In the same letter[132] she writes: "As for me, my dear Celio, I must tell you that it is hardly probable that I should survive much longer. Medical treatment can do nothing for me. Each day and hour my friends see me perishing from before them. This letter is in all likelihood the last you will ever receive from me. My body and my strength are worn out. I have no appetite; and I am constantly, night and day, threatened with suffocation by my cough. A burning fever consumes me; and pain in every part of my body takes away the possibility of sleep. There is nothing further for me but to breathe my last sigh. But up to that last sigh I shall not forget those whom I have loved. Do not let the news of my death afflict you. I know that the reward of the just is reserved for me; and I long to quit this life to be with Jesus Christ." [Sidenote: HER LAST HOURS.] A letter from Grünthler[133] to Curione, gives a detailed account of her last hours. "A short time before her end," he writes, "she waked from a short sleep, and smiled, as if moved by some pleasing thought. Hanging over her, I asked the cause of this sweet expression. 'I saw in my dream,' she said, 'a place illumined with the most brilliant and pure light.'—(She had lucidity and clear honesty enough to distinguish between 'dream' and 'vision.')—Her extreme weakness did not permit her to say more. I said 'Courage, my best beloved! Very soon you will be living amid that pure light.' She smiled again, and made a slight sign of assent. A little afterwards, she said, 'I am happy, perfectly happy;' and ceased speaking, just as her sight began to fail. 'I can scarcely see you, my loved ones,' she said; 'but all round me there seem to be beautiful flowers.' Those were her last words. An instant afterwards she seemed to fall asleep, and breathed her last." She died, the same letter tells us, at four in the afternoon of the 26th of October, 1555; having not completed her twenty–ninth year. Grünthler felt his loss to be the loss of all that made life desirable to him. But he had not to endure it long. The pestilence continued to decimate Heidelberg. The University was deserted; and the town was half emptied by death and by the flight of all who could escape. But the bereaved physician had no motive to shun the pestilence, even if his duty had not been to remain in the midst of it. He continued some two months at his post after the death of his wife, was then struck down by the sickness, and so followed her. The boy Emilio, now in his thirteenth year, thus left alone in the plague–stricken city, must in all probability have taken the infection from his brother–in–law; for he also died within a few days. All three were buried in a chapel of the Church of St. Peter at Heidelberg, at the expense of a French professor in the University, one Guillaume Rascalon; where the following inscription, recently restored, M. Bonnet says, may yet be read:—