without regret, without weakness; always reassured and superior to events, as though some one else were in question.  She touched lightly upon Spain, upon the ascendency the Queen was acquiring already over the King, giving me to understand that it could not be otherwise; running lightly and modestly over the Queen, and always praising the goodness of the King of Spain.  Fear, on account of the passers-by, put an end to our conversation.  She was very gracious to me; expressed regret that we must part; proceeded to tell me when she should start in time for us to have another day together; sent many compliments to Madame de Saint-Simon; and declared herself sensible of the mark of friendship I had given her, in spite of my engagement with M. d’Orleans.  As soon as I had seen her off, I went to M. d’Orleans, to whom I related what I had just done; said I had not paid a visit, but had had simply a meeting; that it was true I could not hinder myself from seeking it, without prejudice to the final visit he had allowed me.  Neither he nor Madame la Duchesse d’Orleans complained.  They had fully triumphed over their enemy, and were on the point of seeing her leave France for ever, without hope in Spain.

Until now, Madame des Ursins amused by a residue of friends, increased by those of M. de Noirmoutiers with whom she lodged and who had money, had gently occupied herself with the arrangement of her affairs, changed as they were, and in withdrawing her effects from Spain.  The fear lest she should find herself in the power of a Prince whom she had so cruelly offended, and who showed, since her arrival in France, that he felt it, hurried all her measures.  Her terror augmented by the change in the King that she found at this last audience had taken place since her first.  She no longer doubted that his end was very near; and all her attention was directed to the means by which she might anticipate it, and be well informed of his health; this she believed her sole security in France.  Terrified anew by the accounts she received of it, she no longer gave herself time for anything, but precipitately set out on the 14th August, accompanied as far as Essonne by her two nephews.  She had no time to inform me, so that I have never seen her since the day of our conversation at Marly in her coach.  She did not breathe until she arrived at Lyons.

She had abandoned the project of retiring into Holland, where the States-General would not have her.  She herself, too, was disgusted with the equality of a republic, which counterbalanced in her mind the pleasure of the liberty enjoyed there.  But she could not resolve to return to Rome, the theatre of her former reign, and appear there proscribed and old, as in an asylum.  She feared, too, a bad reception, remembering the quarrels that had taken place between the Courts of Rome and Spain.  She had lost many friends and acquaintances; in fifteen years of absence all had passed away, and she felt the trouble she might be subjected to by the ministers of the Emperor, and by those of the two Crowns, with their partisans.  Turin was not a Court worthy of her; the King of Sardinia had not always been pleased with her, and they knew too much for each other.  At Venice she would have been out of her element.