What followed an hour afterwards does not belong to my subject, and has made only too much stir throughout all Europe.  Madame died on the morrow, June 30, at three o’clock in the morning; and the King was profoundly prostrated with grief.  Apparently during the day, some indications showed him that Purnon, chief steward of Madame, was in the secret of her decease.  Purnon was brought before him privately, and was threatened with instant death, unless he disclosed all; full pardon being on the contrary promised him if he did.  Purnon, thus pressed, admitted that Madame had been poisoned, and under the circumstance I have just related.  “And my brother,” said the King, “did he know of this?”—­ “No, Sire, not one of us was stupid enough to tell him; he has no secrecy, he would have betrayed us.”  On hearing this answer the King uttered a great “ah!” like a man oppressed, who suddenly breathes again.

Purnon was immediately set at liberty; and years afterwards related this narrative to M. Joly de Fleury, procureur-general of the Parliament, by which magistrate it was related to me.  From this same magistrate I learned that, a few days before the second marriage of Monsieur, the King took Madame aside and told her that circumstance, assuring her that he was too honest a man to wish her to marry his brother, if that brother could be capable of such a crime.  Madame profited by what she heard.  Purnon remained in her service; but after a time she pretended to find faults in him, and made him resign; he sold his post accordingly, towards the end of 1674, to Maurel de Vaulonne, and quitted her service.

CHAPTER XXIII

A the breaking out of the war in Italy this year Segur bought the government of the Foix country from Tallard, one of the generals called away to serve in that war.  Segur had been in his youth a very handsome fellow; he was at that time in the Black Musketeers, and this company was always quartered at Nemours while the Court was at Fontainebleau.  Segur played very well upon the lute; but found life dull, nevertheless, at Nemours, made the acquaintance of the Abbesse de la Joye, a place hard by, and charmed her ears and eyes so much that she became with child by him.  After some months the Abbess pleaded illness, left the convent, and set out for the waters, as she said.  Putting off her journey too long, she was obliged to stop a night at Fontainebleau; and in consequence of the Court being there, could find no accommodation, except in a wretched little inn already full of company.  She had delayed so long that the pangs of labour seized her in the night, and the cries she uttered brought all the house to her assistance.  She was delivered of a child then and there; and the next morning this fact was the talk of the town.

The Duc de Saint Aignan, one of the first of the courtiers who learned it, went straight to the King, who was brisk and free enough in those days, and related to him what had occurred; the King laughed heartily at the poor Abbess, who, while trying to hide her shame, had come into the very midst of the Court.  Nobody knew then that her abbey was only four leagues distant, but everybody learned it soon, and the Duc de Saint Aignan among the first.