It is an hour of torture and anguish, a doleful hour, an hour heart-rending above all, when one loses a cherished mother. The grief borders on stupor. One feels one’s self the sport of a bad dream. One cannot grow accustomed to so horrible a thought. Those holy, venerable hands will never again be laid in blessing on your head! Those lips whence issued counsels so wise, words so affectionate, are closed forever! That heart, so warm, so loving, is cold; it beats no more. Again you call to your mother; you call, and for the first time, alas! she does not answer you. Then, all she has done for you, your childhood, your youth, your whole life, rises up before you. Long years of devotion, of sacrifices and tenderness, are concentrated in a single minute. The heart, invaded by memories as by a rising tide, overflows, and you burst into sobs. Oh! woe to him who at this fatal moment believes that all ends here below! Woe to him who has not the conviction that the dead woman is in heaven, that she is watching over her children; that they can still love and implore her; that she will always be their strength, their consoler, their good angel! But happy in the midst of tears, happy amid the most cruel trials, the Christians who then recall the prayer of Saint Louis, lamenting his mother, Blanche of Castile: “I return thee thanks, O my God! Thou hadst lent me a good, an incomparable, mother; but I know well she was not mine! Now, Lord, thou hast withdrawn her to thyself.... Thus has thy Providence determined. It is true that I cherished her beyond all creatures in the world.... Nevertheless, since thou hast thus ordained, may thine adorable will be done! My God! may thy holy name be blessed forever!” Marie Leczinska died in angelic tranquillity. She was still trying to say her rosary, when death interrupted on earth the prayer which the holy woman was about to resume in heaven. These beautiful words of Massillon were realized for the pious Queen: “The soul of the just, during the days of their mortal life, dare not gaze fixedly upon the profundity of God’s judgments; they work out their salvation with fear and trembling, they shudder at the bare thought of that terrible future where the just themselves will hardly be saved, if they are judged without mercy; but on the bed of death, ah! the God of peace, who manifests Himself, calms their agitations; their fears cease of a sudden and are changed into a sweet hope, their dying eyes pierce the cloud of mortality which still environs them, and see that immortal country after which they have sighed so long, and where they have always dwelt in spirit.” Oh! you who have seen a saintly mother die, you who have in your hearts a regret and an expectation, do not forget!