ll in her confinement; and what confirms me in
this is that she almost killed her by visiting her at that time in
perfumed gloves. She said it was I who wore them, which was untrue.
I would not swear that the Dauphine did not love Bessola better than her
husband; she deserved no such attachment. I often apprised her mistress
of her perfidy, but she would not believe me.

The Dauphine used to say, "We are two unhappy persons, but there is this
difference between us: you endeavoured, as much as you could, to avoid
coming here; while I resolved to do so at all events. I have therefore
deserved my misery more than you."

They wanted to make her pass for crazy, because she was always
complaining. Some hours before her death she said to me, "I shall
convince them to-day that I was not mad in complaining of my sufferings."
She died calmly and easily; but she was as much put to death as if she
had been killed by a pistol-shot.

When her funeral service was performed I carried the taper (nota bene)
and some pieces of gold to the Bishop who performed the grand mass, and
who was sitting in an arm-chair near the altar. The prelate intended to
have given them to his assistants, the priests of the King's chapel; but
the monks of Saint Denis ran to him with great eagerness, exclaiming that
the taper and the gold belonged to them. They threw themselves upon the
Bishop, whose chair began to totter, and made his mitre fall from his
head. If I had stayed there a moment longer the Bishop, with all the
monks, would have fallen upon me. I descended the four steps of the
altar in great haste, for I was nimble enough at that time, and looked on
the battle at a distance, which appeared so comical that I could not but
laugh, and everybody present did the same.

That wicked Bessola, who had tormented the Dauphine day and night, and
had made her distrust every one who approached her, and thus separated
her from all the world, returned home a year after her mistress's death.
Before her departure she played another trick by having a box made with a
double bottom, in which she concealed jewels and ready money to the
amount of 100,000 francs; and all this time she went about weeping and
complaining that, after so many years of faithful service, she was
dismissed as poor as a beggar. She did not know that her contrivance had
been discovered at the Customhouse and that the King had been apprised of
it. He ordered her to be sent for, showed