The King deplored this loss, as a statesman and a good father.  I was a witness of his affliction; it seemed to me extreme.  One knew not whom to approach to break the news to the poor Carmelite.  The Bishop of Meaux, sturdy personage, voluntarily undertook the mission, and went to it with a tranquil brow, for he loved such tasks.

To his hoarse and funereal voice Soeur Louise only replied with groans and tears.  She fell upon the floor without consciousness, and M. Bossuet went on obstinately preaching Christian resignation and stoicism to a senseless mother who heard him not.

About a fortnight after the obsequies of the Prince (which I, too, had celebrated in my church of Saint Joseph), the underprioress of that little community begged me to come to Paris for a brief time and consecrate half an hour to her.  I responded to her invitation.  This is the important secret which the good nun had to confide to me:  Before expiring; the young Prince had found time to interview his faithful valet de chambre behind his curtains.  “After my death,” said he, “you will repair, not to the King, my father, but to Madame la Marquise de Montespan, who has given me a thousand proofs of kindness in my behalf.  You will remit to her my casket, in which all my private papers are kept.  She will be kind enough to destroy all which ought not to survive me, and to hand over the remainder, not to my good mother, who will have only too much sorrow, but to Madame la Princesse de Conti, whose indulgence and kindness are known to me.”

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.