The King's sorrow, on receiving the intelligence of his sister's death, was uncontrollable. The friend, the confidant, the consolation of his life was gone in his darkest hour, when he seemed to have the most need of her sound advice and sustaining comfort. "How," says he, "can I make up for the loss which everything warns me of; how can I replace this beloved and adorable sister, who has loved me so dearly? How could I believe that she, to whom, since my earliest youth, I have confided my every thought, should so soon be taken from me?" He made a pathetic appeal to Voltaire to write something in her memory, and, not being satisfied with one effort, he writes:—"For what I have asked of you, I assure you I have very much at heart; be it prose, be it verse, it is all the same to me. A monument is necessary to commemorate that virtue so pure, so rare, which has not been sufficiently generally known. If I was persuaded I could write adequately myself, I would charge no one with it; but as you are certainly the first of our age, I can address myself only to you."
In response to this appeal, Voltaire wrote the following ode:—
Ombre illustre, ombre chère; âme héroïque et pure;
Toi que mes tristes yeux ne cessent de pleurer,
Quand la fatale loi de toute la nature
Te conduit dans la sepulture,
Faut-il te plaindre ou t'admirer?
Les vertus, les talents ont été ton partage;
Tu vécus, tu mourus en sage;
Et, voyant à pas lents avancer le trépas,