Alberoni, abhorred in Spain as a cruel tyrant, in France, in England, in Rome, and by the Emperor as an implacable and personal enemy, did not seem to have the slightest uneasiness.  Yet he might have had some, and with good cause, at the very moment when he fancied himself most powerful and most secure.

The Regent and the Abbe Dubois, who for a long time had only too many reasons to regard Alberoni as their personal enemy, were unceasingly occupied in silently plotting his fall; they believed the present moment favourable, and did not fail to profit by it.  How they did so is a curious fact, which, to my great regret, has never reached me.  M. le Duc d’Orleans survived Dubois such a few months that many things I should have liked to have gained information upon, I had not the time to ask him about; and this was one.

All I know is, that what Alberoni always dreaded, at last happened to him.  He trembled, at every one, no matter of how little importance, who arrived from Parma (the Queen of Spain, it has not been forgotten, was of that Duchy); he omitted nothing by the aid of the Duke of Parma, and by other means, to hinder the Parmesans from coming to Madrid; and was in terror of the few of those whose journey he could not hinder, and whose dismissal he could not obtain.

Among these few people there was nobody he feared so much as the Queen’s nurse, whom he drew up with a round turn occasionally, so to speak, but less from policy than ill-temper.  This nurse, who was a rough country-woman of Parma, was named Donna Piscatori Laura.  She had arrived in Spain some years after the Queen, who had always liked her, and who made her, shortly after her arrival, her ‘assofeta’, that is to say, her chief ‘femme de chambre’; an office more considerable in Spain than with us.  Laura had brought her husband with her, a peasant in every way, seen and known by nobody; but Laura had intelligence, shrewdness, cleverness, and ambitious views, in spite of the external vulgarity of her manners, which she had preserved either from habit, or from policy, for make herself less suspected.  Like all persons of this extraction, she was thoroughly selfish.  She was not unaware how impatiently Alberoni endured her presence, and feared her favour with the Queen, whom he wished to possess alone; and, more sensible to the gentle taps she from time to time received from him, than to his ordinary attentions, she looked upon him simply as a very formidable enemy, who kept her within very narrow limits, who hindered her from profiting by the favour of the Queen, and whose design was to send her back to Parma, and to leave nothing undone until he had carried it out.

This is all the information I have ever been able to obtain.  The probability is, that Donna Laura was gained by the money of the Regent and the intrigues gained Dubois; and that she succeeded in convincing the Queen of Spain that Alberoni was a minister who had ruined the country, who was the sole obstacle in the way of peace, and who had sacrificed everything and everybody to his personal views, their Catholic Majesties included.  However, as I relate only what I know, I shall be very brief upon this interesting event.