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He concealed, as already said, the real character of the Princess of Parma, who, moreover, could not then have been known to be what she afterwards turned out. The marriage was concluded, the new Queen set out for Spain, and Madame des Ursins went forward to meet her at Xadraque, a small town some few leagues from Madrid. Memoirs of St. Simon, tom. xx., p. 175.
The troops of Las Torres from Valencia, and those who had retreated under Tesse to Roussillon, had joined Berwick at Xadraque, and Philip had placed himself at the head of this formidable army. Charles was obliged to send in the utmost haste to ask the Earl of Peterborough to extricate him from the position in which he had placed himself by neglecting his advice.
"I know not how I managed to endure all the fatigue of that journey," she wrote Madame de Maintenon, whilst wandering about the French frontiers, eighteen days after the scene at Xadraque. "They compelled me to sleep upon straw, and to breakfast in a very different style to the repast to which I had been accustomed.
Confirmed in her design by her interview at Saint Jean de Luz with the Queen Dowager, widow of Charles II. and her relative, and at Pampeluna with Alberoni, Elizabeth held on her way to Madrid. The King advanced to meet her on the road to Burgos, and Madame des Ursins, as has been said, went on before as far as the little town of Xadraque.
Granted that the Abbé Alberoni may have transformed the most ambitious princess in Europe into "a jolly Parmesane fattened upon cheese and butter," and that the habitual circumspection of Madame des Ursins did not protect her against the clumsiness of such a snare may be true, however unlikely; but it is at least doubtful that the camerara mayor could have cherished such illusion when she presented herself for the first time before the new Queen at the interview at Xadraque.
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