Her _Memoires_ are more sincere. She relates that at the end of five months, she wrote to the King that she should die if she remained longer; that it was an unhealthy place on account of the marshes by which the chateau was surrounded; that she "did not believe herself to have done anything which merited death, and such a death, ... and if he wished her to make a long penitence for the crimes which she had _not_ committed, she supplicated him to permit her to go to Eu." Louis XIV. permitted Eu, but made Mademoiselle understand that he had not renounced the project of marriage with the King of Portugal, and that he hoped to lead her, through his kindness, "to the sentiments she should have." She did not delay to discuss the matter. "I departed at once and quitted Saint-Fargeau without regret." This was a final adieu. Mademoiselle had just bought the Comte d'Eu, under circumstances which show how the landed and manorial estates of the ancient regime, which from a distance appear so solid, were in reality held by the most fragile tenure and at the mercy of any accident. The Comte d'Eu was the property of the illustrious and powerful family of Guise. In 1654, the proprietor of the moment, Louis de Lorraine, duc de Joyeuse, was killed at the siege of Arras, leaving an only son of youthful age, Louis Joseph de Lorraine, Prince de Joinville. This child had for guardian his aunt, Mlle. de Guise, an intelligent and important person, the oracle of the family, says Saint-Simon. He had also two other guardians, one of whom, Claude de Bourdeville, Comte de Montresor, had secretly married Mlle. de Guise. These three guardians soon perceived that they were powerless to defend the interests confided to them. The Comte d'Eu was burdened with two million francs of debt, a figure which would not have led to disaster if the Duc de Joyeuse had been there to make his rights respected and to reclaim his share of the monarchical manna; such as pensions, gratifications of the King, benefices, governments, Court charges. But he was dead, and the property of the minor had been put to the quarry, by the people of affairs on the one hand, and the Norman peasants on the other. Against these business sharks, the guardians were obliged, after years of struggle, to invoke the aid of Parliament. They addressed a petition[134] in which they stated that their ward, because he was a child "destitute of the powerful means" which his father would have possessed, had become the victim of usurers and rogues. The two million debt of the Comte d'Eu had been largely bought up by artificial and suspicious creditors, with whom it was impossible to arrive at any settlement.