"A great age," answered Madame de Maintenon, smiling.

He looked at her a moment longer in silence; then, closing the curtains, he went out abruptly.

The memory he would have called up had vanished.

The woman on whom the great king had, for thirty years, heaped confidence and affection, was old, forgotten, dying; she expired at St.Cyr on the 15th of April, 1719, at the age of eighty-three.
She had left the king to die alone.

He was in the agonies; the prayers in extremity were being repeated around him; the ceremonial recalled him to consciousness.