princess, in a state so
strictly levelled by royalty, wherein no one would have a condition
equal to her own, and in which she would display with jesting
haughtiness the pomp inseparable from her title before her abashed
enemies. She had so much faith in the hopes with which d'Aubigny
inspired her, and by which that cunning favourite thought perhaps
already to profit, that she instructed him to go into Touraine and to
purchase land in the neighbourhood of Amboise whereon to erect a
chateau, which should be called the manor of Chanteloup.[62] It was
something like selling the skin of the bear before slaying her bruin;
but with the formal and written engagement of England, with the support
of Holland, which she also had, with Louis XIV., whom she sought to win
back through the influence of Madame de Maintenon, and by the calculated
nobleness of her intentions, she would overcome the resistance of
Austria, and her victory was certain.

[62] Memoires de Saint Simon, tom. xviii., p. 104.

Unfortunately, that which she ought to have anticipated actually came to
pass. England first discovered the occult negotiations of d'Aubigny at
Versailles, and, unwilling that the Princess des Ursins should bestow
anything upon France, she changed her tone, and became almost a
defaulter to her. A Valentian gentleman, Clemente Generoso, says Duclos,
still copying textually from Fitz-Maurice, blamed Lord Lexington, whose
agent and interpreter he had been from the beginning of the war, for
having committed the Queen of England so far to Madame des Ursins, and
advised him to tear up the convention.[63] By the intervention of that
lady, England had obtained all it required, and the written consent of
Philip V. rendered the concessions irrevocable; there was no danger,
therefore, of want of good faith on the part of Madame des Ursins.

[63] Memoirs of Duclos, tom. i., p. 190.

The towering rage of the latter may be imagined when she heard this
news. She made the most earnest entreaties to Queen Anne not to abandon
her. All that she could obtain was that that Princess "would use her
good offices" to procure her the object of her desires. An elastic and
somewhat embarrassing promise of protection was substituted for a formal
and signed engagement, which bound Queen Anne to the interests of Madame
des Ursins as to those of a contracting power. The English had tricked
her; they had surpassed her in cunning. A short time afterwards, if we