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Early that evening, the steamer passed by Mount Vernon, prompting Chambrun to say to Lincoln, “Mount Vernon and Springfield, the memories of Washington and your own, those of the revolutionary and civil wars; these are the spots and names America shall one day equally honor.” The remark brought a dreamy smile to Lincoln’s face. “Springfield!” he said. “How happy, four years hence, will I be to return there in peace and tranquility.”

Years later, Chambrun remained intrigued by Lincoln’s temperament. On first impression, he “left with you with a sort of impression of vague and deep sadness.” Yet he “was quite humorous,” often telling hilarious stories and laughing uproariously. “But all of a sudden he would retire within himself; then he would close his eyes, and all his features would at once bespeak a kind of sadness as indescribable as it was deep. After a while, as though it were by an effort of his will, he would shake off this mysterious weight under which he seemed bowed; his generous and open disposition would again reappear.”

Lincoln’s bodyguard, William Crook, believed he understood something of the shifting moods that mystified the French aristocrat. He had observed that Lincoln seemed to absorb the horrors of the war into himself. In the course of the two-week trip, Crook had witnessed Lincoln’s “agony when the thunder of the cannon told him that men were being cut down like grass.” He had seen the anguish on the president’s face when he came within “sight of the poor, torn bodies of the dead and dying on the field of Petersburg.” He discerned his “painful sympathy with the forlorn rebel prisoners,” and his profound distress at “the revelation of the devastation of a noble people in ruined Richmond.” In each instance, Lincoln had internalized the pain of those around him—the wounded soldiers, the captured prisoners, the defeated Southerners. Little wonder that he was overwhelmed at times by a profound sadness that even his own resilient temperament could not dispel.

DIRECTLY UPON HIS RETURN to Washington, Lincoln went to Seward’s bedside. “It was in the evening,” Fred Seward recalled, “the gas-lights were turned down low, and the house was still, every one moving softly, and speaking in whispers.” His father had taken a turn for the worse. A high fever had developed, and “grave apprehensions were entertained, by his medical attendants, that his system would not survive the injuries and the shock.” Frances had hurried down from Auburn to find her husband in a more serious state than she had imagined, his face “so marred and swollen and discolored that one can hardly persuade themselves of his identity; his voice so changed; utterance almost entirely prevented by the broken jaw and the swollen tongue. It makes my heart ache to look at him.” His mind was “perfectly clear,” however, and he remained, as always, “patient and uncomplaining.”

“The extreme sensitiveness of the wounded arm,” Fred recalled, “made even the touch of the bed clothing intolerable. To keep it free from their contact, he was lying on the edge of the bed, farthest from the door.” When Lincoln entered the room, he walked over to the far side of the bed and sat down near the bandaged patient. “You are back from Richmond?” Seward queried in a halting, scarcely audible voice. “Yes,” Lincoln replied, “and I think we are near the end, at last.” To continue the conversation more intimately, Lincoln stretched out on the bed. Supporting his head with his hand, Lincoln lay side by side with Seward, as they had done at the time of their first meeting in Massachusetts many years before. When Fanny came in to sit down, Lincoln somehow managed to unfold his long arm and bring it “around the foot of the bed, to shake hands in his cordial way.” He related the details of his trip to Richmond, where he had “worked as hard” at the task of shaking seven thousand hands as he had when he sawed wood, “& seemed,” Fanny thought, “much satisfied at the labor.”

Finally, when he saw that Seward had fallen into a much-needed sleep, Lincoln quietly got up and