As M St Aubert lay dying far from his Gascony home, he made his daughter Emily promise that when she returned there, alone, she would look underneath a certain floorboard in a particular room, and draw out from the cavity whatever she found there. At this point, however, both he and Emily were overcome by emotion.

M St Aubert asked Emily to help him face his approaching death without excessive grief, and having mastered his own emotion and calmed Emily a little, went on with his last instructions. He asked Emily to empty a certain under-floor cavity, and burn whatever she found there – stressing most particularly that everything should be burnt unread.

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