Among the different versions of this catastrophe, Laroque asserts that, after an absence on a long journey, on De Rancé’s return, he called at the Hôtel Montbazon, and then learned, for the first time, the death of the Duchess; that he was shown into her room, where, to his horror, the headless body lay in its coffin. The head had been cut off, either because the lead coffin was not made long enough or for the purpose of an anatomical study. Some assert that De Rancé took the head, and that the skull of the woman he loved so well was found in his cell at La Trappe. History, however, will not accept this romantic incident.
Touching the fate of De Rancé’s rival—when Louis XIV. returned to Paris in 1652, the Duke de Beaufort submitted to the royal authority, and took no further part in the civil war, which the Prince de Condé carried on for several years longer. Later, the Duke obtained the command of the royal fleet. In 1664 and 1665, he was at the head of several expeditions against the African corsairs. In 1666 he commanded the French men-of-war ordered to join those of Holland against England. Finally, in 1669, he went to the aid of the Venetians, attacked by the Turks in the island of Candia. The galleys and vessels, newly constructed in the port of Toulon, disembarked seven thousand men under Beaufort—a contingent too weak for such a dangerous undertaking. That aid only served to retard the taking of Candia for a few days, and was the means of useless bloodshed. In a sortie, the rash and impetuous grandson of Henry the Great was cut to pieces in the most merciless way; and as his body could not be found after the fight, his death gave rise to fables sought to be rendered probable by the remembrance of the eccentric part he had previously played.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The same sentiments were thus versified by Loret, when announcing that the Duchess had obtained permission to return to Court:
“Montbazon, la belle douairière,
Dont les appas et la lumière
Sous de lugubres vêtements
Paraissent encore plus charmants....”
CHAPTER V.
MADEMOISELLE DE MONTPENSIER.
Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, Duchess de Montpensier, whom history distinguishes by the epithet of La Grande Mademoiselle, after telling us in her memoirs, at least twenty times, in order to make herself better known, that she was fond of glory, adds—“The Bourbons are folks very much addicted to trifles, with very little solidity about them; perhaps I myself as well as the rest may inherit the same qualities from father and mother.”[6] With this hint, whoever scans her portrait may readily read the character her features reveal:—a mind false to the service of a noble and generous heart; an honest but frivolous mind, too often swayed, by a bombastic heroism; a précieuse of the Hôtel Rambouillet, whom Nicolas Poilly very happily painted as Pallas, with her helmet proudly perched upon the summit of her fair tresses; an amazon, who bordered upon the adventuress, and, notwithstanding, remained the princess; in short, a personage at whom one cannot help laughing heartily, nor at the same time help admiring.