he gratitude of his court, which feeling, under existing
circumstances, it was advisable for the cabinet of Versailles to make
manifest. Thoroughly secure in that quarter, she wrote direct to the
Duke of Savoy,--Philip V. making his father-in-law comprehend that it
was the wish of France to see her installed in such post--and the Duke
of Savoy referred the matter to Louis XIV. From that moment her
elevation was certain. Such choice was the consummation of French
policy.

There is something very striking indeed in that indomitable resolution
one day to govern Spain, conceived and adopted so far from the theatre
of events--to exercise the functions of _Camerara-mayor_ to a queen of
thirteen years of age, when to obtain that exalted guardianship in Court
and State, every ambitious heart was throbbing from the Alps to the
Pyrenees. Yet Madame des Ursins importuned no one, for no one had
thought of her, Louis XIV. no more than his ministers, the Duke of Savoy
no more than the King of Spain; but that remarkable woman had mentally
aimed at that as the supreme object and end of her aspirations. For its
realisation she combined her measures, therefore, with an activity so
ardent, with an accuracy of perception so marvellous through the mesh
of intrigues which spread from Versailles to Turin and to Madrid, that
she succeeded in getting herself accepted simultaneously by the three
courts, through letting them think that the choice of her individuality
had been for each of them the effect of a spontaneous inspiration.

The principal instrument in this affair ought to have been, and was in
fact, the Marechale de Noailles. No woman had a better footing at court
or exercised a more incessant activity among the ministers. The young
Count d'Ayen, her son, a personal friend of the Duke d'Anjou, and who
derived a precocious importance from the gravity of his life, was,
moreover, disposed to second at Madrid the secret negotiation first
broached in the cabinet of Madame de Maintenon, the barriers of which
_sanctum_ scarcely gave way even before the Marechale. The progress of
the negotiation may be followed from day to day in the letters addressed
to Madame de Noailles, conducted by that lady as her indefatigable
correspondent pointed out. The first idea of Madame des Ursins may be
therein detected, developed as it is with equal art and caution, and
strengthened by addressing itself to the mother of a numerous family in
arguments which cou