The news of it was the signal for, perhaps, the most widely-spread and most genuine outburst of grief ever known. Joubert, indeed, asserts the contrary, and not only declares that she was not regretted, but adds that Constant, meeting him casually the very day after the event, did not even allude to it. It never seems to have occurred to Joubert that Constant might have had some other and deeper cause for silence than indifference. From such a nature reserve was perhaps the only tribute that could be more eloquently expressive than the loud lamentations of other friends. These abounded, and even Châteaubriand, who, after all, had not been bound to the dead woman by such ties of constant friendship as attached Schlegel, Sismondi, and others—even he records with a sort of jealous care that in the last letter she ever wrote to Madame de Duras, a letter penned in “large, irregular characters like a child’s,” there was an affectionate allusion to “Francis.” Bonstetten and Sismondi have both left records of their grief at her funeral. The latter, writing immediately after it to his mother, said: “My life is painfully changed. I owe more to her than to any other person.” Bonstetten’s sorrow finds a more energetic expression: “I miss her as though she were a part of myself. I am maimed henceforward in thought.” She was buried at Coppet, and they laid her coffin at the foot of her father’s. A crowd of friends, of humble mourners, and of official functionaries, assembled to do her homage; but Rocca was too ill to be present. He died, indeed, only seven months later, and the son whom Madame de Staël had borne him hardly reached early manhood before he also passed away. Auguste de Staël had preceded him along the road to eternity, and the Duchess de Broglie did not live to be old. Twenty years had hardly elapsed before, with the sole exception of her faithful friend and cousin, Madame Necker de Saussure, no near relative of Madame de Staël was still alive; but those who had known her did not need to be reminded of her. She was constantly present to them, a radiant, imperishable vision. “I wish I could see you asleep,” Bonstetten had said one day to her. “I would like to feel sure that you sometimes close your eyes, and are not always thinking.” She had remained so bright and full of life to the last, that even Death’s inexorable hand could not for many long years efface the recollection of her vivid personality. In a page of the _Mémoires d’Outre Tombe_, Châteaubriand has left a description of a visit paid by himself and Madame Récamier to the grave at Coppet. It was fifteen years after Madame de Staël’s death. The Château was closed, the apartments deserted. Juliette, wandering through them, recognised one after another the spots where Madame de Staël had played the piano, had talked to those gathered round her, or had written.