That evening I saw the worthy Saint-Germain; I gave him orders and some money, so that he might secretly reduce the prices of anything she might require. I enjoined him to keep me informed of everything and not to fail to call me back in case he should want to see me. Three months passed. When I reached Villeneuve, I found two fairly tranquillizing letters about Madame de Caud's health: but Saint-Germain forgot to speak to me of my sister's new lodging. I had begun to write her a long letter, when suddenly Madame de Chateaubriand fell dangerously ill: I was at her bedside when I was brought a new letter from Saint-Germain; I opened it: a withering line told me of the sudden death of Lucile. I have cared for many tombs in my life: it fell to my lot and to my sister's destiny that her ashes should be flung to the skies. I was not in Paris when she died; I had no relations there; kept at Villeneuve by my wife's critical condition, I was unable to go to the sacred remains; orders sent from a distance arrived too late to prevent a common burial. Lucile knew no one and had not a friend; she was known only to Madame de Beaumont's old servant: it was as though he had been charged to link two destinies. He alone followed the forsaken coffin, and he himself was dead before Madame de Chateaubriand's sufferings allowed me to bring her back to Paris. My sister was buried among the poor: in what grave-yard was she laid? In what motionless wave of an ocean of dead was she swallowed up? In what house did she die, after leaving the community of the Dames de Saint-Michel? If, by making researches, if, by examining the archives of the municipalities, the registers of the parishes, I should come across my sister's name, what would that avail me[688]? Should I find the same keeper of the cemetery? Should I find the man who dug a grave that remained nameless and unlabelled? Would the rough hands that were the last to touch so pure a clay have remembered it? What nomenclator of the shades could point out to me the obliterated tomb? Might he not make a mistake as to the dust? Since Heaven has willed it so, let Lucile be for ever lost! I find in this absence of locality a distinction from the burials of my other friends. My predecessor in this world and in the next is praying to the Redeemer for me; she is praying to Him from the midst of the pauper remains among which her own lie confounded: even so does Lucile's mother and mine rest lost among the preferred of Jesus Christ. God will certainly have been able to recognise my sister; and she, who was so little attached to earth, ought to leave no trace there. She has left me, that sainted genius. Not a day has passed but I have wept for her. Lucile loved to hide herself; I have made her a solitude in my heart: she shall leave it only when I shall have ceased to live[689].