Conclusion of Marie Adelaide by Joseph Barry

I am simply going to sum up the final pages of Barry's article by saying that the Duc du Burgogne and Duchess Marie Adelaide did give birth to Louis XV who did succeed Louis XIV to the throne. Marie Adelaide came down with an illness, a case of the measles, and did not survive the disease. She was bled from the foot, had been forewarned of her own death by an astrologer, and so accepted it. Her husband soon followed her, after having succeeded his father to be prepared for the crown. His father had died earlier when looking in on a subject who had suffered the smallpox so that he caught it. Louis XIV suffered many personal losses from his family, and many believed that the doctors were responsible. So much so that a family member took the young Louis XV into her custody so that he would be able to survive the medicinal aids that the physician Fagon had supplied to those who had succumbed to death. Joseph Barry's description of Marie Adelaide's importance to the King and the mood of the chateau du Versailles is based upon Saint-Simon's comments in his journal.

These are Saint-Simon's words:

With her death, all joy vanished, all pleasures, entertainments, and delights were overcast and darkness covered the face of the Court. She was its light and life. She was everywhere at once, she was its center, her presence permeated its inner life, and if, after her death, if the Court continued to subsist, it merely lingered on. No princess was ever so sincerely mourned, none was ever more worth regretting. Indeed, mourning for her has never ceased, a secret, involuntary sadness has remained, a terrible emptiness that never can be filled."

Nor was it ever filled for the King. With her death, twilight became night, the war ended in compromise and exhaustion, and he prepared for his own death in the year that followed.

Note about author: Joseph Barry went to France with Patton's Third Army, and, with one brief interlude, he has lived and written there ever since. Mr Barry's latest book is The People of Paris, which was published last fall by Doubleday & Company, Inc.