All France is affected. It is rumored that the King’s malady was caused by his grief at the invasion of Alsace. His kindness, his repentance, his courage, his patriotism, are everywhere celebrated. Masses are said for him in every church in the kingdom. The clergy read from the pulpits the bulletins from Metz and accounts of the King’s public penance. People speak of him with tears of tenderness and admiration. As for his favorite, the “Lady in red,” as the people call her, she is loaded with maledictions. The Queen is sent for to Metz. She leaves Versailles August 15, amidst universal emotion. When she reaches her spouse, he receives her with tenderness. He embraces her and asks pardon for the pain he has given her. The next day Louis XV. has Madame de Villais waked up at four o’clock in the morning. He knows the Queen has great confidence in her, and he wants her to tell him if Marie Leczinska has really forgiven him. He expresses the most beautiful sentiments, begging God, as he says, to withdraw him from the world if his people would be governed better by some one else. His convalescence begins a few days later. The Queen is full of joy; she thinks her husband has become a saint. But here we leave the narrative to the Duchess de Brancas, a witness of the hopes and the disappointments of Marie Leczinska:-- “The old court,” she says in a curious fragment of Memoirs, “found small difficulty in convincing itself that God, after striking the King, would touch his heart. The maid-of-honor was so devoutly persuaded of this one day that, finding the King in such a condition that he could give the Queen indubitable marks of a sincere reconciliation, she had the Queen’s bed changed into a nuptial couch and put two pillows over the bolster. You can understand what hopes were revealed, by the joy of some people and the astonishment of others. The Queen had been wonderfully well dressed since the King’s convalescence; she wore rose-colored gowns. The old ladies announced their hopes by green ribbons; in fact, there had been nothing so spirituelle in toilet adornments seen for a long time; one was reminded of ancient gallantry by the way in which they were relied on to announce everything without compromising anybody. But you can also conceive the pleasure which the Duke de Bouillon and the Duke de Richelieu took in speaking to the King about what was going on in the Queen’s palace. He seemed so dissatisfied with it that these gentlemen thought they would not displease him by notifying the mothers of the churches that they had been mistaken in getting ready a _Te Deum_ which they would never chant, and that nothing was more uncertain than the King’s conversion. This was quite enough to decide these ladies to change their toilette. Some assumed more modest colors, others lowered their headdresses, still others wore less rouge.”