In this affair, Cardinal d'Estrees had been, without knowing it, the tool of Madame des Ursins. "He was," according to Saint Simon, "a hot, hasty, impetuous, high-handed man, who could tolerate neither superior nor equal." It will readily be imagined that the _camerara-mayor_ could not brook the ascendency which he aimed at ursurping. She resolutely resisted him in all things and on every occasion. She opposed, with might and main, the success of his policy; she set her face against his imperious manners and tedious formalities. Philip and his Queen grew tired of the strife. They took part with Madame des Ursins and wrote to Louis XIV. After that letter "the Cardinal d'Estrees was looked upon as the great stirrer-up of strife. His arrival at the Court of Madrid had interrupted the perfect harmony about to be re-established. Not a day passed without some one suffering from his intractable and arrogant temper." Madame des Ursins worked in the same groove with Torcy. The Cardinal's cabal, by way of revenge, "raked into the private life of the _camerara-mayor_," hoping to destroy by scandalous tales her reputation in the eyes of Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon. Those tactics failed of success; Louis XIV., it is true, recalled Madame des Ursins; but the Queen of Spain defended her favourite with such earnest importunity, that the severity of the Court of Versailles was disarmed. An endeavour was made to reconcile the two adversaries; but that reconciliation, if sincere, was not lasting. Supreme authority admits of no equal partition: difficulties multiplied themselves. Philip V. at length declared to Louis XIV., "that if, to keep his crown, he must resign himself to have Cardinal Porto-Carrero always as his minister, he knew what he should prefer to choose." In the month of September, 1704, therefore, all the French household, with Cardinal Porto-Carrero, quitted Madrid. CHAPTER VI. THE PRINCESS MAKES A FALSE STEP IN HER STATECRAFT--A BLUNDER AND AN IMBROGLIO.