"De ton coeur bannis les alarmes, Qu'un songe heureux sèche les larmes Qui coulent encore de tes yeux."
The words were hardly audible; but we were so moved by the marvellous purity of the pathetic voice that tears stood in our eyes. As for the singer, tears rolled down his face. It was one of those rare and perfect pleasures that are never forgotten. A few years later Villaret made his _début_ as first tenor at the Opéra in Paris with great success. He was very generous with tickets to his early friends and fellow-citizens; some of his most intolerant relatives had died, and he had yielded at last to the general wish.
Now came for my husband and myself the longest separation in our married life. It lasted two months, and seemed at least two years, so sad and wearied did we grow. He wrote every night succinctly what had been done in the course of the day, and sent me his letters three times a week.
When beds had been packed up or sold, our kind neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Whitney, offered him hospitality, which he gratefully accepted, till everything was cleared out of Innistrynich and on its way to Sens, in the department of the Yonne, where our new residence was to be.
On his way to Sens, Gilbert stayed a few days with his aunts, but left them for a short time, and concluded the sale of his property to Henry Milne. It was but a poor bargain, the times being bad for the cotton district on account of the American war; but he had no alternative, having engaged to find capital for the wine business, and even needing money for daily expenses, for as yet he earned nothing.
What he had been in dread of for so many years, on account of his Aunt Mary's state of health, happened just as he was returning to "The Jumps," and when he saw his uncle Thomas awaiting him at the station he had a foreboding of the truth. "Aunt Mary is dead?" ... "Not dead yet, but unconscious, and there is no hope. This morning when Susan was in the breakfast-room, waiting for her sister, she heard a stamping overhead, followed by a dull, heavy thud, and on rushing upstairs found Mary stretched on the floor and moaning, but unconscious. She has been put to bed and attended by doctors; but there is nothing to be done, and they say that she does not suffer." Mournfully my husband ascended alone, in the dark night, the steep hill up which he had so often walked gayly to see his beloved guardian; tenderly he watched at her bedside for forty-eight hours, till she breathed no more, and at last reverently accompanied her remains to the chosen place, which he never omitted to visit afterwards, every time he came to Todmorden. He wrote to say what a satisfaction it was to think that his aunt had seen him only a few hours before the attack, and when it came she must have felt him so near to her.