We were obliged to let the King and Queen fire first, although pretty often they permitted the grand ecuyer and the captain of the guard to fire also; and as we did not know from whom came the report, we were obliged to wait until the King’s arbour was perfectly silent; then let the Prince shoot, who very often had nothing to shoot at, and we still less.  Nevertheless, I killed a fox, but a little before I ought to have done so, at which, somewhat ashamed, I made my excuses to the Prince of the Asturias, who burst out laughing, and the company also, I following their example and all passing very politely.

In proportion as the peasants approach and draw nearer each other, the sport advances, and it finishes when they all come close to the arbours, still shouting, and with nothing more behind them.  Then the coaches return, the company quits the arbours, the beasts killed are laid before the King.  They are placed afterwards behind the coaches.  During all this, conversation respecting the sport rolls on.  We carried away this day about a dozen or more beasts, some hares, foxes, and polecats.  The night overtook us soon after we quitted the arbours.

And this is the daily diversion of their Catholic Majesties.

It is time now, however, to resume the thread of my narrative, from which these curious and little-known details have led me.

I have shown in its place the motive which made me desire my embassy; it was to obtain the ‘grandesse’ for my second son, and thus to “branch” my house.  I also desired to obtain the Toison d’Or for my eldest son, that he might derive from this journey an ornament which, at his age, was a decoration.  I had left Paris with full liberty to employ every aid, in order to obtain these things; I had, too, from M. le Duc d’Orleans, the promise that he would expressly ask the King of Spain for the former favour, employing the name of the King, and letters of the strongest kind from Cardinal Dubois to Grimaldo and Father Aubenton.  In the midst of the turmoil of affairs I spoke to both of these persons, and was favourably attended to.

Grimaldo was upright and truthful.  He conceived a real friendship for me, and gave me, during my stay at Madrid, all sorts of proofs of it.  He said that this union of the two Courts by the two marriages might influence the ministers.  His sole point of support, in order to maintain himself in the post he occupied, so brilliant and so envied, was the King of Spain.  The Queen, he found, could never be a solid foundation on which to repose.  He wished, then, to support himself upon France, or at least to have no opposition from it, and he perfectly well knew the duplicity and caprices of Cardinal Dubois.  The Court of Spain, at all times so watchful over M. le Duc d’Orleans, in consequence of what had passed in the time of the Princesse des Ursins, and during the Regency,. was not ignorant of the intimate and uninterrupted confidence of this prince in me,