I had not the happiness to please this worthy triumvirate; I
obeyed, but did not wait on them, not conceiving that my duty to our
general mistress required me to be a servant to her servants.
Besides this, I was a person that gave them some inquietude; they
saw I was not in my proper situation, and feared the countess would
discover it likewise, and by placing me in it, decrease their
portions; for such sort of people, too greedy to be just, look on
every legacy given to others as a diminution of their own wealth; they
endeavored, therefore, to keep me as much out of her sight as
possible. She loved to write letters, in her situation, but they
contrived to give her a distaste to it; persuading her, by the aid
of the doctor, that it was too fatiguing; and, under pretense that I
did not understand how to wait on her, they employed two great
lubberly chairmen for that purpose; in a word, they managed the affair
so well, that for eight days before she made her will, I had not
been permitted to enter the chamber. Afterwards I went in as usual,
and was even more assiduous than any one, being afflicted at the
sufferings of the unhappy lady, whom I truly respected and beloved for
the calmness and fortitude with which she bore her illness, and
often did I shed tears of real sorrow without being perceived by any
one.
At length I saw her expire. She had lived like a woman of sense
and virtue, her death was that of a philosopher. She was naturally
serious, but towards the end of her illness she possessed a kind of
gayety, too regular to be assumed, which served as a counterpoise to
the melancholy of her situation.
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