I saw the lawyer come out of the chamber first, but was above asking him any questions; the next were the executors and chaplain. I asked the last how they came to have words. He did not answer me directly, but begged to know whose pleasure it was to have the codicil annexed. 'It was mine, sir' replied I; 'and it made me very uneasy before I could have the favour granted.' He only replied by saying 'Ah! poor lady, the favour, as you are pleased to term it, is not calculated for any benefit to you; think the worst you can of it.'
I was terribly uneasy at what the chaplain had said, but I imagined to myself that I could not be worse off than I thought I should be before the codicil was annexed; and, as he withdrew without saying any more, I was fain to rest satisfied with what I had heard, and that amounted to nothing.
The next day after this, the physicians that attended my lord told him it was time for him to settle his worldly affairs, and prepare himself for a hereafter. I now found all was over, and I had no other hopes of his life than the physicians' declaration of his being near his death. For it often happens that the gentlemen of the faculty give out that a man is near his death, to make the cure appear to be the effect of their great skill in distempers and medicine; as others, when they cannot find out the real disease, give out that a man's end is near, rather than discover their want of judgment; and this I thought might be the case with our doctors of physic.
Our son was still kept from the university, and lodged at the house of one of his future guardians; but when he heard that his father was so near his end, he was very little out of his presence, for he dearly loved him. My lord sent the day before his death to lock and seal up all the doors in his dwelling-house at The Hague; and the steward had orders, in case of my lord's decease, not to let anybody come in, not even his lady (who had for some time lodged in the same house with her lord), without an order from the executors.
The keys of the doors were carried to him, and as he saw his death approach, he prepared for it, and, in fact, resigned up the keys of everything to the executors, and, having bid them all a farewell, they were dismissed. The physicians waited; but as the verge of life approached, and it was out of their power to do him any service, he gave them a bill of £100 for the care they had taken of him, and dismissed them.
I now went into the chamber, and kneeling by his bed-side, kissed him with great earnestness, and begged of him, if ever I had disobliged him in any respect, to forgive me. He sighed, and said he most freely forgave me everything that I had reason to think I had offended him in; but he added 'If you had been so open in your conversation to me before our marriage as to discover your family and way of life, I know not but that I should have married you as I did. I might now have been in a good state of health, and you many years have lived with all the honours due to the Countess de Wintselsheim.' These words drew tears from my eyes, and they being the last of any consequence he said, they had the greater impression upon me. He faintly bid me a long farewell, and said, as he had but a few moments to live, he hoped I would retire, and leave him with our son and the chaplain. I withdrew into my own chamber, almost drowned in tears, and my son soon followed me out, leaving the chaplain with his father, offering up his prayers to Heaven for the receiving of his soul into the blessed mansions of eternal bliss.
