“I have this year formed the habit of going to Mass before light. It is better to snatch the first moments of the day from the bustle and pleasures of the world, and first render to God the things that are God’s, and then to the world what belongs to the world. I sometimes find it hard to go out in all kinds of weather from my warm room to attend what is called the servants’ Mass, to which the poor go; but are we not all poor in divine grace, and all servants to our parents, our husbands, and our children? I am abundantly repaid by the recollection I feel in the dim church, the fervor of my prayers, and the calmness and strength I derive from the Divine Presence which accompanies me throughout the day after thus fulfilling a paramount obligation.”
Only a short time before the dreadful accident that caused her death, Madame de Lamartine thus reviews her past life, as if conscious of her approaching end:
“Milly, October 21, 1829.—To-day the birth-day of my first-born. I am here alone, and have consecrated the day to meditation to strengthen my soul and prepare it for death. How many times in my life I have paced up and down this alley of meditation, where no one can see me from the house, with my rosary in my clasped hands, meditating or praying! Alas! what would have become of me in all my interior and exterior trials had God not visited me in my meditations, and suggested holier and more consoling thoughts than my own! It is a great grace to have this facility for recollection in God, which has inclined me almost every day of my life to consecrate some hours, or at least some minutes, in thinking exclusively of him. He loves these heart-to-heart appeals to his divine compassion. He inclines his ear to listen to the pulsations of the pious heart that turns toward him! I felt this more than ever to-day, and came away all bathed in tears, without perceiving it while walking in the alley. It seemed as if my whole life passed before me, and before him who is my Creator and Judge!
“Oh! may his judgment, which is approaching, be merciful.
“I saw myself, as if but yesterday, a child playing in the broad alleys of St. Cloud; then, still young, a canoness, praying and chanting in the Chapel at Salles, undecided whether to make my vows like my companions, and consecrate my whole life to praising God in a place of retreat between the world and eternity; I saw my husband, young and handsome, come in his rich uniform to visit his sister, Madame de Villars, the canoness, under whose care I had been placed because she was older and more reasonable than I. I saw his attention was particularly directed to me above all the rest, and that he profited by every opportunity of visiting his sister at the chapter. As for me, I was struck with his noble features, his somewhat military air, his frankness of expression, and a haughtiness that seemed only to unbend toward me; I remember the emotion of joy shut up in my heart when he at length asked through his sister if I would consent to his demanding me in marriage; then, our first interview in his sister’s presence, our walks in the environs of the chapter with the elder canonesses, his openly expressed wish to marry me, and the continued opposition, and the many tears shed in the presence of God during three years of uncertainty to obtain the miracle of his family’s consent, which appeared impossible; finally, our years of happiness in this poor solitude of Milly, then much more humble than at present; my despair when, scarcely married, he desperately sacrificed all, even me, to fulfil his duty at Paris, defending as a simple volunteer the palace of the king on the 10th of August: the divine protection which enabled him to escape covered with blood from the garden of the Tuileries, his flight, his return here, his imprisonment, my apprehensions as to his life, my visits to the wicket of the prison, where I took my son to kiss him through the bars; my walking with my child in my arms, through the streets of Lyons and Dijon, to appeal to the rude representatives of the people, a word from whom was life or death to me; the fall of Robespierre; the return to Milly, the successive births of my seven children, their education, their marriages, the vanishing of those two angels from earth, for whose loss the remainder cannot console me!
“And now the repose after so much weariness! Repose, yes, but old age also, for I am growing old, whatever they say. These trees that I planted; the ivy I set out on the north side of the house that my son might not tell an untruth in his Harmonies where he describes Milly, and which now covers the whole wall from the cellar to the roof; these walls themselves covered with moss; these cedars which were no higher than my daughter Sophie when she was four years of age, but under which I can now walk—all this tells me I am growing old! The graves of the old peasants whom I knew when young, which I pass as I go to church, tell me plainly this world is not my abiding-place. My final resting-place will soon be prepared. I cannot refrain from tears when I think of leaving all, especially my poor husband, the faithful companion of my early years, who is not feeble, but suffers and needs me now to suffer, as he once needed me to be happy! My children, my dear children! Alphonse, his wife, by her affection and virtue, a sixth daughter; Cécile and her charming children, a third generation of hearts that love and must be loved! And then those who are wanting, but who follow me like my shadow in the Alley of Meditation! Alas! my Césarine, my pride on account of her marvellous beauty, buried far away behind that Alpine horizon which continually recalls her remembrance! Alas! my Suzanne, the saint who wore too soon the aureola on her brow, and whom God took from me that her memory might be for me an image of one of his angels of purity! Dead or absent ones, I am here alone, having borne my fruit—some fallen to the ground like that of yonder trees, and others removed far from me by the Husbandman of the Gospel! Ah! what thoughts attract me, pursue me in this garden, and then force me to leave it when they cause my heart and my eyes to overflow! Ah! this is truly my Garden of Olives!
“O my Saviour! has not every soul such a garden? Alas, yes! this was my garden of delights—and now it is laid waste and desolate. It is my Garden of Olives where I come to watch before my death! And yet it is dear to me, in spite of the vacancies time and death have made around me, even while seeking beneath yonder linden-trees for the white dresses of my children, and listening for their gay voices exclaiming over an insect or a flower in their border!
“What had I done that God should bestow on me this corner of the earth, and this small house, of whose size and barrenness I was sometimes ashamed, but which proved so sweet a nest for my numerous brood? Ah! his name be blessed! his name be blessed! and after me may it still shelter those who will always be a part of me.
“But I hear the bell at Bussières ringing the Angelus.
“Let us leave all this—it is better to pray than to write. I will dry my tears, and all alone in my alley I will say the rosary, to which my little daughters used to respond as they followed me, but which only the sparrows in their nests and the falling leaves now hear. No; no, no, it is not good to give way too much to tears. I must keep my strength for duties to be accomplished—for we have duties even on the death-bed.