hat the
views of Madame des Ursins went much further--"the age and health of
Madame de Maintenon tempting her." The question must have occurred to
the Princess, it was hinted, whether the prospect of replacing her in
France was not more alluring than any she was likely to meet with in
Spain. Such conjectures, however, touching the inmost secrets of a
woman's heart, are more easily formed than verified.

That which appears far more certain is, that independently even of
politics there was a mental triumph achieved by her in this close
contact with the great King. Madame de Maintenon, Madame des Ursins, and
Louis XIV. were all three for some time under the same spell: "I often
recall to mind your ideas and that amiable countenance which so charmed
me at Marly," Madame de Maintenon writes to her a year later; "do you
still preserve that equanimity which allowed you to pass from the most
important topics of conversation with the King to indulge in _badinage_
with Madame d'Heudicourt in my cabinet?" Madame des Ursins, who was only
at that moment a bird of passage, was of those in whom the delight of
pleasing and the feeling of success doubly enhanced every innate grace.
That slight fascination which she probably underwent, she repaid with a
shower of sparkling phrases.

Louis XIV. himself was seduced both by her grace and her talent. He had
expected, according to all accounts, to find in Madame des Ursins a
woman of the Fronde, somewhat post-dated: instead of that he discovered
a person whom it cost little to be naturally a person of authority, with
a capacity for governing, and whose social powers never failed of their
charm, so elevated were their characteristics. She, even as a third
party, from her intercourse with Madame de Maintenon, felt herself grow
quite young again. Of these three potential persons, the assertion may
be hazarded that Madame des Ursins was still that one who best
maintained her position, possessed the happy knack of turning all things
to advantage through her lucid common sense: of the three she played her
part the most unrestrictedly, and therefore so much the better, through
an energetic will in carrying out what an acute judgment told her was
best.

Her brow encircled with the halo of victory, Madame des Ursins, after a
year's absence, re-entered that Spain which she had quitted humiliated:
she returned to it amid the acclamations of its populace, welcomed in
all its cities as a sovereign. The