by the Dutch alliance, and had hope only from the Court of Spain to
counterbalance the formidable union of his enemies. This was the reason
that each of those personages, at Versailles or Paris, had for
retaining the Duchess di Bracciano in the interests of France in the
future succession of Spain, and recommended them to her at the Papal
Court, to the Spanish Ambassador at Rome, the Duke d'Uzeda, or indeed to
any other Spaniard of distinction whom she might meet with in that
capital.

The letters addressed to the Duchess Lanti, her sister, which are, as it
were, a last echo of the conversations of the Hotel d'Albret,[16] were
for the most part written from Paris between the years 1685 and 1698,
the latter being the date of the demise of the Duke di Bracciano. The
advanced age and failing health of her second husband had, in that year,
summoned her back to Rome, and a kind of reconciliation, brought about
chiefly through the good offices of Cardinal Porto-Carrero--soon
afterwards destined to play a great part in the political affairs of his
native country--had preceded that demise, which placed the Duchess in
possession of estates and property reputed to be considerable, but upon
which heavy incumbrances, increased by lawsuits, brought down upon her
endless anxiety and almost ruin.

[16] Collection of M. Geffroy, pp. 1-25.

The obligation of discharging an immense amount of debt compelled Madame
di Bracciano to part with the property of the duchy bearing that name.
She was, therefore, forced to relinquish that title and adopt that of
Princess des Ursins (Orsini), under which she has taken her place in
history. The beneficence of the French King was assured beforehand to a
noble widow married under his auspices, ruined, so to speak, in his
service, and whose palace had become the residence of his ambassador
from the moment that the Prince de Monaco had superseded the disgraced
Cardinal de Bouillon in that high post. The Princess obtained,
therefore, one of those Court pensions, the ordinary patrimony of all
great families, and of which the good offices of the Marechale de
Noailles, the staunch patroness of her kinswoman, had ere long succeeded
in doubling the amount, when the death of Cardinal Maidalchini had left
the considerable subsidy disposable by which that member of the Sacred
College was secretly secured to the policy of Louis XIV. She had,
indeed, herself solicited an increase of her pension in a charmin