“Lady Airlie talked of the death of Madame Rossetti. Her husband[178] felt so completely that all his living interests were buried with his wife, that he laid his unpublished poems under her dead head, and they were buried with her. But, after a year had passed, his feeling about his wife was calmed, while the longing for his poems grew daily, and people urged him that he was forcing a loss upon the world. And the coffin of the poor lady was taken up and opened to get at the poems, and behold her beautiful golden hair had grown and grown till the whole coffin was filled with it--filled with it and rippling over.[179] Lady Airlie had the account from an eye-witness. For one moment Madame Rossetti was visible in all her radiant loveliness, as if she were asleep, then she sank into dust. She was buried with her Testament under her pillow on one side and her husband’s poems on the other.
“The Duke of Teck looked very handsome and was most pleasant and amiable. He said that an old lady in Germany, an ancestress of his, had the most glorious pearl necklace in the world, and when she died, she desired that the pearl necklace might be buried with her. And the family were very sorry to part with their aged relative, but they were still more sorry to part with the family jewels; and in time their grief for the old lady was assuaged, but their grief for the pearl necklace was never assuaged at all, and at last there came a moment when they dug up the coffin, and took the pearl necklace from the aged neck. But behold the pearls were quite spoilt and had lost all their lustre and beauty. Then pearl-doctors were summoned, men who were learned in such things, and they said that the only thing which would restore the beauty of the pearls would be if three beautiful young ladies would wear them constantly, and let the pearls drink in all their youth and beauty. So the eldest daughter of the house took them and wore them constantly, and all the beauty and brilliancy of her loveliness flowed into the pearls, which grew brighter and better every day. And as her beauty faded, another daughter of the house took them, and so three beautiful young ladies took them and wore them in three generations, till, when sixty years were passed, the pearls were so beautiful and glorious, so filled with youth and radiancy, that there is no such pearl necklace in the whole world.”