Combray family; France -- History -- Consulate and First Empire, 1799-1815
With the Hundred Days came another sudden change. At the first rumour of
Bonaparte's landing, Mme. de Combray set out for the coast and crossed
to England. If the alarm was intense, it lasted but a short time. In
July, 1815, the Marquise returned to Tournebut, which she busied herself
with repairing. She found scope for her energy in directing the workmen,
in superintending to the smallest detail the administration of her
estate, and in looking after her household with the particularity of
former times. Although Louis XVIII's Jacobinism seems to have been the
first thing that disillusioned the old royalist, she was none the less
the Lady of Tournebut, and within the limits of her estate she could
still believe that she had returned to the days before 1789. She still
had her seat at church, and her name was to be found in 1819 inscribed
on the bell at Aubevoye of which she was patroness.
Mme. de Combray never again quitted Tournebut, where she lived with her
son Bonnoeil, waited upon by Catherine Querey, who had been faithful
to her in her misfortunes. Except for this faithful girl, the Marquise
had made a clean sweep of all her old servants. None of them are to be
found among the persons who surrounded her during the Restoration. These
were a maid, Henriette Lerebour, a niece of Mlle. Querey; a cook, a
coachman and a footman. During the years that followed, there was an
incessant coming and going of workmen at Tournebut. In 1823 the chateau
and its surrounding walls were still undergoing repairs. In the middle
of October of the same year, Mme. de Combray, who was worn out, took to
her bed. On the morning of Thursday, the 23d, it was reported that she
was very ill, and two village women were engaged to nurse her. At eight
o'clock in the evening the tolling of the bells announced that the
Marquise was no more.
Her age was eighty-one years and nine months. When the judge called on
Friday, at Bonnoeil's special request, to affix seals to her effects,
he asked to be taken first into the chamber of death, where he saw the
Marquise lying in her painted wooden bed, hung with chintz curtains. The
funeral took place at the church of Aubevoye, the poor of the village
forming an escort to the coffin which the men carried on their
shoulders. After the service it was laid in a grave dug under a large
dark tree at the entrance to the cemetery. The tomb, which is carefully
kept, bears to this day a quite legible inscription setting forth in
clumsy Latin the Marquise de Combray's extraordinary history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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