CHAPTER LXVIII

But let me now explain by what means the King was induced to arrive at, and publish this terrible determination.

He was growing old, and though no external change in him was visible, those near him had for some time begun to fear that he could not live long.  This is not the place to descant upon a health hitherto so good and so even:  suffice it to mention, that it silently began to give way.  Overwhelmed by the most violent reverses of fortune after being so long accustomed to success, the King was even more overwhelmed by domestic misfortunes.  All his children had disappeared before him, and left him abandoned to the most fatal reflections.  At every moment he himself expected the same kind of death.  Instead of finding relief from his anguish among those who surrounded him, and whom he saw most frequently, he met with nothing but fresh trouble there.  Excepting Marechal, his chief surgeon, who laboured unceasingly to cure him of his suspicions, Madame de Maintenon, M. du Maine, Fagon, Bloin, the other principal valets sold to the bastard and his former governors,—­all sought to augment these suspicions; and in truth it was not difficult to do so.  Nobody doubted that poison had been used, nobody could seriously doubt it; and Marechal, who was as persuaded as the rest, held a different opinion before the King only to deliver him from a useless torment which could not but do him injury.  But M. du Maine, and Madame de Maintenon also, had too much interest to maintain him in this fear, and by their, art filled him with horror against M. d’Orleans, whom they named as the author of these crimes, so that the King with this prince before his eyes every day, was in a perpetual state of alarm.

With his children the King had lost, and by the same way, a princess, who in addition to being the soul and ornament of his court, was, moreover, all his amusement, all his joy, all his affection, in the hours when he was not in public.  Never, since he entered the world, had he become really familiar with any one but her; it has been seen elsewhere to what extent.  Nothing could fill up this great void:  The bitterness of being deprived of her augmented, because he could find no diversion.  This unfortunate state made him seek relief everywhere in abandoning himself more and more to Madame de Maintenon and M. du Maine.

They soon managed to obtain possession of him, as it were, entirely; leaving no art unexhausted in order to flatter, to amuse, to please, and to interest him.  He was made to believe that M. du Maine was utterly without ambition; like a good father of a family, solely occupied with his children, touched with the grandeur of his nearness to the King, simple, frank, upright, and one who after working at his duties all day, and after giving himself time for prayer and piety, amused himself in hunting, and drew upon his natural gaiety and cheerfulness, without knowing anything of the Court, or of what was passing!  Compare this portrait with his real character, and we shall feel with terror what a rattlesnake was introduced into the King’s privacy.