The operation was accordingly performed about five o’clock, and in five minutes, by La Peyronie, chief surgeon of the King, and successor to Marechal, who was present with Chirac and others of the most celebrated surgeons and doctors.  The Cardinal cried and stormed strongly.  M. le Duc d’Orleans returned into the chamber directly after the operation was performed, and the faculty did not dissimulate from him that, judging by the nature of the wound, and what had issued from it, the Cardinal had not long to live.  He died, in fact, twenty-four hours afterwards, on the 10th, of August, at five o’clock in the morning, grinding his teeth against his surgeons and against Chirac, whom he had never ceased to abuse.

Extreme unction was, however, brought to him.  Of the communion, nothing more was said—­or of any priest for him—­and he finished his life thus, in the utmost despair, and enraged at quitting it.  Fortune had nicely played with him; slid made him dearly and slowly buy her favours by all sorts of trouble, care, projects, intrigues, fears, labour, torment; and at last showered down upon him torrents of greater power, unmeasured riches, to let him enjoy them only four years (dating from the time when he was made Secretary of State, and only two years dating from the time when he was made Cardinal and Prime Minister), and then snatched them from him, in the smiling moment when he was most enjoying them, at sixty-six years of age.

He died thus, absolute master of his master, less a prime minister than an all-powerful minister, exercising in full and undisturbed liberty the authority and the power of the King; he was superintendent of the post, Cardinal, Archbishop of Cambrai, had seven abbeys, with respect to which he was insatiable to the last; and he had set on foot overtures in order to seize upon those of Citeaux, Premonte, and others, and it was averred that he received a pension from England of 40,000 livres sterling!  I had the curiosity to ascertain his revenue, and I have thought what I found curious enough to be inserted here, diminishing some of the benefices to avoid all exaggeration.  I have made a reduction, too, upon what he drew from his place of prime minister, and that of the post.  I believe, also, that he had 20,000 livres from the clergy, as Cardinal, but I do not know it as certain.  What he drew from Law was immense.  He had made use of a good deal of it at Rome, in order to obtain his Cardinalship; but a prodigious sum of ready cash was left in his hands.  He had an extreme quantity of the most beautiful plate in silver and enamel, most admirably worked; the richest furniture, the rarest jewels of all kinds, the finest and rarest horses of all countries, and the most superb equipages.  His table was in every way exquisite and superb, and he did the honours of it very well, although extremely sober by nature and by regime.

The place of preceptor of M. le Duc d’Orleans had procured for him the Abbey of Nogent-sous-Coucy; the marriage of the Prince that of Saint-Just; his first journeys to Hanover and England, those of Airvause and of Bourgueil:  three other journeys, his omnipotence.  What a monster of Fortune!  With what a commencement, and with what an end!