Memoirs of Lewis the Fourteenth Author:Louis Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I In the meanwhile,'having become acquainted with the 'last wishes of that princess by her will, I commanded those whom she had named thereinto carry them pun... more »ctually into execution, excepting those in which she had ordered that there should be no ceremony observed at her funeral: for I did not find any other alleviation to the grief which her death had caused me, than in the honours which I could pay to Tier memory; and accordingly I caused every thing to be done in the same manner as Was performed at the demise of the late king my father. '' : ?.. It was impossible,' in the diversity of companies which were to assemble on this public occasion, to prevent some difficulties or questions arising respecting precedency ; but that which was the most agitated was to whom the first honours were due; namely, to the clergy or the parliament. I decided the question in favour of the clergy; and the first ceremony was performed at St. Denis with a great deal of impatience on the part of the parliament; who, foreseeing that they would receive the same mortification at Notre Dame in Paris, were desirous of parrying off the blow, by sending to me a deputation of some persons belonging to my household. These deputies proceeded to Versailles, whither I had gone for the day. Talon, whom they had chosen for their speaker, remonstrated with me on the right'and the usage by Which that body claimed F 2 - the the precedency over the clergy, alleging, as examples, all the precedents which they could find on their registers. His discourse was rather long, in consequence of his being at some pains to conclude it with a proposal that he was charged with, which was, that I would dispense with their attendance in tKe ceremony altogether: and they, in fact, were right in their conjecture that...« less