l the private audiences that he gave, whether to
his subjects or to the foreign ministers; so that, as I have before
remarked, nothing possibly could escape her.

As for the King, the eternal night and day tete-a-tete she had with him
enabled her to sound him thoroughly, to know him by heart, so to speak.
She knew perfectly the time for preparatory insinuations, their success;
the resistance, when there was any, its course and how to overcome it;
the moments for yielding, in order to return afterwards to the charge,
and those for holding firm and carrying everything by force. She stood
in need of all these intrigues, notwithstanding her credit with the King.
If I may dare to say it, his temperament was her strong point, and she
sometimes had recourse to it. Then her coldness excited tempests. The
King cried and menaced; now and then went further; she held firm, wept,
and sometimes defended herself. In the morning all was stormy. The
immediate attendants acted towards King and Queen often without
penetrating the cause of their quarrel. Peace was concluded at the first
opportunity, rarely to the disadvantage of the Queen, who mostly had her
own way.

A quarrel of this sort arose when I was at Madrid; and I was advised,
after hearing details I will not repeat, to mix myself up in it, but I
burst out laughing and took good care not to follow this counsel.

CHAPTER CXI.

The chase was every day the amusement of the King, and the Queen was
obliged to make it hers. But it was always the same. Their Catholic
Majesties did me the singular honour to invite me to it once, and I went
in my coach. Thus I saw this pleasure well, and to see it once is to see
it always. Animals to shoot are not met with in the plains. They must
be sought for among the mountains,--and there the ground is too rugged
for hunting the stag, the wild boar, and other beasts as we hunt the
hare,--and elsewhere. The plains even are so dry, so hard, so full of
deep crevices (that are not perceived until their brink is reached), that
the best hounds or harriers would soon be knocked up, and would have
their feet blistered, nay lamed, for a long time. Besides, the ground is
so thickly covered with sturdy vegetation that the hounds could not
derive much help from their noses. Mere shooting on the wing the King
had long since quitted, and he had ceased to mount his horse; thus the
chase simply resolved itself into a battue.

The Duc del Orco, who, by his