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The news of this negociation, by turns broken off and renewed, arrived at last at Valchiusa, and raised a tempest in the heart of Madame de Sismondi. Her letters, bathed in tears, begged her son to listen only to the interests of his fortune, of his long future life; she repeats, “that foreigners, learned men, men of letters, are better received in the north than in the other parts of Europe; that they find more roads to fortune open; that they often make rich marriages.” Then, after having enumerated all the advantages it offered, she cries, “Do not ask me how I feel this affair of Wilna: I have too much pain in driving off this feeling. But have you not guessed it? You, who are alarmed at spending ten years far from the country you prefer; do you not know that these ten years are all of life that remains to me? From the day that they begin, all will be over for me. I do not say that I shall die of it; it is in the vigour of one's age that one imagines one shall die of grief that seems insupportable, and that one thinks the measure of moral strength must be that of life. Those who have grown old amidst storms, learn that they wither us, bow us down, but do not carry us off. Sorrow eats up life, but a stroke of nature must give death.” Then, frightened at having allowed this cry of anguish to escape her, the poor mother accuses herself of weakness, and begs her son and her husband to forget her unworthy terrors, to reckon them as nothing, to weigh with sang froid the advantages and inconveniences, assisted by the information of those who knew the country, and afterwards to decide, putting her interest quite out of the question.