A letter from M. Deviolaine announcing my father's death to his friend, General Pille, is my sole guide in this darkness: it informs me that we took shelter at Antilly. This is the letter:-- "VILLERS-COTTERETS, "_27th February 1806._ "MY DEAR COUSIN,--I little thought I should so soon have to inform you of the death of our brave and unfortunate General Dumas. He finished his course at eleven o'clock last night, at Villers-Cotterets, where he had returned to carry out his doctor's orders. The malady of which he died was the result of the shocking treatment he experienced at Naples, on his return from Egypt. He had the consolation of learning, on the very day of his death, that that country was conquered by the French; but this satisfaction did not at all comfort him for the privation of not being able to end his days on the field of battle. Ever since his retirement from active service--all through his illness--he never ceased offering prayers for the success of the French arms. It was most touching to hear him say, only a few hours before his death, that, for his wife and children's sake, he would like to be buried on the field of Austerlitz. "As a matter of fact, my dear cousin, he has left them without any means of existence; his illness consumed his small remaining capital. "My wife is going to take Madame Dumas--her relative--to Antilly, where she will remain a few days, whilst we do all we possibly can to give the general the funeral honours to which his rank, his brave deeds, and the love of his citizens entitle him. "In charging myself with conveying to you this melancholy and distressing news I told Madame Dumas that I would invite you to join her husband's comrades-in-arms; their share in this melancholy affair will soften in some small degree the bitterness of her sorrows. "I thank you, my dear cousin, for the certificate of death in the case of Lasne, _maréchal des logis._ If it is not quite in form, I will inform you. "Believe me, my dear cousin, your attached friend, "DEVIOLAINE." M. Deviolaine had not at all exaggerated our state of distress. My father's only income had been his half-pay pension of 4000 francs; my sister's boarding-school expenses took about 1200 francs of this, so there only remained 2800 francs to provide for the expenses of illness, for the constant changes of place which the restlessness of a dying man craved, and for our usual wants; it was very little, as the reader can see for himself.