On Tuesday, the 27th of August, the King said to Madame de Maintenon, that he had always heard, it was hard to resolve to die; but that as for him, seeing himself upon the point of death, he did not find this resolution so difficult to form.  She replied that it was very hard when we had attachments to creatures, hatred in our hearts, or restitutions to make.  “Ah,” rejoined the King, “as for restitutions, to nobody in particular do I owe any; but as for those I owe to the realm, I hope in the mercy of God.”

The night which followed was very agitated.  The King was seen at all moments joining his hands, striking his breast, and was heard repeating the prayers he ordinarily employed.

On Wednesday morning, the 28th of August, he paid a compliment to Madame de Maintenon, which pleased her but little, and to which she replied not one word.  He said, that what consoled him in quitting her was that, considering the age she had reached, they must soon meet again!

About seven o’clock in the morning, he saw in the mirror two of his valets at the foot of the bed weeping, and said to them, “Why do you weep?  Is it because you thought me immortal?  As for me, I have not thought myself so, and you ought, considering my age, to have been prepared to lose me.”

A very clownish Provencal rustic heard of the extremity of the King, while on his way from Marseilles to Paris, and came this morning to Versailles with a remedy, which he said would cure the gangrene.  The King was so ill, and the doctors so at their wits’ ends, that they consented to receive him.  Fagon tried to say something, but this rustic, who was named Le Brun, abused him very coarsely, and Fagon, accustomed to abuse others, was confounded.  Ten drops of Le Brun’s mixture in Alicante wine were therefore given to the King about eleven o’clock in the morning.  Some time after he became stronger, but the pulse falling again and becoming bad, another dose was given to him about four o’clock, to recall him to life, they told him.  He replied, taking the mixture, “To life or to death as it shall please God.”

Le Brun’s remedy was continued.  Some one proposed that the King should take some broth.  The King replied that it was not broth he wanted, but a confessor, and sent for him.  One day, recovering from loss of consciousness, he asked Pere Tellier to give him absolution for all his sins.  Pere Tellier asked him if he suffered much.  “No,” replied the King, “that’s what troubles me:  I should like to suffer more for the expiation of my sins.”

On Thursday, the 29th of August, he grew a little better; he even ate two little biscuits steeped in wine, with a certain appetite.  The news immediately spread abroad that the King was recovering.  I went that day to the apartments of M. le Duc d’Orleans, where, during the previous eight days, there had been such a crowd that, speaking exactly, a pin would not have fallen to the ground.  Not a soul was there!  As soon as the Duke saw me he burst out laughing, and said, I was the first person who had been to see him all the day!  And until the evening he was entirely deserted.  Such is the world!