yor_, already three-score and ten, dare to spread alluring
snares wherein to entrap an amorous prince of thirty? And did such
tentative, more strange than audacious, succeed to the extent of binding
Philip's conscience in some way? History will never answer the question.
Instead, therefore, of hazarding conjectures, it will be well to confine
our attention to the well-authenticated political acts of the Princess
at this, to her, serious conjuncture.

In losing her royal mistress, the powerful favourite lost along with her
the greatest portion of her strength. It was the remote signal which
heralded her fall. At the same time it did not appear that her energy
had become diminished, or her intelligence clouded, but that her
ordinary prudence had abandoned her. Perhaps, having attained such an
elevation, she dreaded no further reverse, and believed herself secure
enough, in the universal esteem and admiration in which she was held, to
venture upon anything. However that might be, as though her brain had
grown dizzy, she destroyed with her own hands, not her skilfully raised
political edifice, but the structure of her individual fortunes.

Her first imprudence was to attack the Spanish Inquisition. Spain was
not then ripe for that reform accomplished only a century later. Much
less, as it appears to us, should Madame des Ursins, under the influence
of a preconceived religious opinion, with the object of strengthening
the royal authority, have attempted its sudden suppression. Far be it
from us, certainly, to think of defending the Spanish Inquisition. But
it cannot be denied that that institution had vigorously defended Philip
V., and in the eyes of the people was part and parcel, as it were, of
Spain itself. It seemed as though French ideas alone demanded such a
reform, and hence popular suspicion was excited. The Princess failed in
her attempt; but she had voluntarily created for herself a host of
enemies, who from that moment laboured to effect her ruin.

We have already said that, cherishing the hope of obtaining for herself
an independent sovereignty, the difficulties arising from her
pretensions had delayed the conclusion of the treaty of peace. Louis
XIV. was indignant at finding his negotiations fettered and himself
involved in an unavoidable opposition to the wishes of his grandson. As
for Madame de Maintenon, whether the interests of France, compromised by
these delays, had alone provoked her resistance, or wheth