He retired to Paris and there lived quietly in lodgings until 1857, when, at the great age of eighty-two, he was struck down with paralysis. On finding his end near, he sent for a confessor, and—so whimsical a thing is human nature—he greatly edified the holy man by dying like a saint. One trifling peccadillo he perhaps forgot to mention. The breath had scarcely left his body, when ten lovely damsels, each provided with a copy of his will, which left her all his property arrived. Alas for all the ten! Vidocq had always loved the smiles of beauty, and had obtained them by a gift which cost him nothing. He had left his whole possessions to his landlady.
Smith: "Romance of History."
Villars de (Claude Louis Hector, famous French general), 1653-1734. "I always deemed him more fortunate than myself." Said to his confessor, who told him that the Duke of Berwick had perished by a cannon ball.
Villiers (George, First Duke of Buckingham. He was assassinated by John Felton in 1628), 1592-1628. "God's wounds! the villain hath killed me."
John Felton, gentleman, having watched his opportunity, thrust a long knife, with a white heft, he had secretly about him, with great strength and violence, into his breast, under his left pap, cutting the diaphragma and lungs, and piercing the very heart itself. The Duke having received the stroke, and instantly clapping his right hand on his sword-hilt, cried out, "God's wounds! the villain hath killed me."—Book of Death.
Virgil (Publius Virgilius Maro, most illustrious of Latin poets), b. c. 70-19.
Upon a visit to Megara, a town in the neighborhood of Athens, he was seized with a languor, which increased during the ensuing voyage; and he expired a few days after landing at Brundisium, on the 22d of September in the fifty-second year of his age. He desired that his body might be carried to Naples, where he had passed many happy years; and that the following distich, written in his last sickness, should be inscribed upon his tomb:
Mantua me genuit: Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc
Parthenope, Cecerie pascua, rura, duces.
Vitellius (Aulus, Emperor of Rome), 15-69. "Yet I was once your emperor," to the soldiers of Vespasian who were putting him to death by a lingering torture whilst they were dragging him by a horse into the Tiber.
Voltaire (a name capriciously assumed by François Marie Arouet, and made by him more celebrated than any other of which we read in the literary history of the eighteenth century), 1694-1778. "Adieu my dear Marand; I am dying," said to his valet.