Console yourself, dear mother, circumstances require that you should.

We will redouble our care and our gratitude, happy if, by our obedience, we can make up to you in the smallest degree for the inestimable loss of a cherished husband I finish, dear mother,--my grief compels it--by praying you to calm yours.
My health is perfect, and my daily prayer is that Heaven may grant you the same.

Convey my respects to my Aunt Gertrude, to Nurse Saveria, and to my Aunt Fesch.
Your very humble and affectionate son, NAPOLEON.
At the same time he wrote to his kind old uncle, the Canon Lucien, saying: "It would be useless to tell you how deeply I have felt the blow that has just fallen upon us.

We have lost a father; and God alone knows what a father, and what were his attachment and devotion to us.

Alas! everything taught us to look to him as the support of our youth.