and respect her more than their King, replied to her from the bottom of that abyss of astonishment from which they had not yet arisen.  The horses being put to, the coach soon started again.  Soon, too, the Princesse des Ursins found that the assistance she expected from the King did not arrive.  No rest, no provisions, nothing to put on, until Saint-Jean de Luz was reached.  As she went further on, as time passed and no news came, she felt she had nothing more to hope for.  It may be imagined what rage succeeded in a woman so ambitious, so accustomed to publicly reign, so rapidly and shamefully precipitated from the summit of power by the hand that she herself had chosen as the most solid support of her grandeur.  The Queen had not replied to the last two letters Madame des Ursins had written to her.  This studied negligence was of bad augury, but who would have imagined treatment so strange and so unheard of?

Her nephews, Lanti and Chalais, who had permission to join her, completed her dejection.  Yet she was faithful to herself.  Neither tears nor regrets, neither reproaches nor the slightest weakness escaped her; not a complaint even of the excessive cold, of the deprivation of all things, or of the extreme fatigue of such a journey.  The two officers who guarded her could not contain their admiration.

At Saint-Jean de Luz, where she arrived on the 14th of January, 1715, she found at last her corporeal ills at an end.  She obtained a bed, change of dress, food, and her liberty.  The guards, their officers, and the coach which had brought her, returned; she remained with her waiting-maid and her nephews.  She had leisure to think what she might expect from Versailles.  In spite of her mad sovereignty scheme so long maintained, and her hardihood in arranging the King of Spain’s marriage without consulting our King, she flattered herself she should find resources in a Court she had so long governed.  It was from Saint-Jean de Luz that she despatched a courier charged with letters for the King, for Madame de Maintenon, and for her friends.  She briefly gave us an account in those letters of the thunderbolt which had fallen on her, and asked permission to come to the Court to explain herself more in detail.  She waited for the return of her courier in this her first place of liberty and repose, which of itself is very agreeable.  But this first courier despatched, she sent off Lanti with letters written less hastily, and with instructions.  Lanti saw the King in his cabinet on the last of January, and remained there some moments.  From him it was known that as soon as Madame des Ursins despatched her first courier, she had sent her compliments to the Queen Dowager of Spain at Bayonne, who would not receive them.  What cruel mortifications attend a fall from a throne!  Let us now return to Guadalaxara.

CHAPTER LXV