Saint Simon duly registered in his Memoirs,
and in which further figured, to render it more piquante and authentic,
the Reverend Father Robinet. The King certainly had one evening
withdrawn with his confessor into the embrasure of a window. The latter
appearing reserved and mysterious, the curiosity of Philip V. was
excited, and the King questioned his confessor as to the meaning of the
unwonted mood in which he found him. Upon which Father Robinet replied,
that since the King forced him to it, he would confess that nobody
either in France or Spain doubted but that he would do Madame des Ursins
the honour of espousing her. "I marry her!" hastily rejoined the King.
"Oh! as to that, certainly not!" and he turned upon his heel as he
uttered the sentence. It was the pendant of "_Oh! pour mariee, non!_" of
the famous letter of the Abbe d'Estrees, related by the same historian.
Saint Simon's two pictures are delightful; in either of the two, the
priest, whether cunning or malignant, figures conspicuously, attracts
attention, and keeps up one's curiosity.

For some time, Philip V. treated these reports as mere inventions and
calumnies, "the offspring of envy, hatred, and ambition." All that was
said concerning the omnipotence of Madame des Ursins, of her empire over
him, of her hopes, her designs, of that same corridor, of their private
interviews, left him unmoved and indifferent. The Count de Bergueick,
until then a stanch adherent of the Princess des Ursins, himself
declared that that omnipotence had become insupportable, and he asked
permission to return to Flanders, whence he had been summoned. Philip V.
allowed him to depart, and Madame des Ursins lost not one jot of her
authority. But the complaints, the murmurs, the idle talk continued, the
incessant repetition of which could not fail at last to make an
impression upon a weak mind. In the end the King grew wearied, and
vexed, especially at the reports relating to such a ridiculous marriage,
to a matrimonial project which wounded his self-love as a man as well as
his royal dignity, and tormented besides by the exigencies of a
temperament, in which the flesh was far too predominant over the
spirit--"Find me a wife," said he, one day to Madame des Ursins, "our
_tete-a-tetes_ scandalise the people."[71]

[71] Memoire de Duclos, tom, i., p. 230.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PRINCESSES ELIGIBLE TO BECOME PHILIP'S CONSORT.

"FIND me a wife!" The sentence was like a th