Queen, asked Madame to accompany Her Majesty so that she might not have
to appear alone in the presence of her royal husband, and that when
Madame de Maintenon conducted the Queen to the door of the King's room,
and there took the liberty of pushing her ahead so as to force her to
enter, she observed that Marie Therese fell into such a great tremble
that her very hands shook with fright. And why should not the Queen
tremble with unhappy apprehension when even the greatest favorite of
all, Madame de Maintenon, found nothing in the life of the Court but
bitter striving and heart misery? In the very midst of her splendor
she exclaimed to a friend, "If I could only make clear to you the
hideous _ennui_ that devours all of us, the troubles that fill our
days! Do you not see that I am dying of sadness in the midst of a
fortune that passes all imagination? I have had youth and beauty, I
have sated myself with pleasure, I have had my hours of intellectual
satisfaction, I have enjoyed royal favor, and yet I protest to you, my
good friend, that all these conditions leave only a dreadful void."

Marie Thérèse took up her abode at Versailles only when the palace was
pronounced complete. She entered her apartments there in 1682, and
breathed her last in July of the following year. The Queen's bedroom
is filled with historic memories. The walls could whisper many tragic
secrets and the halls might assemble by invocation innumerable ghostly
figures of fair women that once stood close to the throne, wore royal
robes, and nursed breaking hearts. In the Queen's bed chamber died
Marie Therese and, later, Marie Leczinska, the Queen of Louis XV.
There also the Dauphiness of Bavaria and the Duchess of Burgundy passed
away; and, in that chamber, nineteen princes and princesses of the
royal blood were born, among whom were King Philip V of Spain and Louis
XV of France. The chamber was occupied first by the pious and devoted
Marie Therese; after that by the Bavarian Dauphiness, who died in 1690