riters of the seventeenth century, most of whom, the Duc de St. Simon,
for example, and the Princess Elizabeth of Bavaria, had their own
private reasons for disliking her. An admirable epitome of her
character and influence will be found in Dr. Dollinger's _Historical
Studies_. She made Louis an excellent wife, waited upon him assiduously
for thirty years of married life, influenced him constantly towards
good--save only in the one instance of the Huguenots, and finally died
very shortly after her husband.

Madame de Montespan lived in great magnificence after the triumph of her
rival, and spent freely the vast sums which the king's generosity had
furnished her with. Eventually, having exhausted all that this world
could offer, she took to hair-shirts and nail-studded girdles, in the
hope of securing a good position in the next. Her horror of death was
excessive. In thunderstorms she sat with a little child in her lap, in
the hope that its innocence might shield her from the lightning. She
slept always with her room ablaze with tapers, and with several women
watching by the side of her couch. When at last the inevitable arrived
she left her body for the family tomb, her heart to the convent of La
Fleche, and her entrails to the priory of Menoux near Bourbon.
These latter were thrust into a box and given to a peasant to convey to
the priory. Curiosity induced him to look into the box upon the way,
and, seeing the contents, he supposed himself to be the victim of a
practical joke, and emptied them out into a ditch. A swineherd was
passing at the moment with his pigs, and so it happened that, in the
words of Mrs. Julia Pardoe, "in a few minutes the most filthy animals
in creation had devoured portions of the remains of one of the
haughtiest women who ever trod the earth."

Louis, after a reign of more than fifty years, which comprised the most
brilliant epoch of French history, died at last in 1715 amidst the
saddest surroundings.

One by one those whom he loved had preceded him to the grave, his
brother, his son, the two sons of his son, their wives, and finally his
favourite great-grandson, until he, the old dying monarch, with his
rouge and his stays, was left with only a little infant in arms, the Duc
D'Anjou, three generations away from him, to perpetuate his line.
On 20th August, 1715, he was attacked by senile gangrene, which
gradually spread up the leg until on the 30th it became fatal.
His dying words