h was caused by her teeth. She passed the
following days as usual. On Monday, the 1st of February, the Court
returned to Versailles.

On Friday, the 5th of February, the Duc de Noailles gave a very fine box
full of excellent Spanish snuff to the Dauphine, who took some, and liked
it. This was towards the end of the morning. Upon entering her cabinet
(closed to everybody else), she put this box upon the table, and left it
there. Towards the evening she was seized with trembling fits of fever.
She went to bed, and could not rise again even to go to the King's
cabinet after the supper. On Saturday, the 6th of February, the
Dauphine, who had had fever all night, did not fail to rise at her
ordinary hour, and to pass the day as usual; but in the evening the fever
returned. She was but middling all that night, a little worse the next
day; but towards ten o'clock at night she was suddenly seized by a sharp
pain under the temple. It did not extend to the dimensions of a ten sous
piece, but was so violent that she begged the King, who was coming to see
her, not to enter. This kind of madness of suffering lasted without
intermission until Monday, the 8th, and was proof against tobacco chewed
and smoked, a quantity of opium, and two bleedings in the arms. Fever
showed itself more then this pain was a little calmed; the Dauphine said
she had suffered more than in child-birth.

Such a violent illness filled the chamber with rumours concerning the
snuff-box given to the Dauphine by the Duc de Noailles. In going to bed
the day she had received it and was seized by fever, she spoke of the
snuff to her ladies, highly praising it and the box, which she told one
of them to go and look for upon the table in the cabinet, where, as I
have said, it had been left. The box could not be found, although looked
for high and low. This disappearance had seemed very extraordinary from
the first moment it became known. Now, joined to the grave illness with
which the Dauphine was so cruelly assailed, it aroused the most sombre
suspicions. Nothing, however, was breathed of these suspicions, beyond a
very restricted circle; for the Princess took snuff with the knowledge of
Madame de Maintenon, but without that of the King, who would have made a
fine scene if he had discovered it. This was what was feared, if the
singular loss of the box became divulged.

Let me here say, that although one of my friends, the Archbishop of
Rheims, believe