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Even after her attendants had been dismissed and the Princess Orsini had been definitely installed as her camerara-mayor, or head lady in waiting, with almost unlimited powers, Louis Quatorze still thought it advisable to write to his young protégé and give him some advice relative to his treatment of his wife.
A lively sympathy between the two women alone determined the authority of the older over the younger, and if the King's confidence in the camerara-mayor was a homage rendered to the real superiority of her intelligence, it might be said that a happy conformity of tastes, views, and dispositions, attached his Queen to the Princess des Ursins. Two political systems confronted each other at Madrid.
What seemed strange to me was to see three bishops in lawn sleeves and cloaks in the ball-room, remaining, too, all the evening, and to see the accoutrement of the camerara-mayor, who held exposed in her hand a great chaplet, and who, while talking and criticising the ball and the dancers, muttered her prayers, and continued to do so while the ball lasted.
Hume calls her a virago, and, although this is a harsh word, her first encounter with the Princess Orsini would seem to warrant its use. The princess, by virtue of her office of camerara-mayor, had gone ahead of the king, to meet the new queen, and the two women met at the little village of Xadraca, four leagues beyond Guadalaxara.
There is something very striking indeed in that indomitable resolution one day to govern Spain, conceived and adopted so far from the theatre of events to exercise the functions of Camerara-mayor to a queen of thirteen years of age, when to obtain that exalted guardianship in Court and State, every ambitious heart was throbbing from the Alps to the Pyrenees.
She made herself useful to Marie-Louise, became indispensable amidst an intercourse so privileged and private; at the same time she afforded pleasure in so doing, and that proved during the whole period of her sojourn in Spain the most solid foundation of her favour and power. Through the Queen the camerara-mayor was certain of governing the King.
It will readily be imagined that the camerara-mayor could not brook the ascendency which he aimed at ursurping. She resolutely resisted him in all things and on every occasion. She opposed, with might and main, the success of his policy; she set her face against his imperious manners and tedious formalities. Philip and his Queen grew tired of the strife.
Finding that his grandson and the young queen were disposed to resist his recall of the camerara-mayor, he addressed them as a father and as a king: "You know how much I have desired that you should give your confidence to the Princess des Ursins, and that I forgot nothing that might induce you to do so.
What seemed strange to me was to see three bishops in lawn sleeves and cloaks in the ball-room, remaining, too, all the evening, and to see the accoutrement of the camerara-mayor, who held exposed in her hand a great chaplet, and who, while talking and criticising the ball and the dancers, muttered her prayers, and continued to do so while the ball lasted.
Distrusted by those he came ostensibly to defend, and, from the first, an object of suspicion to Madame des Ursins, still the correspondence of the Princess with Madame de Maintenon and the Maréchale de Noailles from April, 1707, to November, 1708, the date of the duke's departure, shows that the relations of the latter with the camerara-mayor were for a long time maintained on the best footing, the dissolute habits of the Duke of Orleans proving less disgusting to Madame des Ursins than the accuracy of his insight into public affairs appears to have charmed her.
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