Madame de Maintenon had hitherto remained in the back rooms, though constantly in the king’s chamber when he was alone.  He said to her once, “What consoles me for leaving you, is that it will not be long before we meet again.”  She made no reply.  “What will become of you?” he added; “you have nothing.”  “Do not think of me,” said she; “I am nobody; think only of God.”  He said farewell to her; she still remained a little while in his room, and went out when he was no longer conscious.  She had given away here and there the few movables that belonged to her, and now took the road to St. Cyr.  On the steps she met Marshal Villeroy.  “Good by, marshal,” she said curtly, and covered up her face in her coifs.  He! it was who sent her news of the king to the last moment.  The Duke of Orleans, on becoming regent, went to see her, and took her the patent (brevet) for a pension of sixty thousand livres, “which her disinterestedness had made necessary for her,” said the preamble.  It was paid her up to the last day of her life.  History makes no further mention of her name; she never left St. Cyr.  Thither the czar Peter the Great, when he visited Paris and France, went to see her; she was confined to her bed; he sat a little while beside her.  “What is your malady?” he asked her through his interpreter.  “A great age,” answered Madame de Maintenon, smiling.  He looked at her a moment longer in silence; then, closing the curtains, he went out abruptly.  The memory he would have called up had vanished.  The woman on whom the great king had, for thirty years, heaped confidence and affection, was old, forgotten, dying; she expired at St. Cyr on the 15th of April, 1719, at the age of eighty-three.

She had left the king to die alone.  He was in the agonies; the prayers in extremity were being repeated around him; the ceremonial recalled him to consciousness.  He joined his voice with the voices of those present, repeating the prayers with them.  Already the court was hurrying to the Duke of Orleans; some of the more confident had repaired to the Duke of Maine’s; the king’s servants were left almost alone around his bed; the tones of the dying man were distinctly heard above the great number of priests.  He several times repeated, Nunc et in hora mortis.  Then he said, quite loud, “O, my God, come Thou to help me, haste Thee to succor me.”  Those were his last words.  He expired on Sunday, the 1st of September, 1715, at eight A. M. Next day, he would have been seventy-seven years of age, and he had reigned seventy-two of them.

In spite of his faults and his numerous and culpable errors, Louis XIV. had lived and died like a king.  The slow and grievous agony of olden France was about to begin.

[Illustration:  Versailles at Night——­52]

CHAPTER LI.——­LOUIS XV., THE REGENCY, AND CARDINAL DUBOIS. 1715-1723.