Sydney, this valet de chambre, informed me that the Count was dead, not through excessive brandy, as the Dauphin’s people spread abroad, but from a cerebral fever, which a copious bleeding would have dissipated at once.  All the soldiers wept for this young Prince, whose generous affability had charmed them.  Sydney had just accompanied his body to Arras, where, by royal command, it had been laid in a vault of the cathedral.  I opened his pretty casket of citron wood, with locks of steel and silver.  The first object which met my eyes was a fine and charming portrait of Madame de la Valliere.  The face was smiling in the midst of this great tragedy, and that upset me entirely, and made my tears flow again.  Five or six tales of M. la Fontaine had been imitated most elegantly by the young Prince himself, and to these rather frivolous verses he had joined some songs and madrigals.  All these little relics of a youth so eager to live betokened a mind that was agreeable, and not libertine.  In any case the sacrifice was accomplished; reflections were in vain.  I burned these papers, and all those which seemed to me without direct importance or striking interest.  That was not the case with a correspondence, full of wit, tenderness, and fire, of whose origin the good Sydney pretended ignorance, but which two or three anecdotes that were related sufficiently revealed to me.  The handsome Comte de Vermandois, barely seventeen years old, had won the heart of a fair lady, of about his own age, who expressed her passion for him with an energy, a delicacy, and a talent far beyond all that we admire in books.

I knew her; the King loved her.  Her husband, a most distinguished field-officer, cherished her and believed her to be faithful.  I burned this dangerous correspondence, for M. de Vermandois, barely adolescent, was already a father, and his mistress gloried in it.

On receiving this casket, in which she saw once more the portraits of her mother, her brother, and her husband, Madame la Princesse de Conti felt the most sorrowful emotion.  I told her that I had acquitted myself, out of kindness and respect, of a commission almost beyond my strength, and I begged her never to mention it to the King, who, perhaps, would have liked to see and judge himself all that I had destroyed.

M. le Comte de Vermandois left by his death the post of High Admiral vacant.  The King begged me to bring him my little Comte de Toulouse; and passing round his neck a fine chain of coral mixed with pearls, to which a diamond anchor was attached, he invested him with the dignity of High Admiral of France.  “Be ever prudent and good, my amiable child,” he said to him, raising his voice, which had grown weak; “be happier than your predecessor, and never give me the grief of mourning your loss.”

I thanked the King for my son, who looked at his decoration of brilliants and did not feel its importance.  I hope that he will feel that later, and prove himself worthy of it.