one hand, the young mother, who had
just confided to her care an infant son she had conceived in anguish,
appealed most touchingly to her attachment and courage; on the other,
Madame de Maintenon, whose sole solicitude was to insure repose to Louis
XIV., by plucking out one after another all the thorns from his crown,
reminded her that she was born a Frenchwoman, and that she owed too much
to the Great King to arrogate to herself the right of contradicting him.
A subject of Louis XIV., did she dare combat at Madrid the plans decided
upon at Versailles? The governess of the heir to the crown of Spain,
could she concur by her advice in despoiling the infant whose first
caresses she was receiving? Madame des Ursins could only escape by a
prompt departure from the difficulties of such an alternative.
Incontestable facts prove that she so understood her position, and that
she was fully determined to quit Spain towards the close of 1709; but
the despair of the Queen, the state of whose health at that time gave
but too serious grounds for alarm, alone hindered her from following out
a project which promised more flattering results than any other in the
deep depression into which the resolves of France had plunged her.

Madame des Ursins had no sooner taken the resolution of remaining upon
the theatre of events, and of sustaining the King of Spain in the noble
career to which his conscience and the national will alike bound him,
than she threw herself headlong into the _melee_, caring nothing more
for the Versailles policy, and burning her ships with a boldness of
which her gentleness of character seemed to have rendered her incapable.
Her epistolary style undergoes also a marked change, and rises with the
loftiness of her part and character. In reproaching Madame de Maintenon
for preferring the King's ease to that of his honour, she launches
shafts against her which, though tipped with elegance, are none the less
sharp-pointed, sometimes in the shape of studied reproaches, but more
frequently still with the spontaneous overflowings of a towering wrath.
The writer then reveals herself from beneath the guise of the woman of
the world, and it is clearly seen that in that encompassed life the
heart has for a moment triumphed over the intelligence.

Madame des Ursins alone, however, remained unshaken. She might well
have, it is true, some moments of misgiving; such as when she wrote to
Madame de Noailles, "I have foreseen, for a l