ited, to
stop at Toulouse and there take up her abode. That was but the first
step to a rehabilitation towards which laboured with equal ardour,
though by very different ways, the youthful spouse of Philip V. and the
grave companion of Louis XIV. Madame de Maintenon, accepting willingly
the part of missionary of Divine justice, held it as a point of honour
not to deceive the hope of the illustrious accused, who had attributed
those functions to her at a juncture so _a propos_. And whether that she
felt a real affection for Madame des Ursins, whether that she wished to
mitigate the Duchess of Burgundy's regret for her sister's vexation,
whether, in short, she feared to see Louis XIV. lose by so abrupt a
change all authority over the affairs of Spain, she was disposed in
every event to serve the exile. The Princess, to give time for the storm
to expend its fury, well knowing that acts hastily determined upon are
ordinarily the least durable, did not seek to hurry matters herself with
the French King, but wrote to Madame de Noailles, hoping that her letter
might be shown: "You are not ignorant of my attachment and respect for
Madame de Maintenon; the obligations that I owe her are ever present to
me, and the reliance that I place in the generosity of her heart."[33]
All the correspondence from Toulouse is in that vein, and, still
further, she adroitly represents herself as a victim, as a woman
disabused of worldly grandeur, and afflicted solely at having displeased
Louis XIV.

[32] "_A lents tours de roue._" St. Simon, tom. vii.

[33] Recueil of M. Geffroy, Letter lvi.

This conduct allayed the mutterings of the spent tempest. The court grew
accustomed to behold in her an unfortunate noblewoman resigned to her
exile with an antique patience.

At the end of four months passed in the capital of Languedoc, in the
depth of a retreat enlivened by an assiduous correspondence with the two
courts, Madame des Ursins received permission to appear at Versailles
and there to justify herself. The intervention of Madame de Maintenon
had nothing more in it than was perfectly natural under the
circumstances; not that she had the desire to govern Spain, as Saint
Simon affirms, nor even France, however entirely she might govern Louis
XIV. What she desired to establish on either side of the Pyrenees was a
species of moral control of the house of Bourbon. And, by keeping her
informed of the most minute particulars touching the Kin