Her letters to Madame de Maintenon from Burgos, admirably paint this characteristic tranquillity of mind. "To enliven you," she writes, "I must give you a description of my quarters. They consist of a single room, which may measure twelve or thirteen feet at most. One large window which will not shut, facing the south, occupies almost entirely one side. A somewhat low door gives me admittance to the Queen's chamber, and another still smaller opens into a winding passage, into which I dare not go, although it always has two or three lamps lighted in it, because it is so badly _paved_ that I should break my neck there. I cannot say that the walls are whitewashed, for they are so dirty. My travelling bedstead is the sole piece of furniture I have in it, besides a folding stool and a deal table, which latter serves me alternately for a toilette, to write upon, or to hold the Queen's dessert--there being no receptacle in the kitchen or elsewhere wherein to put it. I laugh at all this ... and amidst all the sombre occurrences which have befallen us, I console myself with my own reflections. I imagine that fortune may take a good turn, and I calmly and trustfully wait for those consolations which are powerful to assuage all my trouble."[38] "Action becomes you," Madame de Maintenon might remark with great truth. It was, in fact, an original and most distinctive feature in the Princess des Ursins' character, that of having been known to be a person so thoroughly calm in the main during a career so active and a destiny so agitated; and it was to this very characteristic equanimity that she was indebted, after so abrupt a downfall at sixty-two, for the lot reserved for her of dying in peace and of old age at eighty. But there are many other traits worthy of study in her composition, and which place her in perfect contrast with her friend Madame de Maintenon. [38] Mem. de Noailles, tom. iii., p. 375, and Letters to Mad. de Maintenon, tom. iv., p. 163. BOOK II. CHAPTER I. SARAH JENNINGS AND JOHN CHURCHILL.