Soon the young Queen’s careless jollity received a blow, which embittered her. Charles hated and distrusted all French people; and the insistence of Marie Louise in making companions of her French maids annoyed him exceedingly; and the lives of the two maids whom she liked best were made intolerable to them to such an extent that they had to leave. The Queen was in despair, but protested and wept in vain: the two Frenchwomen were made to understand that they had to go; and when their mistress summoned them one morning she was told that they had departed from the palace for good, leaving her with only two French servants, a nurse and a maid. As usual in her trouble, she summoned Mme. Villars, who found her lying down. ‘She rose at once. It is truly surprising how beautiful she has grown. She wore her hair tied up in great curls on her forehead, with rose-coloured ribbons on her cap and on the top of her head; and she was not plastered over with rouge, as she is generally obliged to be. Her throat and bosom admirable. She slipped on a French dressing-gown, which she wore for the rest of the day. She stood thus for a short time regarding herself in a great mirror, and the view seemed to revive her. Her eyes looked as if she had been weeping much. As soon as she began to speak to me the King entered the room, and it is the rule in such cases for the ladies all to leave, except the Mistress of the Robes and some servants. I heard cards asked for, and I concluded that the Queen was going to be bored to death with the little game that the King is so fond of, at which, if you have very bad luck, you may lose a dollar. The Queen always plays it as if she was enraptured with the occupation.’ The loss of two of her French attendants drew Marie Louise ever closer to Mme. Villars, who was a person of mature age, but, to her later regret, she gradually lost some of the reserve that at first she had considered prudent in her communications with the Queen. Mariana smiled upon the constant companionship of her daughter-in-law with the French ambassadress, but she must have known, for she was experienced and clever, that it would end in disaster to Marie Louise, whose future depended upon pleasing her husband and becoming purely Spanish. The Queen did her best to keep the affection of Charles, who, in his own way, was desperately in love with her, and on occasions when he had to leave her for a day or two she affected desperate sorrow at his absence so cleverly as to arouse the admiration of Mme. Villars for her good acting.