eigneur had breathed his
last. He passed along to his carriage between two rows of officers and
valets, all kneeling, and conjuring him to have pity upon them who had
lost all and were like to starve.

[Illustration: The King leaving the Death-bed of Monseigneur----36]

The excitement and confusion at Versailles were tremendous. From the
moment that small-pox was declared, the princes had not been admitted to
Meudon. The Duchess of Burgundy alone had occasionally seen the king.
All were living in confident expectation of a speedy convalescence; the
news of the death came upon them like a thunderclap. All the courtiers
thronged together at once, the women half dressed, the men anxious and
concerned, some to conceal their extreme sorrow, others their joy,
according as they were mixed up in the different cabals of the court.
"It was all, however, nothing but a transparent veil," says St. Simon,
"which did not prevent good eyes from observing and discerning all the
features. The two princes and the two princesses, seated beside them,
taking care of them, were most exposed to view. The Duke of Burgundy
wept, from feeling and in good faith, with an air of gentleness, tears of
nature, of piety, and of patience. The Duke of Berry, in quite as good
faith, shed abundance, but tears, so to speak, of blood, so great
appeared to be their bitterness; he gave forth not sobs, but shrieks,
howls. The Duchess of Berry (daughter of the Duke of Orleans) was beside
herself. The bitterest despair was depicted on her face. She saw her
sister-in-law, who was so hateful to her, all at once raised to that
title, that rank of dauphiness, which were about to place so great a
distance between them. Her frenzy of grief was not from affection, but
from interest; she would wrench herself from it to sustain her husband,
to embrace him, to console him, then she would become absorbed in herself
again with a torrent of tears, which helped her to stifle her shrieks.
The Duke of Orleans wept in his own corner, actually sobbing, a thing
which, had I not seen it, I should never have believed," adds St. Simon,
who detested Monseigneur, and had as great a dread of his reigning as the
Duke of Orleans had. "Madame, re-dressed in full dress, in the middle of
the night, arrived regularly howling, not quite knowing why either one or
the other; inundating them all with her tears as she embraced them, and
making the castle resound with a renewal of shrie