It was to be even so. His frame was feeble, and these fierce attacks affected him severely. In the following November a carriage accident entailed another shock to his system, from which he had not strength to recover. In the month that followed, his friends recognized that he was failing visibly. On the first of January he was attacked by a sharp fever, and it began to be evident that the end was near. For the whole of the six days that remained to him on earth he permitted only the reading of the Holy Scriptures. Over and over they read to him 2 Cor. iv and v, especially the part about the “building of God, the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” “Repeat that again,” he said more than once. Other texts of Scripture particularly suited to his condition were read to him again and again. He would try to repeat them himself with a failing voice, while his eyes and his whole countenance were lighted up with a bright expression of faith and love which the sacred words inspired. Several times he asked those around to repeat St. Martin’s dying words, “Lord, if I am yet necessary to Thy people I refuse not labor; Thy will be done.” On the morning of the 4th he took the blessed sacrament, being carried into the large state bedchamber for the purpose, and gathering about him his attendants, to whom he spoke a few farewell words of tender exhortation. On the 6th he received extreme unction, as one about to depart. And immediately after, bidding every one, save his chaplain, leave the room, summoning all his strength, he dictated to him a few lines addressed to Père Lachaise, the king’s confessor. Being thus about to appear before God, he said: “I have never felt aught save docility to the Church and abhorrence of the novelties attributed to me. I accepted the condemnation of my book with the most absolute unreserve. There never was a moment in my life when I did not entertain the liveliest gratitude and most honest zeal for the king’s person, as also the most inviolable respect and attachment. I wish long life for His Majesty, of whom both Church and State have so great need. If it be permitted me to come before the presence of God, I will continually ask this of Him.” He makes in the letter two requests of the king, neither of them for himself or his family: First, that he will appoint to Cambrai a pious, worthy, orthodox prelate; and secondly, that he will allow the Cambrai seminary to be intrusted to the Sulpician Fathers to whom he owed so much. The rest of that day and the night following he had much agony, and, in a feeble, broken voice, said many times, “Thy will, not mine.” He was surrounded by those who loved him best, his two favorite nephews, the Abbé de Beaumont and the Marquis de Fénelon, arriving in haste from Paris. He gave them all his blessing as long as he could speak. He passed away peacefully, amid the tears of all around, at quarter past five in the morning; aged sixty-three years, five months, and one day.