There is nothing to disprove that a double birth may have been prophesied by the two shepherds. Popular imagination, lively excited by the universal desire for a Dauphin, and by the unexpected announcement of the Queen’s condition, welcomed a thousand superstitious predictions, that for some months served as food for conversation, and helped to soften the delay. But this is the sole incident which is not evidently false in the relation of Soulavie, which is refuted, for the rest, by the impossibility of hiding a second birth from the innumerable witnesses of the first, and by the absolute silence of contemporaries, as well as by the incontestable inutility of the removal and suppression of this younger brother of Louis XIV. FOOTNOTES: [92] Voltaire, _Dictionnaire Philosophique_, vol. i. p. 375. [93] Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, section France, 5. There exists, amongst others, a letter of January 10, 1637, in which Louis XIII. writes to Richelieu “that he will have the Queen come to Saint-Germain, the evenings there being very long without company.” [94] Dulaure, _Histoire de Paris_; Simonde Sismondi, _Histoire des Français_; Dufey de l’Yonne, _Histoire de la Bastille_; The Chevalier de Cubières, _Voyage à la Bastille_. [95] The Old Pretender.--_Trans._ [96] M. Topin is in error. William was, in fact, remonstrated with by the Whigs for having publicly acknowledged a birth which the great majority of the English people at that time believed to be a feigned one.--_Trans._ [97] The child was said to have been brought in in a warming-pan. [98] _Journal d’Héroard_, September 26, 27, 1601. [99] _Corps Universel Diplomatique du Droit des Gens_, of Dumont, Supplement, vol. iv. p. 176. Letter from Chavigny to the Cardinal de Richelieu, September 6, 1638. Despatch from Louis XIII. to M. de Bellièvre, his ambassador in England, September 5, 1638.--Manuscripts of the Imperial Library, _fonds Saint-Germain_, _Harlay_, 364²⁷, fol. 170. [100] “The King was present all the time, and his two attacks of fever have not in any way diminished his strength,” writes Chavigny in the letter in which he relates to Richelieu, then absent from the court, the birth of the Dauphin. This precise statement destroys that of M. Michelet, who, from an anonymous Life of Madame de Hautefort, says that “Louis XIII. would have consoled himself without difficulty at seeing his Spaniard die, and that during the pains he had history read to him to find an example of a King of France having married his subject.”--M. Michelet, _Histoire de France_, vol. xii. p. 211. [101] Dumont, _Corps Diplomatique du Droit des Gens_, vol. iv. p. 176. [102] Letter from Chavigny to the Cardinal de Richelieu, September 6, 1638. Louis XIII. made his brother a present of six thousand crowns, “which consoled him a little,” says Chavigny.