It was through Madame de Maintenon and her correspondence with the princess des Ursins that the private business between the two courts of France and Spain was often carried on. At Madrid far more than at Versailles, the influence of women was all powerful. The queen ruled her husband, who was honest and courageous, but without wit or daring; and the princess des Ursins ruled the queen, as intelligent and as amiable as her sister the duchess of Burgundy, but more ambitious and more haughty. Louis XIV. had several times conceived some misgiving of the camarera major’s influence over his grandson; she had been disgraced and then recalled; she had finally established her sway by her fidelity, ability, dexterity, and indomitable courage. She served France habitually, Spain and her own influence in Spain always; she had been charming, with an air of nobility, grace, elegance and majesty all together, and accustomed to the highest society and the most delicate intrigues, during her sojourn at Rome and Madrid; she was full of foresight and calculation, but impassioned, ambitious, implacable, pushing to extremes her amity as well as her hatred, faithful to her master and mistress in their most cruel trials, and then hampering and retarding peace for the sake of securing for herself a principality in the Low Countries.
But the time came for Madame des Ursins to make definitive trial of fortune’s inconstancy. After having enjoyed unlimited power and influence, with great difficulty she obtained an asylum at Rome, where she lived seven years longer, preserving all her health, strength, mind and easy grace until she died, in 1722, at more than eighty-four years of age, in obscurity and sadness, notwithstanding her opulence, but avenged of her Spanish foes, Cardinals della Giudice and Alberoni, whom she met again at Rome, disgraced and fugitive like herself. “I do not know where I may die,” she wrote to Madame de Maintenon, at that time in retirement at St. Cyr. Both had survived their power; the princess des Ursins had not long since wanted to secure for herself a dominion; Madame de Maintenon, more far-sighted and more modest, had aspired to no more than repose in the convent which she had founded and endowed. Discreet in her retirement as well as in her life, she had not left to chance the selection of a place where she might die.