Let us remark, too, the tranquillity with which our King and the King of Spain received the first intelligence of this event; the inactivity of the latter, the coldness of his letters to Madame des Ursins, and his perfect indifference what became of a person who was so cherished the day before, and who yet was forced to travel deprived of everything, by roads full of ice and snow.  We must recollect that when the King banished Madame des Ursins before, for opening the letter of the Abbe d’Estrees, and for the note she sent upon it, he did not dare to have his orders executed in the presence of the King of Spain.  It was on the frontier of Portugal, where our King wished him to go for the express purpose, that the King of Spain signed the order by which the Princesse des Ursins was forced to withdraw from the country.  Now we had a second edition of the same volume.  Let me add what I learnt from the Marechal de Brancas, to whom Alberoni related, a long while after this disgrace, that one evening as the Queen was travelling from Parma to Spain, he found her pacing her chamber, with rapid step and in agitation muttering to herself, letting escape the name of the Princesse des Ursins, and then saying with heat, “I will drive her away, the first thing.”  He cried out to the Queen and sought to represent to her the danger, the madness, the inutility of the enterprise which overwhelmed him:  “Keep all this quiet,” said the Queen, “and never let what you have heard escape you.  Not a word!  I know what I am about.”

All these things together threw much light upon a catastrophe equally astonishing in itself and in its execution, and clearly show our King to have been the author of it; the King of Spain a consenting party and assisting by the extraordinary order given to Amenzago; and the Queen the actress, charged in some mariner by the two Kings to bring it about.  The sequel in France confirmed this opinion.

The fall of the Princesse des Ursins caused great changes in Spain.  The Comtesse d’Altamire was named Camarera Mayor, in her place.  She was one of the greatest ladies in all Spain, and was hereditary Duchess of Cardonne.  Cellamare, nephew of Cardinal del Giudice, was named her grand ecuyer; and the Cardinal himself soon returned to Madrid and to consideration.  As a natural consequence, Macanas was disgraced.  He and Orry had orders to leave Spain, the latter without seeing the King.  He carried with him the maledictions of the public.  Pompadour, who had been named Ambassador in Spain only to amuse Madame des Ursins, was dismissed, and the Duc de Saint-Aignan invested with that character, just as he was about to return after having conducted the Queen to Madrid.