Chapter XIX: Book V (2)

Marie Louise, utterly frivolous, made no attempt to reform all this, but swam with the stream, taking part in the Kings puerile pleasures of throwing eggshells full of scent at people, or playing with him for hours at his favourite game of spilikins for pence. Mariana looked on at it all quite complacently, Villars and his wife thought out of mere amiability. That may have been so, but it is clear to see now that all that was necessary was to let Marie Louise go her own way unchecked, and Mariana had nothing to fear from her politically or personally. As an instance of the attitude of the Queen-Mother towards the young Queen’s thoughtlessness, a little circumstance related by Mme. Villars may be quoted: ‘I was walking in the gallery of the Buen Retiro on Sunday, before seeing the comedy, thinking nothing of kings or queens, when I heard our young Princess call out my name very loudly. I entered the room whence the voice proceeded quite unceremoniously; and, to my confusion, I found the Queen seated between the King and the Queen-Mother. She had thought of nothing when she called me but her own wish to see me, quite regardless of Spanish gravity; and she burst out laughing heartily when she saw me. The Queen-Mother reassured me. She is always pleased when her daughter-in-law enjoys herself. Indeed, she made an opportunity for me to come and talk with her in a window recess, but I retired as soon as I could.’ To encourage Marie Louise to forget for a moment that she was a Spanish Queen, was to ensure her downfall.

Here is another picture of the young Queen a few days afterwards. Mme. de Sévigné had written a letter talking of Marie Louise’s beautiful little feet, with which she danced so nimbly at Versailles. The young Queen was gratified at the flattery, but ruefully said that all her pretty feet were used for now was to walk round her chamber a few times, and carry her off to bed at half-past eight every night. On this occasion Mme. Villars thus describes her: ‘She was as beautiful as an angel, weighed down but uncomplaining, by a _parure_ of emeralds and diamonds on her head, that is to say, a thousand sparks; a _furious_ pair of earrings, and in front, and around her, in the form of a scarf, rings, bracelets, etc. You think, no doubt, that emeralds on her brown hair would not look well, but you are mistaken. Her complexion is one of the loveliest brunettes ever seen, her throat white, and exquisitely beautiful.’

Soon the young Queen’s careless jollity received a blow, which embittered her. Charles hated and distrusted all French people; and the insistence of Marie Louise in making companions of her French maids annoyed him exceedingly; and the lives of the two maids whom she liked best were made intolerable to them to such an extent that they had to leave. The Queen was in despair, but protested and wept in vain: the two Frenchwomen were made to understand that they had to go; and when their mistress summoned them one morning she was told that they had departed from the palace for good, leaving her with only two French servants, a nurse and a maid. As usual in her trouble, she summoned Mme. Villars, who found her lying down. ‘She rose at once. It is truly surprising how beautiful she has grown. She wore her hair tied up in great curls on her forehead, with rose-coloured ribbons on her cap and on the top of her head; and she was not plastered over with rouge, as she is generally obliged to be. Her throat and bosom admirable. She slipped on a French dressing-gown, which she wore for the rest of the day. She stood thus for a short time regarding herself in a great mirror, and the view seemed to revive her. Her eyes looked as if she had been weeping much. As soon as she began to speak to me the King entered the room, and it is the rule in such cases for the ladies all to leave, except the Mistress of the Robes and some servants. I heard cards asked for, and I concluded that the Queen was going to be bored to death with the little game that the King is so fond of, at which, if you have very bad luck, you may lose a dollar. The Queen always plays it as if she was enraptured with the occupation.’

The loss of two of her French attendants drew Marie Louise ever closer to Mme. Villars, who was a person of mature age, but, to her later regret, she gradually lost some of the reserve that at first she had considered prudent in her communications with the Queen. Mariana smiled upon the constant companionship of her daughter-in-law with the French ambassadress, but she must have known, for she was experienced and clever, that it would end in disaster to Marie Louise, whose future depended upon pleasing her husband and becoming purely Spanish. The Queen did her best to keep the affection of Charles, who, in his own way, was desperately in love with her, and on occasions when he had to leave her for a day or two she affected desperate sorrow at his absence so cleverly as to arouse the admiration of Mme. Villars for her good acting.

But, though she kept the King in alternate fits of maudlin devotion and despairing rage at her capricious flouting of all the rules and traditions of his Court, he himself was politically a cypher, and the policy always favoured by Mariana slowly but surely gained ground, whilst the French interest grew weaker; and Marie Louise, in spite of her uncle’s indignant reminders, raised no finger to help the cause she had been sent to Spain to champion. If Mariana ever had quarrelled with the Emperor, as Villars thought, the breach was patched up now, and the Austrian ambassador, Count de Grana, an old friend of Mariana’s, came to draw closer than before the family alliance. And yet Mariana ostentatiously abstained from any governmental action, whilst all went in the way she wished.

The first open sign of a return to the old policy of religious unity and the Austrian connection was the holding of the greatest _auto de fe_ that had taken place in Madrid for half a century, in June 1680. The Plaza Mayor was transformed at a vast expense into a great theatre; all its hundreds of windows were filled with the aristocracy of Spain, and the high roofs of the houses crowded with people to see the dreadful show. All the inquisitors in Spain had been summoned, and the pulpit, the great tribune for the judges, the platform for the bishops, and the fronts of the barriers and balconies were covered with costly tapestries and rich hangings for the occasion. Eighty-five grandees and noblemen were proud to act as familiars of the Holy Office, and a picked corps of 250 gentlemen served as soldiers of the faith, to guard its ministers, and each to carry a faggot for the devilish bonfire at the gate of Fuencarral after the _auto_ was finished.

All day long, from early morning till four in the afternoon, the King, with Marie Louise and Mariana, sat in the principal balcony of the Panadería, the centre house in the great square, whilst 120 poor wretches in sambenitos, with ropes round their necks, gags in their mouths, and other insignia of shame, were condemned after innumerable ceremonies, sermons and rogations, to the tender mercies of the law condemning heresy. Charles swore again on the gospels to defend and promote the Catholic faith as held in Spain; and when the dread sentences were pronounced, the captain of the Inquisition Guard entered the royal balcony, bearing upon his shield a faggot, which was presented to Charles and the Queen, the former of whom returned it to the holder, saying: ‘Take it in my name, and let it be the first cast upon the fire to burn heretics.’ The French ambassador and his wife were obliged to be present, for those who did not attend were looked upon with suspicion; but they, and all the world, knew that this atrocious scene meant the growing power of the traditional ideas connected with Austrian friendship and the certainty at no distant period of a renewal of the war with France.

Paltry questions of diplomatic precedence and privilege, the haughty encroaching spirit of Louis XIV., and the utter abandonment of even current affairs by the Spanish government, under lazy Medina Celi, widened daily the breach between France and Spain. Villars and his wife, according to the evidence now before us, appear to have misunderstood entirely who were their real friends and foes in the palace. Mariana was all amiability to them, constantly urging that the ambassadress should be much with Marie Louise, and openly disapproving of the harsh manners of the Duchess of Terranova, who was always, says Villars, abusing the French and turning the King’s dislike to his wife’s countrymen into unreasoning hatred. The ambassador therefore believed that the Duchess was really the enemy of the young Queen and the French interest; but it is unquestionable that in the then state of feeling in Spain, the only hope for Marie Louise was to keep as far away from her own countrymen and women as her Mistress of the Robes desired. Marie Louise, thoughtless as she was, naturally considered this tyrannical and hard. On one occasion a French half-witted beggar came to her carriage door, and the Queen, speaking French to him, threw him some alms; whereupon the King was so enraged that he insisted upon the beggar being arrested, examined and expelled the country. Another day the King and Queen in their coach passed in the street some Dutch gentlemen dressed in French style, whose carriage, according to etiquette, had drawn up whilst the royal equipage passed. The strangers were on the left side of the street, and consequently were nearer the Queen than the King, and in their salutations addressed their respects to her. Again the King made a violent jealous scene, and caused a grave reprimand to be addressed to the Dutchmen, who were forbidden ever to salute the Queen again.

In the spring of 1680, on a disputed question of etiquette, the King took away some of the diplomatic privileges of the French ambassador, and the Duke of Orleans wrote to his daughter the Queen, asking her to speak to her husband about it. When Marie Louise did so, Charles sulkily told her to mind her own business, and not to speak to him on such affairs. She pressed her point, however, and he replied: ‘They will recall this ambassador, and send me another gabacho instead.’[306] Some months later, whilst Mme. Villars was on one of her frequent visits to the Queen, the King, who had taken a special dislike to her, and often listened behind the arras to the conversation in the hope of detecting an indiscretion, broke out from his hiding-place in insulting abuse of the ambassadress. Villars lays all this trouble at the door of the Duchess of Terranova and the Marquis of Astorga, the Queen’s master of the household, both appointed by Don Juan, and praises Mariana to the skies for her gentleness to Marie Louise, and her desire that she should have her own way and see as many French people as she liked.[307]

After a time the Duchess of Terranova, finding that the harshness of her methods, contrasting with the gentleness of her opponents, was destroying her influence, softened her manners to some extent, and went so far as to rebuke the King—even to scold him—when he said unkind things to his wife about her countrywomen, but her desire to mould Marie Louise into the traditional Spanish Queen never ceased, and if her advice had been followed, unpalatable and cross-grained as it was, the unhappy girl would have been saved much of her misery. Every small device that the King could adopt, Villars says on the advice of the Duchess, was brought into play to separate the Queen from French influence. She was kept so short of money that most of her beloved horses, which she was not allowed to ride, and their French grooms, had to be sent back to France, all her French men servants, even her doctor, were dismissed, though he, from his name (Dr. Talbot), would seem to have been an Englishman.

In this wretched existence Marie Louise grew callous. She took no pains even to be civil to the Spanish grand dames who visited her, or to pretend to care a jot for the eternal comedies and visits to convents that were the only amusements allowed her. She played for hours every day at spilikins with the King; ‘the worst company in the world, and he never had any one with him but his two dwarfs.’ She was careless and buxom, and found some little pleasure in attending to her birds,[308] but nothing else; for she had neither brains, nor ambition, nor ideas, worthy of her rank. Secretly all she longed for was to return to France as a widowed Queen, to enjoy herself as she liked without fear.[309] Her one delight was the visit of Mme. Villars, who sang French airs with her, or played whilst the Queen danced a minuet, or chatted about Fontainebleau and St. Cloud. ‘I do not know,’ says Mme. Villars, ‘what passes in her breast and in her head to keep her up so, but, as for her heart, I believe that nothing passes there at all.’ In these words the witty Frenchwoman aptly sums up the character of the Queen, doomed to this life of gloomy dulness by the side of a semi-imbecile. She had left her heart behind her in the land she loved, and her existence now was carelessly epicurean.

The political intrigues went on around her unheeded, and she had not wit enough to see the traps laid for her. The Duchess of Terranova was always dour and disagreeable, but her desperate attempts to alienate the Queen from all memory of France had now made her specially disliked by her mistress, whilst Mariana and her friends ostentatiously sided with the young Queen, and deprecated the severity of the Duchess. Incited by them Marie Louise determined to get rid if she could of the rough old lady who was really her only friend, and spoke first to her confidante Mme. Villars about it. The ambassador and his wife were as deeply resentful of the old Duchess, who hated French people, as was the Queen, and were delighted to hear the project for getting rid of her, but Mme. Villars counselled prudence; for she knew how flighty and unstable the Queen was. The Duchess, she said, was very clever, and such a change as that suggested was without precedent in Spain: besides, the Duchess had been later somewhat more civil than before; nevertheless, if the Queen really wished for a new mistress of the Robes she must begin by mentioning the matter to the King, and the Prime Minister, so that the affair might be settled before a word of it reached the ears of the Duchess.

Marie Louise used all her witchery that same night when she broached the subject to her husband. He answered her, as she said, more sensibly than she had expected, and told her that, if really the Duchess made her so unhappy, they would make a change; but it was a serious matter, and she must recollect that no second change would be possible. Marie Louise then approached Queen Mariana, and found her apparently cool and indifferent about it, to an extent that somewhat discouraged the young Queen, who little understood that there was nothing that her mother-in-law desired more than the removal of the only salutary check upon her conduct. But Medina Celi, the Prime Minister, whom the imperious ways of the old Duchess had offended, lent eager ear to the suggestion when, by the aid of the Villars, it was opened to him. Marie Louise, by the advice of Madame Villars, asked that the Duchess of Medina Celi might be her new Mistress of the Robes, but that lady declined absolutely. Then the Marchioness of los Velez and other great ladies were suggested; and when Marie Louise consulted Mariana upon each one in turn, the old Queen remained cold and aloof, and even had excuses, and good words to say about the Duchess of Terranova.

But when there was a talk of the Duchess of Albuquerque, then Mariana took an interest in the matter at once, and agreed with Medina Celi that she would be an ideal person for Mistress of the Robes. But, of all the ladies at Court, the Duchess of Albuquerque was the one that Marie Louise disliked most. She might struggle as she liked, however, she soon found that without Mariana’s goodwill no one could gain a footing in the palace, and she was almost tempted to beg the Duchess of Terranova to stay by her side, especially as the King himself was opposed to the Duchess of Albuquerque. It ended, of course, in Mariana having her way. She bullied her son into making the appointment, and into dismissing the people who, she said, had ruled him for a year, the Duchess of Terranova and his friend Eguia. Unbending to the last, the old Duchess, when she took leave of the Queen, noticed that the latter was crying now that the parting had come, and she told her that it was not proper for a Queen of Spain to weep for so small a matter. Marie Louise, half regretting the change now that it was too late, asked the Duchess of Terranova to come and see her sometimes. ‘I will never set foot in the palace again, as long as I live,’ replied the proud lady, violently banging the table and tearing her fan to bits; and she went forth in high dudgeon, refusing all the honours and rewards offered to her.

With her departure the outlook for Marie Louise changed like a charm. The new Mistress of the Robes had always been considered as austere as her predecessor, for which reason the young Queen had feared her. But she came to her new office all sweetness. The Queen was allowed to sit up until half-past ten at night, an unheard of thing before; she might mount her saddle horses and ride whenever she pleased, as no previous Queen Consort had ever done, and the King, on the persuasion of his mother and the new Duchess of the Robes, positively urged his wife to divert herself in pastimes that had previously been rigorously forbidden.[310] The change in the King was extraordinary, and proves the complete domination of his mother over his weak spirit when she pleased to exert her power. Mme. Villars happened to visit the Queen two days after the Duchess of Albuquerque assumed office; and as she entered the Queen’s apartment Marie Louise ran smiling up to her in joy, crying: ‘You _will_ say yes to what I am going to ask you, will you not?’ The demand turned out to be that, by the King’s special wish, Mme. Villars’s daughter should enter the Queen’s household as a maid of honour; and Marie Louise, at the idea of having a French girl of her own age always near her, was transported with delight. The appointment was sanctioned and gazetted, but never took effect, for Villars could not afford to endow his daughter sufficiently well, and relations soon grew bitter again; but that Charles, who hated the French, and especially Mme. Villars, should ever have consented to it proves how complete the sudden change of scene was.

Encouraged by her new liberty, Marie Louise began to take a keener interest in public affairs, always playing, as can now be clearly seen, the game of those who were bent upon her ruin. Medina Celi had been cleverly diverted by Mariana, who had been ostensibly friendly with him, whilst the councils and secretariats had been gradually packed with her friends; and Marie Louise, prompted by her, took the opportunity of the opposition offered by the minister to the stay of the Court at Aranjuez, to set her husband against Medina Celi, after which, both she and her mother-in-law, into whose hands she played, both worked incessantly to undermine the minister who was already unpopular, owing to the terrible distress in the country and his own ineptitude. The minister and his henchman Eguia, and the King’s confessor, retaliated effectively by sowing jealous distrust between Mariana and her daughter-in-law, and between the King and his wife and mother; and thenceforward complete disunion existed between them all. Mariana, in disgust at her son’s weakness, and knowing that events were tending her way, stood aloof for a time; Marie Louise went her own gait, making no friends and possessing no party; and the inept Charles, alternately petulant and sulky, distrusted everybody.

Villars writes of Marie Louise at this juncture: ‘She, with her youth and beauty, full of life and vivacity, was not of an age or character disposed to enter into the views and application necessary for her proper conduct. Her bent for liberty and pleasure, the memories of France and all she had left behind her there, had made Spain intolerable to her. The captivity of the palace, the ennui of idleness without amusement, the coarse low manners of the King, the unpleasantness of his person, his sulky humour, which she increased frequently by her lack of amiability towards him, all nourished her aversion and unhappiness. She took interest in nothing, and would take no measure, either for the present or the future; and so, putting aside all that Spain could give her, she only consoled herself with the idea of returning to France. She entertained this idea, encouraged by predictions and chimeras which formed her only amusement, for everything else bored her.’[311]

In her despairing knowledge that she could never hope for happiness in Spain, Marie Louise thus grew reckless. She had no ambition to rule except in the heart of the man she loved; she was not clever enough to succeed in the subtle political intrigues that went on around her; she knew now that motherhood was hardly to be hoped for with such a husband as hers, and her one thought was of the joy of living in France. As the political relations between France and Spain grew constantly more strained and Charles’s detestation of Frenchmen increased, the visits of Mme. Villars to Marie Louise perforce grew rarer, for the suspicious King had got into his head that the French ambassadress was serving as an intermediary in the palace intrigues which were setting everybody by the ears. Marie Louise made matters worse by turning to her widowed nurse Mme. Quantin, and her inferior French maid. Quantin was a greedy, meddlesome woman, of low rank, who put up her influence over the Queen for sale, and soon embroiled matters beyond repair.

The Queen, under the influence of this woman, lost what little discretion and prudence she possessed. The many poor French people in the town, to whom Quantin and the other French maids were known, would congregate beneath their apartments in the palace to gossip of France, tell the news, and perhaps to beg for favours; and Marie Louise would sometimes be imprudent enough to approach the windows and exchange words with her countrymen below. Spaniards who saw it—for jealous eyes watched the Queen always—cried shame upon such a derogation from the dignity of Spanish royalty, and the scandalmongers of the capital already began to whisper that the ‘Frenchwoman,’ who would not play the part properly, and gave no signs of motherhood, might be put aside in favour of another Queen. In the Calle Mayor, a punning verse passed from hand to hand reproaching her for her sterility, and demanding in ribald rhyme that she should either give an heir to Spain, or return whence she came; and thus, as war loomed ever nearer between her two countries, the lot of the unhappy Queen grew darker.

Villars began to see that he had been misled in condemning the hard rule of the Duchess of Terranova, and aiding the Queen to gain the freedom advocated for her by the amiable Mariana. ‘It was a great misfortune for the Queen,’ he wrote, ‘who now abandoned herself without restraint to a dangerous line of conduct, and it is quite a question, judging by results, whether the hard severity of the Duchess of Terranova was not better for her than the weak complaisance of the Duchess of Albuquerque.’[312] The poor misguided girl had not a single friend. Mariana kept away; for things were going admirably from her point of view; and a new alliance between Spain and the empire and other powers, against the threatened encroachments of France, was already being discussed in secret.

The Minister, Medina Celi, had succeeded, by means of Eguia and the King’s confessor, in re-establishing his position by arousing the jealousy of all the three members of the royal family against each other; and he sought further to isolate and discredit Marie Louise by whispering to the King that her friend Mme. Villars was engaged in political intrigue with the Queen to the detriment of Spain. Mme. Villars had been specially authorised to visit the Queen as much as possible, and report fully all she heard for the information of the French government; but it is certain that she had no political mission. Charles, however, was childishly jealous of her because his wife liked her, and he instructed the Marquis de la Fuente, his ambassador in France, to demand the recall of Villars in consequence of his wife’s indiscretion. Louis XIV. knew his kinsman well, and the real reason for his demand: but it was part of his policy just then to reassure the Spanish King, and Villars was sacrificed. In the ambassador’s letter of recall, Louis writes, after saying that Charles had complained of the intrigues of Mme. Villars: ‘It is useless to inform you of all the details ... it will suffice to say that, for many reasons affecting my service, I have not thought fit to refuse the King of Spain this mark of my complaisance, however satisfied I may be of the services you have rendered in the post you occupy.’

Both Villars and his wife disdained to justify themselves by a single word, and the ambassadress left Madrid in the summer of 1681, to the despair of Marie Louise; whilst Villars himself was replaced by another ambassador early in 1682. By this time the empire was at war with France. Louis had captured Strasbourg, and Casale in Savoy on the same day (30th September 1681), and Germany seemed almost at the mercy of the now dominant power in Europe. The imperial ambassador at Madrid, supported strongly by Mariana, was striving his utmost to draw Spain into the great war that seemed inevitable, and Holland and England, jealous of the aggression of France, were for a time apparently willing to join Spain. But the clever diplomacy of Louis diverted the powers from the alliance, except the empire and bankrupt Spain; and the sorely reduced Flemish dominion of Spain was again invaded by French troops. Luxembourg, which belonged to Spain, was besieged, the cities of Dixmunde and Courtrai were captured (November 1683), and with every fresh victory of the French, Louis became more exacting. Finally, when the unfortunate country could resist no longer, the government of Charles was forced to accept the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Ratisbon in June 1684, by which Luxembourg, the well-nigh impregnable fortress, was lost to Spain for ever, whilst Louis also kept Strasbourg, Bovines, Chimay, and Beaumont. Other smaller potentates, like the Elector of Brandenburg and the Regent of Portugal, following the example of the great Louis, hectored Spain into degrading concessions, whilst pestilence swept through the south, floods ruined Spanish Flanders, hurricanes sank the silver fleets, upon which the government of Charles largely depended, corruption lorded over all in stark desolate Spain; and the cretin King, growing more feeble in mind and body, mumbled his prayers, or played childish games with his wife or his dwarfs.

During the war, which further despoiled the land of her adoption, the lot of Marie Louise was truly pitiable. Even before it broke out, and during the period of acrimonious recriminatory claims which followed the recall of Villars, her isolation and impotence and the growing power of Mariana were plainly evident. In the instructions given by Louis XIV. to his new ambassador, Vanguyon,[313] in 1682, the latter is instructed to visit the Queen-Mother first, with all sorts of amiable messages, and Marie Louise is only to be addressed ‘in general terms,’ and asked to do her best to maintain good relations between the two countries. Mariana, indeed, with the imperial ambassador, Mansfeldt, constantly at her side, had by the mere force of circumstances and her own character gradually again become the principal controlling power of the State, and, as usual, she directed her influence not to the benefit of Spain but to the aid of the empire in its secular struggle against the encroachments of France. When the war, as already mentioned, broke out (1683) with France, the underhand intrigues of Mariana and the Austrian faction to discredit Marie Louise and destroy any political influence she might have over her husband, were powerfully aided by the general feeling against everything French; and the young Queen, without a single friend near her, was more sorely beset than ever by her relentless enemies, whilst she, perplexed with intrigues that she did not understand, surrounded by people who would willingly have followed her if she had had wit enough to lead them, threw away her chance by the frivolity and imprudence of her behaviour.[314]

She managed, it is true, by her charm and beauty to keep her husband deeply in love with her in his maudlin fashion, but, weak as he was, she failed to influence him politically.[315] She had already offended Medina Celi and played the game of the Queen-Mother against him—for he had been a friend of Don Juan—by interfering with his appointments for the benefit of her nurse, the widow Quantin; and now, at the very period when Mariana had determined that the prime minister, who had failed to pay her full pension, and who alone stood between her and supreme power, should be dismissed, Marie Louise again foolishly threw her influence with her husband against the oft-threatened minister. Medina Celi, overwhelmed by his unpopularity and the insuperable difficulties of his task, was brusquely dismissed by the King in June 1685; and thenceforward Mariana was supreme. The new minister, the Count of Oropesa, was clever and active, and at first made sweeping financial reforms: but he was really the tool of the Austrian faction, which, before many months had passed, negotiated the League of Augsburg, which bound together Spain, the empire, Sweden, Bavaria and other powers, against the encroachments of Louis XIV.; and again poor, ruined Spain was pledged to enter, if called upon, into the central European war.

For the moment Louis was not prepared to meet all Europe in arms, and his views with regard to Spain had become somewhat changed. It was by this time evident that Marie Louise would bear no child to her degenerate husband, and Mariana and Mansfeldt were already preparing to put forward the claims to the succession of the children of the Empress (the Infanta Margaret, daughter of Mariana), whilst Louis XIV., making light, as he always did, of the renunciation signed by Maria Theresa on her marriage (already referred to), was determined to show that his own son, the Dauphin, had the best right to be King of Spain if Charles II. died without issue. When, therefore, the new French ambassador, Feuquière, went to Spain early in 1685, he was instructed to talk seriously, and in secret, to Marie Louise on the subject.[316] He was to tell her that she would be wise to desist from all political intrigue directed to the change of personnel of the government, and so to gain the goodwill of the ministers and obtain a firmer hold over the King. This advice came too late, for she had foolishly connived at Medina Celi’s fall before Feuquières could deliver his message. This, however, was only the first step; and in the following year Father Verjus was sent to Madrid with money and instructions to aid Feuquière in gaining friends and forming a party under the ægis of Marie Louise to push the claims of the Dauphin to the Spanish succession.

In the meantime the Austrian party, under Mariana, were having their own way unchecked. Marie Louise was their sole stumbling-block, for the King would never willingly lose sight of her, notwithstanding her follies, of which her enemies made the most; and at the instance of Mariana and her Austrian backers a dastardly series of plots was formed for ruining the young Queen in the eyes of her husband. We get the first hint of them from a letter dated 12th April 1685 in the curious informal correspondence addressed by the Duke of Montalto in Madrid to the Spanish ambassador in London, Pedro Ronquillo, both of them partisans of Mariana: ‘A case of no little scandalousness has happened in the palace,’ he wrote. ‘You know, of course, that Mme. Quantin is the favourite of our Queen, and that M. Viremont, a Frenchman who takes care of the Queen’s saddle horses, is also well liked by her Majesty. By these means this man introduced himself so much into the palace with the Quantin woman, that, although she wears the dress of a duenna, and is neither young nor at all handsome, there was a talk of their getting married. Everybody laughed at such a courtship; but the matter went so far and the connection was so close, for both of them are cunning enough to get out when they liked, and perhaps he may have found means to enter her chamber in the palace, that the woman was recently taken out of the palace to the house of Donna Ana de Aguirre, who is in high favour with the Queen, and it is said that this Quantin woman gave birth to a boy there the other day.[317] This scandal has caused no end of murmuring and satires, so shameless some of them as to be incredible. What is quite as incredible is the irresolution of the King. Up to the present time nothing has been done, either to the man or the woman, and Viremont continues in his employment as if nothing had happened. They are married now; but if I had my way they should be burned. Yesterday the Quantin woman went to pay her respects to the Queen with as much effrontery as if she had not behaved thus. You can see by this the state the palace is in.’[318]

We can supplement this narrative from other sources. The French widow was the only person of her own tongue and country near Marie Louise, and, though she had been a dangerous companion, the poor Queen clung desperately to her. As soon as the rumour of her marriage spread the outcry for her punishment and expulsion was raised by the enemies of Marie Louise, and the Queen herself was attacked in dozens of spiteful couplets as having connived at immorality in her own apartments. The outraged Queen threw herself at her husband’s feet in an agony of tears, and implored him not to expel the only French woman-servant upon whom she could depend. Charles, moved by his wife’s tears, allowed Quantin to remain in Madrid, though not to sleep in the palace, and refused to believe the stories told him that Marie Louise had knowingly been a party to the irregularity of her servant.

This was to some extent a defeat for the Queen-Mother and her friends; but the scandal laid a foundation of distrust, upon which further attack might be based. This is how the Duke of Montalto speaks of the King’s concession to his wife. ‘I don’t know whether the Quantin affair is true or not; but it is publicly stated, and is the most dreadful scandal that ever happened in the palace. Medina, Oropesa and the Confessor, all urged the King to take some step, but to no purpose, for he preferred to give way to the tears and prayers of the Queen, rather than uphold the decency of his own household. So she has triumphed to such an extent that this woman, having married the rogue Viremont, has positively been brought by the Queen into the palace again to serve her, and goes home to her husband every night! Cases of this sort are surely enough to drive one crazy, and to banish all hope of better times. Since I have told you the story I must now tell you the sequel. As soon as they were married the woman went ostentatiously to the palace to salute the King, which he placidly allowed. The fine pair have now gone to Aranjuez with the Court, like people of quality, in one of the royal coaches. Medina Celi has thrown up everything and gone away in disgust. It is all the King’s fault, and such goings on as these will expose to the world our master’s tyranny and incapacity.’[319]

The further blow at the Queen was silently planned whilst the Court was at the spring palace of Aranjuez, where it usually stayed until Corpus Christi day. On the 12th May Charles fell suddenly ill, and much was made of the matter. Although, after bleeding, he was quite well on the third day, it was decided that he must immediately return to the capital. ‘What must be well borne in mind in all this’ (wrote an enemy of Marie Louise) ‘is that the Queen wanted to prefer her own pleasure to the health of her husband; for it was almost impossible to persuade her to come to Madrid. She said that the illness was nothing, and wished to keep the King there till Corpus Christi, notwithstanding the heat and danger. When she was not allowed to have her own way, she was cross and ill-humoured; as was clear when the King was confined to his bed, for she did not even go to see him. This is the more strange, as when the Quantin woman was to be bled she must needs go and visit her without ceremony. Neither I nor any one else can understand the strange things that are going on in that house.’[320]

This was written at the end of May; and some three weeks afterwards the plot ripened. A Frenchman named Vilaine, who is called by some authorities a discharged groom of Marie Louise, and by the Duke of Montalto the wax-chandler of the Queen-Mother, denounced Quantin and her husband for having plotted, with the knowledge of the Queen, to poison King Charles. The accused persons were at once arrested, and a carefully prepared hue and cry was raised against all Frenchmen. Many foreigners were attacked and some killed in the streets; the French embassy had to be surrounded by troops, and the whole Court was in a panic. Charles was a coward and miserably weak, but he stood by his wife as well as he knew how at this period of trial. Marie Louise, indignant and outraged at what she knew was a vile plot against her, demanded that the accusers should also be arrested; but before this could be done, Quantin and her husband, the French maids and others, were put to the torture; and the poor woman, with both arms broken and her lower limbs crippled for life, still maintained her innocence and would confess nothing.

The Queen’s few Spanish friends were put into close confinement. No evidence whatever could be wrung from any of the accused to support the charge against them: but the Council of Castile, packed now with the Queen-Mother’s partisans, still continued to regard the matter as a serious menace to the King’s life, and frightened poor Charles nearly out of what small wits nature had given him. In a French news letter of the time (19th August 1685) the political aim of the proceedings is exposed. ‘The Council of Spain desires to involve the Queen in the accusations, because they fear her influence over the King, and he has not sufficient strength to resist the ministers who propose to appoint commissaries for the Queen. She has written to her father, saying that she has no French person now near her, nor any one else whom she could trust. She is, she says, in daily fear of being poisoned, and she refuses to eat what they provide for her, which has cast her into great weakness. She will only eat with the King and from his dishes. Vilaine, they say, is to be rewarded and sent to an employment in the Canaries. The French ambassador is not allowed to speak with the Queen; and the Venetian ambassador was nearly murdered, because they thought he was French. When the King is with the Queen the ministers are all in the wrong, but when they are with him he changes his mind.’[321]

Quantin and all the French people about the palace were expelled the country, when no atom of proof could be found against them, and Charles, apparently alarmed at the threats of Louis XIV., that if any harm came to Marie Louise he would avenge her by war in Spain itself, was emphatic in his repudiation of any suspicion on his part against his wife. He assured Feuquières that he regarded his wife’s interests as his own, and never believed for a moment in her guilt: and he assured the Duke of Orleans that, not only did he not know that the accused French people had been tortured, but that when he asked for a copy of the whole of the proceedings in the case, his Council had assured him that the records had all been burnt. In vain, however, did the French government insist upon the punishment of the accusers. The King might promise and strive, but there were others stronger than he; and Vilaine was spirited away and rewarded.

Another news letter in the same French collection as that justed quoted does not hesitate, a few months afterwards, when the whole matter was known, to say: ‘Although the Quantin affair is now a thing of the past, it is nevertheless worth recording that the Count of Mansfeldt, the imperial ambassador and his wife, to please the Queen-Mother, originated the accusation against the woman. She was made to suffer the cruel tortures she did in order to injure the young Queen, who was so outraged at it, and the King as well, that the imperial ambassador is forbidden the palace, except on the business of his embassy.’

Mariana’s friends looked upon it in a very different light. Whilst still the accusation was hanging over Marie Louise, Montalto wrote to Ronquillo in London: ‘Quantin and her husband, and all the Frenchmen in the Queen’s stable, with her bob-tailed horses, have all been packed off to France. They were a lot of rascals, and the cost of her stable was a calamity. They were all guilty, but as none of them would confess under torture, they could not be further proceeded against. People are talking very scandalously about such shameful laxity. Quantin’s young niece[322] was sent out of the palace late at night, so that not a single French person should remain. But the Queen’s tears and prayers soon fetched her back. This is perfectly odious and disgraceful, and one can only have contempt of so easy going a King, who will not let even justice take its course if his wife says nay.’ A few weeks afterwards, the same courtier says: ‘The Queen is still implacable at the loss of her Quantins, and the King so excessively loving (not to call it by another name) of his wife, that all his concessions to her, which ought to make her more submissive to him, makes her humour worse, and the temper that God gave her causes no end of trouble as it is; for it is the most extravagant ever seen.’[323]

The French servants of the Queen, her only solace, all except the girl Duperroy, had been sent away; but still Marie Louise personally had held her place in the King’s affection. No sooner, however, had the Quantin affair fallen a little into the background, than another stab more wicked still was aimed at the Queen by the same hands out of the darkness. There was a foolish, vain, French exon of the guard, the Chevalier Saint Chamans, who had commanded Marie Louise’s escort when she travelled to the Spanish frontier. As was not unusual in the French Court at the time, Saint Chamans was pleased to profess a far-off amorous worship of the lovely Princess; and it is quite probable that during his attendance upon her, she may have smiled in raillery at his silly languishing airs. In any case, the talk of his adoration reached Madrid; and in the autumn of 1685, some miscreant in the capital of Spain wrote two letters as from the Queen in a forged hand imitating hers, to Saint Chamans, containing expressions to the highest degree compromising of her honour. Saint Chamans, like the love-lorn fool that he was, showed the letters to his chums, and Louis XIV. soon learnt of their existence, and what is more extraordinary, believed them to be genuine. In sorrow and severe reprobation, he wrote to Feuquières, directing him to show the letters to the Queen, which he did in September.

Marie Louise, outraged at the mere suspicion, and indignant at so cruel a hoax, rose for once majestic and dignified in her wrath. She scribbled a burning repudiation of the letters which she handed to Feuquières for ciphered transmission to the King of France.[324] ‘It will not be difficult for your Majesty to imagine the affliction in which I am, at knowing that you suspect a person such as I of so unworthy a thing as this. I cannot avoid expressing my justified sorrow at seeing that your Majesty does not esteem at its true worth, as you should, conduct which is most regular, and which certainly is not of the easiest.... but as I am so unhappy as to have people near me here perfidious and abominable enough to use every effort to ruin me by pernicious inventions, I am not surprised that they should exert all their ingenuity to deprive me of the esteem of your Majesty.... Believe me, nothing is more false than that which you have thought of me, and my despair to see that your Majesty doubts for a moment my good behaviour, makes me, in this, stand apart from your counsel, and be myself alone; and I cannot think of the injustice your Majesty has done me without being beside myself with sorrow. Alas! I had made light of all my grief, believing that your Majesty, at least, thought well of me: but I see now I am marked for unhappiness, since your Majesty believes a thing of me which makes me shudder even to think of.... I am so jealous of my honour, and I love it so much, that I shall never do anything to stain it: and life itself is not so insupportable to me, either, that I should seek thus to lose it.... If I were in a more tranquil state, I should supplicate your Majesty to have pity upon this poor realm for my sake; but I dare not, though I think you will be good enough to recollect that I have the honour to be your niece, and that all my happiness depends upon you.... Believe me, too, when I say that I am prouder of being born a princess of your blood, than of the rank I hold in the world’: and so on, for several pages, the wronged and outraged Queen eloquently protests her innocence.

Thenceforward Marie Louise, though entirely without political influence—for the Austrian faction and the Queen-Mother were in that respect all-powerful—was unassailable in the affections of the poor man she had married. Her disregard of the ordinary Spanish etiquette, the free and easy _bonhomie_ of her demeanour, and the indulgence of her caprices increased as she felt more secure in the love of her husband; but she made no other use of her influence over him. No better series of pictures of the life in her palace can be found than in the vitriolic references to Marie Louise and her husband in letters already quoted of the Duke of Montalto. On the 30th August 1685, he writes that for months the Queen had not gone out in public, in which, he says, she was wise, particularly when the anti-French riots were taking place, as the mob might have attacked her. ‘They say again that she is pregnant, but there is not much belief in it, as the same thing has happened several times before. She had got up a very grand comedy for St. Louis’ day; but it had to be deferred, because of this pregnancy rumour, and not even the usual comedies in the palace were given for the same reason.’

On the 24th October of the same year, he records the removal of the Court to the Retiro: ‘which place the Queen is very fond of, because there she can enjoy her country sports, and especially ride about on horseback every afternoon. In order to have her horses nearer to her, she has had a place made for them near the large pond, where she goes every morning to visit them.’ A little later he remarks that everything in the palace is going to the dogs. ‘There is neither firmness nor stability enough to correct these follies of the Queen.’ In April 1686, the same writer says: ‘Things are in the greatest embarrassment for the government, owing to the fancies and caprices of the Queen; for nothing is done by any other rule than her whim.’ It appears that the presence of the Queen’s Spanish friend Señora Aguirre, who had been exiled at the time of the Quantin affair, was much desired by Marie Louise, and the latter demanded her return of the prime minister, Oropesa. He temporised for a time, but when she ordered him peremptorily to advise the King to recall the lady, he refused. ‘Well,’ said the Queen, ‘do not oppose it if the King suggests it.’ ‘Yes I will,’ replied the minister: whereupon Marie Louise went with tears and blandishments to her husband, and begged for the favour. For a time he held out; but at last gave way to the extent of ordering a decree of recall to be drafted and discussed. Oropesa protested, and Charles cancelled the decree. Another passionate outburst from the Queen followed, and in the end she had her way. ‘The coming of this woman (Aguirre) will be worse than all the devils together; worse than Quantin. Judge what a state we are in with this irresolution of our master. The advice of ministers and decisions of tribunals, all are powerless before the will of this woman (the Queen).’

The caprices of Marie Louise soon reached the ears of her uncle Louis, and he did, in May 1686, what he ought to have done years before, namely, to send a French lady of great position and experience, dependent upon him, to advise the Queen and keep her in the right way. The lady was a descendant of the royal house, the Countess of Soissons, and her mission was, if possible, to induce Marie Louise to turn her influence to political account for the benefit of France. Her task was almost hopeless from the first, and she failed, though she tried hard for a time; and in the last few weeks of the Queen’s life, when too late, was of some service to French interests.

‘The Queen’ (writes Montalto in May 1586) ‘is in the full force of her madness, dominating the King completely by cries and threats. He has not an atom of resolution, and no application at all. The day upon which the great council was held, when he would not attend, he went on muleback to the wild beast cages at the Retiro, and there he had the animals caught and counted, thinking more of this frivolity than if it had been some heroic action. This government of ours is nothing more than a boy’s school with the master away. No one respects anything, and each person does as he likes, whilst the Queen follows her whim or the last suggestion.’ On another occasion, when the Marquis of Los Velez was giving a representation of a sacred _auto_ on a holy day, Montalto records that ‘the Queen witnessed the show from a balcony in the passage, when she behaved herself so unrestrainedly as to shock people; and the actions of this lady really give rise to the idea that she is not in her right mind.’