“I was certain, my dear Masclet, that you would tenderly regret the adorable woman whom you were pleased to celebrate before you were personally acquainted with her, and to cherish from the period when she was herself able to express to you her grateful friendship. It would be ungrateful in me to entertain a doubt of your participation in my grief; but although such a doubt was far from my thoughts, I have derived a melancholy gratification from the renewed assurance of your feelings, and for that assurance I thank you most cordially. I willingly admit that under great misfortunes I have felt myself superior to the situation in which my friends had the kindness to sympathize, but at present I have neither the power nor the wish to struggle against the calamity which has befallen me, or rather to surmount the deep affliction which I shall carry with me to the grave. It will be mingled with the sweetest recollections of the thirty-four years during which I was bound by the tenderest ties that perhaps ever existed, and with the thought of her last moments, in which she heaped upon me such proofs of her incomparable affection. I cannot describe the happiness which in the midst of so many vicissitudes and troubles I have constantly derived from the tender, noble, and generous feeling ever associated with the interests which gave animation to my existence. Assure Madame Masclet of my attachment and gratitude. You know my friendship for you, my dear Masclet, and that I am yours most cordially, LA FAYETTE.” Letter from M. de La Fayette to M. de Latour-Maubourg, on the death of Madame de La Fayette:— “JANUARY, 1808. “I have not yet written to you, my dear friend, from the depth of misery in which I am plunged. You have already heard of the angelic end of that incomparable woman. I feel I must again speak of it to you. My grieved heart loves to open itself to the most constant, the dearest confidant of all its thoughts. As yet you have always found me stronger than circumstance, but now this event is stronger than me. Never shall I recover from it. “During the thirty-four years of an union in which her tenderness, her goodness, the elevation of her mind, charmed, adorned, honored my life, I felt myself so used to all that she was to me, that I could not distinguish it from my own existence. She was fourteen, and I was sixteen, when her heart occupied itself with everything that could interest me. I knew I loved her, I knew I needed her; but it is only now that I can distinguish what is left of me for the remainder of a life which I had thought was to have been entirely devoted to worldly matters.