he interests involved in the preservation of the balance of power in
Europe were not those which affected the great King: those of the
cabinet of Versailles, he considered ought to be the sole rule, not only
for France, but for Europe entire. So thought everybody also who
surrounded the pompous Louis. Those even who pretended to hold
themselves aloof from his moral domination--the Duke de Beauvilliers,
the Duke de Chevreuse, and the Archbishop of Cambrai--divided their
hopes between the Duke of Burgundy and the new King of Spain, the
brother of their well-beloved disciple; and, surrounding Philip V. with
creatures of their own, would not admit that they could govern otherwise
than by Frenchmen and French ideas. Even for that party which arrogated
to itself the title of "honest folks," animated by noble sentiments and
generous illusions, it was difficult sufficiently to enlarge the narrow
patriotism of the time, and to admit within it a sympathetic alliance
with the ideas of any foreign nationality.

Madame des Ursins was less exclusively and more truly devoted to Spain,
without failing in her devotion to France. She was a Frenchwoman at
Madrid in sustaining the alliance between the two countries in view of
their common interests, and in attacking by reforms the deep-seated
abuses which had prepared the complete ruin of Spain; she was so
especially likewise in waging a determined fight against an institution
the most repugnant to the character and intelligence of France--the
Inquisition. But she became Spanish also when needful, whether she had
to humour warily the national susceptibilities, or to confide the
principal posts to Spaniards rather than to Frenchmen, or, finally,
whether in 1709, when the guardianship of Philip V. had become a very
heavy burden to the declining Louis, she manifested her indignation at
the very idea, too readily accepted at Versailles, of abandoning Spain,
and was stubbornly resolved, on her own part, to struggle by the side of
Louis XIV.'s grandson to the last extremity.

The whole period which extends up to the moment of her first disgrace
was solely employed by her in establishing her power by masking it. She
still remained without a very precise mission; the indirect
encouragement of Torcy and Madame de Maintenon, it is true, soon came to
sustain her, and her entire study centered in meriting at their hands,
and especially at those of Louis XIV., a more effective confidence.

She had fi