As Caragiale senior died, Mateiu initially planned to join the mainstream Conservative Party and demand a post from Grigore Gheorghe Cantacuzino, the Mayor of Bucharest and a close associate of Bogdan-Pitești. Nevertheless, he came to define this position as "a bad solution", and, as Maiorescu and Ionescu formed an alliance, he successfully requested appointment from Bădărău, eventually obtaining it through the means of a decree signed by King Carol I. Caragiale later commented: " entrusted me with this golden key, which I had wanted for so long, and which, for all of this, I had not been desperate to obtain." This contradicted another one of his accounts, in which he confessed that, initially received with indifference by Bădărău, he had claimed that him joining the Conservative-Democrats had been Ion Luca's dying request. Șerban Cioculescu would comment: "There could not have been a more complete distortion of a parent's last wish!"