“One has no more luck at our age,” Louis XIV. had said to his old friend Marshal Villars, returning from his most disastrous campaign. It was a bitter reflection upon himself which had put these words into the king’s mouth. After the most brilliant, the most continually and invariably triumphant of reigns, he began to see Fortune slipping away from him, and the grievous consequences of his errors successively overwhelming the state. “God is punishing me; I have richly deserved it,” he said to Marshal Villars, who was on the point of setting out for the battle of Denain. The aged king, dispirited and beaten, could not set down to men his misfortunes and his reverses; the hand of God Himself was raised against his house. Death was knocking double knocks all round him. The grand-dauphin had for some days past been ill of small-pox. The king had gone to be with him at Meudon, forbidding the court to come near the castle. The small court of Monseigneur were huddled together in the lofts. The king was amused with delusive hopes; his chief physician, Fagon, would answer for the invalid. The king continued to hold his councils as usual, and the deputation of market-women (dames de la Halle), come from Paris to have news of Monseigneur, went away, declaring that they would go and sing a Te Deum, as he was nearly well. “It is not time yet, my good women,” said Monseigneur, who had given them a reception. That very evening he was dead, without there having been time to send for his confessor in ordinary. “The parish priest of Meudon, who used to look in every evening before he went home, had found all the doors open, the valets distracted, Fagon heaping remedy upon remedy without waiting for them to take effect. He entered the room, and hurrying to Monseigneur’s bedside, took his hand and spoke to him of God. The poor prince was fully conscious, but almost speechless. He repeated distinctly a few words, others inarticulately, smote his breast, pressed the priest’s hand, appeared to have the most excellent sentiments, and received absolution with an air of contrition and wistfulness.” [Memoires de St. Simon, ix.] Meanwhile word had been sent to the king, who arrived quite distracted. The Princess of Conti, his daughter, who was deeply attached to Monseigneur, repulsed him gently: “You must think only of yourself now, Sir,” she said. The king let himself sink down upon a sofa, asking news of all that came out of the room, without any one’s daring to give him an answer. Madame de Maintenon, who had hurried to the king, and was agitated without being affected, tried to get him away; she did not succeed, however, until Monseigneur had breathed his last. He passed along to his carriage between two rows of officers and valets, all kneeling, and conjuring him to have pity upon them who had lost all and were like to starve.

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The excitement and confusion at Versailles were tremendous. From the moment that small-pox was declared, the princes had not been admitted to Meudon. The Duchess of Burgundy alone had occasionally seen the king. All were living in confident expectation of a speedy convalescence; the news of the death came upon them like a thunderclap. All the courtiers thronged together at once, the women half dressed, the men anxious and concerned, some to conceal their extreme sorrow, others their joy, according as they were mixed up in the different cabals of the court. “It was all, however, nothing but a transparent veil,” says St. Simon, “which did not prevent good eyes from observing and discerning all the features. The two princes and the two princesses, seated beside them, taking care of them, were most exposed to view. The Duke of Burgundy wept, from feeling and in good faith, with an air of gentleness, tears of nature, of piety, and of patience. The Duke of Berry, in quite as good faith, shed abundance, but tears, so to speak, of blood, so great appeared to be their bitterness; he gave forth not sobs, but shrieks, howls. The Duchess of Berry (daughter of the Duke of Orleans) was beside herself. The bitterest despair was depicted on her face. She saw her sister-in-law, who was so hateful to her, all at once raised to that title, that rank of dauphiness, which were about to place so great a distance between them. Her frenzy of grief was not from affection, but from interest; she would wrench herself from it to sustain her husband, to embrace him, to console him, then she would become absorbed in herself again with a torrent of tears, which helped her to stifle her shrieks. The Duke of Orleans wept in his own corner, actually sobbing, a thing which, had I not seen it, I should never have believed,” adds St. Simon, who detested Monseigneur, and had as great a dread of his reigning as the Duke of Orleans had. “Madame, re-dressed in full dress, in the middle of the night, arrived regularly howling, not quite knowing why either one or the other; inundating them all with her tears as she embraced them, and making the castle resound with a renewal of shrieks, when the king’s carriages were announced, on his return to Marly.” The Duchess of Burgundy was awaiting him on the road. She stepped down and went to the carriage window. “What are you about, Madame?” exclaimed Madame de Maintenon; “do not come near us, we are infectious.” The king did not embrace her, and she went back to the palace, but only to be at Marly next morning before the king was awake.

The king’s tears were as short as they had been abundant. He lost a son who was fifty years old, the most submissive and most respectful creature in the world, ever in awe of him and obedient to him, gentle and good-natured, a proper man amid all his indolence and stupidity, brave and even brilliant at head of an army. In 1688, in front of Philipsburg, the soldiers had given him the name of “Louis the Bold.” He was full of spirits and always ready, “revelling in the trenches,” says Vauban. The Duke of Montausier, his boyhood’s strict governor, had written to him, “Monseigneur, I do not make you my compliments on the capture of Philipsburg; you had a fine army, shells, cannon, and Vauban. I do not make them to you either on your bravery; it is an hereditary virtue in your house; but I congratulate you on being open-handed, humane, generous, and appreciative of the services of those who do well; that is what I make you my compliments upon.” “Did not I tell you so?” proudly exclaimed the Chevalier de Grignan, formerly attached (as menin) to the person of Monseigneur, on hearing his master’s exploits lauded; “for my part, I am not surprised.” Racine had exaggerated the virtues of Monseigneur in the charming verses of the prologue of Esther:

“Thou givest him a son, an ever ready aid,
Apt or to woo or fight, obey or be obeyed;
A son who, like his sire, drags victory in his train,
Yet boasts but one desire, that father’s heart to gain;
A son, who to his will submits with loving air,
Who brings upon his foes perpetual despair.
As the swift spirit flies, stern Equity’s envoy,
So, when the king says, ‘Go,’ down rusheth he in joy,
With vengeful thunderbolt red ruin doth complete,
Then tranquilly returns to lay it at his feet.”

In 1690 and in 1691 he had gained distinction as well as in 1688. “The dauphin has begun as others would think it an honor to leave off,” the Prince of Orange had said, “and, for my part, I should consider that I had worthily capped anything great I may have done in war if, under similar circumstances, I had made so fine a march.” Whether it were owing to indolence or court cabal, Monseigneur had no more commands; he had no taste for politics, and always sat in silence at the council, to which the king had formally admitted him at thirty years of age, “instructing him,” says the Marquis of Sourches, “with so much vigor and affection, that Monseigneur could not help falling at his feet to testify his respect and gratitude.” Twice, at grave conjunctures, the grand-dauphin allowed his voice to be heard; in 1685, to offer a timid opposition to the Edict of Nantes, and, in 1700, to urge very vigorously the acceptance of the King of Spain’s will. “I should be enchanted,” he cried, as if with a prophetic instinct of his own destiny, “to be able to say all my life, ‘The king my father, and the king my SON.’” Heavy in body as well as mind, living on terms of familiarity with a petty court, probably married to Mdlle. Choin, who had been for a long time installed in his establishment at Meudon, Monseigneur, often embarrassed and made uncomfortable by the austere virtue of the Duke of Burgundy, and finding more attraction in the Duke of Berry’s frank geniality, had surrendered himself, without intending it, to the plots which were woven about him. “His eldest son behaved to him rather as a courtier than as a son, gliding over the coldness shown him with a respect and a gentleness which, together, would have won over any father less a victim to intrigue. The Duchess of Burgundy, in spite of her address and her winning grace, shared her husband’s disfavor.” The Duchess of Berry had counted upon this to establish her sway in a reign which the king’s great age seemed to render imminent; already, it was said, the chief amusement at Monseigneur’s was to examine engravings of the coronation ceremony, when death carried him off suddenly on the 14th of April, 1711, to the consternation of the lower orders, who loved him because of his reputation for geniality. The severity of the new dauphin caused some little dread.

“Here is a prince who will succeed me before long,” said the king on presenting his grandson to the assembly of the clergy; “by his virtue and piety he will render the church still more flourishing, and the kingdom more happy.” That was the hope of all good men. Fenelon, in his exile in Cambrai, and the Dukes of Beauvilliers and Chevreuse, at court, began to feel themselves all at once transported to the heights with the prince whom they had educated, and who had constantly remained faithful to them. The delicate foresight and prudent sagacity of Fenelon had a long while ago sought to prepare his pupil for the part which he was about to play. It was piety alone that had been able to triumph over the dangerous tendencies of a violent and impassioned temperament. Fenelon, who had felt this, saw also the danger of devoutness carried too far. “Religion does not consist in a scrupulous observance of petty formalities,” he wrote to the Duke of Burgundy; “it consists, for everybody, in the virtues proper to one’s condition. A great prince ought not to serve God in the same way as a hermit or a simple individual.”

“The prince thinks too much and acts too little,” he said to the Duke of Chevreuse; “his most solid occupations are confined to vague applications of his mind and barren resolutions; he must see society, study it, mix in it, without becoming a slave to it, learn to express himself forcibly, and acquire a gentle authority. If he do not feel the need of possessing firmness and nerve, he will not make any real progress; it is time for him to be a man. The life of the region in which he lives is a life of effeminacy, indolence, timidity, and amusement. He will never be so true a servant to the king and to Monseigneur as when he makes them see that they have in him a man matured, full of application, firm, impressed with their true interests, and fitted to aid them by the wisdom of his counsels and the vigor of his conduct. Let him be more and more little in the hands of God, but let him become great in the eyes of men; it is his duty to make virtue, combined with authority, loved, feared, and respected.”

Court-perfidy dogged the Duke of Burgundy to the very head of the army over which the king had set him; Fenelon, always correctly informed, had often warned him of it. The duke wrote to him, in 1708, on the occasion of his dissensions with Vendome: “It is true that I have experienced a trial within the last fortnight, and I am far from having taken it as I ought, allowing myself to give way to an oppression of the heart caused by the blackenings, the contradictions, and the pains of irresolution, and the fear of doing something untoward in a matter of extreme importance to the State. As for what you say to me about my indecision, it is true that I myself reproach myself for it, and I pray God every day to give me, together with wisdom and prudence, strength and courage to carry out what I believe to be my duty.” He had no more commands, in spite of his entreaties to obtain, in 1709, permission to march against the enemy. “If money is short, I will go without any train,” he said; “I will live like a simple officer; I will eat, if need be, the bread of a common soldier, and none will complain of lacking superfluities when I have scarcely necessaries.” It was at the very time when the Archbishop of Cambrai was urgent for peace to be made at any price. “The people no longer live like human beings,” he said, in a memorial sent to the Duke of Beauvilliers; “there is no counting any longer on their patience, they are reduced to such outrageous trials. As they have nothing more to hope, they have nothing more to fear. The king has no right to risk France in order to save Spain; he received his kingdom from God, not that he should expose it to invasion by the enemy, as if it were a thing with which he can do anything he pleases, but that he should rule it as a father, and transmit it as a precious heirloom to his posterity.” He demanded at the same time the convocation of the assembly of notables.