Thus died on Friday, the 10th of June, 1712, the haughtiest of men; and the happiest, except in the later years of his life.  After having been obliged to speak of him so often, I get rid of him now, once and for ever.  He was fifty-eight years old; but in spite of the blind and prodigious favour he had enjoyed, that favour had never been able to make ought but a cabal hero out of a captain who was a very bad general, and a man whose vices were the shame of humanity.  His death restored life and joy to all Spain.

Aguilar, a friend of the Duc de Noailles, was accused of having poisoned him; but took little pains to defend himself, inasmuch as little pains were taken to substantiate the accusation.  The Princesse des Ursins, who had so well profited by his life in order to increase her own greatness, did not profit less by his death.  She felt her deliverance from a new Don Juan of Spain who had ceased to be supple in her hands, and who might have revived, in the course of time, all the power and authority he had formerly enjoyed in France.  She was not shocked them by the joy which burst out without constraint; nor by the free talk of the Court, the city, the army, of all Spain.  But in order to sustain what she had done, and cheaply pay her court to M. du Maine, Madame de Maintenon, and even to the King, she ordered that the corpse of this hideous monster of greatness and of fortune should be carried to the Escurial.  This was crowning the glory of M. de Vendome in good earnest; for no private persons are buried in the Escurial, although several are to be found in Saint-Denis.  But meanwhile, until I speak of the visit I made to the Escurial—­I shall do so if I live long enough to carry these memoirs up to the death of M. d’Orleans,—­let me say something of that illustrious sepulchre.

The Pantheon is the place where only the bodies of kings and queens who have had posterity are admitted.  In a separate place, near, though not on the same floor, and resembling a library, the bodies of children, and of queens who have had no posterity, are ranged.  A third place, a sort of antechamber to the last named, is rightly called “the rotting room;” whilst the other improperly bears the same name.  In whilst third room, there is nothing to be seen but four bare walls and a table in the middle.  The walls being very thick, openings are made in them in which the bodies are placed.  Each body has an opening to itself, which is afterwards walled up, so that nothing is seen.  When it is thought that the corpse has been closed up sufficiently long to be free from odour the wall is opened, the body taken out, and put in a coffin which allows a portion of it to be seen towards the feet.  This coffin is covered with a rich stuff and carried into an adjoining room.

The body of the Duc de Vendome had been walled up nine years when I entered the Escurial.  I was shown the place it occupied, smooth like every part of the four walls and without mark.  I gently asked the monks who did me the honours of the place, when the body would be removed to the other chamber.  They would not satisfy my curiosity, showed some indignation, and plainly intimated that this removal was not dreamt of, and that as M. de Vendome had been so carefully walled up he might remain so!