and thin; had an aspect pensive, slow, and somewhat mean; with very fine and expressive eyes.  He deplored the signal faults that he saw succeed each other unceasingly; the gradual extinction of all emulation; the luxury, the emptiness, the ignorance, the confusion of ranks; the inquisition in the place of the police:  he saw all the signs of destruction, and he used to say it was only a climax of dangerous disorder that could restore order to the realm.

Vendome was one of the few to whom the death of the Dauphin and the Dauphine brought hope and joy.  He had deemed himself expatriated for the rest of his life.  He saw, now, good chances before him of returning to our Court, and of playing a part there again.  He had obtained some honour in Spain; he aimed at others even higher, and hoped to return to France with all the honours of a Prince of the Blood.  His idleness, his free living, his debauchery, had prolonged his stay upon the frontier, where he had more facilities for gratifying his tastes than at Madrid.  In that city, it is true, he did not much constrain himself, but he was forced to do so to some extent by courtly usages.  He was, then, quite at home on the frontier; there was nothing to do; for the Austrians, weakened by the departure of the English, were quite unable to attack; and Vendome, floating upon the delights of his new dignities, thought only of enjoying himself in the midst of profound idleness, under pretext that operations could not at once be commenced.

In order to be more at liberty he separated from the general officers, and established himself with his valets and two or three of his most familiar friends, cherished companions everywhere, at Vignarez, a little isolated hamlet, almost deserted, on the sea-shore and in the kingdom of Valencia.  His object was to eat fish there to his heart’s content.  He carried out that object, and filled himself to repletion for nearly a month.  He became unwell—­his diet, as may be believed, was enough to cause this—­but his illness increased so rapidly, and in so strange a manner, after having for a long time seemed nothing that the few around him suspected poison, and sent on all sides for assistance.  But the malady would not wait; it augmented rapidly with strange symptoms.  Vendome could not sign a will that was presented to him; nor a letter to the King, its which he asked that his brother might be permitted to return to Court.  Everybody near flew from him and abandoned him, so that he remained in the hands of three or four of the meanest valets, whilst the rest robbed him of everything and decamped.  He passed thus the last two or three days of his life, without a priest,—­no mention even had been made of one,—­without other help than that of a single surgeon.  The three or four valets who remained near him, seeing him at his last extremity, seized hold of the few things he still possessed, and for want of better plunder, dragged off his bedclothes and the mattress from under him.  He piteously cried to them at least not to leave him to die naked upon the bare bed.  I know not whether they listened to him.