“To others, my example would be fatal, for mine was no common lot.  To meet a Felipe or a Gaston is more than mortals can expect, and therefore the doctrine of society in regard to marriage accords with the natural law.  Woman is weak, and in marrying she ought to make an entire sacrifice of her will to the man who, in return, should lay his selfishness at her feet.  The stir which women of late years have created by their whining and insubordination is ridiculous, and only shows how well we deserve the epithet of children, bestowed by philosophers on our sex.”

She continued talking thus in the gentle voice you know so well, uttering the gravest truths in the prettiest manner, until Gaston entered, bringing with him his sister-in-law, the two children, and the English nurse, whom, at Louise’s request, he had been to fetch from Paris.

“Here are the pretty instruments of my torture,” she said, as her nephews approached.  “Was not the mistake excusable?  What a wonderful likeness to their uncle!”

She was most friendly to Mme. Gaston the elder and begged that she would look upon the chalet as her home; in short, she played the hostess to her in her best de Chaulieu manner, in which no one can rival her.

I wrote at once to the Duc and Duchesse de Chaulieu, the Duc de Rhetore, and the Duc de Lenoncourt-Givry, as well as to Madeleine.  It was time.  Next day, Louise, worn out with so much exertion, was unable to go out; indeed, she only got up for dinner.  In the course of the evening, Madeleine de Lenoncourt, her two brothers, and her mother arrived.  The coolness which Louise’s second marriage had caused between herself and her family disappeared.  Every day since that evening, Louise’s father and both her brothers have ridden over in the morning, and the two duchesses spend all their evenings at the chalet.  Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.

Louise is perfection in her charm, her grace, her good sense, her wit, and her tenderness.  She has retained to the last that perfect tact for which she has been so famous, and she lavishes on us the treasures of her brilliant mind, which made her one of the queens of Paris.

“I should like to look well even in my coffin,” she said with her matchless smile, as she lay down on the bed where she was to linger for a fortnight.

Her room has nothing of the sick-chamber in it; medicines, ointments, the whole apparatus of nursing, is carefully concealed.

“Is not my deathbed pretty!” she said to the Sevres priest who came to confess her.

We gloated over her like misers.  All this anxiety, and the terrible truths which dawned on him, have prepared Gaston for the worst.  He is full of courage, but the blow has gone home.  It would not surprise me to see him follow his wife in the natural course.  Yesterday, as we were walking round the lake, he said to me: 

“I must be a father to those two children,” and he pointed to his sister-in-law, who was taking the boys for a walk.  “But though I shall do nothing to hasten my end, I want your promise that you will be a second mother to them, and will persuade your husband to accept the office of guardian, which I shall depute to him in conjunction with my sister-in-law.”