The letters addressed to the Duchess Lanti, her sister, which are, as it were, a last echo of the conversations of the Hotel d'Albret,[16] were for the most part written from Paris between the years 1685 and 1698, the latter being the date of the demise of the Duke di Bracciano. The advanced age and failing health of her second husband had, in that year, summoned her back to Rome, and a kind of reconciliation, brought about chiefly through the good offices of Cardinal Porto-Carrero--soon afterwards destined to play a great part in the political affairs of his native country--had preceded that demise, which placed the Duchess in possession of estates and property reputed to be considerable, but upon which heavy incumbrances, increased by lawsuits, brought down upon her endless anxiety and almost ruin. [16] Collection of M. Geffroy, pp. 1-25. The obligation of discharging an immense amount of debt compelled Madame di Bracciano to part with the property of the duchy bearing that name. She was, therefore, forced to relinquish that title and adopt that of Princess des Ursins (Orsini), under which she has taken her place in history. The beneficence of the French King was assured beforehand to a noble widow married under his auspices, ruined, so to speak, in his service, and whose palace had become the residence of his ambassador from the moment that the Prince de Monaco had superseded the disgraced Cardinal de Bouillon in that high post. The Princess obtained, therefore, one of those Court pensions, the ordinary patrimony of all great families, and of which the good offices of the Marechale de Noailles, the staunch patroness of her kinswoman, had ere long succeeded in doubling the amount, when the death of Cardinal Maidalchini had left the considerable subsidy disposable by which that member of the Sacred College was secretly secured to the policy of Louis XIV. She had, indeed, herself solicited an increase of her pension in a charmingly witty letter, in which she undertook to prove how useful it would be for the King's service that she should be richer. "My house," says she, "is the only French abode open to the public. It is in my assemblages there that one can speak to people whom it would be difficult to meet with elsewhere." And thus she rose sufficiently high in the esteem of the cabinet of Versailles to obtain even the recall of the French Ambassador from Rome. CHAPTER III. MADAME DES URSINS ASPIRES TO GOVERN SPAIN--SHE MANOEUVRES TO SECURE THE POST OF CAMERARA-MAYOR.