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.

In this there was only one difference, a difference arising from the respective characters of these two ladies and of those two kings; which was that the ascendant of the one, taking the form of friendship the most discreet, was lasting, whilst the other, exercising a direct, immediate, and too overt domination, was destined, sooner or later, to end in tiring out a monarch infinitely less capable than Louis the Fourteenth, but quite as jealous of sway. The Princess bore, therefore, rather the semblance of an intriguante, as people remarked, than of a serious woman, having large views, of will alike firm and prompt, of enlightened and, in a certain sense, liberal mind, with an entire abnegation of self—seeking the welfare of the State alone, and the interests only of the two great countries. Except those whom she had served, or who had sent her to Spain, few had approved her acts at any period of her favour. The misfortunes and the abuses that marked her possession of power, when it had reached its apogee, confirmed them in their opinion, especially when they saw, in France, the severest censure launched against her even from high places, whence until then praise had descended. Others, to whom her previous conduct was less known, judged her only by what seemed ridiculous or faulty at that period of her life, and the last impression received was that which they retained, which has been transmitted to posterity; which was regarded as that most to be relied upon, and which the almost exclusive perusal of Saint Simon, far from modifying in any way that impression, only served to confirm it. That consummate courtier has well said, in his Memoirs, that “her history deserved to be written,” implying the deep interest which would be derivable from it. The narrative, apart from its interest, is valuable for the lesson it conveys of the fruitlessness of the devotion of a most gifted woman’s life to the pursuit of politics on the grandest and most elevated scale. During twelve years the Princess des Ursins exercised a power almost absolute. If, however, the beneficent traces of her influence and sway are sought for, the search proves futile; though doubtless, after so many crises and revolutions Spain has experienced since her time, that ungovernable country must have lost all such advantages; but at any rate posterity would have preserved a remembrance of them. We must not, however, accuse Madame des Ursins too severely. One of those vigorous geniuses was needed which but too seldom make their appearance upon the scene of events to resuscitate and sustain the Spanish monarchy amidst circumstances so untoward and difficult. After civil and foreign war which had driven Philip to the brink of a precipice, he had succeeded in reducing to obedience the last city of his kingdom, only a few days before the fall of Madame des Ursins. And then began a peaceful sway, which allowed useful reforms and beneficent ameliorations to be thought of.

The subject of so many accusations, and probably misconceptions, the Princess possessed a large, fine, and cultivated mind, a rare aptitude for business, a force of character little common among persons of her sex. Warm in her affections, she was naturally so in her hatreds; and though but too easily accessible to unjust prejudices, was prompt also to seek out and encourage merit. She has been reproached for her intrigues, but the same weapons with which she was assailed she turned against her enemies, and their number was great. How manifold must have been the animosities excited by the position of a woman who, standing only at the foot of the throne, governed both its possessors and their Court, created and directed its ministers, generals, and ambassadors! Fervent attachment to her sovereigns, eminent services rendered to them and their countries, an astonishing capacity, a profound knowledge of mankind, a rare presence of mind, and an unshakeable firmness in situations the most perilous and misfortunes the most unlooked-for, such attributes cannot be denied without injustice to the Princess des Ursins, and which, however futile the result of her political career, ought to consecrate the memory of her labours and her name.

It was a generous impulse which prompted Madame des Ursins to commence a fresh attack upon the Spanish Inquisition. Can it be said that the war she waged against it remained without any result? Assuredly not. By her active intervention the English Government obtained the privilege that the palace of its ambassador at Madrid should enjoy the right of an asylum against all the proceedings of the Inquisition, and the same privilege was acquired for British vessels in the ports of Spain. A Protestant nation thus opened in the capital of the Catholic King a perpetual refuge against the rigours of the Holy Office. It was a great innovation; it was the first blow dealt by the spirit of modern times against that of those Spanish institutions which represented the most faithfully the blind and almost barbarous religion of the Middle Ages.

It is difficult to decide whether it was a misfortune or an advantage to her to figure in the gallery of the ducal memoir-writer, Saint Simon. That portrait, sketched with a breadth and freedom by which her womanly character has somewhat suffered, depicts her as devoured by a thirst for power, without even allowing the important services which she rendered to the two nations to be so much as suspected. The great master has not given us a bust-portrait of Madame des Ursins, but a full-length likeness, with that lavish excess of colour flung upon the canvas which imparts more life than truth, more of relief than perspective to the majority of his pictures. If in that brilliant delineation the great lady shines with a somewhat theatrical majesty, the national object which she pursued is in no wise indicated—a grave though natural omission on the part of a man in whom a passionate fondness for details almost always blinds him to the collective point of view, and who is not the first of portraitists only because he is the least reliable of historical painters. He, nevertheless, in her case, always manifests the feeling that she is worthy of a careful, special, and patient study, and he points out such study for the edification of posterity. “She reigned in Spain,” he remarks, “and her history deserves to be written.”

We will now reproduce his elaborate portrait of the Princess. “Rather tall than short of stature, she was a brunette with blue eyes whose expression incessantly responded to everything that pleased her; with a perfect shape, a lovely bosom, and a countenance which, without regularity of feature, was more charming even than the purely symmetrical. Her air was extremely noble, and there was something majestic in her whole demeanour, and a grace so natural and continual in all she did, even in things the most trivial and indifferent, that I have never seen anyone approach to, either in form or mind. Her wit was copious and of all kinds. She was flattering, caressing, insinuating, moderate, desirous to please for pleasing sake, and with charms irresistible when she strove to persuade and win over. Accompanying all this, she possessed a grandeur that encouraged rather than repelled. A delightful tone of conversation, inexhaustible and always most amusing—for she had seen many countries and peoples. A voice and way of speaking extremely agreeable and full of sweetness. She had read much and reflected much. She knew how to choose the best society, how to receive it, and could even have held a Court; was polite and distinguished; and, above all, careful never to take a step in advance without dignity and discretion. She was eminently fitted for intrigue, in which, from taste, she had passed her time at Rome. With much ambition, but of that vast kind far above her sex and the common run of men—a desire to occupy a great position and to govern. An inclination to gallantry and personal vanity were her foibles, and these clung to her until her latest days; consequently she dressed in a way that no longer became her, and as she advanced in life departed further from propriety in this particular. She was an ardent and excellent friend—of a friendship that time and absence never enfeebled; and therefore an implacable enemy, pursuing her hatred even to the infernal regions. Whilst caring little for the means by which she gained her ends, she tried as much as possible to reach them by honest means. Secret, not only for herself, but for her friends, she was yet of a decorous gaiety, and so governed her humours, that at all times and in everything she was mistress of herself.”

Such was the Princess des Ursins, as sketched by that painstaking limner, Saint-Simon; throughout whose “Memoirs” many other scattered traits are to be found of this celebrated woman, who so long and so publicly governed the Court and Crown of Spain, and whose fate it was to make so much stir in the world alike by her reign and her fall.