d to act with Cardinal d'Estrees, and tendered his
resignation. Had he remained firm in that course, probably he might have
re-enacted his political part in the ranks of his new friends, and have
caused the government great embarrassment. On receiving a letter from
Louis XIV., he had the weakness to give way, withdrew his resignation,
and resumed his seat at the council board. But factions hate and despise
more intensely those who abandon their ranks than those who fight
against them: that manoeuvre irritated alike the French and the
Spaniards; both, in their turn, abjured. Porto-Carrero was the turn-coat
from every cause: as a politician he was annihilated.

In this affair, Cardinal d'Estrees had been, without knowing it, the
tool of Madame des Ursins. "He was," according to Saint Simon, "a hot,
hasty, impetuous, high-handed man, who could tolerate neither superior
nor equal." It will readily be imagined that the _camerara-mayor_ could
not brook the ascendency which he aimed at ursurping. She resolutely
resisted him in all things and on every occasion. She opposed, with
might and main, the success of his policy; she set her face against his
imperious manners and tedious formalities. Philip and his Queen grew
tired of the strife. They took part with Madame des Ursins and wrote to
Louis XIV. After that letter "the Cardinal d'Estrees was looked upon as
the great stirrer-up of strife. His arrival at the Court of Madrid had
interrupted the perfect harmony about to be re-established. Not a day
passed without some one suffering from his intractable and arrogant
temper." Madame des Ursins worked in the same groove with Torcy. The
Cardinal's cabal, by way of revenge, "raked into the private life of the
_camerara-mayor_," hoping to destroy by scandalous tales her reputation
in the eyes of Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon. Those tactics failed
of success; Louis XIV., it is true, recalled Madame des Ursins; but the
Queen of Spain defended her favourite with such earnest importunity,
that the severity of the Court of Versailles was disarmed. An endeavour
was made to reconcile the two adversaries; but that reconciliation, if
sincere, was not lasting. Supreme authority admits of no equal
partition: difficulties multiplied themselves. Philip V. at length
declared to Louis XIV., "that if, to keep his crown, he must resign
himself to have Cardinal Porto-Carrero always as his minister, he knew
what he should prefer to choose." In the mo