he had given me respecting the opening of the body, in order that she
might have them executed, and I hindered her from remaining in the
chamber, where there was nothing now but horror to be seen.

At last, about midnight, on the 21st of July, 1819, Madame la Duchesse de
Berry died, ten days after Chirac had consummated his crime. M. le Duc
d'Orleans was the only person touched. Some people grieved; but not one
of them who had enough to live upon appeared ever to regret her loss.
Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans felt her deliverance, but paid every
attention to decorum. Madame constrained herself but little. However
affected M. le Duc d'Orleans might be, consolation soon came. The yoke
to which he had submitted himself, and which he afterwards found heavy,
was severed. Above all, he was free from all annoyance on the score of
Rion's marriage, and its results, annoyance that would have been all the
greater, inasmuch as at the opening of the poor princess she was found to
be again enceinte; it was also found that her brain was deranged. These
circumstances were for the time carefully hidden. It may be imagined
what a state Rion fell into in learning at the army the death of Madame
la Duchesse de Berry. All his romantic notions of ambition being
overturned, he was more than once on the point of killing himself, and
for a long time was always kept in sight by his friends. He sold out at
the end of the campaign. As he had been gentle and polite to his
friends, they did not desert him. But he ever afterwards remained in
obscurity.

On account of this death the theatres were closed for eight days.

On Saturday, the 22nd of July, the heart of Madame la Duchesse de Berry
was taken to the Val-de-Grace.