bled only by the
fortune-tellers. Neither the King nor the countess believed in the
predictions of the philosophers, but they did believe in divination. One
day, returning from Choisy, Louis XV found under a cushion of his coach
a slip of paper on which was transcribed this prediction of the monk
Aimonius, the savant who could read all things from the vast book of the
stars:

"As soon as Childeric had returned from Thuringia, he was crowned King
of France And no sooner was he King than he espoused Basine, wife of the
King of Thuringia. She came herself to find Childeric. The first night
of the marriage, and before the King had retired, the queen begged
Childeric to look from one of the palace windows which opened on a park,
and tell what he saw there. Childeric looked out and, much terrified,
reported to the princess that he had seen tigers and lions. Basine sent
him a second time to look out. This time the prince only saw bears and
wolves, and the third time he perceived only cats and dogs, fighting
and combating each other. Then Basine said to him: I will give you
an explanation of what you have seen: The first figure shows you
your successors, who will excel you in courage and power; the second
represents another race which will be illustrious for their conquests,
and which will augment your kingdom for many centuries; but the third
denotes the end of your kingdom, which will be given over to pleasures
and will lose to you the friendship of your subjects; and this because
the little animals signify a people who, emancipated from fear of
princes, will massacre them and make war upon each other."

Louis read the prediction and passed the paper to the Countess: "After
us the end of the world," said she gaily. The King laughed, but the abbe
de Beauvais celebrated high mass at Versailles after the carnival of
1774, and dared to say, in righteous anger: "This carnival is the last;
yet forty days and Nineveh shall perish." Louis turned pale. "Is it God
who speaks thus?" murmured he, raising his eyes to the altar. The next
day he went to the hunt in grand style, but from that evening he was
afraid of solitude and silence: "It is like the tomb; I do not wish
to put myself in such a place," said he to Madame du Barry. The duc
de Richelieu tried to divert him. "No," said he suddenly, as if the
Trappist's denunciation had again recurred to him, "I shall be at ease
only when these forty days have passed." He died on the fortieth