d 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 L100 for the care they had taken of him, and dismissed
them.

I now went into the chamber, and kneeling by his bedside, 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 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.

A few minutes after our son went into the chamber with me again, and
received his father's last blessing. The chaplain now saw him departing,
and was reading the prayer ordered by the Church for that occasion; and
while he was doing it, my lord laid his head gently on the pillow, and
turning on his left side, departed this life with all the calmness of a
composed mind, without so much as a groan, in the fifty-seventh year of
his age.

As soon as he was dead an undertaker was sent for, by order of the
executors, who met together immediately to open his will, and take care
of all my son's effects. I was present when it was opened and read; but
how terribly I was frightened at hearing the codicil repeated any person
may imagine by the substance of it, which was to this effect; that if I
had given me any more after his decease than the L500 he had left me,
the L500 left to his executors, and the L1000 of my son's estate (which
was now a year's interest), was to be given to such poor families at The
Hague as were judged to be in the greatest want of it; not to be divided
into e