"Leave the King," she continued, after drying her tears. "Leave so
sensual a being; the slave of his passions, the ravisher of others' good.
The pomp and grandeur which surround you and intoxicate you would seem
but a little thing did you but look at them as now I do, upon my bed of
death.

"The Queen hates me; she is right. She despises me, and justly, too. I
shall elude her hatred and disdain, which weigh thus heavily upon my
heart. Perhaps she may deign to pardon me when my lawyer shall have
delivered to her a document, signed by myself, containing my confession
and excuses."

As she uttered these words, Madame de Montausier began to vomit blood,
and I had to summon her attendants. With a last movement of the head she
bade me farewell, and I heard that she called for her husband.

Next day she was dead. Her waiting-maid came to tell me that the
Duchess, conscious to the last, had made her husband promise to resign
his appointment as governor to the Dauphin, and withdraw to his estates,
where he was to do penance. M. de Meaux, a friend of the family, read
the prayers for the dying, to which the Duchess made response, and three
minutes before the final death-throe, she consented to let him preach a
funeral sermon in eulogy of herself and her husband.

When printed and published, this discourse was thought to be a fine piece
of eloquence.

Over certain things the Bishop passed lightly, while exaggerating others.
Some things, again, were entirely of his own invention; and if from the