“Il me tard, Madame, que je sois en état de vous embrasser mil fois pour toute l’amitié que vous m’avez temoigné, qui m’est d’autant plus sensible que ma conduite envers vous l’avoit peu méritée; mais je sçauray si bien vivre avec vous à l’advenir, que vous ne vous repentirés pas de tout ce que vous avés faict to me pour moy, qui fera que je seray toute ma vie tout à vous et de tout mon cœur.”
Poor Clémence de Maillé! how, at that first testimony of an affection which she had despaired of ever gaining, did her heart, so long pent up, burst forth with ecstatic delight! And how must Lenet, on witnessing that touching effusion of irrepressible rapture, have congratulated himself at not having persevered in his diplomatic prudence! She took the letter, shed tears over it, kissed it, read it over and over again, and tried to get it by heart—for she might lose it. Then she selected from her toilette her finest ribbon (a bright flame-coloured one), and sewed that precious missive to it, in order to carry it always upon her person, beneath her dress—upon her chemise, Lenet bluntly tells us, and who adds that that gush of delirious delight lasted until the morrow.
Alas! that warm ray was the only one that Condé, in his glory, let fall upon her, and it was but evanescent. The danger over, the prison opened, Condé restored to his honours and his power, she became once more the despised, alienated, humiliated wife. Mademoiselle, on meeting her again, asked whether it were true that she had taken part in that which was done in her name? On her return from Montrond (after the letter), she found her, it is true, plus habile; but she was shocked at the delight manifested by the Princess on seeing all the great world flock to visit her, so wholly forsaken as she had previously been, and she concluded that, being carried out of her normal condition, she thought too much of herself.
Then came humiliations the most cutting, and the deepest grief. Twice was she attacked by dangerous illness, from which it was asserted she could not recover. And each time that report was welcomed at Court as the joyous announcement of a marriage or a succession. Everybody busied themselves with finding another wife for the Prince; and some thought once more of Mademoiselle: “that rumour reached my ears,” says she, “and I mused upon it.” Unfortunately for her, the poor Princess recovered, and Mademoiselle had to wait for Lauzun. In another place she remarks somewhat spitefully, “Madame la Princesse arrived in better health than could have been anticipated; no one could have imagined that she would so soon recover.”
At length a tragic event, the consequences of which exhibit in a sinister light the perseverance of ill-feeling that had always been shown towards her in the family of which she had become a member, came to add itself to that almost unbroken chain of tribulations, outrages, and troubles amid which no sort of calamity seemed wanting. Two officers of her household took it into their heads to quarrel and draw swords upon each other. The Princess (she was then in her forty-third year—1671) placed herself between the angry combatants with the intention of separating them, and by so doing received a stab in her side. The individual who inflicted the wound was brought to trial. As for her,
“When she was cured, the Prince had her conducted to Châteauroux, one of his country-houses. She has been there kept for a long time imprisoned, and at present permission is only given her to walk in the court-yard, always strictly watched by the people whom the Prince always keeps about her. The Duke is accused of having suggested to the Prince the treatment to which his mother is subjected: he was very glad, it is said, to find a pretext for putting her in a place where she would spend less than in society.”[9]
Was it the hereditary avarice of the house of Condé which thus revealed itself in the odious sentiment of that unworthy son? Poor woman! Her only crime was that of being too liberal. She had, it is true, foolishly placed her diamonds in pledge at Bordeaux to support the cost of the war. But had she not, as a set-off to her prodigality, brought to the Duke d’Enghien and his father her share of Richelieu’s wealth? That prudent advice of the excellent son was followed: the Princess was still a prisoner at Châteauroux, when the Prince her husband died, in 1686; and by way of a precaution—which cannot be thought of without a shudder, giving as it does the measure of an implacable hatred—he recommended that she should be so kept after his decease. This once, Mademoiselle did find a word of pity for the persecuted wife and mother. “I could have wished,” says she, when speaking of the last moments of the Prince, “that he had not prayed the King to let his wife always be kept at Châteauroux, and I was very sorry for it....”
And it was there, doubtless, that she died in 1694, at the age of sixty-six. The collections of funeral orations and sermons of celebrated preachers of that day will be searched in vain for any funeral tribute to her memory. And a feeling of disappointment arises that Bossuet, in his panegyric of the hero, could not find a word of praise, of consolation, or even of pity for the ill-fated shadow he left sorrowful and abandoned by all, to bear his name in pitiless obscurity to the grave.
Mysterious destiny! strange fatality! which neither personal demerits, wrongs, nor faults justified, which neither love, devotedness, nor unfailing virtue, approved and respected even by the calumnious, could avert.