D’Eon was sighing to leave England, and negotiations with a view to his being permitted to return to France had been conducted from time to time since the fall of de Choiseul (1770) by the new minister, the Duke d’Aiguillon; but the Chevalier comprehensively notes, with reference to that minister’s proposals—_Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes_.[267] When the reiterated appeal for succour reached its destination, the count was again in exile at his seat, Ruffec. In the early part of 1774, Versailles was visited by an epidemic which ran through the palace, infecting some fifty or more of its inmates (amongst them the King’s daughters, Adelaide, Victoire, and Sophie), and of whom about a dozen, including Louis XV., were carried off.[268] Those curious to know what were the last days of the profligate and careless monarch will find, on consulting Sismondi, how a death-bed repentance was wrested from him by his confessor, the unflinching and unimpeachable Abbé Mandoux; how the old Marshal de Richelieu remonstrated angrily, and how the _fils emancipé_ received absolution at the hands of the disconcerted Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon, the _grand aumônier_, who read the royal confession. ‘Although the King owes an account of his conduct to God only, he declares that he repents having been the cause of any scandal amongst his subjects, and that he wishes to live solely for the maintenance of religion and the happiness of his people.’ The interment was anything but royal, for the corpse of _le Bien-aimé_ was hurried in the darkness of the night to the tomb—not its last resting-place—amidst the execrations of the numbers who had turned out to see the procession as it hastily passed their way, and who kept shouting the late King’s favourite cry on the hunting field, _tayau! tayau!_—and _hallali! hallali!_ his favourite cry at the death, as his remains were being borne into St. Denis. Wishing to rid himself of a tipsy customer, the keeper of a drinking-shop warned the troublesome fellow that the funeral of Louis XV. was about to pass. ‘What!’ was the answer, ‘we were dying of hunger so long as _ce b—— là_ lived, and are we to die of thirst now that he is dead?’[269] D’Eon’s faith in the good intentions of his master had never deserted him, but now that master was dead; and yet, though the Chevalier lived to see the country he loved so well reap what Louis XV. had sown, his estimate of that monarch’s character never changed!