These words had scarcely been uttered by the king when the prince began to fight for his breath; he stretched out his arms and asked to be turned on his left side.
"I am dying!" he said, as they hastened to carry out his last wish.
And, indeed, they had hardly moved him when, at the stroke of half-past six, he died.
The grief of the duchess was inexpressible. She seized scissors from the mantelpiece, let down her beautiful fair hair, cut it off to the roots and threw the locks on the dead body of her husband.
The sorrow of King Louis was twofold: not knowing that the Duchesse de Berry was pregnant, he deplored even more than the death of a murdered nephew the extinction of a race.
When he withdrew to the Tuileries, he remembered the events of the two preceding days—the letter received on the very morning of the assassination, the warning of some great calamity threatening the royal family. Then, although there was nothing more to be expected from the mysterious stranger, the legend that we have given goes on to say that Louis XVIII. dragged his aching limbs to the window and stuck the three wafers on its panes as a signal of welcome to the unknown writer of the letters. Two hours later, the king received a letter wrapped in three coverings:—
"It is too late! Let a confidential person come and meet me on the pont des Arts, where I will be at eleven o'clock to-night.
"I rely on the honour of the king."
At a quarter-past eleven the mysterious stranger was introduced into the Tuileries and conducted to the king's private chamber. He remained with Louis till one o'clock in the morning. No one ever knew what passed in that interview. The next day, M. Clausel de Coussergues proposed, in the Upper House, to impeach M. Decazes as an accomplice in the assassination of the Duc de Berry.
Thus, at the same time that the Napoleonic and Liberal party were disseminating the skits against the Bourbons which we have quoted, and distributing copies of the proceedings of the Maubreuil trial, the Extreme Right was attacking by similar means the Duc d'Orléans and M. Decazes; each in turn undermining and destroying one another, to the advantage of a fourth party, which was soon to make its appearance under the cloak of Carbonarism—we mean that Republican element which Napoleon, when he was dying in the island of St. Helena, prophesied would dominate the future.