y reproaches on all sides, and those
which came from Saint Cyr were of a peculiarly acrimonious character,
which we must not join the Duke de Saint Simon in attributing to a
jealousy of which there exists no trace, but which is explained by
Madame de Maintenon's desire to secure repose to Louis XIV. at any cost.
These reproaches, moreover, were without foundation, for the accusers of
the Princess should have considered that, if France had the right to
await with lively impatience the signature of a treaty which secured to
her almost all her conquests, it was quite otherwise with Spain, called
upon by that same treaty to pay alone the costs of the pacification. The
measures of 1713, the conclusion of which was in fact retarded for a few
months by the interest and intervention of Madame des Ursins, had been
received with a very natural indignation in the monarchy of Charles V.,
from which they tore away the Milanese, the Two Sicilies, Sardinia, the
Low Countries, Port Mahon, and Gibraltar. So France can now easily
decide whether it had been in 1815 an unpardonable crime in her eyes to
cause by a dilatory question the adjournment of the signing of the
treaties of Vienna.

That check was the first in a series of misfortunes which death alone
was henceforward destined to bring to a close. Early in 1714 died very
suddenly, at the age of twenty-six, Marie Louise of Savoy, her delicate
frame worn out by an ardent temperament, which had sustained it whilst
the storm raged, and which declined when the breath of the hurricane had
ceased to kindle it further. The remains of the young Queen had scarcely
descended into the vaults of the Escurial ere the nation demanded to
know who was to be the new queen-consort; and the same question was
addressed to Madame des Ursins by the Court of Versailles, so well were
known there both the requirements and the austerity of the King of
Spain. What passed during the eight months of that widowhood so
painfully borne? What mysteries did the Medina Coeli palace witness, in
which Madame des Ursins shut up closely Philip V. from the gaze of every
prying eye? Such questions can never now be answered with certainty, for
the reports put into circulation in France by Saint Simon and Duclos, in
Italy by Poggiali, and in England by Fitz-Maurice, had their common
source in the conversations of Alberoni, one of the least scrupulous
actors in the drama of the _Quadruple Alliance_. Did the elderly
_camerara ma