My health is still much weakened; this is the first time for eight days that the fever has left me. Since the blow that struck me I have had eighteen paroxysms of fever, and I thought it was the will of God to end my sad life; but it was not so. I am left with great lassitude and weakness of the legs, which I attribute to the shock of Monsieur's death; they continued to tremble for twenty-four hours as if from a violent attack of fever. Nothing could have been more dreadful than what I witnessed. At nine o'clock in the evening Monsieur left my room, gay and laughing; at half-past ten they called me, and I found him almost unconscious; but he recognized me and said a few words with much difficulty. I stayed the whole night beside him, and the next morning at six o'clock, when there was no longer any hope, they carried me away unconscious. I am grateful to you for the share you take in my misfortune, which is dreadful, and I thank you with all my heart. I beg you to let the Queen-dowager of Denmark know how much I am touched that her Majesty has remembered me in my trouble. I have need to find, in my sad situation, something to divert my thoughts; everything is forbidden to me at present except walking; my greatest comfort is the kindness of the king, of which he continues to give me many proofs. He comes to see me and takes me to walk with him. Saturday was the day when Monsieur was interred, and though I was not present, I wept much, as you can well imagine. I have every reason to rejoice in the king's favour, and so has my son, whom the king has made a very great seigneur. I am well pleased for him; we live happily together; he is a good lad with very good feelings. October, 1701. My health is now perfect, and to keep it so I drive out as much as I can. All the others hunt daily with the king, and go twice a week to the theatre. I am deprived of those things, as you know, and between ourselves, it is not a little privation to be obliged to forego those two amusements. I walk out often on foot and go a good three miles in the forest; that disperses the melancholy that would otherwise crush me; especially when I hear talk about public affairs of which I had previously never heard a word in all my life. I should be very fortunate if I could understand them as you do, but I never could, and at fifty one is too old to begin to learn; I should only make myself as annoying and irritating as a bed-bug. Apropos of bed-bugs, they nearly ate up the little Queen of Spain on her passage up the Mediterranean in the Spanish galleys. Her people were obliged to sit up with her all night. She arrived a few days ago at Toulon, and went from there by land to Barcelona because, so she wrote me, she could not endure the sea any longer. I would not be in her place; to be a queen is painful in any country, but to be Queen of Spain is worst of all.