blic affairs appears to have charmed her. The
rupture of this good understanding, which, however, took place silently,
was one among other results greatly to be regretted of the dark intrigue
into which certain obscure agents momentarily led astray the ambition of
Anne of Austria's grandson--a machination the more disastrous to the
prince, whose honour it impugned, than to the King of Spain, who
received no injury from it during the Duke of Orleans' sojourn within
his territories; the movements of Flotte and Renault, his emissaries,
having only assumed some small degree of importance after his departure.

It is a knotty point of history altogether; but the fact is clear that
the Duke was the centre of the faction opposed to the Princess, and that
around him were banded those with whom she had either clashed or whom
she had overcome. The moment was badly chosen for intriguing; to save
the state should have been the sole aim of the Duke of Orleans. The
allies, for an instant discouraged after Almanza, had not lost all hope.
Their successes in Italy and in Germany soon consoled them for that
reverse, and their armies became once more menacing. It was then that
the Duke of Orleans, it is said, conceived the hope, if not of governing
all Spain, at least of obtaining the kingdoms of Murcia, Valentia, and
Navarre. He himself avowed later to the Duke de Saint-Simon that, seeing
Philip V. tottering, "he had allowed himself to indulge the hope of
being put in his place;" hence his double-faced conduct and strange
manoeuvres. He might not have been willing, doubtless, to pull down the
King of Spain with his own hand, but he did not, of course, steadfastly
desire a triumph which marred his own fortunes. That which, however, may
be affirmed with certainty is, that he maintained with different foreign
generals, among others with the Earl of Stanhope, very suspicious
negotiations; that he designedly did all he could to impede the progress
of the Spanish Government, and seemed, in all he did, solely concerned
in not overstepping that loosely-defined line at which treason begins.
However that might be, Madame des Ursins, strenuously opposed to the
policy which the Duke of Orleans desired to see prevail, and moreover
scarcely able to endure the hostile attitude of that Prince, demanded
his recall and obtained it.

After his departure she pursued him in the persons of his two agents,
Renault and Flotte, whom she had arrested. As for his f