“Revered lady,” he writes to her, “I am touched by your kind remembrance.... The idea that I have found again in you the friend who was so devoted to my unhappy family consoles me, and enables me the better to bear up under the ills that Providence has sent me. I shall never forget your good deeds; ever present to my memory, they make me cherish an existence which I owe to you. I cannot tell what the future may have in store for me, but whatever my fate you may count upon all my gratitude. May the Lord be with you and send prosperity to all your enterprises! He will surely do so, for to whatever country you may take your steps, you will set an example of all the virtues. “We shall see you, I hope, in a better world. Then and in the company of the august and ill-fated author of my sad days, you will be in enjoyment of all the good you have done, and will receive your due recompense from the Sovereign Dispenser of all things. “There being no other end to look for, I beg of God, most noble lady, to take you under His protection. “LOUIS CHARLES.” Richemont shows some aptness and cleverness in the way he touches the note of sensibility, and attains to the diapason appropriate to the _rôle_ he is playing. Had his letter the effect desired? It is hardly likely, but it is the last item in Lady Atkyns’s correspondence, and we have no means of finding an answer to the question. * * * * * In the night of February 2, 1836, Lady Atkyns died. By her bedside one person watched--her devoted servant, Victoire Ilh, whose conduct, according to her mistress’s own statement, “had at all times been beyond praise.” The few friends who could attend gathered together in due course to pay the last honours to the dead. Her remains were conveyed to England for burial at Ketteringham, in accordance with the wish she herself had expressed. Time passed inexorably over her memory, and twenty years later there was nothing to recall the life of love and devotion of this loyal and unselfish Englishwoman. FOOTNOTES: [76] This is far below the actual figure. EPILOGUE Not more than two or three generations separate us from the period through which we have seen come and go the various actors involved in the enterprise of which the prisoners in the Temple were the stake. The _rôle_ that was played by Lady Atkyns and her confidants, forming as it did a minor episode in the changeful story of the emigration and of the fortunes of the Royalists during the Revolution, deserved to be set forth. But the interest attached to such narratives becomes greatly intensified the more completely the records of those mentioned in it can be traced to the end. It seems well, therefore, to see what became of the principal performers who have passed before our eyes in this slight study.