March 20, 1871.
God be with us!
Dear Lady Margaret, our so dear, beautiful, and perfect Georgina has departed from us for ever!
I cannot leave to any one else the sorrow of acquainting you with this fresh bereavement.... Shall I have strength for it? I feel as if my heart were enclosed in the tomb where my children rest.
A pernicious fever has carried from us this most lovable creature, who has been amongst us like an apparition from heaven. She is now reunited to him whom she so loved and mourned, and she who had “unlearnt happiness” is happy now! This thought is necessary to sustain those who remain. You know what she was to me—the most loving, devoted, and piously amiable of daughters; you know what she was to all—an adviser, a comforter, and a light. And all this in a few hours has vanished from us. Who shall console us for the loss of this angelic child, the very sight of whom was a consolation?
Dear friend, she thought of you; she murmured your name in her last prayer. God, the church, France, Ireland, and all those who loved her, by turns were on her lips; the voluntary victim of charity, she accepted death with gladness. You who were her sister, kind Lady Margaret, would that you had been with us at that time which was at once both sweet and cruel! Ah! tears are not permitted to me; the place of angels is in heaven.
Do not think of returning to us until peace is definitely established. Alas! only a few days since we were forming a project to go and take you by surprise. Henceforth I quit Brittany no more—my Campo Santo, as my beloved daughter called it.
Oh! how she must pray for our sorrows on high.
On the morning of the last day she twice repeated to me these beautiful words of the Père Lacordaire: “However hard may be the separations of this world, there always remains to us Him who is its author, who has given and who removes us, who never fails, in whom we shall all be one day reunited by the faith and charity which he has given us.”
And a few minutes before breathing the last sigh she said: “Mother, I asked that I might die for France; it was a sacrifice, because of leaving you. Now all regret has disappeared from my heart; I am going to see Mad, Gertrude, Kate, René—and God!”