into their household, known as the Household of the Mesdames aînées ('Elder Mesdames'). The sisters had two ladies-in-waiting (dame pour accompagner Mesdames). Two years later, they were given their own dame d'honneur, Marie-Angélique-Victoire de Bournonville, duchesse de Duras. When the younger sisters arrived to court from Fontevrault in 1748–50, they were not inducted in to the Household of their elder sisters but formed the Household of the Mesdames cadettes ('Younger Mesdames'). After the death of Henriette in 1752, the Household of the Mesdames aînées was transformed into the Household of Madame Adélaïde, headed by Marie-Suzanne-Françoise de Creil, duchesse de Beauvilliers, and she thus held a unique position as the only unmarried royal princess with her own separate household, while her younger sisters shared theirs. Adélaïde was never married. In the late 1740s, when she had reached the age when princesses were typically married, there were no potential Catholic consorts of desired status available, and she preferred to remain unmarried rather than marry someone below the status of a monarch or an heir to a throne. Marriage prospects suggested to her were liaisons with the Prince of Conti and Prince Francis Xavier of Saxony, neither of whom had the status of being a monarch or an heir to a throne. In her teens, Adelaide fell in love with a member of the Lifeguard after having observed him perform his duties; she sent him her snuffbox with the message, "You will treasure this, soon you shall be informed from whose hand it comes.” The guardsman informed his captain Duc d'Ayen, who in turn informed the king, who recognized the handwriting as his daughter's, and granted the guard an annual pension of four thousand under the express condition that he should "at once remove to some place far from the Court and remain there for a very long time". In 1761, long after she passed the age when 18th-century princesses usually wed, she was reportedly suggested to marry the newly widowed Charles III of Spain. However, after she had seen his portrait, she refused, a rejection which was said to be the reason why Charles III never remarried. When her younger sisters arrived back from Fontevrault in 1748–50, she became the head of the group of the four unmarried, younger sisters; the others were Madame Victoire, Madame Sophie, and Madame Louise. The King referred to them by nicknames: he called Madame Adélaïde ‘Loque’