The King and Monsieur had been accustomed from their childhood to great filthiness in the interior of their houses; so much so, that they did not know it ought to be otherwise, and yet, in their persons, they, were particularly neat.

Madame de la Motte, who had been at Chaillot, preferred the old Marquis de Richelieu to the King.  She declared to His Majesty that her heart was no longer disposable, but that it was at length fixed.

I can never think, without anger, of the evil which has been spoken of the late King, and how little His Majesty has been regretted by those to whom he had done so much good.

I hardly dare repeat what the King said to me on his death-bed.  All those who were usually in his cabinet were present, with the exception of the Princess, his daughter, the Princesse de Conti, and Madame de Vendome, who, alone, did not see the King.  The whole of the Royal Family was assembled.  He recommended his legitimated daughters to live together in concord, and I was the innocent cause of his saying something disagreeable to them.  When the King said, “I recommend you all to be united,” I thought he alluded to me and my son’s daughter; and I said, “Yes, Monsieur, you shall be obeyed.”  He turned towards me, and said in a stern voice, “Madame, you thought I spoke of you.  No, no; you are a sensible person, and I know you; it is to the Princesses, who are not so, that I speak:” 

Louis XIV. proved at his death that he was really a great man, for it would be impossible to die with more courage than he displayed.  For eight days he had incessantly the approach of death before his eyes without betraying fear or apprehension; he arranged everything as if he had only been going to make a journey.

Eight or ten days before his death a disease had appeared in his leg; a gangrene ensued, and it was this which caused his death.  But for three months preceding he had been afflicted with a slow fever, which had reduced him so much that he looked like a lath.  That old rogue, Fagon, had brought him to this condition, by administering purgatives and sudorifics of the most violent kind.  At the instigation of Pere Letellier, he had been tormented to death by the cursed constitution,—­[The affair of the Bull Unigenitus]—­and had not been allowed to rest day or night.  Fagon was a wicked old scoundrel, much more attached to Maintenon than to the King.  When I perceived how much it was sought to exault the Duc du Maine, and that the old woman cared so little for the King’s death, I could not help entertaining unfavourable notions of this old rascal.

It cannot be denied that Louis XIV. was the finest man in his kingdom.  No person had a better appearance than he.  His figure was agreeable, his legs well made, his feet small, his voice pleasant; he was lusty in proportion; and, in short, no fault could be found with his person.  Some folks thought he was too corpulent for his height, and that Monsieur was too stout; so that it was said, by way of a joke at Court, that there had been a mistake, and that one brother had received what had been intended for the other.  The King was in the habit of keeping his mouth open in an awkward way.