she
bade me farewell, and I heard that she called for her husband.

Next day she was dead. Her waiting-maid came to tell me that the
Duchess, conscious to the last, had made her husband promise to resign
his appointment as governor to the Dauphin, and withdraw to his estates,
where he was to do penance. M. de Meaux, a friend of the family, read
the prayers for the dying, to which the Duchess made response, and three
minutes before the final death-throe, she consented to let him preach a
funeral sermon in eulogy of herself and her husband.

When printed and published, this discourse was thought to be a fine piece
of eloquence.

Over certain things the Bishop passed lightly, while exaggerating others.
Some things, again, were entirely of his own invention; and if from the
depths of her tomb the Duchess could have heard all that M. de Meaux said
about her, she never would have borne me such malice, nor would her grief
at leaving life and fortune have troubled her so keenly.

The King thought this funeral oration excellently well composed. Of one
expression and of one whole passage, however, he disapproved, though
which these were he did not do me the honour to say.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

And then he would go off, laughing in his sleeve
Hate me, but fear me
He was not fool enough for his place
I myself being the first to make merry at it (my plainness)
In the great world, a vague promise is the same as a refusal
It is easier to offend me than to deceive me
Knew how to point the Bastille cannon at the troops of the King
Madame de Sevigne
Time, the irresistible healer
Weeping just as if princes had not got to die like anybody else
Went so far as to shed tears, his most difficult feat of all
When one has been pretty, one imagines that one is still so

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan,
Volume III., by Madame La Marquise De Montespan

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