Alas, the Chapel organs may keep going; the Shrine of Sainte Genevieve be let down, and pulled up again,—­without effect.  In the evening the whole Court, with Dauphin and Dauphiness, assist at the Chapel:  priests are hoarse with chanting their ‘Prayers of Forty Hours;’ and the heaving bellows blow.  Almost frightful!  For the very heaven blackens; battering rain-torrents dash, with thunder; almost drowning the organ’s voice:  and electric fire-flashes make the very flambeaux on the altar pale.  So that the most, as we are told, retired, when it was over, with hurried steps, ‘in a state of meditation (recueillement),’ and said little or nothing.  (Weber, Memoires concernant Marie-Antoinette (London, 1809), i. 22.)

So it has lasted for the better half of a fortnight; the Dubarry gone almost a week.  Besenval says, all the world was getting impatient que cela finit; that poor Louis would have done with it.  It is now the 10th of May 1774.  He will soon have done now.

This tenth May day falls into the loathsome sick-bed; but dull, unnoticed there:  for they that look out of the windows are quite darkened; the cistern-wheel moves discordant on its axis; Life, like a spent steed, is panting towards the goal.  In their remote apartments, Dauphin and Dauphiness stand road-ready; all grooms and equerries booted and spurred:  waiting for some signal to escape the house of pestilence.  (One grudges to interfere with the beautiful theatrical ‘candle,’ which Madame Campan (i. 79) has lit on this occasion, and blown out at the moment of death.  What candles might be lit or blown out, in so large an Establishment as that of Versailles, no man at such distance would like to affirm:  at the same time, as it was two o’clock in a May Afternoon, and these royal Stables must have been some five or six hundred yards from the royal sick-room, the ‘candle’ does threaten to go out in spite of us.  It remains burning indeed—­in her fantasy; throwing light on much in those Memoires of hers.) And, hark! across the Oeil-de-Boeuf, what sound is that; sound ‘terrible and absolutely like thunder’?  It is the rush of the whole Court, rushing as in wager, to salute the new Sovereigns:  Hail to your Majesties!  The Dauphin and Dauphiness are King and Queen!  Over-powered with many emotions, they two fall on their knees together, and, with streaming tears, exclaim, “O God, guide us, protect us; we are too young to reign!”—­Too young indeed.

Thus, in any case, ‘with a sound absolutely like thunder,’ has the Horologe of Time struck, and an old Era passed away.  The Louis that was, lies forsaken, a mass of abhorred clay; abandoned ’to some poor persons, and priests of the Chapelle Ardente,’—­who make haste to put him ’in two lead coffins, pouring in abundant spirits of wine.’  The new Louis with his Court is rolling towards Choisy, through the summer afternoon:  the royal tears still flow; but a word mispronounced by Monseigneur d’Artois sets them all laughing, and they weep no more.  Light mortals, how ye walk your light life-minuet, over bottomless abysses, divided from you by a film!