demand if she might not see her friend again. The reply of the King should be remembered, as it brought serious results for his cousin. He said: "I do not forbid you to see him; ... and assuredly you cannot take advice of a worthier man in regard to any of your affairs than Lauzun." She hastened to confirm the permission. "It is my intention, Sire, and I am very happy that you desire that he should continue to be my best friend; but at least, Sire, you will not change as you did before? I cannot help reproaching you." The succeeding days she was obliged to reopen her doors, and the same crowd which had feigned to rejoice with her now pretended to pity her. It was necessary to see again the same faces, to submit to curious looks, glances filled with raillery, and to reply to _banal_ remarks. There was much joking in Paris at her having received condolences in bed, after the fashion of widows. "I have heard in the salon of Mme. de Maintenon," relates Mme. de Caylus,[260] "that she cried out in her despair, 'He should be there beside me!'" A grand Princess, to be dying of love and for a simple cadet from Gascogne, almost a country fellow; this was a novel spectacle, which so shocked all ideas of decorum that the public could not take to heart very seriously this slightly theatrical grief. It was pretended that Louis had said, "This is only a fantasy born in three days and which will pass as rapidly." True or false, the King wished to believe this, and the phrase received general approbation. It relieved the fashionable world from the duty of sympathising with the unfortunate, who was eating out her own heart, and visibly fading away. "I grew thin, with hollow cheeks, as a person who neither eats nor sleeps, and I wept the minute that I was alone, or when I met any friends of M. de Lauzun and they talked of events which had any connection with him. I always desired to speak of him." The hope of a speedy death was her sole consolation, for no one, she was convinced had so deeply suffered. "My state was pitiable, and it must have been experienced to be appreciated, for such feelings cannot be expressed. It is necessary to know one's self, in order to judge, and no one can have felt a grief equal to mine; there is nothing which can compare with it." This is the universal language of disappointed lovers; but the expressive phrase below is not at the disposal of all souls. It is only applicable to moments in which the excess of grief renders it almost unconscious: "On account of feeling too much, I felt nothing." The fifth day, etiquette exacted that she should find herself consoled. Her duties as Princess were recalled to her. "It was needful to go to Court, it was not well to pass eight days without seeing the King."