kind to them; but at the end of some months Mme. de Montesson, in whom she had contrived to arouse an interest in them, took them to live permanently with her.
As Saint-Aubin had long been sold, her brother now called himself M. Ducrest.