de facto absence to drain the Dauphine's economy. Adélaïde Diane de Cossé managed to bring the finances in order and cooperated well with Florimond Claude, comte de Mercy-Argenteau. She kept her office when Marie Antoinette became queen in 1774. She resigned in protest in 1775 when the queen reintroduced the office of surintendante de la Maison de la Reine for her favorite, Marie Thérèse Louise de Savoy, princesse de Lamballe. De Cossé was temporarily succeeded as dame d'atour by Laure-Auguste de Fitz-James, princesse de Chimay, but more permanently by Marie-Jeanne de Mailly. By this point, Marie Antoinette had developed an interest in fashion, which was to eventually almost ruin her finances. The private economy of Marie Antoinette's wardrobe was not to be met with any restrictions until de Mailly's successor, Geneviève d'Ossun, took office and started to work towards curbing it. Later life Adélaïde Diane de Cossé spent the majority of the following years in Italy and in Nice, at that time a part of Savoy, as the warmer climate was judged better for her health. Her son, Jules Gabriel Timoléon, born in 1771, also suffered from poor health. She took him to Italy to improve, but he died in 1775. She lived estranged from her husband, who was the lover of Madame du Barry from 1785 until his death. On the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, she had been in Italy since 1787, and remained she there during the revolution. In 1792, she was widowed when her husband was murdered during the September Massacres. Her father was imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, and she herself was placed upon the list of emigrée's and her fortune in France was confiscated. In 1797, her father, who had been released, was of ill health. She successfully applied to have herself removed from the emigrée list on the grounds that she had never emigrated during the Revolution, and to have her confiscated property restored by recommendation of General Joubert. She returned to France in September 1798. References 1742 births 1808 deaths French ladies-in-waiting