Conti, whose indulgence and
kindness are known to me."

Sydney, this valet de chambre, informed me that the Count was dead, not
through excessive brandy, as the Dauphin's people spread abroad, but from
a cerebral fever, which a copious bleeding would have dissipated at once.
All the soldiers wept for this young Prince, whose generous affability
had charmed them. Sydney had just accompanied his body to Arras, where,
by royal command, it had been laid in a vault of the cathedral. I opened
his pretty casket of citron wood, with locks of steel and silver. The
first object which met my eyes was a fine and charming portrait of Madame
de la Valliere. The face was smiling in the midst of this great tragedy,
and that upset me entirely, and made my tears flow again. Five or six
tales of M. la Fontaine had been imitated most elegantly by the young
Prince himself, and to these rather frivolous verses he had joined some
songs and madrigals. All these little relics of a youth so eager to live
betokened a mind that was agreeable, and not libertine. In any case the
sacrifice was accomplished; reflections were in vain. I burned these
papers, and all those which seemed to me without direct importance or
striking interest. That was not the case with a correspondence, full of
wit, tenderness, and fire, of whose origin the good Sydney pretended
ignorance, but which two or three anecdotes that were related
sufficiently revealed to me. The handsome Comte de Vermandois, barely
seventeen years old, had won the heart of a fair lady, of about his own
age, who expressed her passion for him with an energy, a delicacy, and a
talent far beyond all that we admire in books.

I knew her; the King loved her. Her husband, a most distinguished
field-officer, cherished her and believed her to be faithful. I burned
this dangerous correspondence, for M. de Vermandois, barely adolescent,
was already a father, and his mistress gloried in it.

On receiving this casket, in which she saw once more the portraits of her
mother, her brother, and her husband, Madame la Princesse de Conti felt
the most sorrowful emotion. I told her that I had acquitted myself, out
of kindness and respect, of a commission almost beyond my strength, and I
begged her never to mention it to the King, who, perhaps, would have
liked to see and judge himself all that I had destroyed.

M. le Comte de Vermandois left by his death the post of High Admiral
vacant. The King begge