Towards midnight, fearing that she would soon be too weak to make herself understood, she expressed a wish to have a final conversation with her husband. “I am sure,” said she, “that the prince will not mind being awakened for this occasion, and it would not be well to wait until I could no longer declare to him the things that God has put into my heart.”
On the arrival of Condé, every one present withdrew out of hearing, and husband and wife conversed together for nearly an hour.
ÉLÉONORE DE ROYE, PRINCESSE DE CONDÉ
FROM A DRAWING BY AN UNKNOWN ARTIST
The end came at eight o’clock the following morning (23 July, 1564). Condé, who had quite broken down, had retired to his own room, and one of the Huguenot ministers, who had been with the princess in her last moments, came to break the sad news to him. Dissolute as his life had been of late years, his heart was not quite corrupted, and the grief which he experienced was accentuated by remorse for the pain which his infidelities had so often caused the devoted companion who had just been taken from him. Now, probably for the first time, he seemed to realize her worth, and nothing could have been more touching than the terms in which he spoke of her to his weeping children. “Strive, my darling,” said he to his little daughter, “to resemble your mother, that God may help you as He helped her, that every one may esteem you, and that I may love you more and more, as I shall surely do if you are as she was.” Then, laying his hand on the head of the Marquis de Conti, he added: “My son, you are the first pledge of the blessing and favour of marriage which God gave to your mother and myself. See that you always give me joy and consolation, which you will do if you follow in the footsteps of your mother in the way of virtue. Recognize the traces, for fear lest you go astray along the paths of the dangerous labyrinth of this world. Sons are usually like their fathers, but you must strive to copy the virtues of your mother. For you will be told things about your father and his life that you ought not to imitate, though there are other things in him that you must follow. But in your mother ... you will find nothing which is not worthy to be a treasured example, as she was worthy of a place in the foremost ranks of virtuous women.”[67]
Condé’s grief had, for the moment, exalted him, but his impressions were always more violent than lasting, and scandal was soon to be busy again with his name.
Scarcely had the grave closed upon Éléonore de Roye than all kinds of rumours were in circulation as to her probable successor, for no one doubted that a prince in the very prime of manhood and of so “amorous a complexion” would take unto himself a second wife with as little delay as need be.
It was said that the Maréchale de Saint-André was determined to have him; and the death of the little Mlle. de Saint-André, which had occurred at the Convent of Longchamps three weeks before that of Condé’s wife, whereby the little girl’s immense fortune passed to her mother, was freely ascribed to a diabolical crime on the part of the maréchale, in order to facilitate her union with the prospective widower.