The poor Queen would have died of grief if the death of her son had preceded hers, against the order of nature; but the hearts of our children are not disposed like ours, and who knows how I shall be treated myself by mine when I am gone?

With regard to the King’s arm, Madame d’Orleans, during the service for the Queen, was pleased to relate to the Grande Mademoiselle that, three or four days before, she had seen, in a somewhat troublesome and painful dream, the King’s horse run away, and throw him upon the rocks and brambles of 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.