Political Women, Vol. 2

by active 1840-1883 Sutherland Menzies

Madame des Ursins, who, though a woman of imagination, was, as we have said, but little liable to be dazzled, might still have been pardoned giving way during these months of royal favour to an excess of intoxication; but above all, and at the same time that she displayed the treasures of her continual and inexhaustible conversation, she evinced a lively appreciation of the King’s mental qualities. She returns to the subject afterwards too frequently, and enters too minutely into detail of what she discovered in him, not to show on her part a truthfulness stronger than flattery. She never speaks of the King otherwise than as l’homme du monde le plus aimable, as the meilleur ami, and le plus honnête homme du monde.

“If I had further, Madam, as you observe to me (she writes to Madam de Maintenon) the happiness of his being more accustomed to me, I ingenuously confess to you that it only depends upon his Majesty to perceive that I find him very good company. Really, although I can boast of having, in my time, entertained in France, Italy, and Spain, all the wittiest and most agreeable persons therein, I have never been so much pleased with them as with his Majesty. You must own that this is a very frank avowal.”

There were not wanting those who even went so far as to suppose that the views of Madame des Ursins went much further—“the age and health of Madame de Maintenon tempting her.” The question must have occurred to the Princess, it was hinted, whether the prospect of replacing her in France was not more alluring than any she was likely to meet with in Spain. Such conjectures, however, touching the inmost secrets of a woman’s heart, are more easily formed than verified.

That which appears far more certain is, that independently even of politics there was a mental triumph achieved by her in this close contact with the great King. Madame de Maintenon, Madame des Ursins, and Louis XIV. were all three for some time under the same spell: “I often recall to mind your ideas and that amiable countenance which so charmed me at Marly,” Madame de Maintenon writes to her a year later; “do you still preserve that equanimity which allowed you to pass from the most important topics of conversation with the King to indulge in badinage with Madame d’Heudicourt in my cabinet?” Madame des Ursins, who was only at that moment a bird of passage, was of those in whom the delight of pleasing and the feeling of success doubly enhanced every innate grace. That slight fascination which she probably underwent, she repaid with a shower of sparkling phrases.

Louis XIV. himself was seduced both by her grace and her talent. He had expected, according to all accounts, to find in Madame des Ursins a woman of the Fronde, somewhat post-dated: instead of that he discovered a person whom it cost little to be naturally a person of authority, with a capacity for governing, and whose social powers never failed of their charm, so elevated were their characteristics. She, even as a third party, from her intercourse with Madame de Maintenon, felt herself grow quite young again. Of these three potential persons, the assertion may be hazarded that Madame des Ursins was still that one who best maintained her position, possessed the happy knack of turning all things to advantage through her lucid common sense: of the three she played her part the most unrestrictedly, and therefore so much the better, through an energetic will in carrying out what an acute judgment told her was best.

Her brow encircled with the halo of victory, Madame des Ursins, after a year’s absence, re-entered that Spain which she had quitted humiliated: she returned to it amid the acclamations of its populace, welcomed in all its cities as a sovereign. The citadels fired salutes as she passed; the Spanish Court went out to meet her as far as Burgos; the King and Queen received her at some two leagues from Madrid. She returned strengthened by disgrace, so much the stronger that her absence had proved injurious, treating henceforward as between Power and Power with the Court of Versailles, which, yielding to a political necessity, recognized and graciously accepted, had restored her with its own hand to the summit of power, and seemed, by that signal preference, to menace beforehand all those who should pretend to struggle against her sovereign mission.

Once re-established in Spain, Madame des Ursins, thus acting in harmony once more with Louis XIV., set herself to pursue a more measured course, more regular and thoroughly irreproachable with relation to those whose envoy she was. She took no step save in concert with the sagacious ambassador M. Amelot. If the letters she addressed to Madame de Maintenon, and which commence immediately after her departure from Paris, do not reveal her genius in all its vigour and brilliancy, they at any rate allow us to divine it in certain passages, and give us clearly the chief outlines of her character. The natural tone of her mind was serious, positive, somewhat dry at bottom, but frank, deliberate, and bold. Unlike Madame de Maintenon, she had political ideas which she dared not only avow, but put into execution. Before all else she decided upon the complete restoration of the King’s authority. With reference to a claim advanced by the grandees against the captain of the guards, she was anxious to break up effectually that cabal of the grandees who profited by the weakness of the new régime in order to create titles and prerogatives for themselves: otherwise it would be the means of throwing Spain again into the same embarrassments as those in which France found herself during the Fronde, “when Frenchmen only busied themselves with provoking one another.” She was of opinion that the chiefs of that party should feel the effects of the King’s displeasure before there was time to receive replies from France, in order that it might clearly appear that it was a determination taken by the King of Spain himself, and not a suggestion of others:

“Do not be frightened, Madame, I entreat you, at these resolutions. It is fortunate that the grandees have given us such a lucky opportunity of mortifying them. Lacking strength and courage, these haughty nobles are ceaseless in their attempts to overthrow the authority of their king, and against whom I am incensed beyond measure for all which they did so long as they had the uppermost in the Despacho (Privy Council).”

The virile tone of that paragraph carries us far beyond Madame de Maintenon. There was one thing, however, of more importance to Madame des Ursins than appeasing the grandees, and that was to procure troops and find the means of paying them. That done, she might laugh at every other difficulty. “Would to heaven,” she exclaimed, “that it were as easy to get the uppermost over the priests and monks, who are the cause of all the revolts you hear of!”