about to be taken off the bed, the King
redemanded him, embraced him again, and raising hands and eyes to Heaven,
blessed him once more. This spectacle was extremely touching.

On Tuesday, the 27th of August, the King said to Madame de Maintenon,
that he had always heard, it was hard to resolve to die; but that as for
him, seeing himself upon the point of death, he did not find this
resolution so difficult to form. She replied that it was very hard when
we had attachments to creatures, hatred in our hearts, or restitutions to
make. "Ah," rejoined the King, "as for restitutions, to nobody in
particular do I owe any; but as for those I owe to the realm, I hope in
the mercy of God."

The night which followed was very agitated. The King was seen at all
moments joining his hands, striking his breast, and was heard repeating
the prayers he ordinarily employed.

On Wednesday morning, the 28th of August, he paid a compliment to Madame
de Maintenon, which pleased her but little, and to which she replied not
one word. He said, that what consoled him in quitting her was that,
considering the age she had reached, they must soon meet again!

About seven o'clock in the morning, he saw in the mirror two of his
valets at the foot of the bed weeping, and said to them, "Why do you
weep? Is it because you thought me immortal? As for me, I have not
thought myself so, and you ought, considering my age, to have been
prepared to lose me."

A very clownish Provencal rustic heard of the extremity of the King,
while on his way from Marseilles to Paris, and came this morning to
Versailles with a remedy, which he said would cure the gangrene. The
King was so ill, and the doctors so at their wits' ends, that they
consented to receive him. Fagon tried to say something, but this rustic,
who was named Le Brun, abused him very coarsely, and Fagon, accustomed to
abuse others, was confounded. Ten drops of Le Brun's mixture in Alicante
wine were therefore given to the King about eleven o'clock in the
morning. Some time after he became stronger, but the pulse falling again
and becoming bad, another dose was given to him about four o'clock, to
recall him to life, they told him. He replied, taking the mixture, "To
life or to death as it shall please God."

Le Brun's remedy was continued. Some one proposed that the King should
take some broth. The King replied that it was not broth he wanted, but a
confessor, and sent for him. One day, r