From this moment, a complete change was wrought in her whole manner. Her habitual melancholy gave way to a cheering serenity, which was as consoling as it was agreeable and charming to all around her. Her children and her many friends were greatly struck with the visible effects which divine grace had so evidently produced in her soul.
She now wished, for her more rapid advancement in perfection, to place her conscience entirely under the direction of the saintly Abbé Overberg. She was not content to have him merely as her confessor, but she wished to enter on the same relations—to have the same intimate friendship with him—as existed between St. Vincent de Paul and Mme. de Gondi, St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal, St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa. Though she had written to him several times on the subject of her direction, yet she never dared fully to propose her project to him, lest he might reject her request altogether. However, she took courage at last, and, to her great joy, she was not disappointed.
This holy priest took up his residence in her palace in 1789, and remained there, in the capacity of chaplain, even after her death.
In the following year, Hemsterhuys, her old friend and preceptor, died; and in this year, also, the young Prince Dmitri, having finished an education which would have fitted him for any position or profession in life, took leave of his mother, to commence, in accordance with the fashion, his post-educational travels. For what particular reason he turned his steps toward the New World does not appear. It was during the voyage that he resolved to embrace and profess the Catholic faith. But Providence had designed for him more than a visit to the United States; his life and his labors in our country have made the name of Galitzin a familiar and much-loved word to American Catholics.
In 1803, the husband of the princess died suddenly at Brunswick. This loss she felt most keenly. He had ever been to her a good and indulgent husband, yielding, with even an abundance of good nature, to all her plans, and never interfering with the various projects of her life. We may suppose, too, that her grief was deepened as his unexpected death suddenly blighted all her hopes for his conversion.
But sore trials of another kind yet awaited her. The property of the prince, which, by the marriage contract, should have reverted to her in trust for her children, was seized by his relatives. Penury threatened her for a time, but her appeal was, at length, heard by the Emperor Alexander, and the property was restored.
Meanwhile, she began to suffer from a painful malady which produced hypochondria. The patient, plaintless manner in which she bore her pains; above all, the calm of mind which she preserved in that terrible physical malady which poisons every pleasure and clouds every brightness of life, shows what a high state of perfection she had already attained. Religion was now her solace and her succor. By the perfection of her resignation to the divine will, she not only succeeded in concealing from her friends her painful state, by joining cheerfully in every conversation and pastime; but she cheered the melancholy and depression of others without once evincing that she herself was a victim to its living martyrdom.
With equal fortitude, she was bearing at the same time yet a harder trial. It is always wounding enough to our feelings to have our actions misappreciated, our whole conduct misunderstood, by persons merely indifferent to us. But what is there harder to endure in life than to be misunderstood by those to whom we were once tenderly devoted, to whom we were bound in the closest friendship of intimacy, and to bear their consequent coldness and slights, and sometimes cruel wrongs? Yet this pang was added to the other trials of Princess Amelia. But her great charity checked every human feeling. She was never heard to complain of any neglect, or even the annoying treatment of false friends, and she never sought to soothe the sorrow of her tender heart by any human consolations. In a letter regarding the Abbé de Furstenberg, she described beautifully the rule of charity she followed in this sorest of her trials. Whenever the memory of her slighted friendship would send a pang through her soul, her love of God was her first resource; then she resolved never to intensify the sorrow of the moment by indulging in any dreams of the imagination with regard to an irremediable past, or in any speculations whatever on the subject which would strengthen her sorrow or tend to an uncharitable feeling.
Thus, in these purifying trials, were passed the last years of her life; and when, at length, the gold of her merits was made pure enough in the crucible to be moulded into her crown of glory, she rested from her sorrows.
In 1806, she died the death of the holy, and, at her own request, she was buried beneath the chapel of her country-house at Angelmodde, near Münster.