Madeleine's Happy Death.
Troubles, like migratory birds, never travel alone. As heavier billows
cling together and roll in rapid succession and in thundering force
on the rock-built barriers of nature, so the waves of trial and
misfortune break on frail humanity in crushing proximity. The second
and third billows of misfortune are fast undulating on the tide of time,
and will sweep over the home of Cassier, leaving it a miserable wreck,
a theme for the sympathy and the moral of a historian's pen.
The weakened, consumptive frame of Madeleine did not long survive the
blow that Louis had prepared for her--not, indeed, in the sense of a
guilty and blood-stained hand, but with the merit of an Abraham who,
at the command of Heaven, prepared a funeral pyre for his child.
Madeleine could scarcely weep; the grief of nature was calmed by the
impulses of grace, and she felt in her heart a holy joy in the sublime
destinies of her son. Could we, in the face of the holy teachings of
the Church, institute a comparison between the mother of the soldier
and the mother of a priest? Amidst sighs that were but the convulsive
throes of a heart's emotion, she breathed often and aloud the "Deo
gratias" of the faithful soul.
But like certain forces in nature that require but the slightest shock
to give them irresistible power, by which they burst through their
confining cells and set themselves free, the immortal spirit of
Madeleine burst its prison cell and soared to its home beyond the skies.
We need not tarry over the painful, touching scene oft-told, and felt
sooner or later in every home. Like snow disappearing under the
sunshine, the life of Madeleine was fast melting away. At length, as
if she knew when the absorbing heat would melt the last crystal of the
vital principle, she summoned her family around her to wish them that
last thrilling farewell which is never erased from the tablet of memory.
In the farewell of the emigrant, torn by cruel fate from country and
friends, hope smiles in his tears; the fortune that drives away can
bring back; but the farewell of death leaves no fissure in its cloud
for the gleam of hope--it is final, terrible, and, on this side the
grave, irrevocable.
With faltering voice she doled out the last terrible warning that speaks
so eloquently from the bed of death.
Whilst the aged priest recited the Litanies she raised her last, dying
looks towards heaven, and whispered loud enough to be heard, "O Mary!
pray for my children."
Madeleine was no more. Her last sigh was a prayer that went like
lightning to the throne of God from a repentant, reconciled spirit; at
the same moment her liberated soul had travelled the vast gulf between
time and eternity, and there, in the books held by the guardian angels
of her children, she saw registered the answer to her prayer.
Madeleine was laid in a marble tomb amongst the first occupants of
Pere la Chaise. A small but artistic monument, still extant, and not
far from the famous tomb of Abelard and Eloise, would point out to the
curious or interested where sleeps among the great of the past the
much-loved Madeleine Cassier.
"God's peace be with her!" they did say,
And laughed at their next breath.
O busy world! how poor is thy display
Of sympathy with death.