to dare to address her in such
a fashion." Thus much is certain, that the Queen, outrageously thrusting
Madame des Ursins out of her cabinet,[76] summoned M. d'Amezaga,
lieutenant of the bodyguard, who commanded the escort, and ordered him
to arrest the Princess, to make her get immediately into a carriage, and
have her driven to the French frontiers by the shortest road, and
without halting anywhere. As d'Amezaga hesitated, the Queen asked him
whether he had not received a special command from the King of Spain to
obey her in everything and without reserve--which was quite true. Madame
des Ursins was arrested, therefore, and carried off instantaneously,
just as she was, in her full dress of ceremony, and hurried across Spain
as fast as six horses could drag her. It was mid-winter--no provisions
to be found in the inns of Spain; no beds; not a change of clothes--the
ground covered with frost and snow; and the Princess was then in her
seventy-second year. A lady's maid and two officers of the guard
accompanied her in the carriage.

[75] "I only ask one thing of you," wrote Elizabeth Farnese to
Philip V.; "that is the dismissal of Madame des Ursins;" and the
king had replied--"At least do not spare your blow; for if she only
talk to you for a couple of hours, she will enchain you, and hinder
us from sleeping together, as happened to the late Queen."--Duclos.

[76] Madame des Ursins, stupified, sought to make excuses. "La Reine
alors, redoublant de furie et de menaces, se mit a crier qu'on fit
sortir cette folle de sa presence et de son logis, et l'en fit
mettre dehors par les epaules."--Saint Simon.

"I know not how I managed to endure all the fatigue of that journey,"
she wrote Madame de Maintenon, whilst wandering about the French
frontiers, eighteen days after the scene at Xadraque. "They compelled me
to sleep upon straw, and to breakfast in a very different style to the
repast to which I had been accustomed. I have not forgotten in the
details which I have taken the liberty to send the King (Louis XIV.)
that I ate only two stale eggs daily; it struck me that such a fact
would excite him to take pity upon a faithful subject who has not
deserved, it seems to me, in any way such contemptuous treatment. I am
going to Saint Jean de Luz to take a little repose and learn what it may
please the King to do in my behalf."

And from this last-named town--at which she was set at liberty--an