The people’s President Guido de Marco died peacefully in his sleep, The Times has learnt, happy to be home after battling a critical condition and inundated with heartfelt messages from well-wishers.

Prof. de Marco was feeling tired and had gone for an afternoon nap when his heart failed on Thursday afternoon. Numerous attempts were made to resuscitate him but he was pronounced dead at Mater Dei Hospital at 4.18 p.m.

A tearful Vince Camilleri, Prof. de Marco’s security man and driver for 24 years, recounted how earlier in the day he was at the hospital for an hour of therapy. At about 9.30 a.m. he entered the hospital’s renal unit for dialysis that lasted some four hours. It was here Mr Camilleri felt something was not right.

“He gave me a look I had never seen in 24 years. It seemed as if Prof. de Marco was telling me this was the last time we were going to see each other,” Mr Camilleri recounted, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Ironically, just the evening before, in his typical manner of always looking on the bright side, he had told The Times how he felt “born again” and that after battling for his life the previous week he felt “I’m here to stay... for now at least”.

After driving the de Marcos home to Sliema at around 2.30 p.m., Mr Camilleri bid Prof. de Marco goodbye, for what was to be the last time.

“He was a gentleman and very humble despite the impression he may have conveyed,” he said, recalling the daily visit to Café Cordina in Valletta for a coffee and one cheesecake, which they shared.

“He could not eat a whole cheesecake for medical reasons while I wanted to remain healthy so we shared one solitary cheesecake,” Mr Camilleri recalled, insisting Prof. de Marco would always ask about his family.

“I was fortunate to have worked so closely with him and his family. The country has lost a pillar,” he added.

Prof. de Marco’s closely-knit family – wife Violet and children Fiorella, Giannella and Mario – were yesterday trying to come to terms with the loss.

“I have lost not only a father, but the person who motivated every facet of my life. He was my motivator as a lawyer, my inspiration as a lecturer, my guiding force as a politician,” his son Mario, Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism, told The Times.

Dr de Marco spoke about his father’s boundless love and endless optimism, a trait anybody who knew him has been recalling.

“In the thick of things in the1970s, one phrase of his stuck in my mind as democracy was on the brink: ‘Ir-rota iddur’ (better times will come). He would repeat this phrase to the numerous people who would seek solace in his courage,” he said, breaking down.

“When things for him took a wrong turning and his health took a dip, he would relentlessly say to all of us – keep smiling.

“He taught me that you never know enough, that you can learn, that you should learn, from all types of people, from different walks of life.”

Dr de Marco recalled how even after hours of house visits, when his father was over 60, during the 1996 and 1998 electoral campaigns, climbing hundreds of stairs in Valletta, he would return home energised from the impact the families he encountered would have left on him.

During these visits his father would relish the photos of young people graduating, among families who never dreamt their children might one day become lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects...

Prof. de Marco saw in the eyes of these families the proud eyes he must have seen in his own parents, his son said, adding he was a person of values, a man of principle, but never a fundamentalist.

“He always believed in moderation and that the pendulum would always stop somewhere in the middle. He was a people’s person in the true sense of the word. He just loved meeting people. It was never one occasion too many, till the last days of his life. Meeting people gave him the motivation to live on. I will miss his numerous daily phone calls. His telling us he loves us at the end of each phone call with such insistence he obviously felt that each phone call could have been his last.

“I will feel forever guilty for each time I told him I could not take his call because I was in some meeting or other. I will cherish the fact, however, that a bit of him, a lot of him can live in each and every one of us if we live life the way he did: that life is there for a purpose and we have to live it to the full.”