In this pleasant and quiet manner the autumn and winter passed rapidly away. In the following year, 1799, it became apparent that his young wife would shortly make him a father; and while this prospect increased the happiness and attention of her husband and parents, it added little to their slight stock of cares and troubles, for they were too happy and contented to entertain any other but cheerful anticipations of the result. There is little to induce one to dwell upon a sad and melancholy chapter in the homely life of every-day. After many months of hope, and some of fear, and many lingering changes from better to worse, and back and back again, his dear wife, whom he had loved from a boy with so much truth and feeling, and whose excellences to the last moment of his life, many years afterwards, were the old man's fondest theme, died. "Poor Joe! Oh, Richard, be kind to poor Joe!" were the last words she uttered. They were addressed to her brother. A few minutes afterwards, he sat beside a corpse. They found in her pocket-book a few pencilled lines, beneath which she had written her wish that when she died they might be inscribed above her grave:-- Earth walks on Earth like glittering gold; Earth says to Earth, We are but mould: Earth builds on Earth castles and towers; Earth says to Earth, All shall be ours. They were placed upon the tablet erected to her memory. She died on the 18th of October, 1799, and was buried in the family vault of Mr. Hughes, at St. James's, Clerkenwell.[25] In the first passion of his grief the widower went distracted. Nothing but the constant attention and vigilance of his friends, who never left him alone, would have prevented his laying violent hands upon his life. There were none to console him, except with sympathy, for his friends were hers, and all mourned no common loss. Mr. Richard Hughes, the brother, never forgot his sister's dying words, but proved himself under all circumstances and at all times Grimaldi's firm and steady friend. The poor fellow haunted the scenes of his old hopes and happiness for two months, and was then summoned to the theatre to set the audience in a roar; and chalking over the seams which mental agony had worn in his face, was hailed with boisterous applause in the merry Christmas pantomime!