She died at last after a few hours' illness, having just time to order
all her household to be summoned, and before them to make a public
confession of her sins. As she lay expiring, blessing God that she died
far away from the children of her adulterous connection, the Comte
d'Antin, her only child by the Marquis de Montespan, arrived. Peace and
trust had then come at last to the agonized woman. She spoke to him
about her state of mind, and expired.
To Madame de Maintenon the event would, it was thought, be a relief: yet
she wept bitterly on hearing of it. The king showed, on the contrary,
the utmost indifference, on learning that one whom he had once loved so
much was gone for ever.
All has passed away! The _OEil de Boeuf_ is now important only as
being pointed out to strangers; Versailles is a show-place, not a
habitation. Saint-Simon, who lived until 1775, was truly said to have
turned his back on the new age, and to live in the memories of a former
world of wit and fashion. He survived until the era of the
'Encyclopedie' of Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He lived, indeed,
to hear that Montesquieu was no more. How the spirit of Louis XIV. spoke
in his contemptuous remarks on Voltaire, whom he would only call Arouet;
'The son of my father's and my own notary.
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