Book: The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete

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The Queen of Spain advanced towards Madrid with the attendants sent to
accompany her. She was to be met by the King of Spain at Guadalaxara,
which is about the same distance from Madrid as Paris is from
Fontainebleau. He arrived there, accompanied by the attendants that the
Princesse des Ursins had placed near him, to keep him company, and to
allow no one else to approach him. She followed in her coach, so as to
arrive at the same time, and immediately afterwards he shut himself up
alone with her, and saw nobody until he went to bed. This was on the
22nd of December. The next day the Princesse des Ursins set out with a
small suite for a little place, seven leagues further, called Quadraque,
where the Queen was to sleep that night. Madame des Ursins counted upon
enjoying all the gratitude that the queen would feel for the unhoped-for
grandeur she had obtained by her means; counted upon passing the evening
with her, and upon accompanying her next day to Guadalaxara. She found,
upon arriving at Quadraque, that the Queen had already reached there.
She at once entered into a lodging that had been prepared for her,
opposite that of the Queen. She was in a full Court dress. After
adjusting it in a hurried manner, she went to the Queen. The coldness
and stiffness of her reception surprised her extremely. She attributed
it in the first place to the embarrassment of the Queen, and tried to
melt this ice. Everybody withdrew, in order to leave the two alone.

Then the conversation commenced. The Queen would not long allow Madame
des Ursins to continue it; but burst out into reproaches against her for
her manners, and for appearing there in a dress that showed want of
respect for the company she was in. Madame des Ursins, whose dress was
proper, and who, on account of her respectful manners and her discourse,
calculated to win the Queen, believed herself to be far from meriting
this treatment, was strangely surprised, and wished to excuse herself;
but the Queen immediately began to utter offensive words, to cry out, to
call aloud, to demand the officers of the guard, and sharply to; command
Madame des Ursins to leave her presence. The latter wished to speak and
defend herself against the reproaches she heard; but the Queen,
increasing her fury and her menaces, cried out to her people to drive
this mad woman from her presence and from the house; and absolutely had
her turned out by the shoulders. Immediately afterwards, she called
Amenzaga, lieutenant of the body-guard, and at the same time the ecuyer
who had the control of her equipages. She ordered the first to arrest
Madame des Ursins, and not quit her until he had placed her in a coach,
with two sure officers of the guard and fifteen soldiers as sentinels
over her; the second she commanded to provide instantly a coach and six,
with two or three footmen, and send off in it the Princesse des Ursins
towards Burgos and Bayonne, without once stopping on the road. Amenzago
tried to represent to the Queen that the King of Spain alone had the
power to give such commands; but she haughtily asked him if he had not
received an order from the King of Spain to obey her in everything,
without reserve and without comment. It was true he had received such an
order, though nobody knew a word about it.

Madame des Ursins was then immediately arrested, and put into a coach
with one of her waiting-women, without having had time to change her
costume or her head-dress, to take any precaution against the cold, to
provide herself with any money or other things, and without any kind of
refreshment in the coach, or a chemise; nothing, in fact, to change or to
sleep in! She was shipped off thus (with two officers of the guard; who
were ready as soon as the coach), in full Court dress, just as she left
the Queen. In the very short and tumultuous interval which elapsed, she
sent a message to the Queen, who flew into a fresh passion upon not being
obeyed, and made her set out immediately.

It was then nearly seven o'clock in the evening, two days before
Christmas, the ground all covered with snow and ice, and the cold extreme
and very sharp and bitter, as it always is in Spain. As soon as the
Queen learned that the Princesse des Ursins was out of Quadraque, she
wrote to the King of Spain, by an officer of the guards whom she
despatched to Guadalaxara. The night was so dark that it was only by
means of the snow that anything could be seen.

It is not easy to represent the state of Madame des Ursins in the coach.
An excess of astonishment and 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 to the last two letters Madame des
Ursins had written to her. This studied negligence was of bad augury,
but who would have imagined treatment so strange and so unheard of?

Her nephews, Lanti and Chalais, who had permission to join her, completed
her dejection. Yet she was faithful to herself. Neither tears nor
regrets, neither reproaches nor the slightest weakness escaped her; not a
complaint even of the excessive cold, of the deprivation of all things,
or of the extreme fatigue of such a journey. The two officers who
guarded her could not contain their admiration.

At Saint-Jean de Luz, where she arrived on the 14th of January, 1715, she
found at last her corporeal ills at an end. She obtained a bed, change
of dress, food, and her liberty. The guards, their officers, and the
coach which had brought her, returned; she remained with her waiting-maid
and her nephews. She had leisure to think what she might expect from
Versailles. In spite of her mad sovereignty scheme so long maintained,
and her hardihood in arranging the King of Spain's marriage without
consulting our King, she flattered herself she should find resources in a
Court she had so long governed. It was from Saint-Jean de Luz that she
despatched a courier charged with letters for the King, for Madame de
Maintenon, and for her friends. She briefly gave us an account in those
letters of the thunderbolt which had fallen on her, and asked permission
to come to the Court to explain herself more in detail. She waited for
the return of her courier in this her first place of liberty and repose,
which of itself is very agreeable. But this first courier despatched,
she sent off Lanti with letters written less hastily, and with
instructions. Lanti saw the King in his cabinet on the last of January,
and remained there some moments. From him it was known that as soon as
Madame des Ursins despatched her first courier, she had sent her
compliments to the Queen Dowager of Spain at Bayonne, who would not
receive them. What cruel mortifications attend a fall from a throne!
Let us now return to Guadalaxara.




CHAPTER LXV

The officer of the guards, whom the Queen despatched with a letter for
the King of Spain as soon as Madame des Ursins was out of Quadraque,
found the King upon the point of going to bed. He appeared moved, sent a
short reply to the Queen, and gave no orders. The officer returned
immediately. What is singular is, that the secret was so well kept that
it did not transpire until the next morning at ten o'clock. It may be
imagined what emotion seized the whole Court, and what divers movements
there were among all at Guadalaxara. However, nobody dared to speak to
the King, and much expectation was built upon the reply he had sent to
the Queen. The morning passed and nothing was said; the fate of Madame
des Ursins then became pretty evident.

Chalais and Lanti made bold to ask the King for permission to go and join
the Princess in her isolation. Not only he allowed them to do so, but
charged them with a letter of simple civility, in which he told her he
was very sorry for what had happened; that he had not been able to oppose
the Queen's will; that he should continue to her her pensions, and see
that they were punctually paid. He was as good as his word: as long as
she lived she regularly received them.

The Queen arrived at Guadalaxara on the afternoon of the day before
Christmas day, at the hour fixed, and as though nothing had occurred.
The King received her in the same manner on the staircase, gave her his
hand, and immediately led her to the chapel, where the marriage was at
once celebrated; for in Spain the custom is to marry after dinner. After
that he led her to her chamber, and straightway went to bed; it was
before six o'clock in the evening, and both got up again for the midnight
mass. What passed between them upon the event of the previous evening
was entirely unknown, and has always remained so. The day after
Christmas day the King and Queen alone together in a coach, and followed
by all the Court, took the road for Madrid, where there was no more talk
of Madame des Ursins than if the King had never known her. Our King
showed not the least surprise at the news brought to him by a courier
despatched from Guadalaxara by the Duc de Saint-Aignan, though all the
Court was filled with emotion and affright after having seen Madame des
Ursins so triumphant.

Let us now look about for some explanations that will enable us to pierce
this mystery--that remark to Torcy which escaped the King, which Torcy
could not comprehend, and which he related to Castries, who told it to
Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans, from whom I learned it! Can we imagine
that a Parma princess brought up in a garret by an imperious mother,
would have dared to take upon herself, while six leagues from the King of
Spain whom she had never seen, a step so bold and unheard-of, when we
consider against whom directed, a person possessing the entire confidence
of that King and reigning openly? The thing is explained by the order,
so unusual and so secret, that Amenzago had from the King of Spain to
obey the Queen in everything, without reserve and without comment; an
order that became known only at the moment when she gave orders to arrest
Madame des Ursins and take her away.

Let us remark, too, the tranquillity with which our King and the King of
Spain received the first intelligence of this event; the inactivity of
the latter, the coldness of his letters to Madame des Ursins, and his
perfect indifference what became of a person who was so cherished the day
before, and who yet was forced to travel deprived of everything, by roads
full of ice and snow. We must recollect that when the King banished
Madame des Ursins before, for opening the letter of the Abbe d'Estrees,
and for the note she sent upon it, he did not dare to have his orders
executed in the presence of the King of Spain. It was on the frontier of
Portugal, where our King wished him to go for the express purpose, that
the King of Spain signed the order by which the Princesse des Ursins was
forced to withdraw from the country. Now we had a second edition of the
same volume. Let me add what I learnt from the Marechal de Brancas, to
whom Alberoni related, a long while after this disgrace, that one evening
as the Queen was travelling from Parma to Spain, he found her pacing her
chamber, with rapid step and in agitation muttering to herself, letting
escape the name of the Princesse des Ursins, and then saying with heat,
"I will drive her away, the first thing." He cried out to the Queen and
sought to represent to her the danger, the madness, the inutility of the
enterprise which overwhelmed him: "Keep all this quiet," said the Queen,
"and never let what you have heard escape you. Not a word! I know what
I am about."

All these things together threw much light upon a catastrophe equally
astonishing in itself and in its execution, and clearly show our King to
have been the author of it; the King of Spain a consenting party and
assisting by the extraordinary order given to Amenzago; and the Queen the
actress, charged in some mariner by the two Kings to bring it about. The
sequel in France confirmed this opinion.

The fall of the Princesse des Ursins caused great changes in Spain. The
Comtesse d'Altamire was named Camarera Mayor, in her place. She was one
of the greatest ladies in all Spain, and was hereditary Duchess of
Cardonne. Cellamare, nephew of Cardinal del Giudice, was named her grand
ecuyer; and the Cardinal himself soon returned to Madrid and to
consideration. As a natural consequence, Macanas was disgraced. He and
Orry had orders to leave Spain, the latter without seeing the King. He
carried with him the maledictions of the public. Pompadour, who had been
named Ambassador in Spain only to amuse Madame des Ursins, was dismissed,
and the Duc de Saint-Aignan invested with that character, just as he was
about to return after having conducted the Queen to Madrid.

In due time the Princesse des Ursins arrived in Paris, and took up her
quarters in the house of the Duc de Noirmoutiers, her brother, in the Rue
Saint-Dominique, close to mine. This journey must have appeared to her
very different from the last she had made in France, when she was Queen
of the Court. Few people, except her former friends and those of her
formal cabal, came to see her; yet, nevertheless, some curious folks
appeared, so that for the first few days there was company enough; but
after that, solitude followed when the ill-success of her journey to
Versailles became known. M. d'Orleans, reunited now with the King of
Spain, felt that it was due to his interest even more than to his
vengeance to show in a striking manner, that it was solely owing to the
hatred and artifice of Madame des Ursins that he had fallen into such
disfavour on account of Spain, and had been in danger of losing his head.
Times had changed. Monseigneur was dead, the Meudon cabal annihilated;
Madame de Maintenon had turned her back upon Madame des Ursins; thus M.
d'Orleans was free to act as he pleased. Incited by Madame la Duchesse
d'Orleans, and more still by Madame, he begged the King to prohibit
Madame des Ursins from appearing anywhere (Versailles not even excepted)
where she might meet Madame la Duchesse de Berry, Madame, Monsieur le
Duc, and Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans, who at the same time strictly
forbade their households to see her, and asked the persons to whom they
were particularly attached to hold no intercourse with her. This made a
great stir, openly showed that Madame des Ursins had utterly lost the
support of Madame de Maintenon and the King, and much embarrassed her.

I could not feel that M. d'Orleans was acting wrong, in thus paying off
his wrongs for the injuries she had heaped upon him, but I represented to
him, that as I had always been an intimate friend of Madame des Ursins,
putting aside her conduct towards him and making no comparison between my
attachment for him and my friendship for her, I could not forget the
marks of consideration she had always given me, particularly in her last
triumphant journey (as I have already explained), and that it would be
hard if I could not see her. We capitulated then, and M. le Duc and
Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans permitted me to see her twice--once
immediately; once when she left--giving my word that I would not see her
three times, and that Madame de Saint-Simon should not see her at all;
which latter clause we agreed to very unwillingly, but there was no
remedy. As I wished at least to profit by my chance, I sent word to
Madame des Ursins, explaining the fetters that bound me, and saying that
as I wished to see her at all events at my ease since I should see her so
little, I would let pass the first few days and her first journey to
Court, before asking her for an audience.

My message was very well received; she had known for many years the terms
on which I was with M. d'Orleans; she was not surprised with these
fetters, and was grateful to me for what I had obtained. Some days after
she had been to Versailles, I went to her at two o'clock in the day. She
at once closed the door to all comers, and I was tete-a-tete with her
until ten o'clock at night.

It may be imagined what a number of things were passed in review during
this long discourse. Our eight hours of conversation appeared to me like
eight moments. She related to me her catastrophe, without mixing up the
King or the King of Spain, of whom she spoke well; but, without violently
attacking the Queen, she predicted what since has occurred. We separated
at supper time, with a thousand reciprocal protestations and regret that
Madame de Saint-Simon could not see her. She promised to inform me of
her departure early enough to allow us to pass another day together.

Her journey to Versailles did not pass off very pleasantly. She dined
with the Duchesse de Luders, and then visited Madame de Maintenon; waited
with her for the King, but when he came did not stop long, withdrawing to
Madame Adam's, where she passed the night. The next day she dined with
the Duchesse de Ventadour, and returned to Paris. She was allowed to
give up the pension she received from the King, and in exchange to have
her Hotel de Ville stock increased, so that it yielded forty thousand
livres a-year. Her income, besides being doubled, was thus much more
sure than would have been a pension from the King, which she doubted not
M. d'Orleans, as soon as he became master, would take from her. She
thought of retiring into Holland, but the States-General would have
nothing to do with her, either at the Hague, or at Amsterdam. She had
reckoned upon the Hague. She next thought of Utrecht, but was soon out
of conceit with it, and turned her regards towards Italy.

The health of the King, meanwhile, visibly declining, Madame des Ursins
feared lest she should entirely fall into the clutches of M. d'Orleans.
She fully resolved, therefore, to make off, without knowing, however,
where to fix herself; and asked permission of the King to come and take
leave of him at Marly. She came there from Paris on Tuesday, the 6th of
August, so as to arrive as he left dinner, that is, about ten o'clock.
She was immediately admitted into the cabinet of the King, with whom she
remained tete-a-tete full half an hour. She passed immediately to the
apartments of Madame de Maintenon, with whom she remained an hour; and
then got into her coach and returned to Paris. I only knew of this
leave-taking by her arrival at Marly, where I had some trouble in meeting
her. As chance would have it, I went in search of her coach to ask her
people what had become of her, and was speaking to them when, to and
behold! she herself arrived. She seemed very glad to see me, and made me
mount with her into her coach, where for little less than an hour we
discoursed very freely. She did not dissimulate from me her fears; the
coldness the King and Madame de Maintenon had testified for her through
all their politeness; the isolation she found herself in at the Court,
even in Paris; and the uncertainty in which she was as to the choice of a
retreat; all this in detail, and nevertheless without complaint, without
regret, without weakness; always reassured and superior to events, as
though some one else were in question. She touched lightly upon Spain,
upon the ascendency the Queen was acquiring already over the King, giving
me to understand that it could not be otherwise; running lightly and
modestly over the Queen, and always praising the goodness of the King of
Spain. Fear, on account of the passers-by, put an end to our
conversation. She was very gracious to me; expressed regret that we must
part; proceeded to tell me when she should start in time for us to have
another day together; sent many compliments to Madame de Saint-Simon; and
declared herself sensible of the mark of friendship I had given her, in
spite of my engagement with M. d'Orleans. As soon as I had seen her off,
I went to M. d'Orleans, to whom I related what I had just done; said I
had not paid a visit, but had had simply a meeting; that it was true I
could not hinder myself from seeking it, without prejudice to the final
visit he had allowed me. Neither he nor Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans
complained. They had fully triumphed over their enemy, and were on the
point of seeing her leave France for ever, without hope in Spain.

Until now, Madame des Ursins amused by a residue of friends, increased by
those of M. de Noirmoutiers with whom she lodged and who had money, had
gently occupied herself with the arrangement of her affairs, changed as
they were, and in withdrawing her effects from Spain. The fear lest she
should find herself in the power of a Prince whom she had so cruelly
offended, and who showed, since her arrival in France, that he felt it,
hurried all her measures. Her terror augmented by the change in the King
that she found at this last audience had taken place since her first.
She no longer doubted that his end was very near; and all her attention
was directed to the means by which she might anticipate it, and be well
informed of his health; this she believed her sole security in France.
Terrified anew by the accounts she received of it, she no longer gave
herself time for anything, but precipitately set out on the 14th August,
accompanied as far as Essonne by her two nephews. She had no time to
inform me, so that I have never seen her since the day of our
conversation at Marly in her coach. She did not breathe until she
arrived at Lyons.

She had abandoned the project of retiring into Holland, where the States-
General would not have her. She herself, too, was disgusted with the
equality of a republic, which counterbalanced in her mind the pleasure of
the liberty enjoyed there. But she could not resolve to return to Rome,
the theatre of her former reign, and appear there proscribed and old, as
in an asylum. She feared, too, a bad reception, remembering the quarrels
that had taken place between the Courts of Rome and Spain. She had lost
many friends and acquaintances; in fifteen years of absence all had
passed away, and she felt the trouble she might be subjected to by the
ministers of the Emperor, and by those of the two Crowns, with their
partisans. Turin was not a Court worthy of her; the King of Sardinia had
not always been pleased with her, and they knew too much for each other.
At Venice she would have been out of her element.

Whilst agitated in this manner, without being able to make up her mind,
she learned that the King was in extreme danger, a danger exaggerated by
rumour. Fear seized her lest he should die whilst she was in his realm.
She set off immediately, therefore, without knowing where to go; and
solely to leave France went to Chambery, as the nearest place of safety,
arriving there out of breath, so to say.

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