Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/55

40 passionate emotion, with, fame to crown it: his was silent sorrow, and he died of it, unsung.

Marmontel leaves us no doubt that her death was the cause of his. " D'Alembert," he says, " was unconsoled and incon- solable for his loss. It was then that he buried himself in the lodging given to him in the Louvre as secretary of the French Academy. I have told elsewhere how he passed the rest of his life. He often complained to me of the dreadful solitude into which he had fallen. In vain I reminded him of all that he had told me himself about the change in the feelings of his friend. " Yes," he replied, " she was changed, but I was not ; she lived no longer for me, but I lived always for her. Now that she is gone, I know not why I live. Ah ! would that I had still to suffer the bitter moments she knew so well how to soften and make me forget ! Do you remem- ber the happy evenings we spent with her ? And now — what remains to me ? Instead of herself when I come home, I find her shade. This lodging in the Louvre is like a tomb ; I never enter it except with horror."

D'Alembert survived his friend, whose memory never left him for an instant, seven years.

It was on a Thursday, May 23, 1776, that death brought to Mile, de Lespinasse the rest for which she longed. The account that La Harpe has left of this event is perhaps the most affecting that we have of it : " During the last days of her life she saw none but her intimate friends. They were all in her chamber on the night of her death ; and all were weeping. She had passed the last three days in a state of exliaustion that scarcely permitted her to speak aloud. The nurses revived her with cordials and raised her in her bed.
 * Do I still live ? ' she said. Those were her last words."

The Letters of Mile, de Lespinasse cannot be read and judged by personal standards or social convention ; not even