things that pass away.’” “The days of this affliction were soon shortened,” says St. Simon; “from the first moment I saw him, I was scared at his fixed, haggard look, with a something of ferocity, at the change in his countenance and the livid marks I noticed upon it.  He was waiting at Marly for the king to awake; they came to tell him he could go in; he turned without speaking a word, without replying to his gentlemen (menins) who pressed him to go; I went up to him, taking the liberty of giving him a gentle push; he gave me a look, that pierced right to the heart, and went away.  I never looked on him again.  Please God in His mercy I may look on him forever there where his goodness, no doubt, has placed him!”

It was a desperate but a short struggle.  Disease and grief were victorious over the most sublime courage.  “It was the spectacle of a man beside himself, who was forcing himself to keep the surface smooth, and who succumbed in the attempt.”  The dauphin took to his bed on the 14th of February; he believed himself to be poisoned, and said, from the first, that he should never recover.  His piety alone, through the most prodigious efforts, still kept up; he spoke no more, save to God, continually lifting up his soul to him in fervent aspirations.  “What tender, but tranquil views!  What lively motions towards thanksgiving for being preserved from the sceptre and the account that must be rendered thereof!  What submission, and how complete!  What ardent love of God!  What a magnificent idea of infinite mercy!  What pious and humble awe!  What invincible patience!  What sweetness!  What constant kindness towards all that approached him!  What pure charity which urged him forward to God!  France at length succumbed beneath this last chastisement; God gave her a glimpse of a prince whom she did not deserve.  Earth was not worthy of him; he was already ripe for a blessed eternity!”

“For some time past I have feared that a fatality hung over the dauphin,” Fenelon had written at the first news of his illness; “I have at the bottom of my heart a lurking apprehension that God is not yet appeased towards France.  For a long while He has been striking, as the prophet says, and His anger is not yet worn out.  God has taken from us all our hope for the Church and for the State.”

Fenelon and his friends had expected too much and hoped for too much; they relied upon the dauphin to accomplish a work above human strength; he might have checked the evil, retarded for a while the march of events, but France carried simultaneously in her womb germs of decay and hopes of progress, both as yet concealed and confused, but too potent and too intimately connected with the very sources of her history and her existence for the hand of the most virtuous and most capable of princes to have the power of plucking them out or keeping them down.