iers.
One Sieur d'Aubigny, a kind of household steward whom she had promoted
to be her equerry, was lodged in the _Retiro_ palace near the apartments
of her women, where he was seen one day brushing his teeth very
unconcernedly at the window. _C'etait un beau et grand drole tres-bien
fait et tres-decouple de corps et d'esprit_,[28] and not a _bete brute_,
as Louville calls him. But he was bold and somewhat insolent, as one who
conceived that he had a right to be so. On another occasion, Louville
and the Duke de Medina-Coeli entering the apartments of Madame des
Ursins, into which she ushered them in order that they might talk more
unrestrainedly, D'Aubigny who was installed at the other end, seeing
only the Princess and believing her to be alone, began to apostrophise
her in terms of very rude and coarse familiarity, which threw all
present into confusion. The feminine failing of Madame des Ursins, was,
we are told, this; "gallantry and _l'entetement de sa personne_ was in
her the dominant and overweening weakness above all else, even to the
latest period of her life." So Saint Simon says, and he renders her full
justice moreover for her spirited and elevated qualities.

[27] "Elle a des moeurs _a l'escarpolette_."

[28] Saint Simon.

But to return to the matter of the intercepted despatch. What piqued the
Princess most was, to find details in it exaggerating the authority of
D'Aubigny, and a statement to the effect that it was generally believed
that she had married him. On reading this passage the pride of the great
lady was more outraged even than her modesty. Beside herself with rage
and vexation, she wrote with her own hand upon the margin of the letter,
"_Pour mariee, non_" ("At any rate, not married"), showed it in this
state to the King and Queen of Spain, to a number of other people,
always with strange clamouring, and finally crowned her folly by
sending it to Louis XIV., with furious complaints against the Abbe for
writing it without her knowledge, and for inflicting upon her such an
atrocious injury as to mention such a thing as this pretended marriage.
Her letter and its enclosure reached the King at a very inopportune
moment. Just before he had received a letter, which, taken in connection
with this of the Princess des Ursins, struck a blow at her power of the
most decisive kind. At the same time that the original thus annotated
was despatched to the Marquis de Torcy, a copy of it was addressed b