“At Court nothing long remains a secret.  The Queen was warned, and for a while would not believe her informants.  But your husband, with brutal impetuousness, burst in upon me.  He insulted me in outrageous fashion.  He tried to drag me out of bed and throw me out of the window.  Hearing me scream, my servants rushed in and rescued me, in a fainting state, from his clutches.  And you it is who have brought upon me such scandalous insults.

“Ready to appear before my God, who has already summoned me by a spectre, I have a boon to ask of you, Madame la Marquise.  I beg it of you, as I clasp these strengthless, trembling hands.  Do not deny me this favour, or I will cherish implacable resentment, and implore my Master and my Judge to visit you with grievous punishment.

“Leave the King,” she continued, after drying her tears.  “Leave so sensual a being; the slave of his passions, the ravisher of others’ good.  The pomp and grandeur which surround you and intoxicate you would seem but a little thing did you but look at them as now I do, upon my bed of death.

“The Queen hates me; she is right.  She despises me, and justly, too.  I shall elude her hatred and disdain, which weigh thus heavily upon my heart.  Perhaps she may deign to pardon me when my lawyer shall have delivered to her a document, signed by myself, containing my confession and excuses.”

As she uttered these words, Madame de Montausier began to vomit blood, and I had to summon her attendants.  With a last movement of the head she bade me farewell, and I heard that she called for her husband.

Next day she was dead.  Her waiting-maid came to tell me that the Duchess, conscious to the last, had made her husband promise to resign his appointment as governor to the Dauphin, and withdraw to his estates, where he was to do penance.  M. de Meaux, a friend of the family, read the prayers for the dying, to which the Duchess made response, and three minutes before the final death-throe, she consented to let him preach a funeral sermon in eulogy of herself and her husband.

When printed and published, this discourse was thought to be a fine piece of eloquence.

Over certain things the Bishop passed lightly, while exaggerating others.  Some things, again, were entirely of his own invention; and if from the depths of her tomb the Duchess could have heard all that M. de Meaux said about her, she never would have borne me such malice, nor would her grief at leaving life and fortune have troubled her so keenly.

The King thought this funeral oration excellently well composed.  Of one expression and of one whole passage, however, he disapproved, though which these were he did not do me the honour to say.

BOOK 4.

CHAPTER XLIX.

President de Nesmond.—­Melladoro.—­A Complacent Husband and His Love-sick Wife.—­Tragic Sequel.