JUDGMENT ON MAISONS. 315

few days after, and is carried off on the 5th of May, 1727, in
her forty-sixth year, without having had a moment free.

Her son, for a long time much afflicted, seeks to distinguish
himself and acquire friends. Taking no warning from what
has occurred, he thinks only of running after the fortune of
this world, and is surprised at Paris by the small-pox. He be-
lieves himself dead, thinks of what he has neglected all his
life, but fear suddenly seizes him, and he dies in the midst of
it, on the 13th of September, 1731, leaving an only son, who
dies a year after him, eighteen months old, all the great wealth
of the family going to collateral relatives.

These Memoirs are not essays on morality, therefore I have
contented myself with the most simple and the most naked
recital of facts; but I may, perhaps, be permitted to apply
here those two verses of the 37th. Psalm, which appear so ex-
pressly made for the purpose: "I have seen the impious
exalted like the cedars of Lebanon: Yea, he passed away, and,
lo, he was not; yea, I sought him, but he could not be found."

But let me leave this subject now, to treat of other matters.
On Friday, the last day of August, I lost one of the best and
most revered of friends, the Due de Beauvilliers. He died at
Vaucresson after an illness of about two months, his intellect
clear to the last, aged sixty-six years, having been born on the
24th of October, 1648.

He was the son of M. de Saint Aignai), who with honour
and valour was truly romantic in gallantry, in belles-lettres,
and in arms. He was Captain of the Guards of Gaston, and
at the end of 1649 bought of the Due de Liancourt the post of
first-gentleman of the King's chamber. He commanded after-
wards in Berry against the party of M. le Prince, and served
elsewhere subsequently. In 1661 he was made Chevalier of
the Order, and in 1661 Duke and Peer. His first wife he lost
in 1679. At the end of a year he married one of her chamber-
maids, who had been first of all engaged to take care of her
dogs. She was so modest, and he so shamefaced, that in de-
spite of repeated pressing on the part of the King, she could
not be induced to take her tabouret. She lived in much re-