The virile tone of that paragraph carries us far beyond Madame de Maintenon. There was one thing, however, of more importance to Madame des Ursins than appeasing the grandees, and that was to procure troops and find the means of paying them. That done, she might laugh at every other difficulty. "Would to heaven," she exclaimed, "that it were as easy to get the uppermost over the priests and monks, who are the cause of all the revolts you hear of!"

The first portion of the Princess"s labours was accomplished. Her most dangerous enemies had fallen: she reigned. But there yet remained a few hostile n.o.bles, and she resolved to strike at them. One of them, formerly her ally, the Duke de Montellano, president of Castile, excited the suspicion of this mistrustful woman. She manifested towards him, from the moment of her return, a haughty coldness. She dreaded to see in a post of such eminence a man placed by his birth amongst her worst enemies. Montellano, offended at her att.i.tude towards him, tendered his resignation. The King hesitated, but the Princess made him accept it, and the corregidor of Madrid, Ronquillo, a man of obscure origin, was nominated to the presidentship. Amelot was equally mistrustful of certain grandees in the Privy Council, as was the Princess; and, whether they tendered their resignation or that it was required of them, the Duke de Montalto and the Count de Monterei were replaced by devoted partisans of the Princess. The high aristocracy, indignant at this manoeuvre, worked against her in an underhanded opposition, in which the double character of the Duke de Medina-Coeli was more and more developed. Their plans were foiled in the very outset, but we shall see them again make their appearance upon the political arena at a moment when it required nothing less than all the power and skill of Madame des Ursins to triumph over them.

The Princess was, in fact, triumphing on the very brink of a volcano.

Spain was in a blaze, and every day seemed to call in question the existence of that throne under the shadow of which she had come to reign. Lord Peterborough had torn Barcelona from Philip V., and the greater part of its garrison had recognised the Archduke, who, acting henceforward as King of Spain, had just made his entrance into that city amidst the acclamations of the Catalan people. The princ.i.p.al fortresses of the province had shared the fate of the chief city; and on one side the insurrection spread to Saragossa, whilst on the other, the important city of Valencia proclaimed Charles III. The situation was little better in the west of the kingdom, for an Anglo-Portuguese army had penetrated into Estramadura, commanded by a French refugee who had been made an English peer,[35] and whose hatred pursued Louis XIV. on every field of battle. Constrained to carry on the struggle simultaneously in Flanders, Italy, and beyond the Pyrenees, in order to defend the integrity of a monarchy which more and more hesitated in its obedience, the French King had just sent to Spain thirty battalions and twenty squadrons, which it became necessary to supplement by despatching a new army. Unhappily, the time was approaching when the French soldiery had more cause to dread their own generals than those of the enemy; and these forces, besides being insufficient, were placed under the command of Marshal de Tesse, a cunning courtier but mediocre general, incapable of any initiative strategy, and whose sole study was to carry out to the letter the personal instructions of Louis XIV. and Chamillard. However, either from want of sufficient resources or want of skill, Tesse failed this once in the execution of his master"s formal orders, which directed him to suspend all his operations in order to retake Barcelona at any cost. A siege languidly conducted in presence of a fleet mistress of the seas, on which the French flag dared no longer show itself, was followed by a disaster aggravated by the presence of the King of Spain and by bitter recriminations between the two nations together engaged in that fatal enterprise. Alike indifferent to misfortune and success, still it might be seen in Philip, since the presence of his rival in Spain, that there was an indomitable resolution to die sword in hand in defence of the sole right which touched his pride and his conscience. Before Barcelona he had displayed a useless courage, and when de Tesse rendered it necessary to raise the siege by his refusal to continue it, the insurrection had closed to the King every road which gave access to his capital. To rejoin the Queen Regent in the heart of the two Castiles, Philip was compelled to take, in mortal agony, the road to France, in order to direct his steps by way of Rousillon towards Navarre, thus giving his enemies a plausible pretext for turning his going out of the kingdom into a desertion of the crown.

[35] The Duke of Berwick.

Trials not less formidable awaited the young Queen at the hands of fortune. Excited by the greatness of the danger, but finding a succour in the _sang-froid_ of Madame des Ursins, which her youth and ardour denied her, adored by the inhabitants of Madrid, to whom in the hour of crisis she confided herself with a touching helplessness, the _Savoiana_, by the spell of her gentle and steady virtues, alone maintained the royal authority in a country where "it was necessary to have almost an army in each province."[36]

[36] Despatch of Marshal de Tesse to Chamillard, 4th Feb., 1706.--_Memoires_ de Noailles, tom. ii., p. 380.

At length the day came when despair reigned everywhere save at the _Retiro_ Palace. The square d"Alcantara, defended by ten battalions, the last remains of the Spanish army, had surrendered without fighting.

Whether through folly or treason, Salamanca had also just fallen into the enemy"s hands, and the Anglo-Portuguese troops advanced by forced marches upon Madrid, in order there to proclaim Charles III. There was nothing left but flight--but to quit a city of proved devotion and confide in others of doubtful fidelity. The King had rejoined the French army; the Queen, accompanied by her _camerara mayor_ and a few female attendants, was compelled to repair to Burgos, in order there to keep up at least some shadow of legitimate government. The little party was without resources, money, almost without victuals. The silver plate belonging to the palace was hastily flung into the melting-pot; the sovereign of so many realms, after having borrowed by p.a.w.ning so many thousand pistoles, packed up with her own hands those jewels which were a tribute to her from the new world, the pride and recreation of her sorrowful youth, previous to pledging them to the Jew brokers. Her court, lately so numerous, had been dispersed by the wind of adversity, not with the intent of influencing events, but, shameful to record, only to await them; and Marie Louise _enceinte_ with the first child of her marriage, shaped her course towards the land of the Cid, resolved to go thither and defend the monarchy even among those rugged mountains which had been its cradle. Dest.i.tution prevailed throughout the solitudes of Castile as well as in those poor _posadas_, bare as an Asiatic caravanserai. If in the central provinces the populace showed itself faithful, it was not without extreme suffering and the most cruel perplexity that the journey could be accomplished by almost impracticable ways, through detachments of the enemy, launched in pursuit of the royal retinue. Nothing certainly is more honourable to the memory of the Princess des Ursins than the letters in which she relates with charming naturalness the daily accidents of that adventurous life, which she supported at the age of sixty-five with all the gaiety of a youthful tourist.[37]

[37] Letters of the Princess to Mad. de Maintenon, from the 24th of June to 26th October, 1706.--Tom. iii., pp. 305 to 367.

In the midst of these disasters, therefore, Philip V. found a firm support in the devotion of the people and in the indefatigable zeal of Madame des Ursins. At Madrid and in all the provinces, except Catalonia, the allies were received with that repugnance which presages a disastrous future and belies the most brilliant promises of victory.

Madame des Ursins multiplied herself: speeches, letters, overtures--she spared nothing to obtain from the people the money indispensable for carrying on the war. She thus arrested desertion, consolidated in Old Castile, and even in Andalusia the King"s authority; she propagated, in short (if we may so express it) the feeling of devotedness. She knew how to surround Philip V. with the austere majesty of royal misfortune endured with courage and consoled by the watchful love of the nation. At the same time her cheerful and confident spirit restored to its serenity the little court of Burgos. She locked within her own bosom her discouragements and inquietudes: she clung to hope, and that successfully. She sought and found in her own firm will consolation justified by events. All her correspondence at this epoch, at times amiable, witty, affectionate, at others grave, precise, and altogether politic, full of facts, plans, exact details, worthy of a minister, and of a great minister too, shows the extraordinary genius of the woman. It was not she alone, certainly, who saved the dynasty, for it was necessary to fight and conquer to do that, but she was unquestionably one of the most vigorous instruments ever made use of by Providence to work out its own purposes in defence of a nation.

She had some ideas about war too--we do not say they were of the best, but she had some--and about plans of defence and the choice of generals.

She antic.i.p.ated coming dangers, which she laid bare and exposed without allowing herself to be discouraged by them. She described the native troops in their true colours, the places of importance entirely unprovided for, according to Spanish custom; she energetically claimed help from France, and after asking for strong battalions in the body of her letter, adds in a postscript that she has advised the King of Spain to have prayers offered up. She did not forget to send appropriate flatteries also to Madame de Maintenon.

A few days after the arrival of the Duke of Berwick, in order to thank Madame de Maintenon for such aid, she spoke to her about Saint-Cyr, well aware that nothing could be more agreeable, and knowing _the weakness of mothers_.

"The Queen has highly approved of all your Saint-Cyr rules; our ladies are anxious to have them, and I am working hard at translating them into Spanish to afford them that satisfaction. If her Majesty were not under engagements very different to those of the young ladies of Saint-Cyr, I really believe that she would like to be one of your pupils."

Her flattery knew well in what language to couch itself; but there were moments at which, discontented at feeling Spain abandoned and lost sight of by Versailles, she became plain spoken even to rudeness. Great allowance, however, ought to be made for the Princess"s occasional bluntness when it is remembered that she was then in her sixty-fourth year, suffering from rheumatism and a painful affection of one of her eyes, a condition altogether very unpropitious in which to commence the career of arms in the capacity of field-marshal to a youthful Queen.

Notwithstanding all this, however, she exerted herself to enliven everybody, to console, to inspire fort.i.tude and a spirit of joyousness around her, never to see things on their darkest side or through her ailing eye, but to obey rather the buoyant spirit and an inclination to hope for the best, which was natural to her.

"It often happens, Madame," she writes to Madame de Maintenon, "that when one thinks all is lost some fortunate circ.u.mstance occurs unexpectedly which entirely changes the face of things." "I think," she says in another letter, "that fortune may again become favourable to us; that it is with its favours as with too much health; I mean that one is never so near falling sick as when one feels oneself so remarkably well, nor so near being unfortunate as when our measure of happiness is full to the brim. I reverse the medal, and I await some consolation which may effectually alleviate my sorrows. I wish, Madame, that you would do the same, and that your temperament were your best friend, as mine is that on which I can surest reckon; for I think, to speak frankly, that I have more obligation to it than to my reason, and that there is no great merit in possessing that tranquillity of mind, of which you are disposed, in your extreme kindness, to think me possessed, and on which you bestow so much praise."

Madame de Maintenon, in fact, who, strong-minded as she might be, was nevertheless perpetually tormenting herself and wailing about something or other, continually eulogised that natural equanimity which she envied, that courage allied with good temper, that amiability, and that _beau sang qui ne laissait rien d"apre et de chagrin en elle_.

Her letters to Madame de Maintenon from Burgos, admirably paint this characteristic tranquillity of mind. "To enliven you," she writes, "I must give you a description of my quarters. They consist of a single room, which may measure twelve or thirteen feet at most. One large window which will not shut, facing the south, occupies almost entirely one side. A somewhat low door gives me admittance to the Queen"s chamber, and another still smaller opens into a winding pa.s.sage, into which I dare not go, although it always has two or three lamps lighted in it, because it is so badly _paved_ that I should break my neck there.

I cannot say that the walls are whitewashed, for they are so dirty. My travelling bedstead is the sole piece of furniture I have in it, besides a folding stool and a deal table, which latter serves me alternately for a toilette, to write upon, or to hold the Queen"s dessert--there being no receptacle in the kitchen or elsewhere wherein to put it. I laugh at all this ... and amidst all the sombre occurrences which have befallen us, I console myself with my own reflections. I imagine that fortune may take a good turn, and I calmly and trustfully wait for those consolations which are powerful to a.s.suage all my trouble."[38] "Action becomes you," Madame de Maintenon might remark with great truth. It was, in fact, an original and most distinctive feature in the Princess des Ursins" character, that of having been known to be a person so thoroughly calm in the main during a career so active and a destiny so agitated; and it was to this very characteristic equanimity that she was indebted, after so abrupt a downfall at sixty-two, for the lot reserved for her of dying in peace and of old age at eighty. But there are many other traits worthy of study in her composition, and which place her in perfect contrast with her friend Madame de Maintenon.

[38] Mem. de Noailles, tom. iii., p. 375, and Letters to Mad. de Maintenon, tom. iv., p. 163.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

SARAH JENNINGS AND JOHN CHURCHILL.

THE succession of the Duke d"Anjou to the Spanish crown had, in fact, destroyed the balance of power in Europe; and our William the Third, then recently dead, but even beyond the grave the most resolute enemy of Louis the Fourteenth, had bequeathed to him the new league which bore the name of the Great Alliance, and which had for its aim to place the Spanish crown upon the head of the Archduke Charles, the son of the Emperor of Germany; or in default of dispossessing Philip the Fifth of his kingdom, to trace round the two nations of France and Spain a limit which should never be overpa.s.sed by the ambition of either. All hope of success for the Archduke Charles--the legitimate successor to the last four effete kings of Spain--all the means which he might have of preserving in Europe two houses of Austria, and of continuing that grand Austrian duality which the sceptre of Charles the Fifth had produced, but which was then broken in twain, rested chiefly upon the English alliance. There, for the adversaries of Louis the Fourteenth, was the knot of the question. With the treasures of England, with her navy, with her troops also, together with the advantage of her situation, which allowed of her doing so much mischief to France, the Imperialists might effect much; without her they could scarcely do anything. Hence with them the necessity of keeping in power a party favourable to them--the Whigs, a party which preferred that ancient duality to the new duality--in other words, the ambition of Louis the Fourteenth to therewith augment the House of Bourbon, and in effect more dangerous than the other to the English nation. But that necessity created another: it was requisite to have near Queen Anne some one who, at Court, should be, as it were, the advanced sentinel of the Whigs, attached to the interests of Austria, and who would hinder from penetrating, or at any rate prevailing therein any other interest than theirs. This precaution was so much the more indispensable that Queen Anne"s feeling towards the Whigs was purely official, and not a genuine sympathy. To these zealous partizans of Parliament and liberty, to these avowed heirs of those who had made the revolution of 1640, she secretly preferred the Tories. Amongst them she found admirers of the absolute order of government that Louis XIV., lord of France instead of being legislator of it, had for too long a time subst.i.tuted for the too much contemned troubles of the Fronde. And the rather as they might be termed, under that relation, a veritable French party, did she lean towards them, because they were the defenders of the royal prerogative.

The exactions, the delays, the innumerable formalities of const.i.tutional monarchy, wearied her to such an extent, that more than once the rumour ran that she was willing to treat for the recall of her brother, the ex-King James the Third. These reports were not without foundation, as the Duke of Berwick tells us in his "Memoirs"; the desire alone of preventing civil war, to which fresh endeavours on the part of that prince would give rise, was alleged as the generous motive for relinquishing a design which the disgust of a too-limited power had inspired. The Whigs well knew how to conjure that peril. But they had always to dread that whilst continuing to wear the crown, Anne might not so much consider the welfare of England as that of her own pleasure, where such welfare interfered with her peculiar sympathies; and lest in turning to the side of the Tories she might carry away from the Archduke Charles the support of England, in other words his chief reliance. The question was how to guarantee themselves from that untoward eventuality?

One means devised--and it was not the less available in this case of royalty exercised by a woman--was to secure to Queen Anne the adhesion of the Mistress of the Robes, Lady Churchill, the clever wife of the brilliant soldier, afterwards Duke of Marlborough.

This remarkable woman, who, without possessing great talents, and with the disadvantage of an imperious and capricious temper, exercised for so long a period such exceptional influence over public affairs, was the second of the three daughters of Richard Jennings, a country gentleman of good family but moderate fortune, her mother being Frances Thornhurst, daughter of Sir Gifford Thornhurst, of Agnes Court, in Kent, and his heiress. She was born at Holywell, near St. Alban"s, 29th May, 1660, the very day of the restoration of Charles the Second. In recompense for the services rendered by their father during the civil wars, the two elder sisters were received when very young into the household of the d.u.c.h.ess of York.

When only twelve years old, Sarah Jennings had the good fortune to become the inseparable companion of the Princess Anne, who was about the same age. Her beauty was not characterised by regularity of feature, but she possessed an animated countenance, with eyes full of fire. She was small of stature, more piquante than imposing, and her chief charms were centered in her magnificent tresses, the delicacy of her features, and certain peculiar graces of mind and person. These attractions were enhanced by a conversation full of vivacity and intelligence. Prudent and virtuous--for even Swift, who was otherwise the remorseless enemy of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, renders homage to the virtue of the latter--in the midst of a corrupt Court, and enjoying the highest favour of the Royal Family, she had for admirers some men of the highest rank in England. Amongst those who aspired to her hand may be cited the admired Earl of Lindsay, afterwards Marquis of Ancaster, "the star and ornament of the Court," whose suit she rejected for that of the young and handsome Colonel Churchill. A single trait suffices to prove the lady"s attractiveness--the avaricious John Churchill wooed and wedded her although all along he knew Sarah to be altogether portionless.

This successful wooer--afterwards Lord Churchill and Duke of Marlborough--who had entered the army at sixteen, was the son of a poor cavalier knight who had come to London after the Restoration. Love, not War, was the first stepping-stone to his subsequent high fortune. The Duke of York, heir to the Crown, "young and ardent in the pursuit of pleasure," became enamoured of Arabella Churchill one of the maids-of-honour to his first wife, and afterwards his avowed mistress.

Through this lady"s interest, her elder brother John obtained a pair of colours in the Guards. In his twenty-third year he made his first campaign in the Low Countries when Charles and Louis united their forces against Holland. Distinguished by his commanding stature and handsome face, he was known to the French soldiery as the "handsome Englishman."

Turenne complimented him on his gallantry and "serene intrepidity"

before the allied armies. The Marshal had been attracted to him by his courage, and is said to have laid a wager, which he won, on the subject of Churchill"s gallantry, on the occasion of a post of importance having been abandoned by one of his own officers. "I will bet a supper and a dozen of claret," said he, "that my handsome Englishman will recover the post with half the number of men commanded by the officer who lost it."

The event justified the Marshal"s opinion. Emboldened by the praise of such a general, Churchill solicited but did not obtain the command of a regiment from Louis XIV.,[39] the great King refusing his services, as he declined those of Prince Eugene a few years later. He was esteemed one of the handsomest and most attractive gentlemen of the day. Lord Chesterfield, the _arbiter elegantiarum_, declared that the grace and fascination of young Churchill was such, that he was "irresistible either by man or woman."

[39] This curious fact was lately ascertained by M. Moret, through the discovery of an inedited, but authentic doc.u.ment, in the _Archives de la Guerre_ in Paris. It appears in a letter of Lord Lockhart, the English Amba.s.sador at Paris, who asks that the colonelcy of a regiment might be given to Churchill. It is dated 27th of May, 1674.--_Archives de la Guerre_, vol. 411, No. 193.

On his return to London at the close of the war, the young soldier became attached to the household of the Duke of York, and rose rapidly in that witty, gallant, and corrupt Court, where shone the Grammonts, Rochesters, and Hamiltons, and where Churchill sought the society of the sultanas who shared with Charles the government of England. The handsome Churchill became, for a short time, the object of the violent but fickle fondness of the head sultana, the d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland. On one occasion the audacious gallant was very nearly caught in the frail beauty"s apartments by "old Rowley," and only escaped by leaping from the window at the risk of his life. For this exploit the grateful d.u.c.h.ess presented her daring lover with five thousand pounds. Churchill made no scruple of receiving the money, so early had the sordid propensity for gain taken hold of him, and with it he at once bought an annuity of five hundred a year, well secured on the estate of Lord Chesterfield"s grandfather, Halifax.[40]

[40] Chesterfield"s Letters, November 18th, 1748.

After some disputes and obstacles on the part of the Churchill family, which the d.u.c.h.ess of York herself took the trouble to obviate, the two lovers were united in the month of April, 1678: and whilst the husband advanced in the confidence and favour of James, his wife made still more rapid progress in the affections of the young Princess, his daughter.

During many years of married happiness, Churchill testified the greatest affection for his wife, and always kept her minutely informed--even amidst councils and battle-fields--upon the state of public affairs, and showed the most entire deference and the liveliest affection for her.

Most of his letters end with these words: "I am yours, heart and soul."

Lady Churchill governed this great man, in fact, like a child--who himself governed kings. Like the Princess des Ursins, she possessed incontestably certain qualities, a liking and capacity for public business, a knowledge of men, the shrewdness of her s.e.x, the obstinacy of her race, an inconceivable love of domination; but she was hard, vindictive, insatiable of honours and wealth, and united to the pride of a queen the rage of a fury.

Aided by his sister, by the King"s imperious mistress and his own incontestable merit, Churchill climbed fast up the ladder of preferment. He obtained successively the command of the only dragoon regiment in the service, a Scotch peerage, and the post of Amba.s.sador to the Court of France. Lord Churchill, however, was destined to be advanced still higher in court favour through the influence of his wife and his own genius as a general.

At the Revolution of 1688, he coldly foorsook James II., his benefactor, and carried over his formidable sword to the House of Orange. The Revolution augmented his fortune. Created Earl and General by William III.; Duke, Knight of the Garter and Commander of the British Armies by Queen Anne. Marlborough was one of those men whom conviction astonishes, devotedness confounds; who acknowledge no other law than that of their own interest, no other deity than success, and which the uncontrollable current of human affairs not unfrequently brings rapidly to the surface.

Cradled in revolutions, he had seen the Commonwealth pa.s.s away, the Stuarts fall, the House of Orange proclaimed. He had taken part in intrigues, plots, apostacies, defections: doubt alone survived every other political instinct of his heart. Faithful to the very brink of misfortune, he ever adhered unswervingly until the dawning of the evil days. Well aware how quickly dynasties expire in a country convulsed by revolutions, he had learnt to antic.i.p.ate approaching catastrophes, and to secure to himself beforehand an _appui_ amongst the victorious survivors. Whilst he was defending the cause of the House of Orange in Europe, he corresponded secretly with the Stuarts, kept up a.s.siduous relations with the little Court of St. Germains, and made underhand preparations for marrying one of his daughters with the Pretender, then ex-King (James III.), at St. Germains, and, perhaps, on the morrow _de facto_ King of England. But if Marlborough"s soul was mean and sordid, his genius was vast and powerful. In parliament, at St. James"s, in foreign councils, in foreign courts, on the field of battle, everywhere he dominated men. His education had been so very much neglected that he could scarcely write correctly his native English, and yet, when he rose to speak in the House of Lords, the entire a.s.sembly hung upon his words, and the most consummate orators, the heads of the British forum, were envious of that natural eloquence which without effort went straight to the heart; and he exercised that charm even upon his foes, to such a degree that Bolingbroke once remarked to Voltaire, when speaking of him: "He was such a great man that I have forgotten his vices."[41]

[41] Voltaire, Beuchot"s edition, tom. x.x.xvii. Lettre xii., p. 172.

At the period of which we are now treating, Marlborough was the most powerful personage in England: by his wife, the Queen"s favourite, he ruled the household; by the Whigs, become his friends, parliament and the ministry; by his rank and his military popularity, the army; by Prince Eugene, his comrade in arms, the councils of Austria; by his old friend Heinsius, the States-General; by the weight of his name, his conduct and address, the suppleness of his character, Prussia and the princes of the Empire. It was he who raised their regiments, who regulated their subventions, who appeased their quarrels. He was the head and arm of the coalition. As potent as Cromwell, more of a king than William III.; without affection or hatred, he justified the saying of Machiavelli: "The universe belongs to the phlegmatic."

We will now revert to his no less celebrated wife, who, as Lady Churchill and d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, so long and wholly swayed the mind and ruled the court of Queen Anne. Brought up in such close intimacy with the Princess, Lady Churchill had a.s.sumed from childhood an absolute ascendancy over her mind. Anne was indolent and taciturn; she delighted in the lively talk of her companion and bosom friend, and loved her in spite of her haughty temperament, to which her own easy disposition yielded without offering the slightest resistance. Married to a sullen and insignificant husband, whose sole delight was centred in a c.r.a.pulous love of the bottle; she had lost her only son during his minority--had seen her father, James II. dethroned, her brother, the Chevalier St.

George, proscribed, and, to the exclusion of that well-beloved brother, she was compelled to leave her crown to a stranger--the Elector George of Hanover, for whom she felt an invincible aversion. Anne confided all her griefs to her favourite Mistress of the Robes, and by degrees an ardent affection for her inseparable companion, which had in it all the delicate tenderness of feminine friendship, sprung up in the Princess"s bosom. Such was the strength of the attachment that it was the desire of the Princess that all distinction prescribed by etiquette should be waived. She required that in their epistolary correspondence they should treat each other as equals, under the a.s.sumed names of Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman. Lady Churchill chose the latter, which would be, she said, the emblem of her "frank, open temper." Under these a.s.sumed names they wrote frequently to each other to communicate their sentiments of joy, anguish, hope or fear, according to the events of the day, and gave themselves up unrestrictedly to the momentary impulse of their hearts.

"I both obtained and held the place in her service," the favourite goes on to relate, "without the a.s.sistance of flattery--a charm which, in truth, her (the Princess"s) inclination for me, together with my unwearied application to serve and amuse her rendered needless; but which, had it been otherwise, my temper and turn of mind would never have suffered me to employ. Young as I was when I first became this high favourite, I laid it down as a maxim, that flattery was falsehood to my trust, and ingrat.i.tude to my dearest friend.... From this rule I never swerved: and though my temper and my notions in most things were widely different from those of the Princess, yet, during a long course of years, she was so far from being displeased with me for openly speaking my sentiments, that she sometimes professed a desire, and even added her command, that it should be always continued, promising never to be offended at it, but to love me the better for my frankness."

CHAPTER II.

STATE OF PARTIES IN ACTION ON THE ACCESSION OF ANNE--HARLEY AND BOLINGBROKE AIM AT OVERTHROWING THE SWAY OF THE d.u.c.h.eSS--ABIGAIL HILL BECOMES THE INSTRUMENT OF THE d.u.c.h.eSS"S DOWNFALL.