In the evening it was known that the King had only recovered for the moment.  In giving orders during the day, he called the young Dauphin “the young King.”  He saw a movement amongst those around him.  “Why not?” said he, “that does not trouble me.”  Towards eight o’clock he took the elixir of the rustic.  His brain appeared confused; he himself said he felt very ill.  Towards eleven o’clock his leg was examined.  The gangrene was found to be in the foot and the knee; the thigh much inflamed.  He swooned during this examination.  He had perceived with much pain that Madame de Maintenon was no longer near him.  She had in fact gone off on the previous day with very dry eyes to Saint-Cyr, not intending to return.  He asked for her several times during the day.  Her departure could not be hidden.  He sent for her to Saint-Cyr, and she came back in the evening.

Friday, August the 30th, was a bad day preceded by a bad night.  The King continually lost his reason.  About five o’clock in the evening Madame de Maintenon left him, gave away her furniture to the domestics, and went to Saint-Cyr never to leave it.

On Saturday, the 31st of August, everything went from bad to worse.  The gangrene had reached the knee and all the thigh.  Towards eleven o’clock at night the King was found to be so ill that the prayers for the dying were said.  This restored him to himself.  He repeated the prayers in a voice so strong that it rose above all the other voices.  At the end he recognised Cardinal de Rohan, and said to him, “These are the last favours of the Church.”  This was the last man to whom he spoke.  He repeated several times, “Nunc et in hora mortis”, then said, “Oh, my God, come to my aid:  hasten to succour me.”

These were his last words.  All the night he was without consciousness and in a long agony, which finished on Sunday, the 1st September, 1715, at a quarter past eight in the morning, three days before he had accomplished his seventy-seventh year, and in the seventy-second of his reign.  He had survived all his sons and grandsons, except the King of Spain.  Europe never saw so long a reign or France a King so old.

CHAPTER LXXIII

I shall pass over the stormy period of Louis XIV.’s minority.  At twenty-three years of age he entered the great world as King, under the most favourable auspices.  His ministers were the most skilful in all Europe; his generals the best; his Court was filled with illustrious and clever men, formed during the troubles which had followed the death of Louis XIII.