“On the next day, July 13, about eleven o’clock, we were about to get into the carriage to go to the Tuileries.  As I followed the king to the red drawing-room, I saw Troussart, the commissary of police, with a terrified countenance whispering something to General Gourgaud, who made a gesture of horror, and went to speak in a low voice to the king.  The king cried out:  ‘Oh, my God!’ Then I cried:  ’Something has happened to one of my children!  Let nothing be kept from me!’ The king replied:  ’Yes, my dear; Chartres has had a fall on his way here, and has been carried into a house at Sablonville.’  Hearing this, I began to run like a madwoman, in spite of the cries of the king and the remonstrances of M. de Chabannes, who followed me.  But my strength was not equal to my impulses, and on getting as far as the farm, I was exhausted.  Happily the king came up in the carriage with my sister, and I got in with them.  Our carriage stopped.  We got out in haste, and went into the cabaret, where in a small room, stretched upon a mattress on the floor, we found Chartres, who was at that moment being bled....  The death-rattle had begun.  ‘What is that?’ said the king to me.  I replied:  ’Mon ami, this is death.  For pity’s sake let some one fetch a priest, that my poor child may not die like a dog!’ and I went for a moment into a little side room, where I fell on my knees and implored God from my inmost soul, if He needed a victim, to take me and spare so dear a child....

“Dr. Pasquier arrived soon after.  I said to him:  ’Sir, you are a man of honor; if you think the danger imminent, I beseech you tell me so, that my child may receive extreme unction.’  He hung his head, and said:  ‘Madame, it is true.’

“The cure of Neuilly came and administered the sacrament while we were all on our knees around the pallet, weeping and praying.  I unloosed from my neck a small cross containing a fragment of the True Cross, and I put it into the hand of my poor child, that God the Saviour might have pity on him in his passage into eternity.  Dr. Pasquier got up and whispered to the king.  Then that venerable and unhappy father, his face bathed in tears, knelt by the side of his eldest son, and tenderly embracing him, cried; ’Oh that it were I instead of thee!’ I also drew near and kissed him three times,—­once for myself, once for Helene, and once for his children.  I laid upon his lips the little cross, the symbol of our redemption, and then placed it on his heart and left it there.  The whole family kissed him by turns, and then each returned to his place....  His breathing now became irregular.  Twice it stopped, and then went on.  I asked that the priest might come back and say the prayers for the dying.  He had scarcely knelt down and made the sign of the cross, when my dear child drew a last deep breath, and his beautiful, good, generous, and noble soul left his body....  The priest at my request said a De profundis.  The king wanted to lead me away, but I begged him to allow me to embrace for the last time my beloved son, the object of my deepest tenderness.  I took his dear head in my hands; I kissed his cold and discolored lips; I placed the little cross again upon them, and then carried it away, bidding a last farewell to him whom I loved so well,—­perhaps too well!