, if I wished to see him alive once more. I went to the house
at once, and found Mrs. Eames and her friend at the bedside of the dying
man. He was already unconscious, and soon breathed his last. At Mr.
Eames's request I now gave up my room at the hotel and came to stay with
Mrs. Eames, who was prostrated with the fatigue of nursing the sick man
and with grief for his loss. While I sat and talked with her Mr. Eames
entered the room, and said, "Mrs. Howe, my wife has always had a
menagerie here in Washington, and now she has lost her faithful old
grizzly."

I was intrusted with some of the arrangements for the funeral. Mrs.
Eames said to me that, as the count had been a man of no religious
belief, she thought it would be best to invite a Unitarian minister to
officiate at his funeral. I should add that her grief prevented her from
perceiving the humor of the suggestion. I accordingly secured the
services of the Rev. John Pierpont, who happened to be in Washington at
the time. Charles Sumner came to the house before the funeral, and
actually shed tears as he looked on the face of his former friend. He
remarked upon the beauty of the countenance, saying in his rather
oratorical way, "There is a beauty of life, and there is a beauty of
death." The count's good looks had been spoiled in early life by the
loss of one eye, which had been destroyed, it was said, in a duel. After
death, however, this blemish did not appear, and the distinction of the
features was remarkable.

Among his few effects was a printed volume containing the genealogy of
his family, which had thrice intermarried with royal houses, once in the
family of Maria Lesczinska, wife of Louis XV. of France. Within this
book he had inclosed one or two cast-off trifles belonging to Mrs.
Eames, with a few words of deep and grateful affection. So ended this
troublous life. The Russian minister at Washington called upon Mrs.
Eames soon after the funeral, and spoke with respect of the count, who,
he said, could have held a brilliant position in Russia, had it not been
for his quarrelsome disposition. Despite his skepticism, and in all his
poverty, he caused a mass to be said every year for the soul of his
mother, who had been a devout Catholic. To the brother whose want of
faith added the distresses of poverty to the woes of exile, Gurowski
once addressed a letter in the following form: "To John Gurowski, the
greatest scoundrel in Europe." A younger brother of his, a