“It is not papa? Where is papa?” and the little lips quivered.
“Where I shall soon see him, dear Eleonore! I am going to leave you. Never forget your poor mother.” She then kissed the child several times. “There is some of papa’s hair in the locket around my neck.” Then addressing the gentlemen, she added: “Take it when I am gone—not till then.”
Madame Eboli then sank into a stupor, in which she lay for half an hour; then opening her eyes, she only said:
“Gustave says come! . . . . My child we will watch over thee. . . . . Protect her, she is so young—so innocent. I come, Gustave—I come!”
And the angel of death passed by and received her last breath. Sixteen summers had found her a child, eighteen a woman, and at twenty she was laid where the aged sleep.
“Be her sleep calm and deep,
Like theirs who fell, not ours who weep.”[[2]]
| [2] | That same night, in the adjoining room of the hospital, died the son of Marmontel, from the effects of exposure and hunger. He had been traveling over North America, when from some cause his remittances from France were discontinued. He found himself at Albany utterly without resources. Leaving his trunk there, he walked to New York in hopes of finding the money, or of borrowing some from the French consul. His journey was a lone and toilsome one, and the exposure to the cold induced the return of a fever from which he had but lately recovered at the West. The French consul treated him harshly, disbelieved his story, and sent him to the hospital. The day after his death a large sum directed to him, was received through a packet-ship, which had been detained at sea by a succession of disasters, two months longer than her usual time. |
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