bewilderment prevailed at first, and
suspended all other sentiment; but grief, vexation, rage, and despair,
soon followed. In their turn succeeded sad and profound reflections upon
a step so violent, so unheard-of, and so unjustifiable as she thought.
Then she hoped everything from the friendship of the King of Spain and
his confidence in her; pictured his anger and surprise, and those of the
group of attached servitors, by whom she had surrounded him, and who
would be so interested in exciting the King in her favour. The long
winter's night pissed thus; the cold was, terrible, there was nothing to
ward it off; the coachman actually lost the use of one hand. The morning
advanced; a halt was necessary in order to bait the horses; as for the
travellers there is nothing for them ever in the Spanish inns. You are
simply told where each thing you want is sold. The meat is ordinarily
alive; the wine, thick, flat, and strong; the bread bad; the water is
often worthless; as to beds, there are some, but only for the mule-
drivers, so that you must carry everything with you, and neither Madame
des Ursins nor those with her had anything whatever. Eggs, where they
could find any, were their sole resource; and these, fresh or not, simply
boiled, supported them during all the journey.

Until this halt for the horses, silence had been profound and
uninterrupted; now it was broken. During all this long night the
Princesse des Ursins had had leisure to think upon the course she should
adopt, and to compose her face. She spoke of her extreme surprise, and
of the little that had passed between her and the Queen. In like manner
the two officers of the guard accustomed, as was all Spain, to fear and
respect her more than their King, replied to her from the bottom of that
abyss of astonishment from which they had not yet arisen. The horses
being put to, the coach soon started again. Soon, too, the Princesse des
Ursins found that the assistance she expected from the King did not
arrive. No rest, no provisions, nothing to put on, until Saint-Jean de
Luz was reached. As she went further on, as time passed and no news
came, she felt she had nothing more to hope for. It may be imagined what
rage succeeded in a woman so ambitious, so accustomed to publicly reign,
so rapidly and shamefully precipitated from the summit of power by the
hand that she herself had chosen as the most solid support of her
grandeur. The Queen had not replied