lf better acquainted with the
particulars than the Duke, he mentions a very aggravating fact, which
was, that, in order to construct that very suspicious means of
communication, it was necessary to demolish a monastery of Capuchins,
and that in consequence "dead bodies were disinterred, the Holy
Sacrament dislodged from the church, the monks quitting it in
procession, amidst exclamations of "Oh, sacrilege! Oh, profanation!"
from all Madrid."[59]

[59] Memoirs of Duclos (Petitot's Collection), tom. i., p. 230.

Happily, Duclos is merely in this the servile copyist of a Spanish
author, whose contradictions and bad feeling it would be very easy to
expose. He has reproduced word for word the version to be found in the
_Memoires sur l'Espagne_, printed as a sequel to the letters of
Fitz-Maurice. What! to make a simple corridor from one apartment to
another, nothing less was required than to demolish an entire monastery,
large as they were, in Spain especially, with its church and everything
devoted to its religious purposes, and the dwellings of the monks? And
Saint Simon knew nothing of all this? For, had he known it, most
assuredly he would not have failed to fling it in the face of Madame des
Ursins. That the Marquis de Saint Philippe, who was upon the spot, a man
so religious, and who could not endure Madame des Ursins, should say not
one word, without fear of derogating from his customary gravity, of that
impious scandal, of such a Vandalism as had revolted all Madrid! We
think that if M. Duclos had better informed himself upon the point and
of the source whence he derived it, he, too, would have complained of
exaggeration, and would not have given it out as a fact.

The part played by Madame des Ursins would assuredly have been grander
if she had herself renounced the regal boon proffered by Philip V., as
soon as it promised to be an obstacle to the pacification of Europe; if
she had preferred the general good to her own particular advantage, and
sustained her lofty character to the end, she would have preserved by so
doing the prestige of grandeur and disinterestedness which had
constantly surrounded her. A love of power would have been pardoned in
her, always foreign to considerations of personal advantage; and, as
ambition, like other human passions, may become a source of crime,
though it is not itself a crime, in her case it would have been praised,
because she would have unceasingly shunned the vanity which