Everything leads us to infer, in fact, that it was Philip V. who, forgetting the long and faithful services of Madame des Ursins, and wearied of a domination from which he had not the courage to free himself, gave authority to his new consort to take everything upon herself; and the latter, who, like Alberoni, her crafty adviser, belonged to the intrepid race of political gamesters, did not hesitate for a single instant to commence her regal play with the execution of such a master-stroke. Elizabeth of Parma felt herself to be too first-rate a personage to condescend to figure side by side on the same stage with Madame des Ursins. It was of this same Elizabeth, born for a throne, that Frederick the Great said: "The pride of a Spartan, the obstinacy of a Briton, added to Italian finesse and French vivacity, formed the character of this singular woman. She advanced audaciously to the accomplishment of her designs; nothing astonished her, nothing could stop her." Possessed of such qualities it is not surprising to find that she profited by the smallest opening to sweep the ground clear on her arrival. Recovering from this stunning downfall, Madame des Ursins, after the first moments of surprise, recovered all her strength, her sang-froid, her wonted equanimity. Not a complaint or unbecoming reproach or weak word escaped her lips. She had formed a just estimate beforehand of all that human instability; she said to herself, on beholding her enemies triumphant and her friends in consternation, that there was no reason to be greatly astonished. That this world was only a stage over which many very poor actors strutted, that she had thereon played her part better than many others perhaps, and that her enemies ought not to have expected to see her so humiliated that she could no longer perform it: "It is in the eye of heaven that I should be humbled," said she, "and I am so." Every reader of Saint Simon must be deeply impressed with his narrative of that terrible night of December 24th, 1714. Who can fail to picture to himself the rude expulsion of the Princess des Ursins from the Queen's apartment in her full dress of ceremony, suddenly packed off in a carriage, without proper clothing or change of linen, and without money, to be whirled away through a winter's night so severe that her driver lost one of his hands from frost-bite, over mountain passes where the roads had disappeared beneath the snow, towards an unknown destination? Who cannot picture to himself hunger coming to add fresh tortures to those of the prolonged nightmare under which that unfortunate lady must have suffered the keenest pangs of incertitude, of astonishment, and of humiliation? Such, however, was the fate reserved for a woman who had inscribed her name among those of the founders of a dynasty and the liberators of a great kingdom!