“And how often have you heard me joking her about her _aimables hérésies_. Who knows whether the fear of increasing my regret would not have partly restrained the outpouring of her feelings, in the same manner as when, during our married life, her utter unselfishness prevented her from yielding to what was most impassioned in her nature? ‘There was a period,’ she said a few months ago, ‘when, after one of your returns from America, I felt myself so forcibly attracted to you that I thought I should faint every time you came into the room. I was possessed with the fear of annoying you, and tried to moderate my feelings. You can scarcely be dissatisfied with what remains.’ “‘What gratitude I owe to God,’ she would repeat during her illness, ‘that such passionate feelings should have been a duty. How happy I have been!’ she said the day of her death. ‘What a lot to be your wife!’ And when I spoke to her of my tenderness, she answered in a touching tone: ‘Is it true? Is it indeed true? How good you are! Repeat it again; it does me so much good to hear you. If you do not find yourself sufficiently loved, lay the fault upon God; He has not given me more faculties than that I love you,’ she said, in the midst of her delirium, ‘Christianly, humanly, passionately.’ “When she was pitied for her sufferings, the fear of exaggerating them to herself and to others would come upon her. One day as I was watching her with a look of pity, ‘Oh! I am overpaid,’ she said, ‘by that kind look.’ “She often begged of me to remain in the room, because my presence calmed her. Sometimes, however, she would ask me to go and attend to my business; and when I answered that I had nothing else to do than to take care of her, ‘How good you are,’ she would exclaim with her feeble though _pénétrante_ voice; ‘you are too kind; you spoil me; I do not deserve all that; I am too happy!’ “Her delirium was intense. It bore principally on the reign of Athalie, on the family of Jacob, in which she liked to persuade herself that I was tenderly beloved, on the contentions of Israel and Judah. ‘Would it not be strange,’ she said, ‘if, being your wife, I were obliged to sacrifice myself for a king?’ “She was in fear of troubles, of proscriptions, and prepared herself to meet them with the fortitude which characterized her in real dangers. She thought there was to be a persecution against Christians, and reckoned upon me to protect the oppressed. ‘It appears to me,’ she said, ‘that the world is beginning over again; nothing but fresh experiments. Why are not all things going on according to your wishes?’ All these thoughts were confused in her head; she believed we were in Egypt and Syria.