the least trouble in the world about it.  The bombshell dropped all at once when nobody could have expected it, and everybody fell on his stomach as is done when a shell drops; everybody was gloomy and almost wild; the king himself appeared as if exhausted by so great an effort of will and power.  He had only just signed his will, when he met, at Madame de Maintenon’s, the Ex-Queen of England.  “I have made my will, Madame,” said he.  “I have purchased repose; I know the impotence and uselessness of it; we can do all we please as long as we are here; after we are gone, we can do less than private persons; we have only to look at what became of my father’s, and immediately after his death too, and of those of so many other kings.  I am quite aware of that; but, in spite of all that, it was desired; and so, Madame, you see it has been done; come of it what may, at any rate I shall not be worried about it any more.”  It was the old man yielding to the entreaties and intrigues of his domestic circle; the judgment of the king remained steady and true, without illusions and without prejudices.

Death was coming, however, after a reign which had been so long and had occupied so much room in the world that it caused mistakes as to the very age of the king.  He was seventy-seven; he continued to work with his ministers; the order so long and so firmly established was, not disturbed by illness any more than it had been by the reverses and sorrows of late; meanwhile the appetite was diminishing, the thinness went on increasing, a sore on the leg appeared, the king suffered a great deal.  On the 24th of August he dined in bed, surrounded as usual by his courtiers; he had a difficulty in swallowing; for the first time, publicity was burdensome to him; he could not get on, and said to those who were there that he begged them to withdraw.  Meanwhile the drums and hautboys still went on playing beneath his window, and the twenty-four violins at his dinner.  In the evening, he was so ill that he asked for the sacraments.  There had been wrung from him a codicil which made the will still worse.  He, nevertheless, received the Duke of Orleans, to whom he commended the young king.  On the 26th he called to his bedside all those of the court who had the entry.  “Gentlemen,” he said to them, “I ask your pardon for the bad example I have set you.  I have to thank you much for the way in which you have served me, and for the attachment and fidelity you have always shown me.  I am very sorry not to have done for you what I should have liked to do.  The bad times are the cause of that.  I request of you, on my great-grandson’s behalf, the same attention and fidelity that you have shown me.  It is a child who will possibly have many crosses to bear.  Follow the instructions my nephew gives you; he is about to govern the kingdom, and I hope that he will do it well; I hope also that you will all contribute to preserve unity.  I feel that I am becoming unmanned, and that I am unmanning you also; I ask your pardon.  Farewell, gentlemen; I feel sure that you will think of me sometimes.”