"This is the day of the funeral, and it pours torrents, without a moment's respite. I am vexed to the last degree by this rain, which will greatly interfere with the programme. The government and the newspapers are disgusting. Good-by, dear méchante. If you don't write, I'll not love you any the less; but I shall be very angry with you." "Dear, very dear friend," she writes to Madame Cheuvreux, in a moment of great depression, "it is difficult for a letter to do any one more good than yours has done me; above all, as a proof of your old and large and tender and loyal friendship. Oh, how good it is to have such a friendship when one is in sorrow like mine!" She rebounded now and then, and never nursed her grief morbidly; but her sorrow remained inconsolable to the last. Her faculties had continued unimpaired up to this period, but the decay of memory, which set in soon after M. Mohl's death, went on rapidly to almost total loss. tures, under the sofa-cushions, and in other unlikely places: sometimes twenty, thirty, forty thousand francs were spread about the drawing-room in this fashion. Then she would forget where she had hid the money, and would fancy it had been stolen, and spend the day in a state of despair, looking for it; afraid to say anything to her servants, but confiding her trouble to any friend who came in, and who would help in the search. When the money was all found she was like a child that had got back its lost penny. Yet even in this sad mental decay, which invaded the morale, increasing to mania a natural tendency to stinginess, Madame Mohl's heart retained its native warmth. She never grew to love her money better than her friends. Her affection for Mrs. Wynne Finch had grown much deeper and tenderer since that courageous friend had warned her that M. Mohl was dying. She was always entreating Mrs. Wynne Finch to come and dine with her. "My dear," she would say, "I never have any dinner to speak of for myself, but don't you be afraid on that account. There is a capital pastry-cook's opposite, and I will send across for any dishes you like, and they will be here piping hot in five minutes. So come whenever you can, and be sure you can never come amiss." And fabulously economical as she had grown towards herself, she would gladly have paid many times a week for these piping hot dishes for her friend. She forgot events from one day to another completely. She would go down of a morning to Madame d'Abbadie, who lived on the floor below her, and exclaim in sudden agitation, "My dear, I want you to give me the address of your man of business. I want him to invest my money for me. I don't know what to do with it, and I am afraid it will all be lost." She would take down the name and address, and go away re- Sometimes she forgot that M. Mohl lieved in mind, and return next day, was dead, and would speak as if he were again asking for it in the same agita- coming home to dinner. It was very tion. She had never adopted the Eng- curious to observe how the chief charlish custom of keeping her money at a acteristic of her mind, that keen intelbanker's, and drawing checks, but used lectual curiosity, which Dr. Johnson to stow it away in boxes and drawers, considered the surest sign of a vigorous sometimes to the great annoyance of intellect, survived this wreck of memory. friends at whose houses she visited. One day she received a visit from a lady Towards the end of her life this habit who had been away in Australia for became a mania, and she used to hide many years. Madame Mohl had not away large sums of money behind pic- the faintest recollection of who she was, or anything about her. "My dear," she said, I dare say I liked you very much, but I have quite forgotten you. Never mind. Tell me who you are." The visitor quite failed to identify herself; but when she spoke of Australia the old lady was full of curiosity to hear all about it, and opened a fire of leading questions: "And they speak English? How extraordinary! And what sort of clothes do they wear? Do they go naked, like savages?" and so on; inquiring about the resources of the colony, and the people and their prospects, as she might have done formerly on hearing of the discovery of a new island. Once she grasped the subject presented to her, she could talk about it as clearly and sensibly as ever. In the summer of 1881, two years before her death, Mr. and Mrs. Wheelwright, of Boston, came to see her. Mrs. Wheelwright's notes made at the time show us Madame Mohl as she was in her ninety-first year: "A curious little figure came forward to greet us, a very slight woman, about the middle height. Her gray hair was in a most disheveled condition; a mass of tangled curls projected over her forehead, and was constantly getting into her eyes, and she was constantly poking it out. Her black silk gown, much the worse for the wear, was made open in the neck. A lace ruffle adorned the edge of her bodice, which had a trick of getting unhooked every minute, and at which she was perpetually fumbling with her very active fingers. Her eyes were fine and still bright, and her manner very agreeable, in spite of some eccentricities, such as curling and uncurling herself in a corner of the sofa." She talked to her visitors pleasantly of long ago, and was as accurate as possible concerning things that had happened fifty, sixty, seventy years past; but events of a nearer date were all confused. When Mrs. Wheelwright spoke of her memoir of Madame Récamier, she could remember nothing about it. "Did I write a book about her, my dear? I don't remember." Of Madame Récamier herself she had the most vivid recollection, and of Châteaubriand, too; she said he was "the most agreeable of men." To Mrs. Wheelwright's remark, "But he was so vain and selfish?" she replied," But selfish people are not necessarily disagreeable, my dear, and their vanity makes them anxious to ingratiate themselves." Madame Récamier, she said, "did not seem old, she carried herself so well; and she had a great deal of sense, much more than people gave her credit for. She was well read, and kept up in the literature of the day. I have never known anybody so delightful in a tête-à-tête. I loved to get her alone, but it was not easy, she was always so surrounded." She Its Mr. and Mrs. Wheelwright went again to see Madame Mohl in the evening, and found her alone, looking very desolate over her solitary cup of tea. "The large windows of her salon were open, looking over green gardens full of tall trees; in the distance the gilt dome of the Invalides. The setting sun threw a golden glow into the room. Madame Mohl was very low-spirited, and told us over and over again the sad stories of her sister's and her husband's death. took us to the window, and pointed out the various gardens. That large one,' she said, 'belongs to a convent. occupants are an order of missionaries to North Africa, and are supported by all the peasants of France.' She told us she had had a quarrel with her cook. 'I have had her for ten years, and I fancied she was attached to me; but, my dear, it was all a delusion. She was not a bit attached to me; and she has been putting up the other maid to ask for higher wages, so I shall have to part with them both. When I went to England, in former years, I wanted no maid. Now, I don't know what to do, or where to go. I have never been in Paris be fore so late' (July). Her books were her only resource now, she said. When we came in she had been reading the Nineteenth Century, dipping into it as she sipped her tea. The publishers always sent it to her, she told us. Justin M'Carthy's History of our own Times was on the table beside it. A most delightful book, my dear. I read it all the evening, and I never go to bed before midnight.' We asked her about old times, and how the society of her youth compared with that of the present day. She said there was no society now. 'Louis - Philippe was the best king France ever had. The French did not know when they were well off. In those days society was delightful. Six to a dozen people used to go to the house of one among them every night, or several times a week. They took pains to be agreeable; to have some story to tell, some interesting news, etc. Each one did his part; it was delightful. But all that is over now. The late dinners and love of display have killed society.' We mentioned to her that we had just met an old acquaintance of hers, Mr. F. B., of Boston, and that he spoke of knowing her years ago. Mr. F. B. ?' she said. 'I don't remember him; but I knew so many pleasant Americans. Why does he not come and see me? I can't think why people forget me as they do.' She seemed to take Mr. B.'s forgetfulness so much to heart that we hastened to assure her that he was only passing through Paris." This falling off of visitors was her constant complaint. She kept bewailing it to everybody. "I used to have "I used to have such crowds of pleasant people coming to see me! Nobody comes now. Why, I wonder?" But if the "crowds of pleasant people" who had been assiduous at the Rue du Bac when it was a centre of amusement ceased to frequent the now lonely salon, this way of the world was not imitated by the few real friends who were sincerely attached to Madame Mohl. Their faithful devotion made a fine contrast to the desertion by the pleasure-seeking crowd. Amongst these faithful ones were Madame and Mademoiselle Tourguenieff, whose longproved affection drew closer to her in her hour of need; M. and Madame d'Abbadie, who were her near neighbors; and Mignet. But no one was more devotedly kind than M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, the friend of a lifetime. After M. Mohl's death, M. St. Hilaire gave up his beloved studies, his whole time for six months, to perform the onerous duties of executor to his friend. Madame Mohl grew so used to having him continually at her beck and call, always at hand to advise, to cheer her, and to manage her business, that when his duties as Minister for Foreign Affairs forcibly put an end to this pleasant state of things the poor old soul was indignant, and resented it as a cruel wrong and a faithless desertion. When M. St. Hilaire's name was mentioned, she would say petulantly, "I never see him. He never cared for me; it was only for M. Mohl that he cared. I know that now." But the moment the deserter was set free from the bondage of state affairs he went at once to the Rue du Bac. Madame Mohl gave a scream of delight when she beheld him, and fell upon his neck, in her impulsive, childlike way. "So you have come back! Why did you give me up? What did I do to vex M. St. Hilaire was equally you?" touched by her reproaches and by her joyful welcome. He tried to make her understand that he had not been in fault, and that he had now come to resume the old and pleasant intercourse which had been inevitably interrupted by public duties. She was pacified, but nailed him at once by a promise to dine with her every Friday, so long as he did not take to being state minister again. M. 1 Widow and daughter of the political economist, not the novelist. St. Hilaire kept this weekly engagement to the last. He declares that in doing so he had no merit of self-sacrifice; that Madame Mohl's conversation was as interesting, as clever, as it had been in her younger days. The loss of her memory and her delusion about her money affairs were very distressing; but with this exception, she was the same bright, amusing hostess as ever. Within the last year of her life she became possessed by the idea that she had lost everything; that she would not be able to meet the next quarter's rent, and would be obliged to leave her present abode. M. St. Hilaire, who knew how utterly devoid of foundation this fear was, would advise her to go to her man of business, assuring her that he would find the necessary money. When her mind was set at rest on this score, she would chat away as pleasantly as possible on every subject that was started. A Physically she remained as active as a young girl, and would run up and down stairs, with her burden of ninety years, as if she had been nineteen. few months before her death, Mrs. Milner Gibson called to inquire for her. Being herself ailing at the time, she could not climb the steep stairs, but sent up her card. Madame Mohl, hearing that her old friend was waiting in the carriage for an answer, ran down as she was, and jumped in beside her, and began to talk about M. Mohl and to weep over him, as if she had lost him only a month before. The friends who surrounded her to the last relate how bitterly she continued to mourn for her husband. They used to find her of an evening sitting by the fire, with the tongs in her hand, fidgeting with the logs, building and unbuilding them, and looking the picture of loneliness and desolation. She would at once begin to talk of "Mr. Mohl," and pour out her recollections of all that he had been to her; telling over and over the same tale of his entire de votion to her, his cleverness in managing their property, his fidelity to old friends, his goodness, his wonderful learning, etc. As she rambled on, the big tears would trickle down her wrinkled face, and the little gray curls would quiver with the emotion that shook her. Up to within a short time of her death, she was often heard to say that she had never known an hour's ennui in her life; poignant grief she had experienced more than once, but ennui never. Such an assertion sounds almost incredible from any human being, no matter how exceptionally bright his circumstances and opportunities may have been; but, discounting it, as one must do all Madame Mohl's sweeping statements, it was perhaps as true of her as it could be of any one. She had a very happy temperament: she was content to take the world as she found it, and she found it a very pleasant place, full of gens d'es prit; she was content with herself, her position, her fortune, all the share in life that was allotted to her. There was a spirit of unworldliness, though it may sound paradoxical,-negative unworldliness, that preserved her from the irritation and restlessness that positive worldliness breeds. She did not care a dry straw for a multitude of things, the want of or the longing for which keeps worldly minded persons in a state of chronic disquiet and discontent. Her standard was low enough to be reached without strain or discomfort. It makes all the difference, having a convenient standard. Pleasing one's self and other people, without reference to a high ideal that involves sacrifice, makes the way very easy and smooth. Madame Mohl said that she had always striven to please, feeling that "au fond il n'y a que cela." She had succeeded, and had reaped a rich crop from the seed carefully sown through, say, three quarters of a century. She had been widely, extraordinarily popular, and had "pleased" more people than most of her generation; but when the power of pleasing no longer existed, there was nothing to replace it, nothing to fall back on, and the life that had been so brilliant and full of interesting, pleasant excitement was setting in solitude, weariness, and gloom. Ennui, that she had kept at bay throughout, overtook her at the close, when she had lost the power of coping with it. She knew that the end was not far off, and she saw the night closing in upon her apparently without fear. She said more than once to a friend whose courage had stood her in good stead at another crisis only less momentous, "I feel greatly humbled before God when I look back on my life, and see how much better I might have been and how much more I might have done." Her friend's assurance that this sense of being an unprofitable servant and her sorrow for having done so little were the best atonement she could make used to console her, and she would renew the selfaccusation to hear the words of encouragement repeated. 66 M. St. Hilaire continued faithful to his weekly engagement. On Friday, the 11th of May, he dined with Madame Mohl en tête-à-tête for the last time. "Never," he said to me, "did I see her more agreeable; her talk was as original, as piquante, as entertaining, as I ever remembered it." She had begun, as usual, by telling him of her utter destitution, and her terror of being short of money for the quarter's rent; but when he had set her mind at rest on this point, she was quite content, like a child, and entered into conversation on a variety of subjects, talking of old times and memories in common, and on all of these things she was as clear as a bell. After dinner she seemed tired, and lay down on the sofa. When the tray was brought in, she asked M. St. Hilaire to make the tea. "I thought this a bad sign," her old friend says, reverting with pathetic humor to this incident of their last evening together. It was the first time, in all their long years of intimacy, that he had ever known her to allow any one to interfere in the tea-making. He said that it was too great a responsibility; that he would pour in the water, but that he could not undertake to put in the tea. She laughed, and repeated a remark that he had often heard before; that is, that his not drinking tea was the only flaw she had ever discovered in his character. He went away before midnight, leaving her in very good spirits. The next day she had a kind of fit. The servant ran down for Madame d'Abbadie, who came at once. Mademoiselle Tourguenieff was sent for later. These two faithful friends watched by her to the last. It was wonderful to see how, with the shades of death closing round her, her esprit retained its quickness. The doctor had ordered her to be rubbed with some calming lotion, and Madame d'Abbadie was doing this with the utmost gentleness; but the old lady cried out, and told the doctor she had been shaken to pieces. On her friend's affectionately protesting that she had made her hand so light that it could not have hurt an infant, Madame Mohl retorted, with a faint flash of the old spirit, "Oh, yes, so you think; but then, other people's skin is so tough!" (la peau d'autrui est si dure!) Her favorite, the big Persian cat, jumped up on the bed. She stroked him, and said, “He is so distingué. His wife is not the least distingué, but he does not see it; he is like many other husbands in that." Madame d'Abbadie prayed beside her, and the dying woman joined with fervor and entire consciousness in all she said. Before sundown she passed away. It was the 15th of May, 1883. They laid her to rest between Fauriel and Julius Mohl. Kathleen O'Meara. |