if she knew when the absorbing heat would melt the last crystal of the
vital principle, she summoned her family around her to wish them that
last thrilling farewell which is never erased from the tablet of memory.
In the farewell of the emigrant, torn by cruel fate from country and
friends, hope smiles in his tears; the fortune that drives away can
bring back; but the farewell of death leaves no fissure in its cloud
for the gleam of hope--it is final, terrible, and, on this side the
grave, irrevocable.

With faltering voice she doled out the last terrible warning that speaks
so eloquently from the bed of death.

Whilst the aged priest recited the Litanies she raised her last, dying
looks towards heaven, and whispered loud enough to be heard, "O Mary!
pray for my children."

Madeleine was no more. Her last sigh was a prayer that went like
lightning to the throne of God from a repentant, reconciled spirit; at
the same moment her liberated soul had travelled the vast gulf between
time and eternity, and there, in the books held by the guardian angels
of her children, she saw registered the answer to her prayer.

Madeleine was laid in a marble tomb amongst the first occupants of
Pere la Chaise. A small but artistic monument, still extant, and not
far from the famous tomb of Abelard and Eloise, would point out to the
curious or interested where sleeps among the great of the past the
much-loved Madeleine Cassier.

"God's peace be with her!" they did say,
And laughed at their next breath.