good dinner, consisting of a great number of dishes, was placed, and
round which all the wedding guests took their seats. In the midst of the
banquet, one of the little waiting-maids ran in, crying,

"Thank Heaven, we have escaped great perplexity. The old ----- is dead."

It is the same here, the old is dead. She quitted this world at St.
Cyr, on Saturday last, the 15th day of April, between four and five
o'clock in the evening. The news of the Duc du Maine and his wife being
arrested made her faint, and was probably the cause of her death, for
from that time she had not a moment's repose or content. Her rage, and
the annihilation of her hopes of reigning with him, turned her blood.
She fell sick of the measles, and was for twenty days in great fever.
The disorder then took an unfavourable turn, and she died. She had
concealed two years of her age, for she pretended to be only eighty-four,
while she was really eighty-six years old. I believe that what grieved
her most in dying was to quit the world, and leave me and my son behind
her in good health. When her approaching death was announced to her, she
said, "To die is the least event of my life." The sums which her nephew
and niece De Noailles inherited from her were immense; but the amount
cannot be ascertained, because she had concealed a large part of her
wealth.

A cousin of hers, the Archbishop of Rouen, who created so much trouble
with respect to the Constitution, followed his dear cousin into the other
world exactly a week afterwards, on the same day, and at the same hour.

Nobody, knows what the King said to Maintenon on his death bed. She had
retired to St. Cyr before he died. They fetched her back, but she did
not stay, to the end. I think the King repented of his folly in having
married her, and, indeed, notwithstanding all her contrivances, she could
not persuade him to declare their marriage. She wept for the King's
death, but was not so deeply afflicted as she ought to have been. She
always flattered herself with the hope of reigning together with the Duc
du Maine.

From the beginning to the end of their connection, the King's society was
always irksome to her, and she did not scruple to say so to her own
relations. She had before been much accustomed to the company of men,
but afterwards dared see none but the King, whom she never loved, and his
Ministers. This made her ill-tempered, and she did not fail to make
those persons who were within her po