forty-three was at length fain to own that she passionately loved the Gascon cadet, who was then in his thirty-eighth year. Determined as she was naturally, that discovery overwhelmed her. "I resolved," she says, "never to speak to M. Lauzun again save in hearing of a third person, and I was anxious to avoid opportunities of seeing him in order to drive him out of my head. I entered upon such a line of conduct; I only exchanged a few trivial words with him. I found that I did not know what I was saying, that I could not put three words of good sense together; and the more I sought to shun him, the more desirous I was of seeing him." At her wits' end, the poor Princess cast herself at the foot of the altar, on one occasion when she took the sacrament, and ardently besought Heaven to enlighten her as to the course she ought to pursue. The inspiration is by no means difficult to anticipate. "Heaven's grace determined me not to struggle longer to drive out of my mind that which was so strongly established in it, but to marry M. de Lauzun." Two things, however, were necessary to accomplish this: firstly, that M. de Lauzun should thoroughly understand that he was beloved, and that he would deign to espouse Mademoiselle's twenty-two millions; and next that King Louis should consent to a marriage, the strangest certainly ever resolved upon. Strange, indeed, that she, the grand-daughter of Henry the Great, Mademoiselle d'Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes, Mademoiselle d'Orleans, Mademoiselle the King's first cousin, the Mademoiselle destined to the throne, should ask the King's permission to marry a Gascon cadet. Louis, as the sequel to an overture made to him by several nobles collectively, friends of Lauzun, with M. de Montausier at their head, granted his permission. But when the question arose, thanks to the blind vanity of Lauzun, of their union being celebrated at the Louvre and in the face of all France, like an alliance "of crown to crown;" when a feeling which was shared by every member of the royal house was on the point of communicating itself to all the sovereign families of Europe, Louis, with great reason, began to take account of the political interests which this whim of the Princess brought into play, and retracted, as King, the authority which he had given as head of a family. Contemporary writers seem never tired of dwelling upon the manifestations of Mademoiselle's grief, at times as laughable as at others it was touching; receiving the condolence of all the Court as though she had been a lone widow, Madame de Sevigne tells us, and exclaiming excitedly in her despair to every fresh visitor, as she pointed to the vacant place in her bed, "He should be there! he should be there!"