a precipice, from which he was rescued with a broken arm. A
lady observed that dreams are but vague and uncertain indications.

"Not mine," replied Madame, with ardour; "they are not like others. Five
or six days before the Queen fell ill, I told her, in the presence of
Madame la Dauphine, that I had a most alarming dream. I had dreamt that
I was in a large church all draped in black. I advanced to the
sanctuary; a vault was opened at one side of the altar. Some kind of
priests went down, and these folk said aloud, as they came up again, that
they had found no place at first; that the cavity having seemed to them
too long and deep, they had arranged the biers, and had placed there the
body of the lady. At that point I awoke, quite startled, and not
myself."

Hardly had the Princess finished her story, when the Infanta, turning
pale, said to her: "Madame, you will see, the dream of the vault refers
to me. At the funeral of the Queen of England I noticed, and remember,
that the same difficulty occurred at Saint Denis; they were obliged to
push up all the coffins, one against the other."

And, in truth, we knew, a few days afterwards, that for this poor Queen,
Maria Theresa, the monks of the abbey had found it necessary to break
down a strong barrier of stones in their subterranean church, to remove
the first wife of Gaston, mother of Mademoiselle, and find a place for
the Spanish Queen who had arrived in those regions.

There were several funeral orations on this occasion. Not a single one
of these official discourses deserved to survive the Queen. There was
very little to say about her, I admit; but these professional
panegyrists, these liars in surplice, in black cassock, or in purple and
mitre, are not too scrupulous to borrow facts and material in cases where
the dead person has neglected to furnish or bequeath it them.

In my own case I congratulated myself on this sort of indifference or
literary penury; an indiscreet person, sustained by zeal or talent, might
have wished to mortify me in a romance combined of satire and religion.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Jean Baptiste Colbert.--His Death.--His Great Works.--His Last Advice to
the Marquise.

M. Colbert had been ailing for a long time past. His face bore visible
testimony against his health, to which his accumulated and incessant
labour had caused the greatest injury. We had just married his son
Blainville to my niece, Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charent