d up
to her arrival at which she had unfalteringly maintained the strength
and constancy of her character, neither a tear nor a complaint escaping
her--a few days later she wrote again to Madame de Maintenon:

"Here I shall await the King's commands. I am in a small house--the
ocean before me, sometimes calm, sometimes agitated: it is an image of
what passes in courts. You know what has happened to me; I shall not
implore in vain your generous compassion. I agree perfectly with you
that stability is only to be found in God. Assuredly it is not to be
found in the human breast; for who could be more certain than I was of
the King of Spain's heart?"

Everything leads us to infer, in fact, that it was Philip V. who,
forgetting the long and faithful services of Madame des Ursins, and
wearied of a domination from which he had not the courage to free
himself, gave authority to his new consort to take everything upon
herself; and the latter, who, like Alberoni, her crafty adviser,
belonged to the intrepid race of political gamesters, did not hesitate
for a single instant to commence her regal play with the execution of
such a master-stroke. Elizabeth of Parma felt herself to be too
first-rate a personage to condescend to figure side by side on the same
stage with Madame des Ursins.

It was of this same Elizabeth, born for a throne, that Frederick the
Great said: "The pride of a Spartan, the obstinacy of a Briton, added to
Italian finesse and French vivacity, formed the character of this
singular woman. She advanced audaciously to the accomplishment of her
designs; nothing astonished her, nothing could stop her." Possessed of
such qualities it is not surprising to find that she profited by the
smallest opening to sweep the ground clear on her arrival.

Recovering from this stunning downfall, Madame des Ursins, after the
first moments of surprise, recovered all her strength, her sang-froid,
her wonted equanimity. Not a complaint or unbecoming reproach or weak
word escaped her lips. She had formed a just estimate beforehand of all
that human instability; she said to herself, on beholding her enemies
triumphant and her friends in consternation, that there was no reason to
be greatly astonished. That this world was only a stage over which many
very poor actors strutted, that she had thereon played her part better
than many others perhaps, and that her enemies ought not to have
expected to see her so humiliated that she could no