286 MEMOIRS OF THE DUKE OF SAINT-SIMOK

woman to meddle with at Genoa ? She turned her thoughts,
therefore, towards Rome. Then, on sounding, found her course
clear, quitted Genoa and returned to her nest.

She was not long there before she attached herself to the
King and Queen of England (the Pretender and his wife), and
soon governed them openly. What a poor resource ! But it
was courtly and had a flavour of occupation for a woman who
could not exist without movement. She finished her life there
remarkably healthy in mind and body, and in a prodigious opu-
lence, which was not without its use in that deplorable Court.
For the rest, Madame des TJrsins was in mediocre estimation at
Rome, was deserted by the Spanish, little visited by the French,
but always faithfully paid by France and Spain, and unmolested
by the Regent. She was always occupied with the world, and
with what she had been, but was no longer; yet without
meanness, nay, with courage and dignity.

The loss she experienced in January, 1720, of the Cardinal
de la Tr6moille, although there was no real friendship between
them, did not fail to create a void in her. She survived him
three years, preserved all her health, her strength, her mind
until death, and was carried off, more than eighty years of age,
at Rome, on the 5th of December, 1722, after a very short
illness.

She had the pleasure of seeing Madame de Maintenon for-
gotten and annihilated in Saint Cyr, of surviving her, of seeing
at Rome her two enemies, Giudice and Alberoni, as profoundly
disgraced as she,—one falling from the same height,—and of
relishing the forgetfulness, not to say contempt, into which they
both sank. Her death, which, a few years before, would have
resounded throughout all Europe, made not the least sensation.
The little English Court regretted her, and some private friends
also, of whom I was one. I did not hide this, although, on
account of M. le Due d'Orleans, I had kept up no intercourse
with her; for the rest, nobody seemed to perceive she had dis-
appeared. She was, nevertheless, so extraordinary^ person,
during all the course of her long life, everywhere, and had so