The Curé of Versailles came to the Palace with a view to preparing the King for the pious ceremony; but he encountered the Duc de Fronsac, who gave him his word as a gentleman of birth that he would pitch him out of the window at the first syllable he might utter on this subject.

  “If I am not killed by the fall,” was the Curé’s answer, “I will come in again by the door, as I have the right to do.”

  However on the 7th, at three o’clock in the morning, it was the King himself who peremptorily demanded the Abbé Mandoux to be sent for, a poor priest who knew nothing of Court intrigues, a simple- minded ecclesiastic who had been made the King’s Confessor, and who was blind.

  His Majesty’s confession lasted seventeen minutes. This ended, the Ducs de la Vrillière and d’Aiguillon were for still deferring the viaticum; but Lamartinière, the bitter enemy of Madame du Barry, who had introduced Lorry and Bordeu to the King’s favour, approaching his Royal master:

  “Sire,” said he, “I have seen your Majesty in many difficult straits, but never have I admired your conduct so highly as I do to-day. If you follow my advice, you will complete forthwith what you have so well begun,”

  The result was the King had Mandoux recalled, and received absolution at his hands.

  As for the proposed public and conspicuous act of repentance that was solemnly to annihilate Madame Du Barry, this was not so much as mentioned. The grand Almoner and the Archbishop had together drawn up the following form of declaration which was made in the presence of the viaticum:

  “Albeit the King is accountable for his conduct to God alone, he hereby declares his repentance for having been the occasion of scandal to his subjects, and his desire to live henceforward only for the maintenance of true religion and the happiness of his subjects.”

  The Royal family, including Madame Louise, who had quitted her Convent to attend upon her father, assembled at the foot of the staircase to receive the blessed sacrament.

  While His Majesty was receiving the consolations of Religion, the Dauphin, who was not allowed to see his father as he had not had the smallpox, was writing to the Abbé Terray in the following terms:

  “To the Controller General, “Sir, — I beg you to see to the distribution amongst the poor of the different parishes of Paris of two hundred thousand livres for prayers for the King’s recovery. If you think the sum excessive, deduct it from our allowances, Madame la Dauphine’s and mine.

  “LOUIS-AUGUSTE.”

  In the course of May 7th and 8th the disease went from bad to worse. The King felt his body literally falling to pieces as he lay. Deserted by his courtiers, who dared not stay beside this living corpse, he had none to watch over him but his three daughters, who never left his side for an instant.

  The King was appalled and conscience stricken. In this horrible corruption which was destroying him bodily he saw a direct punishment from Heaven. In his eyes the invisible hand that was disfiguring his person with loathsome plague spots, was the hand of God. In a delirium that was more of the mind than of the body, and the more dreadful for that very reason, he saw the flames of the burning pit, and screamed for his Confessor, the poor blind Priest, his only hope and refuge, to hold the crucifix betwixt him and the lake of fire. Then with his own hands he would take the holy water, and lifting sheets and blankets, drench himself from head to foot with the blessed liquid, uttering groans of terror the while. Next he would ask for the crucifix, and seizing it with both hands, kiss it again and again, crying: “Lord! Lord! intercede for me, for me the chiefest of all sinners that have ever lived.”

  In these terrible accesses of despairing anguish the King passed the 8th day of the month. All day long, — and all day was one agonized confession, — neither the Priest nor his daughters ever left his side. His body was a prey to the most hideous corruption and the living corpse of the doomed King exhaled so fearful a stench that two lackeys fell down stifled, one of whom died.

  By the morning of the 10th the bones of the thighs could be seen through the gaping rents in the flesh. Three more lackeys fainted. Terror seized the Palace, and all its inhabitants took to flight, not a living soul was left in the vast pile save the three devoted women and the good Priest.

  The whole day of the 10th was one long death struggle; the King would not die, though he lay practically a dead man already in his bed, which was virtually a tomb. At last, at five minutes to three, he sprang up, stretched out his arms, fixed his eyes on a corner of the bedchamber, and cried:

  “Chauvelin! Chauvelin! but I tell you it is not two months yet..., “ — and fell back a corpse.

  God had granted courage to the three Princesses and the devoted Priest to nurse the living King, but the Monarch once dead, their task no less than his was ended. Moreover all three were already stricken with the disease that had just killed their father.

  The funeral arrangements were left to the Grand Master, who completed all his preparations without setting foot inside the Palace. The nightsoilmen of Versailles were the only persons to be found to undertake the risk of putting the King’s body in the leaden coffin destined for its reception. In this he was laid without balms or aromatics, simply wrapped in the sheets of the bed whereon he had died. Then the leaden coffin was placed inside an oak shell, and the whole carried into the Chapel Royal.

  On the 12th, what had once been Louis XV. was carried to Saint-Denis. The coffin was in a great hunting coach; a second carriage was occupied by the Duc d’Ayen and the Duc d’Aumont; in a third rode the Grand Almoner and the Curé of Versailles. A score of pages and fifty grooms, mounted and bearing torches, formed the funeral cortège.

  The procession, starting from Versailles at eight in the evening, reached Saint- Denis at eleven. The body was lowered into the Royal vault, which it was not to quit till the day when the Basilica was profaned by the Revolutionary mob; this done, the entrance was immediately closed, the door walled up and every chink stopped, that no emanation from this: human dung-heap might filter through from the lodging of the dead to pollute the homes of the living.

  We have described elsewhere the delight of the Parisians at the death of Louis XIV. Their satisfaction was equally great when they found themselves rid of him whom thirty years before they had surnamed The well- beloved.

  The Curé of Sainte-Geneviève was rallied on the small effect produced by the wonder-working shrine of the Patron Saint of Paris. “Why, what have you to complain of,” was his sardonic answer, “is not the King dead?”

  Next day Madame du Barry received at Rueil a letter banishing her the country.

  Sophie Arnould heard the news simultaneously of the King’s death and Madame du Barry’s banishment. “Alas!” she exclaimed, “behold us orphaned of father and mother both!”

  It was the only funeral oration pronounced over the tomb of the grandson of Louis XIV.

  THE END

 

 

  Alexandre Dumas, MONSIEUR DE CHAUVELIN’S WILL

 

 

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