She became passionately fond of Nature, both in its grander and more minute charms, by day and by night. She has recorded how, while on a visit to relatives at Gaillac, she would after going to bed often get up, open the window and lean out to watch the stars. As this was carrying her love of Nature a little too far, we cannot be surprised that, having one night been discovered, her aunts took the precaution of preventing her falling from the window by having it nailed up. So long as the childhood of the little De Guérins lasted it was an intensely happy one. But the time came all too soon when, for Eugénie, the joys of childhood were to give place to almost mature care; when her childish affection for her brother Maurice was to be succeeded by an anxious and almost maternal solicitude. Madame de Guérin, for years an uncomplaining sufferer, was taken from them when Eugénie was thirteen, Maurice eight. The impression left upon her mind by her mother's death was so great, and her grief so profound, that we find her after a lapse of sixteen years recording her feelings thus in her journal: "To-day my whole soul looks from the sky to a tomb, for on it sixteen years ago my mother died at midnight. This sad anniversary is consecrated to mourning and prayer. I have spent it before God in regrets and in hope; even while I weep, I lift my eyes and see the heavens where my mother is without doubt happy, for she suffered so much! Her illness was long, and her spirit patient. I do not remember a single complaint escaping her, or that she cried out at all, notwithstanding the pain that tore her; no Christian ever bore suffering better. One saw that she had learnt it before the Cross. She would smile upon her bed like a martyr on the rack. Her face never lost its serenity, and even in her agony she seemed to be thinking of a festival. This surprised me who saw her suffer so much, and I myself who wept at the least thing and knew not the meaning of resignation under pain. And when they told me that she was going to die I looked at her, and her cheerful aspect made me believe she would not. She did die, however, at midnight on April 2, whilst I had fallen asleep at the foot of her bed. Her quiet death did not waken me; never did soul leave the world with more tranquillity.... I was led into another room."