So many emotions had prostrated Madame de Châteauroux. Joy revived her for awhile, but all was over with her; she was never again to see either the palace of Versailles, so greatly longed for, or the King whose love had been so fatal to her. She never left her bed again. A burning fever consumed her; she thought herself poisoned, and suffered horrible tortures in soul and body. Her worst enemies would have pitied her. Her agony lasted eleven days. She had a violent delirium accompanied by convulsive movements, and struggled against death with all the energy of her youth, all the vehemence of her character. In spite of his pretended passion, Louis XV. did not trouble himself to come and bid her adieu. He did not even send directly to inquire about her. Madame de Lauraguais, who had just had a child, was not beside her sister’s bed. The Duchess de Châteauroux died alone, December 8, 1744. The King deserted her; Jesus Christ did not forsake her. At her last hour, she repented like Magdalen, and for the first time in years, the dying sinner knew interior peace. “Père Ségand was with her,” says the Duke de Luynes. “As he was speaking to her of the confidence we ought to have in the Blessed Virgin, she replied that she had always worn a little medal of her, and that she had begged two graces through her intercession,--not to die without the sacraments, and to die on one of her feasts. She had already obtained the first and was presently to obtain the second, for she died on the feast of the Conception.” At first Louis XV. felt crushed. The Queen herself, who practised on so great a scale the wholly Christian virtue of forgiveness of injuries, the Queen shared sincerely in her husband’s grief. She passed in solitude the evening which had been set apart for a friendly reunion at the house of the Duchess de Luynes. During the night she became frightened, and summoned one of her women: “My God!” cried she, “that poor duchess! If she should return!... I think I see her.”--“Eh! madame,” returned the chambermaid, “if she comes back, it will not be Your Majesty that receives her first visit.”