The slippered soldier who, in his decrepitude, flung out his banner with this device upon it, belied at least a portion thereof. He caught cold, by keeping an assignation near the bastion, on one of the coldest nights of the Congress-winter, and while waiting vainly for the _innamorata_ who had fooled him. The consequent symptoms soon assumed a fatal aspect; and straightway “this god did shake,” and made his motto pointless, save against himself. His remorse might have been small, and doubtless no one envied a dying dandy; but the latter was himself no longer without fear or regret. He feared the slow approach of death; and his regret was not that life had been misspent, but that it had come to its limit. He aggravated his malady by defying it, and appearing at a ball. It was the last occasion on which he was seen in public, and it killed him. He took to his couch, and, in ignoble prostration, he bewailed that he could not die like Petronius Arbiter, that accomplished _roué_, base as man and great as consul, who played with death; now pricked a vein, and now bandaged it; now whipped a slave, and now freed one; now listened to gay music, now trilled a gay song; anon, cursed the whole world, and forthwith fell dead, like a dog in his uncleanness. “After all,” said the Prince, “I shall be better off than Petronius; and friends and dear ones will receive my last sigh. Not,” said poor fearful nature, speaking through the Prince,—“not that I am going to die just yet. There is no cause for fear. Let us banish sadness. I am living, and I _will_ live!” And then the moribund beau made puns, as if death could be delayed by playing upon words. Or he called up old souvenirs, and gossiped about the famous “fine eyes” of the Countess de Witt. “You should have seen her,” said the dying Prince; “her eyes were so bepraised that she at length never spoke of them but as her ‘fine eyes.’” Once the admirable Marie Antoinette expressed regret at her looking unwell, and asked from what she suffered. “May it please your Majesty,” answered the simple Countess, “I am suffering from cold _in my fine eyes!_”—and then the dying prater laughed, and they who stood around him smiled in melancholy accord.