The moment after we had settled this point he said to me, “And you! what will you be?” and he pressed me so much to explain myself that I said at last if he would put me in the council of affairs of the interior, I thought I should do better there than elsewhere.

“Chief, then,” replied he with vivacity.

“No, no! not that,” said I; “simply a place in the council.”

We both insisted, he for, I against.  “A place in that council,” he said, “would be ridiculous, and cannot be thought of.  Since you will not be chief, there is only one post which suits you, and which suits me also.  You must be in the council I shall be in the Supreme Council.”

I accepted the post, and thanked him.  From that moment this distinction remained fixed.

I will not enter into all the suggestions I offered to M. le Duc d’Orleans respecting the Regency, or give the details of all the projects I submitted to him.  Many of those projects and suggestions were either acted upon only partially, or not acted upon at all, although nearly every one met with his approval.  But he was variable as the winds, and as difficult to hold.  In my dealings with him I had to do with a person very different from that estimable Dauphin who was so rudely taken away from us.

But let me, before going further, describe the last days of the King, his illness, and death, adding to the narrative a review of his life and character.

CHAPTER LXXII

Louis XIV. began, as I have before remarked, sensibly to decline, and his appetite, which had always been good and uniform, very considerably diminished.  Even foreign countries became aware of this.  Bets were laid in London that his life would not last beyond the first of September, that is to say, about three months, and although the King wished to know everything, it may be imagined that nobody was very eager to make him acquainted with the news.  He used to have the Dutch papers read to him in private by Torcy, often after the Council of State.  One day as Torcy was reading, coming unexpectedly—­for he had not examined the paper—­upon the account of these bets, he stopped, stammered, and skipped it.  The King, who easily perceived this, asked him the cause of his embarrassment; what he was passing over, and why?  Torcy blushed to the very whites of his eyes, and said it was a piece of impertinence unworthy of being read.  The King insisted; Torcy also:  but at last thoroughly confused, he could not resist the reiterated command he received, and read the whole account of the bets.  The King pretended not to be touched by it, but he was, and profoundly, so that sitting down to table immediately afterwards, he could not keep himself from speaking of it, though without mentioning the gazette.