that I shall wake to-morrow morning? I have a spasm
of strength at this moment. Let me make the most of it."

Louis asked if he should warn the duchess. The duke, before replying,
listened to the strains from the ball that came floating in through the
opened windows, prolonged in the darkness by an invisible bow; then he
said:

"Let us wait a little. I have something to do first."

He bade them move to his bedside the little lacquer table, intending
himself to sort out the letters to be destroyed; but, finding that his
strength was failing, he called Monpavon: "Burn everything," he said to
him in a feeble voice, and added, when he saw him going toward the
fireplace, where a bright fire was burning, notwithstanding the fine
weather:

"No--not here. There are too many of them. Some one might come."

Monpavon lifted the light desk and motioned to the valet to carry a
light for him. But Jenkins darted forward:

"Stay, Louis, the duke may need you."

He took possession of the lamp; and they stole cautiously along the long
corridor, exploring the reception-rooms, the galleries, where the
fireplaces were filled with artificial plants with no trace of ashes,
wandering like ghosts in the silence and darkness of the vast dwelling,
alive only over yonder at the right where pleasure sang like a bird on a
roof that is about to fall.

"There's no fire anywhere. What are we to do with all this stuff?" they
asked each other, sorely perplexed. One would have said they were two
thieves dragging away a safe which they were unable to open. At last
Monpavon, out of patience, walked with an air of resolution to a certain
door, the only one they had not yet opened.

"Faith, we'll do the best we can! As we can't burn them, we'll drown
them. Show me a light, Jenkins."

And they entered.

Where were they? Saint-Simon, describing the downfall of one of these
sovereign existences, the utter confusion of ceremonials, of dignities,
of grandeurs caused by death, especially by sudden death, Saint-Simon
alone could have told you. With his delicate, carefully-kept hands the
Marquis de Monpavon pumped. The other passed him torn letters, bundles
of letters, soft as satin, many-hued, perfumed, adorned with ciphers,
crests, banderoles with mottoes, covered with fine, close, scrawling,
enlaced, persuasive chirography; and all those delicate pages whirled
round and round in the eddying stream of water which crumpled and soiled
them and washed a