“It will come at the predestined day; it will come,” as Bossuet said, “this last illness when, amidst an infinite number of friends, doctors, and attendants, you will find yourself without assistance, more forsaken, more abandoned, than the pauper dying on the straw without a sheet for his burial! For of what avail are these friends in this fatal malady? Only to afflict you by their presence; these doctors? only to torment you; these attendants? only to run hither and thither about your house with useless zeal. You need other friends, other servants; these paupers whom you have despised are the only ones capable of assisting you. Why did you not think in time of providing yourself with such friends as would now hold out their arms to receive you into everlasting tabernacles?”[56] Even on her death-bed Madame de Pompadour, always the slave of the man whose mistress she was called, feared the King more than God himself. They say she sent to Louis XV. to ask if he desired her to go to confession. The King replied affirmatively. A priest from Paris, the curé of the Madeleine, administered the last sacraments to the dying woman. When he was about to withdraw, it is pretended that she retained him with a last smile, and said: “One moment, Monsieur the Curé, we will go away together.” A few minutes before she had caused her will to be read to her, which commenced thus: “I, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, wife separated from the property of Charles Guillaume Lenormand d’Étioles, equerry, have made and written my present testament and ordinance of my last will, which I wish to be executed in its entirety. I recommend my soul to God, entreating Him to have pity on it, to pardon my sins, to grant me the grace to do penance and to die in dispositions worthy of His mercy, hoping to appease His justice by the merits of the precious blood of Jesus Christ my Saviour and by the powerful intercession of the Blessed Virgin and of all the Saints in Paradise. I desire that my body shall be taken to the Capuchins of the Place Vendôme, at Paris, and buried in the vault of the chapel conceded to me.” As one sees, the Marquise was not so faithless as the Encyclopedists claimed. The poor woman had learned for herself what earthly kings are. Perhaps, at the last hour, she turned her eyes toward the King of Heaven. She breathed her last April 15, 1764. It was long since Louis XV. had ceased to love her. He merely tolerated her. If he had kept her at court, it was only lest her disgrace should make her die of chagrin. This premature death was rather a release from embarrassment than an affliction to him. It is said that, seeing from one of the windows of Versailles the carriage starting which was to carry her coffin to Paris during a frightful storm, he said tranquilly: “The Marquise will not have good weather for her journey.” Then, calmly drawing out his watch, he calculated at what hour the funeral would reach its destination--and that was all.