With her departure the outlook for Marie Louise changed like a charm. The new Mistress of the Robes had always been considered as austere as her predecessor, for which reason the young Queen had feared her. But she came to her new office all sweetness. The Queen was allowed to sit up until half-past ten at night, an unheard of thing before; she might mount her saddle horses and ride whenever she pleased, as no previous Queen Consort had ever done, and the King, on the persuasion of his mother and the new Duchess of the Robes, positively urged his wife to divert herself in pastimes that had previously been rigorously forbidden.[310] The change in the King was extraordinary, and proves the complete domination of his mother over his weak spirit when she pleased to exert her power. Mme. Villars happened to visit the Queen two days after the Duchess of Albuquerque assumed office; and as she entered the Queen’s apartment Marie Louise ran smiling up to her in joy, crying: ‘You _will_ say yes to what I am going to ask you, will you not?’ The demand turned out to be that, by the King’s special wish, Mme. Villars’s daughter should enter the Queen’s household as a maid of honour; and Marie Louise, at the idea of having a French girl of her own age always near her, was transported with delight. The appointment was sanctioned and gazetted, but never took effect, for Villars could not afford to endow his daughter sufficiently well, and relations soon grew bitter again; but that Charles, who hated the French, and especially Mme. Villars, should ever have consented to it proves how complete the sudden change of scene was. Encouraged by her new liberty, Marie Louise began to take a keener interest in public affairs, always playing, as can now be clearly seen, the game of those who were bent upon her ruin. Medina Celi had been cleverly diverted by Mariana, who had been ostensibly friendly with him, whilst the councils and secretariats had been gradually packed with her friends; and Marie Louise, prompted by her, took the opportunity of the opposition offered by the minister to the stay of the Court at Aranjuez, to set her husband against Medina Celi, after which, both she and her mother-in-law, into whose hands she played, both worked incessantly to undermine the minister who was already unpopular, owing to the terrible distress in the country and his own ineptitude. The minister and his henchman Eguia, and the King’s confessor, retaliated effectively by sowing jealous distrust between Mariana and her daughter-in-law, and between the King and his wife and mother; and thenceforward complete disunion existed between them all. Mariana, in disgust at her son’s weakness, and knowing that events were tending her way, stood aloof for a time; Marie Louise went her own gait, making no friends and possessing no party; and the inept Charles, alternately petulant and sulky, distrusted everybody.