and even the Duc d’Orleans himself.

His intense agitation was succeeded by profound melancholy, stupor closely allied to insanity or death.

One evening, the Comte de Guiche went to the Abbey Church of Saint Denis.  He hid himself here, to avoid being watched, and when the huge nave was closed, and all the attendants had left, he rushed forward and flung himself at full length upon the tombstone which covers the vast royal vault.  By the flickering light of the lamps, he mourned the passing hence of so accomplished a woman, murdered in the flower of her youth.  He called her by name, telling her once more of his deep and fervent love.  Next day, he wandered about in great pain, gloomy and inconsolable.

One day he came to see me at Clagny, and talked in a hopeless, desolate way about our dear one.  He told me that neither glory nor ambition nor voluptuous pleasures could ever allure him or prove soothing to his soul.  He assured me that life was a burden to him,—­a burden that religion alone prevented him from relinquishing, and that he was determined to shut himself up in La Trappe or in some such wild, deserted place.

I sought to dissuade him from such a project, which could only be the cause of grief and consternation to his relatives.  He pretended to yield to my entreaties, but the next night he left home and disappeared.

At length he came back.  Luckily, the Trappist Abbe de Ranch wished to take away from him the portrait on enamel of Henrietta of England, so as to break it in pieces before his eyes.  So indignant was the Count that he was upon the point of giving the hermit a thrashing.  He fled in disgust from the monastery, and this fresh annoyance served, in some degree, to assuage his grief.  Life’s daily occupations, the excitements of society, the continual care shown towards him by his relatives, youth, above all, and Time, the irresistible healer, at last served to soothe a sorrow which, had it lasted longer, would have been more disastrous in its results.

The Comte de Guiche consented to marry a wife to whom he was but slightly attached, and who is quite content with him, praising his good qualities and all his actions.

CHAPTER XLIV.

Mexica.—­Philippa.—­Molina.—­The Queen’s Jester.

In marrying Maria Theresa, Infanta of Spain, the King had made an advantageous match from a political point of view.  For through the Infanta he had rights with regard to Flanders; she also provided him with eventual claims upon Spain itself, together with Mexico and Peru.  But from a personal and social point of view, the King could not have contracted a more miserable alliance.  The Infanta, almost wholly uneducated, had not even such intellectual resources as a position such as hers certainly required, where personal risk was perpetual, where authority had to be maintained by charming manners, and respect for power ensured by elevation of tone and sentiment, which checks the indiscreet, and imbues everybody with the spirit of consideration and reverence.