I renewed my visits to the old woman; but her stories were either so fabulous or disconnected, and those of Agnes so unvaried, that I saw no probability of acquiring further information, and lost sight of Mrs. Jordan’s situation for a considerable time after her departure from Boulogne. I thought it, by-the-bye, very extraordinary that neither the mistress nor maid said a word about any attendant of Mrs. Jordan, even although it was not till long after that I heard of Col. Hawker and Miss K * * * * having accompanied her from England. After Mrs. Jordan left Boulogne, it appears that she repaired to Versailles, and subsequently, in still greater privacy, to St. Cloud, where, _totally_ secluded, and under the name of Johnson, she continued to await, with agitated impatience, in a state of extreme depression, the answers to some letters, by which was to be determined her future conduct as to the distressing business that had led her to the continent. Her solicitude arose not so much from the real importance of this affair as from her indignation and disgust at the ingratitude which she had experienced, and which by drawing aside the curtain from before her unwilling eyes, had exposed a novel and painful view of human nature.
At that period I occupied a large hotel adjoining the Bois de Boulogne. Not a mile intervened between us; yet, until long after Mrs. Jordan’s decease, I never heard she was in my neighbourhood. There was no occasion whatever for such entire seclusion; but the anguish of her mind had by this time so enfeebled her, that a bilious complaint was generated, and gradually increased. Its growth did not appear to give her much uneasiness—so dejected and lost had she become. Day after day her misery augmented, and at length she seemed (we were told) actually to regard the approach of dissolution with a kind of placid welcome!
The apartments she occupied at St. Cloud were in a house in the square adjoining the palace. This house appeared to me large, gloomy, cold, and inconvenient; just the sort of place which would tell in description in a romance. It seemed almost in a state of dilapidation. I could not, I am sure, wander over it at night without a superstitious feeling. The rooms were numerous, but small; the furniture scanty, old, and tattered. The hotel had obviously once belonged to some nobleman; and a long, lofty, flagged gallery stretched from one wing of it to the other, which looked over a large uncultivated garden, and a charming country beyond. But Mrs. Jordan’s chambers were wretched: no English comforts solaced her latter moments! In her little drawing-room, a small old sofa was the best piece of furniture: on this she constantly reclined, and on it she expired.[37]