On Tuesday, the 23rd February, the two bodies were taken from Versailles to Saint-Denis in the same chariot.  The procession began to enter Paris by the Porte Saint-Honore at two o’clock in the morning, and arrived between seven and eight o’clock in the morning at Saint-Denis.  There was great order in Paris, and no confusion.

On Tuesday, the 8th March, Monseigneur le Duc de Bretagne, eldest son of Monsieur le Dauphin, who had succeeded to the name and rank of his father, being then only five years and some months old, and who had been seized with measles within a few days, expired, in spite of all the remedies given him.  His brother, M. le Duc d’Anjou, who still sucked, was taken ill at the same time, but thanks to the care of the Duchesse de Ventadour, whom in after life he never forgot, and who administered an antidote, escaped, and is now King.

Thus three Dauphins died in less than a year, and father, mother, and eldest son in twenty-four days!  On Wednesday, the 9th of March, the corpse of the little Dauphin was opened at night, and without any ceremony his heart was taken to the Val de Grace, his body to Saint-Denis, and placed by the side of those of his father and mother.  M. le Duc d’Anjou, now, sole remaining child, succeeded to the title and to the rank of Dauphin.

I have said that the bodies of the Dauphin and the Dauphine were opened in presence of all the faculty.  The report made upon the opening of the latter was not consolatory.  Only one of the doctors declared there were no signs of poison; the rest were of the opposite opinion.  When the body of the Dauphin was opened, everybody was terrified.  His viscera were all dissolved; his heart had no consistency; its substance flowed through the hands of those who tried to hold it; an intolerable odour, too, filled the apartment.  The majority of the doctors declared they saw in all this the effect of a very subtle and very violent poison, which had consumed all the interior of the body, like a burning fire.  As before, there was one of their number who held different views, but this was Marechal, who declared that to persuade the King of the existence of secret enemies of his family would be to kill him by degrees.

This medical opinion that the cause of the Dauphin’s and the Dauphine’s death was poison, soon spread like wildfire over the Court and the city.  Public indignation fell upon M. d’Orleans, who was at once pointed out as the poisoner.  The rapidity with which this rumour filled the Court, Paris, the provinces, the least frequented places, the most isolated monasteries, the most deserted solitudes, all foreign countries and all the peoples of Europe, recalled to me the efforts of the cabal, which had previously spread such black reports against the honour of him whom all the world now wept, and showed that the cabal, though dispersed, was not dissolved.