a little while beside her. "What is your
malady?" he asked her through his interpreter. "A great age," answered
Madame de Maintenon, smiling. He looked at her a moment longer in
silence; then, closing the curtains, he went out abruptly. The memory he
would have called up had vanished. The woman on whom the great king had,
for thirty years, heaped confidence and affection, was old, forgotten,
dying; she expired at St. Cyr on the 15th of April, 1719, at the age of
eighty-three.

She had left the king to die alone. He was in the agonies; the prayers
in extremity were being repeated around him; the ceremonial recalled him
to consciousness. He joined his voice with the voices of those present,
repeating the prayers with them. Already the court was hurrying to the
Duke of Orleans; some of the more confident had repaired to the Duke of
Maine's; the king's servants were left almost alone around his bed; the
tones of the dying man were distinctly heard above the great number of
priests. He several times repeated, _Nunc et in hora mortis_. Then he
said, quite loud, "O, my God, come Thou to help me, haste Thee to succor
me." Those were his last words. He expired on Sunday, the 1st of
September, 1715, at eight A. M. Next day, he would have been seventy-
seven years of age, and he had reigned seventy-two of them.

In spite of his faults and his numerous and culpable errors, Louis XIV.
had lived and died like a king. The slow and grievous agony of olden
France was about to begin.

[Illustration: Versailles at Night----52]

CHAPTER LI.----LOUIS XV., THE REGENCY, AND CARDINAL DUBOIS. 1715-1723.

At the very moment when the master's hand is missed from his work,
the narrative makes a sudden bound out of the simple times of history.
Under Henry IV., under Richelieu, under Louis XIV., events found quite
naturally their guiding hand and their centre; men as well as
circumstances formed a group around the head of the nation, whether king
or minister, to thence unfold themselves quite clearly before the eyes of
posterity. Starting from the reign of Louis XV. the nation has no longer
a head, history no longer a centre; at the same time with a master of the
higher order, great servants also fail the French monarchy; it all at
once collapses, betraying thus the exhaustion of Louis XIV.'s latter
years; decadence is no longer veiled by the remnants of the splendor
which was still reflected from the great king and his great