The Press.
London, England, 1858-01-09 00:00:00

The end of the drama is thus related :

The night which followed was very agitated. The King
was seen at all moments joining his hands, striking his
breast, and was heard repeating the prayers be ordinarily
employed.
On Wednesday morning, the `.:Bth of August, he paid a
compliment to Madame de Maintenon, which pleased her
but little, and to which she replied not one word. Ile
said, that what consoled him in quitting her was that, con-
sidering the age she had reached, they must soon meet
again !
About seven o'clock in the morning, he eaw in the
mirror two of his valets at the foot of the bed weeping, and
said to them, " Why do you weep ? Is it because you
thought me immortal? As for me, I have not thought
myself so, and you ought, considering my age, to have
been prepared to lose me."
A very clownish Provencal rustic heard of the extremity
of the King while on his way from Marseilles to Paris, and
came this morning to Versailles with a remedy which, he
said, would cure the gangrene. The King was so ill, and
the doctors so at their wits' ends, that they consented to
receive him. Fagon tried to say something, but this
rustic, who was named Le Brun, abused him very coarsely,
and Fagon accustomed to abuse others was confounded.
Ten drops of Le Brun's mixture in Alicante wine were
therefore given to the King about eleven o'clock in the
morning. Sometime after he became stronger, but the
pulse falling again and becoming bad, another dose was
given to him about four o'clock, to recall him to life, they
told him. He replied, taking the mixture, "To life or to
death as it shall please God."

We pass over the expiring hours of the Sove-
reign, and cite some anecdotes of the way in
which ho acquired his immense power
over his subjects :
The most cruel means by which the King was informed
of what was passing—for many years before anybody knew
it—was that of opening letters. The promptitude and
dexterity with which they were opened passes understand-
ing. He saw extracts from all the letters in which there
were passages that the chiefs of the post-office, and then
the minister who governed it, thought ought to go before
him; entire letters, to:), were sent to him, when their con-
tents seemed to justify the sending. Thus the chiefs of
the post, nay, the principal clerks, were in a position to
suppose what they pleased and a4aitist whom they pleased.
A word of contempt against the King or the Grown*
went, a joke, a detached phrase, was enough.

St. Simon admits that though the King dived
into the secrets of other persons, yet that he
kept them faithfully. He then tells the fol-
lowing most romantic story :
We know, amongst many others, the famous story of a
woman of quality, who, alter having been separated a year
from her husband, found herself in the family-way just as
lie was on the point of returning from the army, and who,
not knowing what else to do, in the most urgent manner
begged a private interview of the King. Show obtained it,
and confided to him her position, as to the worthiest man
in hisrealtn, as she said. The King counselled her to profit
by her distress, and live more wisely for thetlutnre, and
immediately promised to retain her husband on the frontier
as loug as was necessary, and to forbid his return under any
pretext, and in fact he gave orders the same day to Lou.
vole, and prohibited the husband not only all leave of
absence, but forbade him to quit for a single day the post
he was to command all the winter. The officer, who was
distinguished, and who had neither wished nor asked to be
employed all the winter upon the frontier, and Louvoie,
who had in no way thought of it, were equally surprised and
vexed. They were obliged, however, to obey to the letter,
and without asking why ; and the King never mentioned
the circumstance until many years afterwards, when he was
quite sure nobody could find out either husband or wife, se
in fact they never could, or even obtain the most vague or
the most uncertain suspicion.
The fourth volume is not so interesting as
the third. In the latter portion of it St. Simon
describes his journey to Spain, and his resi-
dence at the Spanish Court. A reader would
expect more from the author's opportunities
in Spain, but the descriptions and incidents
are rather wanting in vivacity. The romantic
character of the country, of its inhabitants and
its buildings, did not profoundly touch St.
Simon, who was intensely French in his way
of looking at life. Neither is Alberoni's cha-
racter drawn with the vigour that one might
expect. Alberoni was a being quite out of
" routine ;" his vehement impulses and his
bold designs were not to be appreciated by a
matt like St. Simon ; and yet it must be con-
fessed that there was a strong dash of origin-
ality in Alberoni. On the other hand, the
Regent Duke of Orleans is depicted in the
most vivid colours, and the man stands out on
the canvas in all the force of teal life. He
is shown in his cabinet and in every-day life
just as history, by memorable pens, has
painted him ; but there is a freshness and an
ease in St. Simon's accounts of that remark-
able person which are wanted in other accounts
of him.
On the whole, these new volumes (which
complete the work) are most instructive and
entertaining, and Mr. St. John deserves well
of the public for this performance. They
have been published simultaneously with his
work on Montaigne, but we conjecture that a
vast majority of readers will prefer St. Simon.

A Woman's Thoughts about Women. By the
Author of " John Halifax, Gentleman."
London: Hurst and Blackett.
THE authoress of " John Halifax," a novel
which in nobility of purpose and skill of exe-
cution has not been recently surpassed, has
been tempted to quit the path of fiction, and
assume the severity of the moralist -we re-
gret to state with only indifferent success. To
her presev volume the old hackneyed antithesis
applies with singular closeness,—What is true
in it is not new, and what is new is not true.
It contains a good deal of good sense and
useful advice, and kindly feeling, but still
nothing more than, thank God, may very
commonly be met with in English society.
If every English lady who has thought these
thoughts were to make a book of them, the
" Row " could not contain the works that.
should be written. In fiction a commonplace
truth receives as it were a new setting—is
brought out into bolder relief, or placed in its
most striking light. We do not require, there-
fore, that all our novelists should be philoso-
phers, though some of our philosophers make
very good novelists. But in the regular essay
we do require either sense or satire of a more
than average depth; and in the present essays
we do not get it.
We observed that what was new in this
volume was not true ; but the converse is not
good. The errors do nut all possess the merit
of novelty. We shall, however, present our
readers with a few specimens of statements
calculated, in our opinion, to mar the useful-
ness which these " Thoughts " are otherwise
undoubtedly suited to exercise. For instance,