Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency — Volume 13 by duc de Louis de Rouvroy Saint-Simon
page 23 of 79 (29%)
page 23 of 79 (29%)
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On Sunday, the 23rd of July, her body was carried in an eight-horse coach
to Saint-Denis. There was very little display; only about forty torches were carried by pages and guards. The funeral service was performed at Saint-Denis in the early part of September. There was no funeral oration. Madame de Saint-Simon had been forced, as I have shown, to accept the post of lady of honour to Madame la Duchesse de Berry, and had never been able to quit it. She had been treated with all sorts of consideration, had been allowed every liberty, but this did not console her for the post she occupied; so that she felt all the pleasure, not to say the satisfaction, of a deliverance she did not expect, from a princess twenty-four years of age. But the extreme fatigue of the last days of the illness, and of those which followed death, caused her a malignant fever, which left her at death's portal during six weeks in a house at Passy. She was two months recovering herself. This accident, which almost turned my head, sequestered me from anything for two months, during which I never left the house, scarcely left the sick-chamber, attended to nothing, and saw only a few relatives or indispensable friends. When my wife began to be re-established, I asked M. le Duc d'Orleans for a lodging at the new chateau at Meudon. He lent me the whole chateau; completely furnished. We passed there the rest of this summer, and several other summers afterwards. It is a charming place for rides or drives. We counted upon seeing only our friends there, but the proximity to Paris overwhelmed us with people, so that all the new chateau was sometimes completely filled, without reckoning the people of passage. |
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