and silence: "It is like the tomb; I do not wish to put myself in
such a place," said he to Madame du Barry. The duc de Richelieu
tried to divert him. "No," said he suddenly, as if the Trappist's
denunciation had again recurred to him, "I shall be at ease only
when these forty days have passed." He died on the fortieth day.

Du Barry believed neither in God nor in the devil, but she believed
in the almanac of Liege. She scarcely read any book but this--
faithful to her earliest habits. And the almanac of Liege, in its
prediction for April, 1774, said: "A woman, the greatest of
favorites, will play her last role." So Madame the Countess du
Barry said without ceasing: "I shall not be tranquil until these
forty days have passed." The thirty-seventh day the King went to
the hunt attended with all the respect due to his rank. Jeanne
wept in silence and prayed to God as one who has long neglected
her prayers.

Louis XV had not neglected his prayers, and gave two hundred
thousand livres to the poor, besides ordering masses at St.
Genevieve. Parliament opened the shrine, and knelt gravely
before that miraculous relic. The least serious of all these good
worshippers was, strange to say, the curate of St. Genevieve:
"Ah, well!" said he gaily, when Louis was dead, "let us continue
to talk of the miracles of St. Genevieve. Of what can you
complain? Is not the King dead?"

At the last moment it was not God who held the heart of Louis--it
was his mistress. "Ask the Countess to come here again," he said.

"Sire, you know that she has gone away," they answered.