The excessive pain upset him to such a degree that he was sitting out in the open air with a violent fever upon him.

He begged me to send you word, and to assure you that the wheel-broken do not suffer during a single moment what he suffers one half of his life, and so he wishes for death as a happy release." He died with Bossuet at his pillow.

"Very well prepared as regards his conscience," says Madame de Sevigne again; "that is all settled; but, in other respects, it might be the illness and death of his neighbor which is in question, he is not flurried about it, he is not troubled about it.

Believe me, my daughter, it is not to no purpose that he has been making reflections all his life; he has approached his last moments in such wise that they have had nothing that was novel or strange for him." M.de La Rochefoucauld thought worse of men than of life.

"I have scarcely any fear of things," he had said; "I am not at all afraid of death." With all his rare qualities and great opportunities he had done nothing but frequently embroil matters in which he had meddled, and had never been anything but a great lord with a good deal of wit.