"While the king continues to work I sup; but it is not once in two months that I can do so at my ease. I feel that the king is alone, or I have left him sad, or that M. Chamillart has almost finished with him; sometimes he sends and begs me to make haste. Another day he wants to show me something. So that I am always hurried, and the only thing I can do is to eat very fast. I have my fruit brought with the meat to hasten supper; and all this as fast as I can. I leave Mme. d'Heudicourt and Mme. de Dangeau at table, because they cannot eat as fast as I do, and often I am oppressed by it. "After this it is, as you may suppose, getting late. I have been about since six in the morning; I have not breathed freely the whole day; I am overcome with weariness and yawning; more than that, I begin to feel what it is that makes old age; I find myself at last so weary that I can no more. Sometimes the king perceives it and says: 'You are very tired, are you not? You ought to go to bed.' So I go to bed; my women come and undress me; but I feel that the king wants to talk to me and is waiting till they go; or some minister still remains and he fears my women will hear what he says. That makes him uneasy, and me too. What can I do? I hurry; I hurry so that I almost faint; and you must know that all my life what I have hated most is to be hurried. At five years of age it had the same effect upon me; I was faint if I ran too fast, for being naturally very quick and consequently inclined to haste, I was also very delicate, so that to run, as I tell you, choked me. Well, at last I am in bed; I send away my women; the king approaches and sits down by my pillow. What can I do then? I am in bed, but I have need of many things; mine is not a glorified body without wants. There is no one there whom I can ask for what I need; not a single woman. It is not because I could not have them, for the king is full of kindness, and if he thought I wanted one woman he would endure ten; but it never comes into his mind that I am constraining myself. As he is master everywhere, and does exactly what he wishes, he cannot imagine that any one should do otherwise; he believes that if I show no wants, I have none. You know that my rule is to take everything on myself and think for others. Great people, as a rule, are not like that; they never constrain themselves, they never think that others are constrained by them, nor do they feel grateful for it, simply because they are so accustomed to see everything done in reference only to themselves that they are no longer struck by it and pay no heed. I have sometimes, during my severe colds, been on the point of choking with a cough I was unable to check. M. de Pontchartrain, who saw me one day all crimson with the effort, said to the king: 'She cannot bear it; some one must be called.'