ody-guard, and at the same time the ecuyer
who had the control of her equipages. She ordered the first to arrest
Madame des Ursins, and not quit her until he had placed her in a coach,
with two sure officers of the guard and fifteen soldiers as sentinels
over her; the second she commanded to provide instantly a coach and six,
with two or three footmen, and send off in it the Princesse des Ursins
towards Burgos and Bayonne, without once stopping on the road. Amenzago
tried to represent to the Queen that the King of Spain alone had the
power to give such commands; but she haughtily asked him if he had not
received an order from the King of Spain to obey her in everything,
without reserve and without comment. It was true he had received such an
order, though nobody knew a word about it.

Madame des Ursins was then immediately arrested, and put into a coach
with one of her waiting-women, without having had time to change her
costume or her head-dress, to take any precaution against the cold, to
provide herself with any money or other things, and without any kind of
refreshment in the coach, or a chemise; nothing, in fact, to change or to
sleep in! She was shipped off thus (with two officers of the guard; who
were ready as soon as the coach), in full Court dress, just as she left
the Queen. In the very short and tumultuous interval which elapsed, she
sent a message to the Queen, who flew into a fresh passion upon not being
obeyed, and made her set out immediately.

It was then nearly seven o'clock in the evening, two days before
Christmas, the ground all covered with snow and ice, and the cold extreme
and very sharp and bitter, as it always is in Spain. As soon as the
Queen learned that the Princesse des Ursins was out of Quadraque, she
wrote to the King of Spain, by an officer of the guards whom she
despatched to Guadalaxara. The night was so dark that it was only by
means of the snow that anything could be seen.

It is not easy to represent the state of Madame des Ursins in the coach.
An excess of astonishment and bewilderment prevailed at first, and
suspended all other sentiment; but grief, vexation, rage, and despair,
soon followed. In their turn succeeded sad and profound reflections upon
a step so violent, so unheard-of, and so unjustifiable as she thought.
Then she hoped everything from the friendship of the King of Spain and
his confidence in her; pictured his anger and surprise, and those of the
group of attached