"What a rendezvous!" she muttered half aloud. "He cares for no one but himself." Bolduc, the King's apothecary, was near, and heard her say so. That very day she left him while he dozed, and drove away to Saint-Cyr. On Sunday, the 1st of September, Louis died. His confessor, the Jesuit Letellier, never returned. Madame de Maintenon remained at Saint-Cyr. Save the Cardinal de Rohan, and the parish priest of Versailles, all had forsaken him. No sooner had he breathed his last, than precautions were necessary to guard his body from insult. While the first lord in waiting, standing at the central window within the royal bedchamber which overlooks the Cour de Marbre, the town of Versailles, and the forest, broke his bâton of office, shouting in a loud voice, "The King is dead! Long live the King!" blasphemous songs and brutal jests passed from group to group of low women gathered along the streets. When the funeral procession left Versailles, almost secretly in the twilight, reaching the Bois de Boulogne and the plain of Saint-Denis by tracks and country roads, crowds followed it, bellowing horrible imprecations. Along the causeway, outside the barriers of Versailles, temporary tents were pitched, where peasants stood, glass in hand, to toast the corpse with curses. These peasants and the townsmen of Versailles had heard of millions squandered on royal mistresses, while the people starved; of war abroad and persecutions at home; of intolerance which spared no one; of ruin, exile, imprisonment, and torture. The country people and the populace did not acknowledge the dead as Louis the Great. The citizens hated him. These men neither knew nor cared that he had a sonorous voice, a measured and solemn delivery that gave weight to his smallest utterances, that leading a life of vice he observed outward decorum, that he had a majestic presence and a stately manner. These men weighed him—manners against acts, life against words—and found him wanting. Posterity readjusted the scales and pronounced them just. The great Revolution declared the balance. Louis XVI. expiated the crimes of his ancestors on the scaffold. * * * * * *