ld consider that I
had worthily capped anything great I may have done in war if, under
similar circumstances, I had made so fine a march." Whether it were
owing to indolence or court cabal, Monseigneur had no more commands;
he had no taste for politics, and always sat in silence at the council,
to which the king had formally admitted him at thirty years of age,
"instructing him," says the Marquis of Sourches, "with so much vigor and
affection, that Monseigneur could not help falling at his feet to testify
his respect and gratitude." Twice, at grave conjunctures, the
grand-dauphin allowed his voice to be heard; in 1685, to offer a timid
opposition to the Edict of Nantes, and, in 1700, to urge very vigorously
the acceptance of the King of Spain's will. "I should be enchanted," he
cried, as if with a prophetic instinct of his own destiny, "to be able to
say all my life, 'The king my father, and the king my SON.'" Heavy in
body as well as mind, living on terms of familiarity with a petty court,
probably married to Mdlle. Choin, who had been for a long time installed
in his establishment at Meudon, Monseigneur, often embarrassed and made
uncomfortable by the austere virtue of the Duke of Burgundy, and finding
more attraction in the Duke of Berry's frank geniality, had surrendered
himself, without intending it, to the plots which were woven about him.
"His eldest son behaved to him rather as a courtier than as a son,
gliding over the coldness shown him with a respect and a gentleness
which, together, would have won over any father less a victim to
intrigue. The Duchess of Burgundy, in spite of her address and her
winning grace, shared her husband's disfavor." The Duchess of Berry had
counted upon this to establish her sway in a reign which the king's great
age seemed to render imminent; already, it was said, the chief amusement
at Monseigneur's was to examine engravings of the coronation ceremony,
when death carried him off suddenly on the 14th of April, 1711, to the
consternation of the lower orders, who loved him because of his
reputation for geniality. The severity of the new dauphin caused some
little dread.

"Here is a prince who will succeed me before long," said the king on
presenting his grandson to the assembly of the clergy; "by his virtue and
piety he will render the church still more flourishing, and the kingdom
more happy." That was the hope of all good men. Fenelon, in his exile
in Cambrai, and the Duke