No need to watch longer for the loaded wains! The tired courtiers made the best of a bad business; half a dozen of the highest of the Great "shared the Cardinal's two camp-beds"; the quilts on which the children had been bedded on the way from Paris were spread upon the floor. Those who had no mattresses lay upon straw or upon bare boards. The ladies fared worst of all; they had been used to the tender cares of their _femmes-de-chambre_. * * * * * Mademoiselle's spirits rose; she had always boasted that she was "a creature superior to trifles," and the general difficulty had put her on her mettle. Monsieur's wife wept feebly; she told the courtiers of the luxury of her early life, and of her present sufferings. Monsieur's little daughters were restless and displeased. Mademoiselle noted this adventure in her memoirs: I slept in a vast and finely gilded room, but there was very little fire in it, and it had neither window-panes nor windows, which, as the month was January, was not agreeable. My mattress was on the floor, and my sister, who had no mattress, slept with me. I had to sing to her to put her to sleep; she greatly troubled my sleep. She turned, and re-turned; then, feeling me close to her, she cried out that she "saw the beast," and then I had to sing to her again, and thus the night passed. I had no underclothing to change, and they washed my nightdress during the day and my day-chemise during the night. I had not my women to comb my hair and to dress me, and that was very inconvenient. I ate with Monsieur, who made very bad cheer.... I lived in that way ten days, then my equipage arrived, and I was very glad to have all my commodities. Louis XIV. and little Monsieur played about Saint Germain in the wintry weather, and as the days passed their garments acquired the marks of use. The King's furniture did not arrive, neither did his boxes; the Parisians would not permit them to leave the city. All the gates of Paris were guarded; no one was passed without papers. It was so difficult for people of quality to obtain passports that the ladies ran away in the garb of monks, or disguised in some other way. The Marquise d'Huxelles went through the gates in the uniform of a soldier, with an "iron pot" on her head.[134] Paris had never refused its favourite anything, and Mademoiselle's chariots went and came and no one asked what they contained; the belongings of her friends were transported as freely as her own if they were in her boxes or in her wains. In after life she used to call those days "the time of plenty." "I had everything!" she wrote exultantly; "they gave me passports for all that I wished taken out, and not only that, but they watched over and escorted my chariots! nothing equalled the civilities that they showed me."