The Prince de la Moskowa, the eldest son of Marshal Ney, is a great musician, and conceived a plan for promoting a taste for sacred music at Paris; such music is strangely unknown and little appreciated. He has taken great trouble to gather a few amateurs, and attempts to arouse some interest in the association among certain ladies by asking them to become patronesses. I am one of the number. The day before yesterday the first performance took place in the salon of Hertz. The attempt was laudable but the result only moderately successful, notwithstanding the great talent of Madame de Sparre and another female voice. But in Paris people cannot sing austere and sacred numbers of religious music with due simplicity and gravity and without dramatic action. It is a new art in this country, and can only be acclimatised at the expense of time, but the attempt is none the less interesting. I told the Prince de la Moskowa that he ought to secure the support of the Paris priests, of whom I saw two in the room.
A sad accident has just happened to a family of my acquaintance. A young man of eighteen, Henri Lombard, the pride and joy of his parents, the honour of his school and beloved by his comrades, died on the 24th of this month after an illness of three days; the illness in question was hydrophobia. Last November he found one of his sporting dogs surly and depressed: the same day his hand was scratched by the animal's teeth, which died a short time afterwards of madness. His master, who was very fond of the animal, was so bold as to wipe away the foam from the dog's mouth while he was tied up, with his sponge: he afterwards washed out the sponge and used it as before; but he could not forget the scratch upon his hand of which he had not at first spoken; not until three months after the dog's death did he tell his old nurse that for several weeks he had been anxious and uneasy, but that lapse of time had entirely reassured him and that he now felt quite confident. A quiet and studious youth, he was by no means lively and communicative and spoke very little of his inner feelings: thus, no member of his family knew how assiduously he had followed for nearly a year the religious instructions given at Saint Louis d'Antin by M. Petetot, the clever and respected priest of that parish. Henri Lombard's parents were by no means accustomed to attend such exercises, and he had probably been afraid of displeasing them by displaying habits in contradiction with theirs. Such was the state of affairs on Friday, April 21, when he felt very ill, and experienced a marked repugnance to liquids; he immediately recognised the hopeless nature of his condition and begged M. Petetot to come and speak to him. He fulfilled all his religious duties not only with exemplary regularity but with such fervent faith and such remarkable resignation that the priest and all present were both astonished and edified. During the dreadful attacks of this horrible malady, in the terrible grip of the strait-waistcoat, covered with the disgusting foam of mania, racked by the disease, for which no remedy can even be tried, Henri Lombard thought only of heaven: the solemn parting of soul and body seemed to have taken place even before the moment of death; the soul long buried in silent meditation was thus revealed and fled from its earthly bonds; it found language and expressions supernatural in character. When he was able to speak he exhorted every one with strange appropriateness and authority, especially his mother, whom he knew to be in the wrong towards a respected member of his family. He said to her with words of inspiration, "Mother, from my death-bed I send you to ask pardon and to repair the wrong you have done." When Madame Lombard returned to him he said, "I know you will weep over my grave and think you draw nearer to me in going to my tomb, and you will not know or feel that I am no longer there. You will not raise your eyes to the place where I shall be above. I shall be better off, for I shall be where I can intercede for you." The schoolboys who were boarders at the Hospice de la Charité, whom the uncle of Henri Lombard, M. Andral, had placed near him, and who did not leave until all was over, were so overcome by the scene that their agnostic ideas were entirely changed. M. Andral himself, though accustomed to the most heartrending sights, was depressed and consoled at the same time. The funeral of the youth was remarkable for the fact that it was attended by the whole of the school to which he belonged and by the general eulogy and regret which was expressed upon all sides.