llies, and whose
wickedness ought to have inspired her with horror," her adroit flattery
of Madame de Maintenon, "to whom Providence had reserved, as by an
assured privilege for her virtue, the sacred mission of causing truth
and justice in the end to triumph;" "Heaven wishing to avail itself of
her services for that purpose in spite of herself;" such are the chief
features of that clever defence, in which calculation tempers rage and
resentment, and which ought to be read in its entirety in the
interesting letters of the Princess.[30]

[30] Letter of May, 23rd, 1704. Geffroy's Recueil, p. 169.

But the letters likewise of the great King which have come down to us,
show that there was no need of the foolish insult conveyed by her own
epistle, to make him angry with Madame des Ursins. The complaints raised
against her were then universal, at least at Versailles, and at a
distance it was difficult to separate those which were founded on false
reports. With the well-known temper which characterised Louis XIV., it
must have seemed a thing inconceivable that such importance should be
conceded to a woman whom he had placed there to do his bidding. Finding
that his grandson and the young queen were disposed to resist his recall
of the _camerara-mayor_, he addressed them as a father and as a king:--

"You ask for my advice," he says to Philip V. (20th August, 1704), "and
I write you what I think; but the best advice becomes useless when it is
only asked for and followed after the mischief has happened.... You have
hitherto given your confidence to incapable or interested persons....
(And speaking of the recall of Orry and of another agent) it seems,
however, that the interest of those particular persons wholly engages
your attention, and at a time when you ought only to have elevated
views _you dwarf them down to the cabals of the Princess des Ursins,
with which I am unceasingly wearied_."

And to the Queen, Louis XIV. writes still more explicitly (20th
September, 1704,):--

"You know how much I have desired that you should give your confidence
to the Princess des Ursins, and that I forgot nothing that might induce
you to do so. However, unmindful of our common interest, she has given
herself up to an enmity which I do not comprehend, and has only thought
of baffling those who have been charged with our affairs. If she had had
a sincere attachment for you, she would have sacrificed all her
resentments, well or ill-foun