It has been sought to divine the real authors of the Princess's disgrace; for it has been considered, not without good reason, that it was very improbable that no other cause save a sudden impulse arising from a feeling of anger, barely justifiable on the Queen's part, had urged her to put in execution a resolution which brought about nothing less than an actual political revolution. BOOK IV. CLOSING SCENES. CHAPTER I. THE PRINCESS DES URSINS. THE Princess des Ursins, as it will be seen, shared the fate of Portocarrero, of Medina-Coeli, and of all those whose power she had broken or whose designs she had frustrated; and who, after their decease, were immediately buried in silence and oblivion. Divided into two parts by the death of Marie-Louise of Savoy, her political life in Spain had not always assumed the same character, a like aspect. The first had been marked by useful or glorious actions, and was of real grandeur; the second was more remarkable for its weakness. Side by side with a bold and honourable, although unsuitable enterprise, ridiculous and extravagant pretensions were coupled. Finding herself alone at the right hand of Philip the Fifth, she became puffed up with her exclusive influence, her new rank and title. She exaggerated her personal importance. She was possessed with the secret desire of being in Spain, with a young sovereign, and he too on the eve of marriage, what Madame de Maintenon was in France, with an aged monarch, and for a while she attained that object, as flattering to her feminine vanity as to her ambition.