The cheerful aspect of nature seemed to echo the brightness of my thoughts. The heights of Mérix were bathed in the rosy hues of morning; in the sky appeared the first golden threads of the sun; in the plain the slight fragrance of the dew, perfumed breezes, and the warbling of the birds.
We saluted in passing the little cross where the brother and sister took such a tender adieu of each other, where Eugénie preserved so long the impression that the horse's foot made in the plastic soil. One Christmas Eve, going to midnight Mass, she gathered, in her simple piety, some branches covered with hoar-frost from the bushes which grow along this road, which she wished to place before the Blessed Sacrament—a scene which she described with so much freshness and charming grace:
"We all went to midnight Mass, papa in advance—the night was superb. Never had there been a more beautiful midnight, so much so that papa put his head out from his mantle several times to look at the firmament. The ground was covered with hoar-frost, but we did not feel the cold, and then the air was warmed in front of us by the torches which our servants carried to light the way. It was charming, I assure you, and I only wish you could have been with us, going to church along these roads bordered with little bushes, as white as if they were all in bloom. The hoar-frost makes beautiful flowers. We saw a branch so lovely that we wished to make a bouquet for the Blessed Sacrament, but it melted in our hand. All flowers are short-lived. I regretted my bouquet: it was sad to see it melt, and dissolve drop by drop."
Going along, Mlle. de Guérin told me of the last sickness and death of her sister. Two years before, her health became seriously affected; it was in vain that the physician sent her to the waters of Cauterets, to seek the strength which would never more return.
She felt her end approaching; but she did not tremble; in her complete resignation, there was no place for fear. As she watched the span of life gradually diminish, she seemed to fold within herself, like the sensitive plant; wrapped around her the mantle of holy recollection, in which great souls envelope themselves at the approach of that supreme contemplation which she foresaw. She talked but little, prayed much, and smiled rarely. Her little room had become the cell of a religious; she lived there cloistered, only leaving it to go to church. Prayer was her recreation, the Holy Eucharist her food.
"I wish to die after having received the holy communion," said she a short time before her death. They noticed that she looked often toward Andillac, where she was going so soon to dwell. The swallow is compelled to fly away on the eve of winter; the winter of death was approaching.
She took cold going to Mass on the Epiphany, and returned home with a fever, which increased rapidly. Inflammation of the lungs supervened, which hurried her to the portal of death in a few days. After having received the holy Viaticum, "I can die now," sighed she with a celestial smile. "Adieu, my dear Marie!" And as she felt the tears tremble in her eyes, at seeing her so overcome with grief, she embraced her, and said, while turning her head away to conceal her emotion, "Ah! do not let us be sad!" as if she was afraid of weakening the generosity of her sacrifice.
Such was the appointed end of Mlle. Eugénie de Guérin. She died like a saint, "as the angels would die, if they were not immortals," said one of her friends.
We arrived at Andillac.
"Mosou Ritou"—M. le Curé—"is he in the rectory?" asked Mlle. de Guérin in patois of the old servant, as she entered with the familiarity of an habituée.