Chapter III.
Maria Antoinette Enthroned.
1774-1775
Louis XV. seized with small-pox.
In the year 1774, about four years after the marriage of Maria Antoinette and Louis, the dissolute old king, Louis XV., in his palace at Versailles, surrounded by his courtiers and his lawless pleasures, was taken sick. The disease soon developed itself as the small-pox in its most virulent form. The physicians, knowing the terror with which the conscience-smitten monarch regarded death, feared to inform him of the nature of his disease.
"What are these pimples," inquired the king, "which are breaking out all over my body?"
"They are little pustules," was the reply, "which require three days in forming, three in suppurating, and three in drying."
Flight of the courtiers.
The dreadful malady which had seized upon the king was soon, however, known throughout the court, and all fled from the infection. The miserable monarch, hated by his subjects, despised by his courtiers, and writhing under the scorpion lash of his own conscience, was left to groan and die alone. It was a horrible termination of a most loathsome life.