small bottle, which contained,
she said, an exquisite cordial with which she was always provided in
case of over-fatigue. The duke drained it, and returned the empty
bottle to the duchess. As she took it she said, with a smile, "I am
very glad to have met you so opportunely."

Thus they parted. In a few hours the duke was a corpse. It was so
manifestly for the interest of the dissolute and unprincipled Duke of
Orleans that the princes which stood between him and the throne should
be removed, that all these cases of poisoning were attributed to him.
Indeed, one of the motives which might have influenced his daughter,
the Duchess de Berri, to poison her husband, whom she loathed, may
have been the hope of seeing her father upon the throne. When the
funeral procession passed near the Palais Royal, the residence of the
duke, the tumult was so great that it was feared that the palace might
be sacked.

The anguish of the duke, thus clamorously assailed with the crime of
the most atrocious series of assassinations, was great. A friend, the
Marquis de Canillac, calling upon him one day, found him prostrate
upon the floor of his apartment in utter despair. He knew that he was
suspected by his uncle the king, and by the court as well as by the
populace. At last he went boldly to the king, and demanded that he
should be arrested, sent to the Bastile, and put upon trial. The king
sternly, and without any manifestation of sympathy, refused, saying
that such a scandal should not, with his consent, be made any more
public than it already was. The king also recoiled from the idea of
having a prince of the blood royal tried for murder.

As it was known that the king could not live long, and a babe of but
two years was to be his successor--a feeble babe, who had already
narrowly escaped death by poison, the question of the regency, during
the minority of this babe, and of heirship to the throne in case the
babe should die, became a matter of vast moment. The court was filled
with intrigues and plots. The Duke of Orleans had his numerous
partisans, men of opulence and rank. He was but a nephew of the
king--son of the king's brother.

On the other hand was the Duke du Maine, an acknowledged _son_ of the
king--the legitimated son of Madame de Montespan. But no royal
decree, no act of Parliament could obliterate the stain of his birth.
He had many and powerful supporters, who, by his accession to power,
would be placed in all the offic