t leave his memory. By daylight his trouble of mind
and body was at its height; he desired his valet to summon his physician
and the prior of the convent. "And immediately," added he,
"immediately."

Comprehending better this time the wishes of his master, the domestic
hastened to arouse the prior, whose convent almost adjoined the chateau,
and the physician, who had apartments in the chateau itself. This
physician was a young man, chosen by the celebrated Tronchin from among
his cleverest pupils at the express desire of the Abbe de Voisenon.

Seriously alarmed at the danger of the abbe, both prior and physician
hastened to obey the summons. M. de Voisenon was so ill last night.
Should they arrive in time? So equal and so prompt was their zeal that
both reached the abbe's bedroom door together. But when they opened it,
what was their astonishment to find that the bird had flown; our abbe
had got over his little fright, and had gone out shooting again.

The end of that fatal eighteenth century was now approaching; undermined
by years and debauchery, it was now like a ruined spend-thrift moving
away from the calendar of the world in rags; it was hideously old, but
its years inspired not respect. Old king, old ministers, old
generals--if indeed there were generals,--old courtiers, old mistresses,
old poets, old musicians, old opera dancers, broken down with _ennui_,
pleasure, and idleness--toothless, faded, rouged, and wrinkled--were
descending slowly to the tomb. Louis XV. formed one of the funeral
procession; he was taken to St. Denis between two lines of _cabarets_
filled with drunken revellers, madly rejoicing at being rid of this
plague, which another plague had carried off to the grave. Crebillon was
dead; the son of the great Racine, honored by the famous title of Member
of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, was taken off by a
malignant fever, and obtained from the grateful publicity of the day
the following necrological eulogium, as brief as it was eloquent: "M.
Racine, last of the name, died yesterday of a malignant fever; as a man
of letters he was long dead, having become stupefied by wine and
devotion." Twelve days afterwards Marivaux followed Racine to the grave.
The Abbe Prevost died of a tenth attack of apoplexy in the forest of
Chantilly. In the following spring the celebrated Madame de Pompadour
descended, at the age of forty-four, into the grave, after having
exhaled a _bon mot_ in guise of