orning, he saw in the mirror two of his
valets at the foot of the bed weeping, and said to them, "Why do you
weep? Is it because you thought me immortal? As for me, I have not
thought myself so, and you ought, considering my age, to have been
prepared to lose me."

A very clownish Provencal rustic heard of the extremity of the King,
while on his way from Marseilles to Paris, and came this morning to
Versailles with a remedy, which he said would cure the gangrene. The
King was so ill, and the doctors so at their wits' ends, that they
consented to receive him. Fagon tried to say something, but this rustic,
who was named Le Brun, abused him very coarsely, and Fagon, accustomed to
abuse others, was confounded. Ten drops of Le Brun's mixture in Alicante
wine were therefore given to the King about eleven o'clock in the
morning. Some time after he became stronger, but the pulse falling again
and becoming bad, another dose was given to him about four o'clock, to
recall him to life, they told him. He replied, taking the mixture, "To
life or to death as it shall please God."

Le Brun's remedy was continued. Some one proposed that the King should
take some broth. The King replied that it was not broth he wanted, but a
confessor, and sent for him. One day, recovering from loss of
consciousness, he asked Pere Tellier to give him absolution for all his
sins. Pere Tellier asked him if he suffered much. "No," replied the
King, "that's what troubles me: I should like to suffer more for the
expiation of my sins."

On Thursday, the 29th of August, he grew a little better; he even ate two
little biscuits steeped in wine, with a certain appetite. The news
immediately spread abroad that the King was recovering. I went that day
to the apartments of M. le Duc d'Orleans, where, during the previous
eight days, there had been such a crowd that, speaking exactly, a pin
would not have fallen to the ground. Not a soul was there! As soon as
the Duke saw me he burst out laughing, and said, I was the first person
who had been to see him all the day! And until the evening he was
entirely deserted. Such is the world!

In the evening it was known that the King had only recovered for the
moment. In giving orders during the day, he called the young Dauphin
"the young King." He saw a movement amongst those around him. "Why
not?" said he, "that does not trouble me." Towards eight o'clock he
took the elixir of the rustic. His brain appeared confused; he hi