she herself was
tired of her political _role_ whatever may have been the mask with which
her prudence sought to cover her ambition during her disgrace, the
existence of that ambition is clear enough as a matter of history. We
admit nothing more, in answer to the insinuations of Saint Simon, that
dazzled with the royal favour she had dreamed of supplanting Madame de
Maintenon in the great King's confidence. Of a judgment eminently sound
and precise, she had too much of the practical in her character to
cradle her imagination with such chimaeras. Madame des Ursins'
quick-sightedness fathomed all the advantages she might derive from the
general discouragement, and promised herself to let nothing be lost by
it either for herself or her dependents, however equivocal their
position might be towards her. She procured the admission of D'Aubigny
into the cabinet of Louis XIV., and, a thing more difficult still, into
that of Madame de Maintenon. She caused Orry to be reinstated in his
former functions, at the same time that one of her most dangerous
enemies, the father Daubenton, received an order to quit Madrid, where
his restless nullity had lost itself in a maze of intrigues. Authorised
in a manner to form her ministry, she nominated the President Amelot as
Ambassador for Spain, a diplomatist although very high minded, yet of
somewhat subaltern ability, one of the lights of that magistracy from
which Louis XIV. loved to recruit the staff of his government, and
whence Madame des Ursins herself sprung on her mother's side. The
Marshal de Tesse was appointed to the command of the army, and Orry, a
pupil of Colbert and a distinguished financier, was one of those clever
and hard-working citizens who were amongst the best of French ministers
of that epoch. This selection, equally excellent for both monarchs, was
better still for the Princess, to whom it guaranteed a valuable
concurrence without leaving her to apprehend any resistance. Those three
men, from the very moment of their arrival in Madrid, found themselves
face to face with two grave difficulties. The first was the opposition
of the grandees; the second, a foreign invasion. Aristocratic
conspiracies were hatching in the capital. The Archduke Charles had
landed in Catalonia, and several noblemen were endeavouring to clear the
road for him as far as Madrid. The Marquis de Leganez was the soul of
this plot. Ever since the accession of Philip V. he had eluded taking
the oath of