"Associated Member of the National Institute, who was born at Villers-Cotterets, March 31st 1760, and whose peaceful spirit entered upon its immortal rest, on the 11th Ventôse, year IX of the Republic. (2 March 1801) "En ces mots l'amitié consacra son histoire; Il montra les talents, aux vertus réunis; Son esprit lui donna la gloire, Et sa belle âme des amis. "Rest in peace, beloved one!" And indeed if any soul should rest in peace it ought indeed to be that of the good and religious-minded Demoustier, whose memory was venerated by all Villers-Cotterets. My mother often used to tell me that a gentler, more sympathetic, more delightful man never breathed. He died at the same age as my father--forty-one--and faced his end with the gentle and pious resignation of all good souls. The day before his death, my mother sat beside his bedside and, though hopeless herself, she tried to instil hope into him. He smiled sweetly at her, and looked out upon a gleam of beautiful spring sunshine, the sunshine that comes more like nature's first smile than the sun of summer. Demoustier laid his hand on hers and, looking at her, he said:-- "Dear Madame Dumas, we must not delude ourselves: I can no longer take broth or milk or water, so I must die." And he died next day with a smile upon his lips. Alas! it was my mother's ambition to erect just such a stone as was put over Demoustier's resting-place; but she could not afford to consecrate the dead at the cost of the living. I fancy I must have acquired my partiality for cemeteries, that is to say village cemeteries, from my frequent walks with my mother to the Villers-Cotterets cemetery: nothing impresses me so much even now--their churches, their tall weeping willows, their broken-off columns, and their crosses painted black, with a simple white inscription stating the name and the age of the deceased. Alas! if I were now to return to our cemetery how many graves of friends I should find there, besides my mother's! Nearly all whom I knew in my childhood lie there, and, with Christ in the early days of Christian Rome, I could exclaim: "I have more friends under the earth than on it." Let those who take the trouble of studying small details study the different localties where my childhood was passed: les Fossés, Antilly, the confined room at the hôtel de _l'Epée_, the ruined castle of Villers-Cotterets, the house and the town garden of M. Deviolaine, the cloister at Saint-Remy, the château of Villers-Hellon, the grand park of François I., of Henri II. and of Henri IV., and the little cemetery of Pieux,--the name of the place where the Villers-Cotterets cemetery was situated,--and they may find the origins of many qualities in my books, of many traits in my character.