tered themselves the first that they should figure, the other that
they should find themselves free. The people ruined, overwhelmed,
desperate, gave thanks to God, with a scandalous eclat, for a
deliverance, their most ardent desires had not anticipated.

Foreigners delighted to be at last, after so many years, quit of a
monarch who had so long imposed his law upon them, and who had escaped
from them by a species of miracle at the very moment in which they
counted upon having subjugated him, contained themselves with much more
decency than the French. The marvels of the first three quarters of this
reign of more than seventy years, and the personal magnanimity of this
King until then so successful, and so abandoned afterwards by fortune
during the last quarter of his reign--had justly dazzled them. They made
it a point of honour to render to him after his death what they had
constantly refused him during life. No foreign Court exulted: all plumed
themselves upon praising and honouring his memory. The Emperor wore
mourning as for a father, and although four or five months elapsed
between the death of the King and the Carnival, all kinds of amusements
were prohibited at Vienna during the Carnival, and the prohibition was
strictly observed. A monstrous fact was, that towards the end of this
period there was a single ball and a kind of fete that the Comte du Luc
our own ambassador, was not ashamed to give to the ladies, who seduced
him by the ennui of so dull a Carnival. This complaisance did not raise
him in estimation at Vienna or elsewhere. In France people were
contented with ignoring it.

As for our ministry and the intendants of the provinces, the financiers
and what may be called the canaille, they felt all the extent of their
loss. We shall see if the realm was right or wrong in the sentiments it
held, and whether it found soon after that it had gained or lost.

To finish at once all that regards the King, let me here say, that his
entrails were taken to Notre Dame, on the 4th of September, without any
ceremony, by two almoners of the King, without accompaniment. On Friday,
the 6th of September, the Cardinal de Rohan carried the heart to the
Grand Jesuits, with very little accompaniment or pomp. Except the
persons necessary for the ceremony, not half a dozen courtiers were
present. It is not for me to comment upon this prompt ingratitude, I,
who for fifty-two years have never once missed going to Saint-Denis on
th