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164 painfully changed. I owe more to her than to any other person." Bonstetten's sorrow finds a more energetic expression: "I miss her as though she were a part of myself. I am maimed henceforward in thought."

She was buried at Coppet, and they laid her coffin at the foot of her father's. A crowd of friends, of humble mourners, and of official functionaries, assembled to do her homage; but Rocca was too ill to be present. He died, indeed, only seven months later, and the son whom Madame de Staël had borne him hardly reached early manhood before he also passed away. Auguste de Staël had preceded him along the road to eternity, and the Duchess de Broglie did not live to be old.

Twenty years had hardly elapsed before, with the sole exception of her faithful friend and cousin, Madame Necker de Saussure, no near relative of Madame de Staël was still alive; but those who had known her did not need to be reminded of her. She was constantly present to them, a radiant, imperishable vision. "I wish I could see you asleep," Bonstetten had said one day to her. "I would like to feel sure that you sometimes close your eyes, and are not always thinking." She had remained so bright and full of life to the last, that even Death's inexorable hand could not for many long years efface the recollection of her vivid personality.

In a page of the Mémoires d'Outre Tombe, Châteaubriand has left a description of a visit paid by himself and Madame Récamier to the grave at Coppet. It was fifteen years after Madame de Staël's death. The Château was closed, the apartments deserted. Juliette, wandering through them, recognised one after another