om he wished
to see and who were sent for immediately, summoned the head of his
cabinet, and, as Jenkins ventured the opinion that it was a great
fatigue for him, said:

"Can you guarantee that I shall wake to-morrow morning? I feel strong at
this moment; let me take advantage of it."

Louis inquired whether the duchess should be informed. The duke, before
replying, listened to the sounds of music that reached his room through
the open windows from the little ball, sounds that seemed prolonged in
the night on an invisible bow, then answered:

"Let us wait a little. I have something to finish."

They brought to his bedside the little lacquered table that he might
himself sort out the letters which were to be destroyed; but feeling his
strength give way, he called Monpavon.

"Burn everything," said he to him in a faint voice; and seeing him move
towards the fireplace, where a fire was burning despite the warmth of
the season.

"No," he added, "not here. There are too many of them. Some one might
come."

Monpavon took up the writing-table, which was not heavy, and signed to
the _valet de chambre_ to go before him with a light. But Jenkins sprang
forward:

"Stay here, Louis; the duke may want you."

He took hold of the lamp; and moving carefully down the whole length of
the great corridor, exploring the waiting-rooms, the galleries, in which
the fireplaces proved to be filled with artificial plants and quite
emptied of ashes, they wandered like spectres in the silence and
darkness of the vast house, alive only over yonder on the right, were
pleasure was singing like a bird on a roof which is about to fall in
ruins.

"There is no fire anywhere. What is to be done with all this?" they
asked each other in great embarrassment. They might have been two
thieves dragging away a chest which they did not know how to open. At
last Monpavon, out of patience, walked straight to a door, the only one
which they had not yet opened.

"_Ma foi_, so much the worse! Since we cannot burn them, we will drown
them. Hold the light, Jenkins."

And they entered.

Where were they? Saint-Simon relating the downfall of one of those
sovereign existences, the disarray of ceremonies, of dignities,
of grandeurs, caused by death and especially by sudden death, only
Saint-Simon might have found words to tell you. With his delicate,
carefully kept hands, the Marquis de Monpavon did the pumping. The other
passed to him the letters after tea