e of Madame
de Maintenon and of his _confessor_, who had mainly instigated him in
the persecution of the Protestants,

"Gentlemen, I die in the faith and obedience of the Church. I know
nothing of the dogmas by which it is divided. I have followed the
advice which I have received, and have done only what I was desired to
do. If I have erred, my guides alone must answer before God, whom I
call upon to witness this assertion."

The succeeding night the king was restless and greatly agitated. He
could not sleep, and seemed to pass the whole night in agonizing
prayer. In the morning he said to Madame de Maintenon,

"At this moment I only regret yourself. I have not made you happy. But
I have ever felt for you all the regard and affection which you
deserved. My only consolation in leaving you exists in the hope that
we shall, ere long, meet again in eternity."

Hours of agony, bodily and mental, were still allotted to the king.
His limbs were badly swollen. Upon one of them mortification was
rapidly advancing. He was often delirious, with but brief intervals of
consciousness. The service for the dying was performed. The ceremony
seemed slightly to arouse him from his lethargy. His voice was heard
occasionally blending with the prayers of the ecclesiastics as he
repeated several times,

"Now, in the hour of death, O my God, come to my aid."

These were his last words. He sank back insensible upon his pillow. A
few hours of painful breathing passed away, and at eight o'clock in
the morning of the 1st of September, 1715, he expired, in the
seventy-seventh year of his age and the seventy-second of his reign.
It was the longest reign in the annals of France. Had he been governed
through this period by enlightened Christian principle, how many
millions might have been made happy whom his crimes doomed to
life-long woe!

An immense concourse was assembled in the court-yard at Versailles,
anticipating the announcement of his death. The moment he breathed his
last sigh, the captain of the body-guard approached the great balcony,
threw open the massive windows, and, looking down upon the multitude
below, raised his truncheon above his head, broke it in the centre,
threw the fragments down into the court-yard, and cried sadly, "The
king is dead!"

Then, instantly seizing another staff from the hands of an attendant,
he waved it joyfully above his head, and shouted triumphantly, "Long
live the king, Louis XV.!" A huzza burst