CHAPTER XVIII
Termination of Condé’s military career—His retirement at Chantilly—His improvements of the château and estate—His son, the Duc d’Enghien (Monsieur le Duc)—Portrait of this prince by Saint-Simon—His tyrannical treatment of his wife—His singular habits—Malicious practical joke which he perpetrates on the Duc de Luxembourg—His amours with the Duchesse de Nevers, the Marquise de Richelieu, and the Comtesse de Marans—His natural daughter by Madame de Marans legitimated and married to the Marquis de Lassay—His lack of military capacity—His children—The education of his only son, the Duc de Bourbon, superintended by Condé—Marriage of the young prince to Mlle. de Nantes, elder daughter of Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan—The wedding-night—Conversion of Condé—His last illness—His death—His funeral oration by Bossuet—The Princesse de Condé remains in captivity—Her death.
Monsieur le Prince probably troubled himself very little about his unhappy wife’s feelings towards him. Having brought his military career to a triumphant close by restoring the fortunes of France in Alsace and driving the Imperialists across the Rhine, he had retired definitely to Chantilly, to spend the remaining years of his life in as much peace as his implacable enemy, gout, would permit.
In this delightful spot, his leisure was cheered by the society of all the celebrities of his time. There were to be met warriors, statesmen and ambassadors, divines and philosophers, poets, painters, scientists and wits. No general set out to join his army without coming to take leave of the great captain and discuss with him his plan of campaign; no distinguished foreigner visited Paris without paying homage at Chantilly; no author of repute published a book without sending a copy to the prince who was “thought the best judge in France both of wit and learning.”[218]
And so he grew old, honoured and adulated by all:
“Tranquille et glorieux
Il vit à Chantilly comme on vit dans les cieux.”[219]
Condé had a natural taste for gardening—even during his imprisonment at Vincennes he had amused himself by cultivating carnations—and his greatest pleasure in his declining years was to embellish the retreat which he had chosen for himself. In 1662, he had begun the enlargement of the park, and, under the direction of the celebrated gardener Le Nôtre, parterres were traced around the château, long alleys, bordered by trim hedges, stretching away into the forest began to make their appearance, and trees, shrubs, and rare plants were gathered from all quarters. But want of money imposed prudence, and it was not until some years later, when Monsieur le Prince’s finances were once more in a satisfactory condition, that the work took a wide scope. Then it was that Gitard constructed the grand staircase; that Mansart built the Orangerie, and commenced the Ménagerie; that the aqueduct which brought to Chantilly the water of the fountain of the Hôtel-Dieu-des-Marais was made; that the parterres were completed and new avenues pierced in all directions; that the fountains which “were silent neither day nor night”[220] were erected, and that Chantilly began to assume the appearance which it was to retain until the Revolution.
Condé, however, had another and more important occupation in his retirement than the embellishment of Chantilly.
One of the greatest disappointments of the prince’s life was his only son, the Duc d’Enghien, to whom, as we have mentioned, he was most tenderly attached. As a child, Monsieur le Duc—to give him his official designation—had been charming, but this early promise had unhappily not been fulfilled, either in appearance or in character; while, though he undoubtedly possessed great abilities, he was quite incapable of employing them to any useful purpose. Saint-Simon has drawn of him one of his most arresting portraits:
HENRI JULES DE BOURBON, DUC D’ENGHIEN (AFTERWARDS PRINCE DE CONDÉ)
FROM AN ENGRAVING BY N. POILLY, AFTER THE PAINTING BY MIGNARD
“He was a little man, very thin and slenderly made, whose countenance, though somewhat mean, was still imposing from the fire and intelligence of his eyes; while his nature was a compound as rare as could be met with. No man was ever endowed with a keener or more varied intelligence, which extended even to the arts and mechanics, and was joined to an exquisite taste. No man had a more frank or more natural courage, or a greater desire to shine; and, when he wished to please, he did so with so much tact, grace, and charm that it seemed spontaneous. Neither was any man more accomplished in invention and execution, in the pleasures of life, in the magnificence of fêtes, by which he often astonished and delighted in every conceivable way. But, then, no man had ever before so many useless talents, so much futile genius, or so lively and active an imagination, solely employed to be his own curse and the scourge of others. Abjectly and basely servile, even to lackeys, he scrupled not to use the lowest and paltriest means to gain his ends. Unnatural son (to his mother), cruel father, terrible husband, detestable master, pernicious neighbour; without friendship, without friends—incapable of having any—jealous, suspicious, ever restless, full of artifices to discover everything and to scrutinize all (in which he was unceasingly occupied, aided by an extreme vivacity and a surprising penetration); choleric and headstrong to excess, even over trifles, never in accord with himself and keeping all about him in a tremble, he caused the unhappiness of every one who had any connection with him. To conclude, impetuosity and avarice were his masters, which monopolized him always. With all this, he was a difficult man to resist, when he brought into play the pleasing qualities he possessed.”
To his unfortunate wife, Anne of Bavaria, he was a veritable tyrant. She was ugly, virtuous, and stupid, a little deformed, and not very clean in her person; but this did not hinder him from being furiously jealous till the end of his life. Nor were her piety, the unwearying attentions she lavished upon him, her gentleness, and her novice-like submission able to protect her from frequent insults, and even from blows and kicks. The poor woman was hardly allowed to call her soul her own. “She was not mistress even of the most trifling things; she did not dare to propose or to ask anything. He would make her start on a journey the moment the fancy took him, and often, as soon as she was seated in the carriage, he would make her descend again, or return from the end of the street, and recommence the journey after dinner or the next day. Once this kind of thing lasted for fifteen days running, before a journey to Fontainebleau. At other times, he would summon her from church, and make her leave High Mass, and sometimes would even send for her when she was on the point of receiving the Communion; and she would be obliged to return on the instant and defer her Communion until another occasion. This he did, not because he wanted her, but merely to gratify his whim.”
He was always uncertain in his movements, and had four dinners prepared for him every day: one in Paris, a second at Écouen, a third at Chantilly, and a fourth wherever the Court might be at the moment. But the expense of this arrangement was not so great as might be supposed, for the menu consisted merely of soup and half a chicken roasted upon a croûton of bread, the other half serving for the following day. He rarely invited any one to dine with him, but, when he did, no one could be more courteous or more attentive to his guests.
He delighted in practical jokes, generally of an extremely malicious kind, of which the following will serve as an example:
DIANE GABRIELLE DE THIANGES, DUCHESSE DE NEVERS
The Duc de Luxembourg,[221] son of the celebrated marshal, had a young and pretty wife,[222] who suffered, like a good many other ladies about the Court, from excessive sensibility, a fact which was “known to everybody in France except her husband.” On the occasion of a visit of the Court to Marly, both M. de Luxembourg and his consort were invited to take part in a masquerade. Monsieur le Duc undertook to provide the former with what he declared to be a highly original costume, and, since he enjoyed the reputation of being a great authority on such matters, his offer was gladly accepted. Thereupon the malicious prince proceeded to array his unconscious victim in various fantastic garments, which he crowned with a gigantic pair of antlers, which almost touched the candelabra. Thus attired, he was conducted into the ballroom, where, by a sudden shifting of his mask, his identity was quickly revealed. When the company perceived who it was who was thus parading the emblem of a deceived husband, a great shout of laughter rang through the room, which redoubled when the luckless Luxembourg, mistaking the hilarity which his appearance aroused for a tribute to the originality of his costume, bowed repeatedly.
In his youth, Monsieur le Duc, like most of his family, was very much addicted to gallantry. When his affections were engaged, nothing cost too much, and “he made some amends for a shape which resembled a gnome rather than a man.”[223] “He was grace, magnificence, gallantry personified—a Jupiter transformed into a shower of gold. Now, he disguised himself as a lackey; another time, as a female vendor of articles for the toilette; anon, in some other fashion. He was the most ingenious man in the world.”[224]
Among the great ladies who smiled upon him was the lovely and fascinating Gabrielle de Thianges, who became, in 1670, the wife of the Duc de Nevers, the brother of the famous Mancini sisters.[225] “Few women,” says Saint-Simon, “have surpassed her in beauty. Hers was of every kind, with a singularity which charmed.” And he declares that when she died, at the age of sixty, she was “still perfectly beautiful.”
If we are to believe Madame de Caylus, the duchess, after the fall of her aunt, Madame de Montespan, had, at that lady’s suggestion, made an attempt to capture the affections of the King, “in order to keep the royal favour in the family,” and that it was only upon the failure of this intrigue that she resolved to content herself with Monsieur le Duc. But, whatever may have been the lady’s feelings towards him, Monsieur le Duc was desperately enamoured of her, and the fertility of resource which he displayed and the sums he appears to have expended in order to enjoy her society were really astonishing.
Voltaire asserts, in a note to the first edition of the Souvenirs of Madame de Caylus, that, for the purpose of entering secretly into the apartment of the duchess, he had bought the two houses on either side of the Hôtel de Nevers. Saint-Simon goes much further and says that, to conceal their rendezvous, “he rented all the houses on one side of a street near Saint-Sulpice, furnished them, and pierced the connecting walls.” If we are to believe this anecdote, the Maréchal de Richelieu must have been but a feeble plagiarist when, many years later, he adopted a similar means of entrance into the Palais-Royal and the Hôtel de la Popelinière.[226] But since Saint-Sulpice, though close to the Hôtel de Condé, was a long way from the Hôtel de Nevers, we must confess that we do not quite see how such operations were to bring Monsieur le Duc to the side of his beloved. Perhaps, however, Saint-Simon intends us to understand that, in order not to excite the least suspicion, the prince was in the habit of entering a house at one end of the street, and the lady one at the other extremity, and of meeting in the middle. Any way, it seems rather a tall story, even for Saint-Simon.
Despite so many precautions, the Duc de Nevers scented treason, and resolved to escape it by the procedure which he usually adopted in such circumstances, namely, by carrying his wife off to Rome.[227] “M. de Nevers,” writes Madame de Caylus, “was in the habit of setting off for Rome in the same way as any one else would go out to supper; and Madame de Nevers had been known to enter her carriage in the persuasion that she was only going for a drive, and then to hear her husband say to the coachman: “To Rome.” In time, however, the lady began to know her husband better and to be more on her guard against him, and happening to discover his intention of taking her upon another of these sudden journeys, she promptly warned her lover and begged him to devise some means of averting, or, at any rate, of postponing, their threatened separation.
Now, the Duc de Nevers, like all the Mancini, had a very pretty turn for verse-making, of which he was inordinately vain, and nothing delighted him more than to hear his poetical effusions recited before an appreciative audience. Aware of this little weakness, Monsieur le Duc resolved to lay a trap for him, into which he felt convinced he could not fail to fall. But let us listen to Madame de Caylus:
“Monsieur le Prince,[228] equally fertile of invention as reckless of expense whenever his tastes or passions were concerned, judged, from the knowledge he possessed of the character of M. de Nevers, that he might easily divert him from his intended expedition, by affording him an opportunity of employing his talent and exercising his passion for making verses. He proposed, therefore, to give a fête to Monseigneur[229] at Chantilly. The invitation was given and accepted, when he hastened to M. de Nevers, informed him of the entertainment, and, pretending that he was in a great difficulty about the choice of a poet to write the words of the divertissement, begged him, as a favour, to find him one. Upon which M. de Nevers offered himself, just as Monsieur le Duc had foreseen. To conclude, the fête took place—it cost more than one hundred thousand crowns—and Madame de Nevers did not go to Rome.”
Thus Madame de Caylus. But Saint-Simon gives another version of this story, according to which the laugh, at the last, was on the side of M. de Nevers:
“The Duc de Nevers, all jealous, all Italian, all full of intelligence that he was, had never conceived the least suspicion of this fête, although he was not ignorant of the love of Monsieur le Prince for his wife. However, five days before it took place, he ascertained the reason why it was being given. He said not a word about it, but started for Rome the very next day with his wife, and remained there for a long time; and, in his turn, scoffed at Monsieur le Prince.”
Another grande dame whom the duke honoured by his attentions was the Marquise de Richelieu,[230] a lady whom Saint-Simon mentions, “because she is not worth the trouble of being silent about.” According to the same chronicler, he fell madly in love with this siren, and “spent millions upon her, and to keep himself informed of her movements.” One fine day, he discovered, to his profound indignation, that he had a successful rival in the person of the Comte de Roucy. He reproached the marchioness bitterly with her treachery, and, though she assured him that she had been cruelly maligned, he had her so closely watched that very soon the charge was brought home to her beyond any possibility of denial. In vain, did the culprit entreat his forgiveness; in vain, did she swear by all that she held sacred that Roucy’s love was as nothing to her in comparison with his, and that she would never see him again. The infuriated prince refused to be placated and turned to leave her. Then the fear of losing so prodigal a lover “suggested to the marchioness an excellent expedient for setting his mind at rest.” She proposed to give Roucy a rendezvous at her house, and that some of Monsieur le Duc’s people should lie in wait; and, when the count appeared, make away with him. But, instead of the success she appears to have expected from this very Italian proposal,[231] the prince was so horrified that he immediately sent to warn Roucy, and never saw Madame de Richelieu again.
A third inamorata of Monsieur le Duc, of whom we should have perhaps spoken before, since she was one of the loves of his youth, whereas his liaisons with the Duchesse de Nevers and the Marquise de Richelieu belong to his riper years, was the widowed Comtesse de Marans, often mentioned in the letters of Madame de Sévigné, who speaks of her with unusual bitterness, owing, it is believed, to some disparaging remark which she had once let fall concerning the writer’s beloved daughter, Madame de Grignan. The countess was an extremely pretty woman, but the most inconsequent and extravagant creature in the world. According to Madame de Sévigné, she had been heard to declare that she would rather die than surrender herself to a man whom she loved; but, if a man loved her and she did not find him altogether odious, she would be willing to yield. Whether or no she loved Monsieur le Duc, she surrendered herself to him, and, in 1668, presented him with a daughter. The girl was at first known as Mlle. de Guenani, which is the anagram of her father’s duchy of Anguien (the old orthography of Enghien). But, in 1692, she was legitimated, and took the name of Julie de Condé, Mlle. de Châteaubriant. Brought up at first at Maubuisson, she was later sent to the Abbaye-aux-Bois, from which retreat, however, she occasionally emerged to pay visits to her relatives at Chantilly or Saint-Maur. At this time, there seems to have been some idea of her taking the veil, but she was so pretty, intelligent, and amusing, that it was eventually decided that she should remain in the world, and, in 1696, she married the Marquis de Lassay, a middle-aged widower, celebrated for his amorous adventures, who had been for some time past desperately in love with her. The bride received a dowry of 100,000 livres, as well as 20,000 livres for the expenses of her trousseau; while Lassay was appointed the King’s lieutenant in the Bresse. It is to be feared, however, that the amorous marquis had reason to regret his bargain, for, if gossip does not lie, before she had been married a week, the lady had provided herself with a lover.
Many and grave as were the faults of Monsieur le Duc, it is probable that Condé would have suffered them with comparative equanimity if his son had inherited in any degree his own genius for war. But, singularly enough, with all the intelligence and quickness of perception which he displayed in other directions, Enghien never showed the smallest aptitude for his father’s profession. “So great a warrior as Monsieur le Prince,” writes Saint-Simon, “was never able to make his son understand the first principles of the art of war. He made this teaching for a long time the principal object of his care and study. His son tried to do the same, but was never able to acquire the slightest aptitude for any portion of the art, although his father concealed nothing from him, and was constantly explaining all that relates to it at the head of his army. He always took him with him, and endeavoured to give him a command near himself, of course, in order to counsel him. This plan of instruction succeeded no better than the others. Finally, he despaired of his son, gifted though he was with such great talents, and ceased his endeavours, with what grief may be imagined.”
In fairness to Monsieur le Duc, however, it should be mentioned that, if he had inherited none of his father’s military genius, he had at least inherited his valour, and, on more than one occasion, he displayed conspicuous courage. Thus, at the sanguinary battle of Seneffe (11 August, 1674), when Condé’s horse had been killed under him, and the prince had been thrown with great violence to the ground, Enghien threw himself before him, and was himself wounded in assisting him to rise.
Of nine children whom Anne of Bavaria had borne the Duc d’Enghien, four daughters and a son had survived.[232] The boy, Louis, Duc de Bourbon, was in his eighth year when Condé retired definitely to Chantilly, and Monsieur le Prince, in the hope of developing in the son the qualities which he had not found in the father, and of perhaps living to see him rise up and continue the glorious traditions of the family, desired to direct his education himself. Monsieur le Duc, whose time was fully occupied by his duties at the Court, and who still retained his former habits of submission to his father’s will, consented; and Condé decided to have his grandson educated on the same system which had proved so successful in his own case. Established at the Petit-Luxembourg, with his gouverneur Deschamps,[233] his tutors the Jesuit Fathers Alleaume et du Rosel, and one of Monsieur le Prince’s equerries, Le Bouchet, who directed his physical exercises, the young duke attended the courses of the Collège de Clermont, passing his vacations at Chantilly, whither his tutors always accompanied him.
All the masters and professors under whom the boy studied were vigorously seconded by Condé, who maintained with them an almost daily correspondence, while he was continually exhorting his grandson to apply himself to his studies. The Duc de Bourbon, however, though he was not without ability, was incurably indolent, and, despite all the efforts of his teachers and the reprimands of Monsieur le Prince, his progress both at the Collège de Clermont and at Louis-le-Grand, to which he was transferred when he was fourteen, was most disappointing. It was evident that Condé had not taken into sufficient consideration the great difference in temperament between himself and his grandson, and that a system which had produced such splendid results in his own case was quite unsuited to this idle, pleasure-loving lad.
The duke was accordingly removed from college, and, on the advice of Bossuet, Condé decided to keep him under his own eye at Chantilly, and to entrust the rest of his education to La Bruyère and the distinguished mathematician Sauveur. This plan worked excellently for some months, and Monsieur le Prince was full of hope; but, unfortunately, the Duc d’Enghien, to whom the possession of the royal favour was of infinitely more importance than anything else in the world, considered that the time had now arrived to bring his son to the notice of the King and initiate him into his duties as a courtier, and desired that he should pay occasional visits to Versailles. These visits, which, on some pretext or other, were frequently prolonged far beyond the limit which Condé had fixed, naturally did not make for the young gentleman’s progress in his studies, for, though his tutors always accompanied him, he soon became so absorbed in the pleasures of the Court that they thought themselves fortunate if they could obtain from him an occasional hour of distracted attention. La Bruyère was in despair and appealed to Monsieur le Prince, who remonstrated vigorously with Enghien. “Your son,” he writes, “will become a very good huntsman, but ignorant of everything that he ought to know. It is for you to remedy it, and to think of his life, his health, and his good education. I beg you to consider it, and not to wait to remedy it until it is too late.”
Condé and Enghien were, however, at cross-purposes; the one wished to form a man, a prince, a captain; the other thought only of making his son an accomplished courtier. That the hope of the Condés should be an invariable guest at Marly was in the latter’s eyes a more desirable thing than that he should command armies; that he should secure the reversion of the governments and offices which had been bestowed upon his father was of more importance than that he should inherit his grandsire’s fame.
It must be admitted that Enghien was indefatigable in his endeavours to further what he conceived to be the interests of his son. “With the prudence and calculation of an officer experienced in sieges, he pursued his plan, seeking to take possession of all the avenues which could conduct him to the heart of the King; hunting and shooting-parties, masquerades, ballets, fêtes at Marly, served him as approach-works; a direct attack that he was preparing could not fail to assure for his son the royal favour.”[234]
This “direct attack,” which was delivered in June, 1684, on the occasion of the visit which Louis XIV. paid to Chantilly, on his return from the siege of Luxembourg, took the form of demanding for the Duc de Bourbon the hand of Mlle. de Nantes, the elder of the King’s two surviving daughters by Madame de Montespan, who had celebrated her eleventh birthday a few days previously. To the intense joy of Monsieur le Duc, it was completely successful, and his Majesty graciously consented to bestow the hand of his legitimated daughter on the heir of the Condés. Owing, however, to the tender age of the young lady, the arrangement remained a secret for some months, and it was not until the following April that it was made public.
This was not the first alliance between the fruit of le Grand Monarques amours and the Princes of the Blood. In January, 1684, Condé’s nephew and ward the young Prince de Conti[235] had espoused Louise de la Vallière’s daughter, Mlle. de Blois, on which occasion, we learn from Madame de Sévigné that Monsieur le Prince, who had always clung to the bygone fashion of moustaches and a chin-tuft, astonished the Court by appearing clean-shaven, with his hair curled and powdered, and a justaucorps adorned with diamond buttons.[236] But, although Condé approved of the marriage arranged for his grandson, he was far from approving of the latter interrupting his studies to take upon himself conjugal responsibilities. However, such was the Monsieur le Duc’s impatience to see the young prince become the son-in-law of the King that he ultimately withdrew his objections, and Louis XIV. having also proved complaisant, the marriage was celebrated, in the chapel at Versailles, on 24 July, 1685.
So far as people were able to judge from features which were hardly yet formed, the twelve-year-old bride gave promise of being very pretty; and this promise was duly fulfilled. As much could not be said for the bridegroom. Both the Duc and Duchesse d’Enghien were short, though of no unusual diminutiveness, but their son was almost a dwarf,[237] and a very ugly one to boot, with an abnormally large head, an unwholesome complexion, and a surly expression.
The union of these two marionettes, as the Marquis de Sourches calls them, was celebrated with extreme magnificence, and “the Great Condé and his son left nothing undone to testify their joy, just as they had left nothing undone to bring about the marriage.”[238] The King secured to the duke the reversion of all the offices held by his father and gave him a pension of 90,000 livres, and to his daughter one of 100,000 livres.
In the evening, the happy pair proceeded to the pretended consummation of their marriage, without which the ceremony through which they had just passed would not have been considered binding. In the presence of the King and all their relatives, they entered a state bed, where they remained for half an hour, the Duchesse d’Enghien standing by the bridegroom’s side, and Madame de Montespan by that of the bride. This solemn farce terminated, they separated, not to meet again for several months, except in the presence of witnesses; and the Duc de Bourbon went back to his interrupted studies, which Monsieur le Prince had insisted on his continuing.
LOUIS III, DUC DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ (CALLED MONSIEUR LE DUC)
FROM A CONTEMPORARY PRINT
The year which saw the marriage of the Duc de Bourbon marks a very important event in the life of his grandfather. The religious instruction of Condé had been as thorough as the other branches of his education, and, in early youth, he appears to have been as orthodox a Catholic as any one could desire, and even to have shown some degree of fervour. However, his life of war and pleasures soon brought indifference, and the society of fashionable freethinkers, like Saint-Évremond and the celebrated Princess Palatine, combined with the difficulty he experienced in reconciling the doctrines of the philosophers whose works he was fond of studying with the theological teaching of the time, raised doubts in his mind which eventually led to a very pronounced form of unbelief. At the same time, he declared himself to be always open to conviction of his errors, and one of his favourite occupations in his later years was to engage in theological discussions with Bossuet, the Oratorian Malbranche, and other eminent divines.
The death of his beloved sister, Madame de Longueville, who, in April, 1679, crowned twenty-seven years of penitence and good works by a truly Christian death, at which Condé was himself present, made a profound impression upon him, and he was even more impressed by that of his old friend, the Princess Palatine, who, after declaring that the greatest of all miracles would be her conversion to Christianity, had for the last twelve years been leading a life of almost equal devotion. From that time, the discussions between Condé and Bossuet became more frequent, and little by little the prince began to surmount the obstacles which barred his return to the fold.
It was, however, a Jesuit, Père des Champs, formerly a fellow-pupil of Condé at Bourges, who was to finish the work which the great bishop had begun. At the beginning of Holy Week, 1685, the prince summoned him to Chantilly; for several days they remained closeted together, after which Condé descended to the chapel and received the Sacrament, in the presence of all his Household. Some weeks later, he communicated publicly at the Church of Saint-Sulpice, in which parish the Hôtel de Condé was situated.
For some time past Condé’s health had been such as to occasion grave anxiety; his attacks of gout were becoming more frequent and more severe, and he was often so feeble that he was unable to walk without assistance. When, at the end of May, 1686, although in great pain, he insisted on coming to Versailles to attend a Chapter of the Ordre du Saint-Esprit, at which the cordon bleu was to be bestowed on the Duc de Bourbon and the Prince de Conti, the fatigue which the journey and the ceremony entailed exhausted him to such a degree that, according to Sourches, those present “expected every moment to see him die.”
Towards the middle of the following November, news reached Chantilly that the little Duchesse de Bourbon had been taken seriously ill with small-pox at Fontainebleau, where the Court was then in residence. Notwithstanding that he was again suffering from the gout, Monsieur le Prince at once ordered his coach and set off for Fontainebleau. On the road he met the Duc de Bourbon and his eldest sister, Mlle. de Condé, whom the King had sent to Paris, so that they should not be exposed to the contagion. Alarmed at their grandfather’s appearance, they endeavoured to persuade him to turn back, but he insisted on continuing the journey. Arrived at Fontainebleau, he shut himself up with the Duchesse de Bourbon and “rendered her all the cares not only of a tender father, but of a zealous guardian.”[239] The girl, however, grew worse, and Louis XIV., on learning of his daughter’s danger, wished to come and see her. “Monsieur le Prince,” writes Madame de Caylus, “placed himself at the door to prevent him entering, and there ensued a great struggle between parental love and the zeal of a courtier, very glorious for Madame la Duchesse.” The writer adds that the King, being the stronger, went in, notwithstanding Condé’s resistance, but, according to other chroniclers, his Majesty was so touched by his cousin’s zeal for his safety that he ended by allowing him to have his way.
Soon after this incident, the Duchesse de Bourbon’s illness took a turn for the better, and at the end of a fortnight she was pronounced convalescent. Condé’s presence was no longer necessary; but the change in his manner of life, the sleepless nights, the fatigue and the anxiety he had endured, had been too much for an old man whose constitution was already so shattered, and it was evident that his days were numbered. He had expressed a wish to die at Chantilly, and it was hoped that it might be possible to gratify it. But, on the morning of 10 December he became much weaker, and was warned that it was time to think of the Sacraments. He desired that Père des Champs should be summoned from Paris, and, turning to Gourville, observed: “Ah well! my friend, I believe my journey will be a longer one than we thought. But I wish to write to the King.” And, after a vain attempt to write himself, he dictated to his confessor, Père Bergier, a letter to Louis XIV., to implore his pardon for the Prince de Conti, who had been for some time in disgrace and seemed likely to remain there.
In the middle of the night, feeling worse, he made his confession and received absolution from Père Bergier, Père des Champs not having yet arrived, and at daybreak the curé of Fontainebleau brought him the Viaticum. Shortly afterwards, Monsieur le Duc arrived with the news that the King had, on his own initiative, pardoned the Prince de Conti, for the letter which Monsieur le Prince had dictated the previous day had not yet been despatched. This intelligence was a great relief to Condé, who caused a few lines to be added to the letter, thanking his Majesty for his kindness and assuring him that he should now die content.
Conti and Père des Champs arrived a little later, and, with the Duc and Duchesse d’Enghien, remained with him to the end, which came very peacefully between seven and eight o’clock in the evening. “No one,” wrote the British Ambassador, the Earl of Arran, to his Government, “ever died with less concern, and he preserved his senses to the last minute.”
After lying for some days in the mortuary chapel at Fontainebleau, which had been transformed into a chapelle ardente, the body of Condé was conveyed to Valery and interred in the family vault. His heart was deposited in the Jesuit church in the Rue Saint-Antoine. “In carrying to the same place the heart of my uncle, the Comte de Clermont,” writes his great-grandson, “I had an opportunity of seeing all the hearts of our ancestors, which were deposited there, enclosed in silver-gilt cases; and I remarked (as did also those who accompanied me) that the heart of the Great Condé was nearly double the size of all the others.”[240]
On 10 March, 1687, a solemn service was held at Notre-Dame. The funeral oration, pronounced by Bossuet, is generally considered the masterpiece of that famous preacher, and is the greatest of all the tributes rendered to the memory of Condé.
“At that moment” (during his last hours), exclaimed the orator, “he (Condé) extended his consideration to the most humble of his servants. With a liberality worthy of his birth and of their services, he left them overwhelmed with gifts, but still more honoured by the proofs of his remembrance.” But for the woman who had so gloriously borne his name, who had so uncomplainingly shared his misfortunes, Condé, on his death-bed, had not a word of tenderness, of gratitude, or of pardon. Nay, if we are to believe la Grande Mademoiselle, on the morrow of his masters death, Gourville carried to Louis XIV. a letter written some time before, to be given him after that event, in which Condé entreated the King never to allow the princess to leave her prison at Châteauroux.[241]
However that may be, Claire-Clémence never quitted that gloomy fortress, either living or dead; for, when she died, after surviving her husband more than seven years (18 April, 1694), she was interred in the Church of Saint-Martin, which lay within the precincts of the château. “No member of her illustrious family appears to have attended her obsequies, and doubtless the twelve poor people whom she had had the charity to maintain out of her meagre allowance, with some Capuchins from the neighbouring convent, were the only persons who came to pray over the grave of her who, for her misfortune, had become “the very high, very excellent and puissant Princesse de Condé.”[242]