Soon after this incident, the Duchesse de Bourbon’s illness took a turn for the better, and at the end of a fortnight she was pronounced convalescent. Condé’s presence was no longer necessary; but the change in his manner of life, the sleepless nights, the fatigue and the anxiety he had endured, had been too much for an old man whose constitution was already so shattered, and it was evident that his days were numbered. He had expressed a wish to die at Chantilly, and it was hoped that it might be possible to gratify it. But, on the morning of 10 December he became much weaker, and was warned that it was time to think of the Sacraments. He desired that Père des Champs should be summoned from Paris, and, turning to Gourville, observed: “Ah well! my friend, I believe my journey will be a longer one than we thought. But I wish to write to the King.” And, after a vain attempt to write himself, he dictated to his confessor, Père Bergier, a letter to Louis XIV., to implore his pardon for the Prince de Conti, who had been for some time in disgrace and seemed likely to remain there. In the middle of the night, feeling worse, he made his confession and received absolution from Père Bergier, Père des Champs not having yet arrived, and at daybreak the curé of Fontainebleau brought him the Viaticum. Shortly afterwards, _Monsieur le Duc_ arrived with the news that the King had, on his own initiative, pardoned the Prince de Conti, for the letter which _Monsieur le Prince_ had dictated the previous day had not yet been despatched. This intelligence was a great relief to Condé, who caused a few lines to be added to the letter, thanking his Majesty for his kindness and assuring him that he should now die content. Conti and Père des Champs arrived a little later, and, with the Duc and Duchesse d’Enghien, remained with him to the end, which came very peacefully between seven and eight o’clock in the evening. “No one,” wrote the British Ambassador, the Earl of Arran, to his Government, “ever died with less concern, and he preserved his senses to the last minute.” After lying for some days in the mortuary chapel at Fontainebleau, which had been transformed into a _chapelle ardente_, the body of Condé was conveyed to Valery and interred in the family vault. His heart was deposited in the Jesuit church in the Rue Saint-Antoine. “In carrying to the same place the heart of my uncle, the Comte de Clermont,” writes his great-grandson, “I had an opportunity of seeing all the hearts of our ancestors, which were deposited there, enclosed in silver-gilt cases; and I remarked (as did also those who accompanied me) that the heart of the Great Condé was nearly double the size of all the others.”[240] On 10 March, 1687, a solemn service was held at Notre-Dame. The funeral oration, pronounced by Bossuet, is generally considered the masterpiece of that famous preacher, and is the greatest of all the tributes rendered to the memory of Condé.