Foreigners delighted to be at last, after so many years, quit of a monarch who had so long imposed his law upon them, and who had escaped from them by a species of miracle at the very moment in which they counted upon having subjugated him, contained themselves with much more decency than the French.  The marvels of the first three quarters of this reign of more than seventy years, and the personal magnanimity of this King until then so successful, and so abandoned afterwards by fortune during the last quarter of his reign—­had justly dazzled them.  They made it a point of honour to render to him after his death what they had constantly refused him during life.  No foreign Court exulted:  all plumed themselves upon praising and honouring his memory.  The Emperor wore mourning as for a father, and although four or five months elapsed between the death of the King and the Carnival, all kinds of amusements were prohibited at Vienna during the Carnival, and the prohibition was strictly observed.  A monstrous fact was, that towards the end of this period there was a single ball and a kind of fete that the Comte du Luc our own ambassador, was not ashamed to give to the ladies, who seduced him by the ennui of so dull a Carnival.  This complaisance did not raise him in estimation at Vienna or elsewhere.  In France people were contented with ignoring it.

As for our ministry and the intendants of the provinces, the financiers and what may be called the canaille, they felt all the extent of their loss.  We shall see if the realm was right or wrong in the sentiments it held, and whether it found soon after that it had gained or lost.

To finish at once all that regards the King, let me here say, that his entrails were taken to Notre Dame, on the 4th of September, without any ceremony, by two almoners of the King, without accompaniment.  On Friday, the 6th of September, the Cardinal de Rohan carried the heart to the Grand Jesuits, with very little accompaniment or pomp.  Except the persons necessary for the ceremony, not half a dozen courtiers were present.  It is not for me to comment upon this prompt ingratitude, I, who for fifty-two years have never once missed going to Saint-Denis on the anniversary of the death of Louis XIII., and have never seen a single person there on the same errand.  On the 9th of September, the body of the late King was buried at Saint-Denis.  The Bishop of Aleth pronounced the oration.  Very little expense was gone to; and nobody was found who cared sufficiently for the late King to murmur at the economy.  On Friday, the 25th of October, his solemn obsequies took place at Saint-Denis in a confusion, as to rank and precedence, without example.  On Thursday, the 28th of November, the solemn obsequies were again performed, this time at Notre Dame, and with the usual ceremonies.

CHAPTER LXXIX

The death of the King surprised M. le Duc d’Orleans in the midst of his idleness as though it had not been foreseen.  He had made no progress in numberless arrangements, which I had suggested he should carry out; accordingly he was overwhelmed with orders to give, with things to settle, each more petty than the other, but all so provisional and so urgent that it happened as I had predicted, he had no time to think of anything important.