Marie Josèphe of Saxony left Dresden, January 14, 1747. She saw her betrothed for the first time between Nangis and Corbeil. The nuptial benediction was given to the pair in the chapel of Versailles, February 8, 1747. Four days afterward, Marshal Saxe wrote to Augustus III.: “Sire, I shall have no difficulty in saying agreeable things to Your Majesty about Madame the Dauphiness, and renown will serve as my guaranty. No one could succeed better than this Princess; she is adored by everybody, and the Queen loves her as if she were her own child; the King is enchanted with her, and M. the Dauphin loves her passionately. She has steered her way through all this with all imaginable address; I could not but admire her. At fifteen, according to what they say, there is no such thing as childhood in this society; and, in truth, she has astonished me. Your Majesty could hardly believe with what nobility, what presence of mind, Madame the Dauphiness has conducted herself. M. the Dauphin seems a schoolboy beside her.” The married pair were installed on the ground floor, in the south wing of the central portion of the palace, under the Queen’s apartments. (The Dauphin’s bedroom, where the Regent died, is now the third hall of the Marshals, No. 46 of M. Eudore Soulié’s _Notice du Musée_. That of the Dauphiness is now the second hall of the Marshals, No. 41 of the _Notice_.) It was in the latter chamber that, according to usage, the ceremonial of the putting to bed took place. In the letter we are about to quote, Marshal Saxe gives his brother an account of this strange custom:-- “Certainly,” he says, “there are moments which call for all the assurance of a person formed to sustain his part with dignity. Among others there is one, that of the bed, whose curtains are opened when the husband and wife have been put into the nuptial bed, which is terrible, because the whole court is in the room; and the King told me to remain near Madame the Dauphiness in order to reassure her. She endured this with a tranquillity which astonished me. The Dauphin drew the coverings over his face; but my Princess never stopped talking to me with a charming ease, paying no more attention to the people of the court than if there had been no one in the chamber. On approaching her, I said the King had ordered me to do so to keep her in countenance, and that all this would only last a moment. She told me I gave her pleasure; and I did not leave her until her women had closed the curtains, and the crowd had gone away. They departed with a sort of sadness, for it looked like a sacrifice, and she has continued to interest everybody in her. Your Majesty will laugh, perhaps, at what I have just said; but the blessing of the bed, the priests, the candles, the brilliant pomp, the beauty and youth of the Princess, in fine, the desire one has that she may be happy,--all these things taken together provoke more thought than laughter.”