M. de Lamartine, after passing one gloomy All Souls’ day in recollection near his mother’s grave at St. Point, ended it by taking out the eighteen _livrets_ in which all her thoughts and feelings had been buried for so many years, and, while the church-bell was mournfully tolling above her grave as if to reproach the living for their silence and admonish them to pray for their dead, he opened these books one after the other, and read, sadly smiling, but oftener weeping the while. It is with some such a feeling the reader will follow him. The drama of the heart is always touching, the genuine tear, even in the eye veiled in domestic obscurity, always appealing, and in this page of life’s drama there is many a one dropped. But the eyes from which they fell are always turned heavenward, and such tears have always a gleam of heaven in them, without which the sorrows of life would be unendurable. * * * * * Madame de Lamartine was the daughter of M. des Roys, intendant-general of finances to the Duke of Orleans. Madame des Roys was the under-governess of the children of that prince, and so great a favorite of the duchess that she was employed as the confidential agent of the latter during her exile, as we learn from this volume. After the execution of Philippe Egalité and the dispersion of his family, the duchess took refuge in Spain. Her daughter, afterwards known as Madame Adelaide, who displayed so much character and exerted so great a political influence during the reign of her brother Louis Philippe, was in a German or Swiss convent. The duchess, suspicious of Madame de Genlis’ influence over her daughter, and perhaps fearful she might be made a tool of the Orleans faction, with whose aims she did not sympathize, commissioned her devoted follower, Madame des Roys, to bring her daughter to Spain. Madame des Roys succeeded in her mission. She embarked at Leghorn about the beginning of January, 1802, and arrived safely at Barcelona with her charge. Madame de Lamartine, who had all this from her mother’s lips, says the meeting of the duchess and Mademoiselle d’Orleans was extremely affecting. Madame des Roys subsequently returned to France, and died on her estates in June, 1804, worn out with fatigue, and troubles resulting from the revolution. She gave her daughter a portrait of Mademoiselle d’Orleans--a present from the duchess, and Madame de Lamartine always showed herself loyal to that family. When the poet wrote his _Chant du Sacre_ without mentioning the Duke of Orleans among the other members of the royal family, she entreated him with tears to be mindful of what she owed the family. Lamartine yielded, but with so ill a grace that his allusion displeased the duke. Madame de Lamartine, fearful of being thought ungrateful to the family, wrote Mademoiselle d’Orleans a full explanation of the affair.