"I have committed, monseigneur, the great sin that you know."
"The great sin that I know! I know so many," thought the abbé. "What sin, my friend?"
"Yea, the great sin—although married—"
"Ah! I understand!" Then, sotto voce, "My great sin, although a priest."
A deplorable fatality, if it was a fatality, had so willed it that the vassal should have fallen into the same snares as had his lord, who was now called to judge him at his last hour.
When the confession was ended, the Abbé de Voisenon consulted his own heart with inward terror, and after some hesitation he remitted his penitent's sins, inwardly avowing to himself that the dying man ought, at least, out of gratitude, to render him the same service.
The ceremony over, the abbé rose to depart: but his limbs failed him, and they were actually obliged to carry him home, where he arrived in a state of prostration that seriously alarmed his household. During the remainder of that day he spoke to no one; wrapped up in the silence of his own melancholy thoughts, he opened his lips only to cough. The night was bad; icy shiverings passed over his frame: the image of this man, of the same age, and burdened with the same sins as he himself had committed, would not leave his memory. By daylight his trouble of mind and body was at its height; he desired his valet to summon his physician and the prior of the convent. "And immediately," added he, "immediately."
Comprehending better this time the wishes of his master, the domestic hastened to arouse the prior, whose convent almost adjoined the château, and the physician, who had apartments in the château itself. This physician was a young man, chosen by the celebrated Tronchin from among his cleverest pupils at the express desire of the Abbé de Voisenon.
Seriously alarmed at the danger of the abbé, both prior and physician hastened to obey the summons. M. de Voisenon was so ill last night. Should they arrive in time? So equal and so prompt was their zeal that both reached the abbé's bedroom door together. But when they opened it, what was their astonishment to find that the bird had flown; our abbé had got over his little fright, and had gone out shooting again.
The end of that fatal eighteenth century was now approaching; undermined by years and debauchery, it was now like a ruined spend-thrift moving away from the calendar of the world in rags; it was hideously old, but its years inspired not respect. Old king, old ministers, old generals—if indeed there were generals,—old courtiers, old mistresses, old poets, old musicians, old opera dancers, broken down with ennui, pleasure, and idleness—toothless, faded, rouged, and wrinkled—were descending slowly to the tomb. Louis XV. formed one of the funeral procession; he was taken to St. Denis between two lines of cabarets filled with drunken revellers, madly rejoicing at being rid of this plague, which another plague had carried off to the grave. Crébillon was dead; the son of the great Racine, honored by the famous title of Member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, was taken off by a malignant fever, and obtained from the grateful publicity of the day the following necrological eulogium, as brief as it was eloquent: "M. Racine, last of the name, died yesterday of a malignant fever; as a man of letters he was long dead, having become stupefied by wine and devotion." Twelve days afterwards Marivaux followed Racine to the grave. The Abbé Prevost died of a tenth attack of apoplexy in the forest of Chantilly. In the following spring the celebrated Madame de Pompadour descended, at the age of forty-four, into the grave, after having exhaled a bon mot in guise of confession. Desirous, as it would appear, of leaving this world like the rest of his worthy compères, the composer Rameau cried furiously to his confessor, whose lugubrious note while intoning the service at his bedside offended the delicacy of his ear, 'What the devil are you muttering there, Monsieur le Curé? you are horribly out of tune!' And thereupon Master Rameau expired of a putrid fever. And what think you, worthy reader, occupied the public the day following the death of the most celebrated musician in Europe, the king of the French school? Why, nothing less than this wonderful piece of news: "Mademoiselle Miré, of the Opera, more celebrated as a courtesan than as a danseuse, has interred her lover; on his tomb are engraven these words: