Madame de Maintenon, who feared the air and many other inconveniences, could gain no privilege over the others.  All she obtained, under pretence of modesty and other reasons, was permission to journey apart; but whatever condition she might be in, she was obliged to follow the King, and be ready to receive him in her rooms by the time he was ready to enter them.  She made many journeys to Marly in a state such as would have saved a servant from movement.  She made one to Fontainebleau when it seemed not unlikely that she would die on the road!  In whatever condition she might be, the King went to her at his ordinary hour and did what he had projected; though several times she was in bed, profusely sweating away a fever.  The King, who as I have said, was fond of air, and feared warm rooms, was astonished upon arriving to find everything close shut, and ordered the windows to be opened; would not spare them an inch; and up to ten o’clock, when he went to supper, kept them open, utterly regardless of the cool night air, although he knew well what a state she was in.  If there was to be music, fever or headache availed not; a hundred wax candles flashed all the same in her eyes.  The King, in fact, always followed his own inclination, without ever asking whether she was inconvenienced.

The tranquillity and pious resignation of the King during the last days of his illness, was a matter of some surprise to many people, as, indeed, it deserved to be.  By way of explanation, the doctors said that the malady he died of, while it deadens and destroys all bodily pain, calms and annihilates all heart pangs and agitation of the mind.

They who were in the sick-chamber, during the last days of his illness, gave another reason.

The Jesuits constantly admit the laity, even married, into their company.  This fact is certain.  There is no doubt that Des Noyers, Secretary of State under Louis XIII., was of this number, or that many others have been so too.  These licentiates make the same vow as the Jesuits, as far as their condition admits:  that is, unrestricted obedience to the General, and to the superiors of the company.  They are obliged to supply the place of the vows of poverty and chastity, by promising to give all the service and all the protection in their power to the Company, above all, to be entirely submissive to the superiors and to their confessor.  They are obliged to perform, with exactitude, such light exercises of piety as their confessor may think adapted to the circumstances of their lives, and that he simplifies as much as he likes.  It answers the purpose of the Company to ensure to itself those hidden auxiliaries whom it lets off cheaply.  But nothing must pass through their minds, nothing must come to their knowledge that they do not reveal to their confessor; and that which is not a secret of the conscience, to the superiors, if the confessor thinks fit.  In everything, too, they must obey without comment, the superior and the confessors.