The princesses had entered the king’s closet; they were weeping and making a noise.  “You must not cry so,” said the king, who asked for them to bid them farewell.  He sent for the little dauphin.  His governess, the Duchess of Ventadour, brought him on to the bed.  “My child,” said the king to him, “you are going to be a great king.  Render to God that which you owe to Him; recognize the obligations you have towards Him; cause Him to be honored by your subjects.  Try to preserve peace with your neighbors.  I have been too fond of war; do not imitate me in that, any more than in the too great expenses I have incurred.  Take counsel in all matters, and seek to discern which is the best in order to follow it.  Try to relieve your people, which I have been so unfortunate as not to have been able to do.”  He kissed the child, and said, “Darling, I give you my blessing with all my heart.”  He was taken away; the king asked for him once more and kissed him again, lifting hands and eyes to Heaven in blessings upon him.  Everybody wept.  The king caught sight in a glass of two grooms of the chamber who were sobbing.  “What are you crying for?” he said to them; “did you think that I was immortal?” He was left alone with Madame de Maintenon.  “I have always heard say that it was difficult to make up one’s mind to die,” said he; “I do not find it so hard.”  “Ah, Sir,” she replied, “it may be very much so, when there are earthly attachments, hatred in the heart, or restitutions to make!” “Ah!” replied the king, “as for restitutions to make, I owe nobody any individually; as for those that I owe the kingdom, I have hope in the mercy of God.”

[Illustration:  The Death-bed of Louis XIV.——­50]

The Duke of Orleans came back again; the king had sent for him.  “When I am dead,” he said, “you will have the young king taken to Vincennes; the air there is good; he will remain there until all the ceremonies are over at Versailles, and the castle well cleaned afterwards; you will then bring him back again.”  He at the same time gave orders for going and furnishing Vincennes, and directed a casket to be opened in which the plan of the castle was kept, because, as the court had not been there for fifty years, Cavoye, grand chamberlain of his household, had never prepared apartments there.  “When I was king . . . ,” he said several times.

A quack had brought a remedy which would cure gangrene, he said.  The sore on the leg was hopeless, but they gave the king a dose of the elixir in a glass of Alicante.  “To life and to death,” said he as he took the glass; “just as it shall please God.”  The remedy appeared to act; the king recovered a little strength.  The throng of courtiers, which, the day before, had been crowding to suffocation in the rooms of the Duke of Orleans, withdrew at once.  Louis XIV. did not delude himself about this apparent rally.  “Prayers are offered in all the churches for your Majesty’s life,” said the parish priest of Versailles.  “That is not the question,” said the king “it is my salvation that much needs praying for.”