On returning to Versailles, the Queen quietly ate her supper. Mademoiselle perceived Lauzun among those present. "In rising from table, I said to him, 'This is very disconcerting.' He replied, 'Very, and I am afraid that it may spoil our plans.' I responded, 'Ah, no. No matter what may happen.'" The poor woman could not sleep during the night: how rid herself of Monsieur, if the King should wish "the marriage"? At six in the morning, word came from Saint-Cloud that Madame was dead. "At this news," continues Mademoiselle, "the King resolved to take medicine," and Mademoiselle, arriving with the Queen, found him in a dressing-gown, weeping bitterly over the loss of Madame, and very tenderly pitying his own woe. He said to Mademoiselle: "Come, watch me take medicine; let us make no more fuss; better act as I am doing." After his draught he retired, and the morning was passed in his bedchamber speaking of the dead. In the afternoon, the King dressed and went to consult Mademoiselle, as the great authority in matters of Court etiquette, upon the proper arrangements for the funeral ceremony. After these details had been discussed, the King spoke the word she was expecting and dreading: "'My cousin, here is a vacant place, will you fill it?' I became pale as death, and said, 'You are the master, your wish is mine.' He urged me to speak frankly. I said, 'I can say nothing about this.' 'But have you any aversion to the idea?' I was silent; he went on, 'I will further the affair and report to you.'" In the salons, the crowd of courtiers was busily engaged in remarrying Monsieur. The question was, "To whom?" and every one looked at the Grande Mademoiselle. Lauzun bore the situation like a man of spirit, without troubling himself with useless regrets or feigning a loving despair which was very foreign to his nature. His manner was free, very gay, too easy to please Mademoiselle when he congratulated her and refused to listen to her protestations that "it would never be." "The King said that he wished you would marry Monsieur; it will be necessary to obey." He besought her not to hesitate, and dilated on the joys of grandeur, and the happiness she might have with Monsieur. She responded, "I am more than fifteen, and I do not propose to accept a life fit only for children." Of all the honours attached to the rank of sister-in-law to the King, one alone appealed to her,--that she would then have a good place in the royal carriage, instead of being always on the basket seat, and she represented to Lauzun that the "good place would not long remain vacant." It would be assigned to the children of the King as soon as they should be grown up. Once he added: "The past must be forgotten. I remember nothing of what you have told me; I have lately forgotten all."