356 MEMOIRS OF THE DUKE OF SAINT-SIMOK

off on the previous day with very dry eyes to St. Cyr, not in-
tending to return.* He asked for her several times during the
day. Her departure could not be hidden. He sent for her to
St. Cyr, and she came back in the evening.

Friday, August the 30th, was a bad day preceded by a bad
night. The "King continually lost his reason. About five
o'clock in the evening Madame de Maintenon left him, gave
away her furniture to the domestics, and went to St. Cyr never
to leave it.

On Saturday, the 31st of August, everything went from bad
to worse. The gangrene had reached the knee and all the
thigh. Towards eleven o'clock at night the King was found
to be so ill that the prayers for the dying were said. This re-
stored him to himself. He repeated the prayers in a voice so
.strong that it rose above all the other voices. At the end he
recognised Cardinal de Eohan, and said to him, " These are the
last favours of the church." This was the last man to whom,
he spoke. He repeated several times, Nunc et in hord mortis,
then said, "Oh, my God, come to my aid: hasten to succour
me."

These were his last words. All the night he was without
consciousness and in a long agony, which finished on Sunday,
the 1st September, 1715, at a quarter past eight in the morn-
ing, three days before he had accomplished his seventy-seventh
year, and in the seventy-second of his reign. He had sur-
vived all his sons and grandsons, except the King of Spain.
Europe never saw so long a reign or France a King so old.

* If anything could make Madame de Maintenon more odious? it is this
heartless desertion of the old King in his last moments of agony and peni-
tence.