icate you would seem
but a little thing did you but look at them as now I do, upon my bed of
death.

"The Queen hates me; she is right. She despises me, and justly, too. I
shall elude her hatred and disdain, which weigh thus heavily upon my
heart. Perhaps she may deign to pardon me when my lawyer shall have
delivered to her a document, signed by myself, containing my confession
and excuses."

As she uttered these words, Madame de Montausier began to vomit blood,
and I had to summon her attendants. With a last movement of the head she
bade me farewell, and I heard that she called for her husband.

Next day she was dead. Her waiting-maid came to tell me that the
Duchess, conscious to the last, had made her husband promise to resign
his appointment as governor to the Dauphin, and withdraw to his estates,
where he was to do penance. M. de Meaux, a friend of the family, read
the prayers for the dying, to which the Duchess made response, and three
minutes before the final death-throe, she consented to let him preach a
funeral sermon in eulogy of herself and her husband.

When printed and published, this discourse was thought to be a fine piece
of eloquence.

Over certain things the Bishop passed lightly, while exaggerating others.
Some things, again, were entirely of his own invention; and if from the
depths of her tomb the Duchess could have heard all that M. de Meaux said
about her, she never would have borne me such malice, nor would her grief
at leaving life and fortune have troubled her so keenly.

The King thought this funeral oration excellently well composed. Of one
expression and of one whole passage, however, he disapproved, though
which these were he did not do me the honour to say.

BOOK 4.

CHAPTER XLIX.

President de Nesmond.--Melladoro.--A Complacent Husband and His Love-sick
Wife.--Tragic Sequel.

President de Nesmond--upright, clear-headed magistrate as he was--was of
very great service to me at the Courts of Justice. He always managed to
oblige me and look after my interests and my rights in any legal dispute
of mine, or when I had reason to fear annoyance on the part of my
husband.

I will here relate the grief that his young wife caused him, and it will
be seen that, by the side of this poor President, M. de Montespan might
count himself lucky. Having long been a widower, he was in some measure
accustomed to this state, until love laid a snare for him just at the age
of sixty-f