Madame de Chateaubriand, being ill, made a journey in the South of France, derived no benefit from it, and returned to Lyons, where Dr. Prunelle[276] condemned her. I went to join her; I took her to Lausanne, where she proved M. Prunelle in the wrong. At Lausanne I stayed in turn with M. de Sivry and with Madame de Cottens, a warm-hearted, witty and unhappy woman. I saw Madame de Montolieu[277]: she was living in retirement on a high hill; she died in the illusions of romance, like Madame de Genlis, her contemporary. Gibbon[278] had composed his History of the Roman Empire: "It was ... as I sat musing among the ruins of the Capitol," he writes at Lausanne, on the 27th of June 1787, "while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind." [Sidenote: Death of Madame de Custine.] Madame de Staël had appeared at Lausanne with Madame Récamier. The whole Emigration, a whole finished world had stopped for some short moments in that sad and smiling town, a sort of false city of Granada. Madame de Duras has recalled its memory in her Memoirs, and the following note reached me there to tell me of the new loss which I was condemned to suffer: "BEX, 13 _July_ 1826. "It is all over, monsieur, your friend[279] exists no more; she gave up her soul to God, without pain, at a quarter to eleven this morning. She was out driving as late as yesterday evening. Nothing announced her end to be so near; what am I saying? we did not think that her illness was to end in this way. M. de Custine[280], whose sorrow does not permit him to write to you himself, had been on one of the mountains around Bex only yesterday morning, to order mountain-milk to be sent down every morning for the dear sufferer. "I am too much overcome with grief to be able to enter into longer details. We are getting ready to return to France with the precious remains of the best of mothers and friends. Enguerrand[281] will lie at rest between his two mothers. "We shall pass through Lausanne, where M. de Custine will come to see you so soon as we arrive. "Receive, monsieur, the assurance of the respectful attachment with which I am, etc., "BERSTŒCHER[282]." See above and below what I have had the happiness and the unhappiness to recall touching the memory of Madame de Custine. Madame de Charrière's work, the _Lettres écrites de Lausanne_, well describes the scene which I had daily before my eyes, and the feelings of grandeur which it inspires: