irous, by opposing it on many
points, to take advantage of its decreptitude. She could not shut her
eyes to the dazzling aspect of Madame de Maintenon's laurels.

We have shown what the Princess was as a young woman, and also at the
mature age of forty; but it is during the twenty-four years of her green
old age (1698-1722) when having become a great political personage, we
have to behold her exercising a powerful influence over the destinies of
two great kingdoms, and aspiring to soar to a greater height than ever
her painstaking ambition enabled her to attain. It was then that
ambition began to take entire possession of her soul, and displaced in
her heart every other sentiment that her previous sixty-two years had
not extinguished. There can be no doubt of that fact when we discover in
her letters such a glow of youthful feeling, such scarcely repressible
delight, and finally that air of triumph with which she proposes to
welcome and profit by her first elevation.

Her ambition, moreover, could not have had a more brilliant and
legitimate aim than that of associating herself in the glorious task of
France become the instructress of Spain; and Madame des Ursins, who
joined to her own the aspirations of the other sex, entered upon her new
mission with a zeal, an ardour, and an activity more than virile.

Into what profound decadence Spain had then fallen is well known to any
reader of modern history, and the history of modern Europe contains no
more terrible lesson. The Austrian dynasty, insatiable and jealous, had
sought to impose at once upon Spain, Europe, and the world, her
political and religious despotism. Charles V. had confiscated Spanish
liberties and conquered the Commons. Philip II., his son, constituting
himself the representative of Catholicism, had persecuted on all sides,
whether by open violence or intrigue, by the aid of corruption or
torture, the new principle of Protestantism. He had failed in every
quarter. The sanguinary executions of the Duke of Alva had been answered
by the creation of a new free State--Protestant and Republican Holland.
With the _Invincible Armada_ was engulfed the last menace of the Spanish
navy, which had been answered by the triumph of Protestant England under
the glorious reign of Elizabeth. The Spanish nation itself had
conspired, it must be confessed, to that decadence. It had shown no
reaction either against the enervating despotism of royalty, or even the
nature of the