The counsel of the more prudent members of the party was to leave things alone, and to trust to time. It proved a wise decision. Passions of this kind are more frequently nourished than overcome by opposition; while, on the other hand, the greater the facilities for enjoying the society of the enchantress, the more speedily do disillusion and lassitude arrive. After the first rapture of the reunion, Condé began to ask himself whether, after all, he was not acting very unwisely in quarrelling with his personal friends and jeopardizing his political future for the sake of a girl who had been the cause of so much scandal, and who, he had good reason to believe, had not even troubled to remain faithful to him. Isabelle, perceiving that the prince had not the least intention of regularizing their connexion, and mortified by the manner in which her name was being bandied about, began to regard Condé as the author of her misfortunes. Hence arose quarrels, tears, recriminations. Condé reproached Isabelle with her intimacy with Du Fresne and others. Isabelle retorted by accusing the prince of neglecting her for the Maréchale de Saint-André, to whom, in recognition of the gift of Valery, he had felt obliged to pay some fugitive attentions, and did not fail to take advantage of the opportunity which his acceptance of the maréchale’s calculating generosity afforded her for the exercise of her powers of sarcasm. Wit is a dangerous weapon for lovers to play with, and Isabelle’s was sharper than a two-edged sword.
At length, the situation became so unpleasant that Condé determined to put an end to it; and, towards the close of the spring, he broke of his own free will with Isabelle and was reconciled to the Protestants. They, needless to say, received the repentant prodigal with open arms and lost no time in setting to work to procure him a second wife. They found her in Mlle. de Longueville,[76] a young lady who joined to high rank and the profession of the Reformed faith considerable personal attractions, and, in September, Condé set off for Niort to obtain the King’s sanction to his marriage, “leaving the Maréchale de Saint-André dissolved in tears and regrets for having been so foolish as to consume her substance in vain expenses to acquire the quality of the wife of a Prince of the Blood.”
Catherine, though disappointed at the reconciliation between Condé and his party, was greatly relieved that the prospect of an alliance with the Guises had come to nothing; and Charles IX., on her advice, not only expressed his approval of the marriage, but authorized its celebration at the Court, according to the rites of the Protestant religion, where it took place on 5 November 1565.
The new Princesse de Condé was in many ways an estimable young woman, and the marriage, which was to be cut short by the prince’s tragic death three years later, appears to have been a happy one. She had, however, been very strictly brought up and was, moreover, of a decidedly jealous disposition, and she was determined not to permit the souvenirs of her husband to be dragged about France by his former mistresses. No sooner married, than, following the example of the Duchesse d’Étampes when she had supplanted Madame de Châteaubriand in the affections of François I., she imperiously demanded of the prince that he should require Isabelle to restore all the presents that he had made her; and Condé, who was one of those men who are quite incapable of resisting the caprices of the preferred of the moment, was mean enough to obey.
When the messenger sent by the prince informed Isabelle of the object of his visit, she flew into the most violent passion and made so terrible a scene that, had he not happened to be a Huguenot of a particularly inflexible type, he would doubtless have returned to Condé and reported the failure of his mission. As it was, he waited patiently until her fury had expended itself, and then repeated his request. The lady left the room and presently returned with a packet, in which she had placed all the jewels she had received from Condé and a portrait of the prince by a celebrated painter, the first token of his love that he had given her. Sitting down at the table, she placed the portrait before her and decorated it with an enormous pair of horns; and then contemptuously tossed it and the packet of jewels to the astonished messenger. “Take them, my friend,” said she, “and carry them to your master; I send him everything that he gave me. I have neither added nor taken away anything. Tell that beautiful princess, his wife, who has importuned him so much to demand from me what he gave me, that, if a certain nobleman—mentioning him by name—had treated her mother in the same way, and had claimed and taken away all that he had given her, she would be as poor in trinkets and jewels as any demoiselle of the Court. Well, let her make use of the paste and the baubles; I leave them to her.”[77]
It is to be hoped that Condé had the grace to feel ashamed of himself when his messenger returned; but since, in common with the majority of his contemporaries, he possessed a pretty thick skin, we are inclined to doubt whether such a reproof would have occasioned him more than a momentary vexation. Public opinion, we are told, however, judged him very severely, and declared that he had acted most ungenerously “in having despoiled this poor lady, who had honestly earned such presents par la sueur de son corps.”[78]
In one of his despatches, written soon after the rupture between the prince and Isabelle, Sir Thomas Smith announced that “the Prince de Condé had married la Limoel (sic) to a gentleman of his and given them 15,000 livres a year.”[79] The Ambassador had been misinformed, for Isabelle was still single at the time, nor was this project, if it really existed, ever realized. The lady, however, notwithstanding the notoriety of her relations with Condé and the criminal charge which had been brought against her, was not long in finding a husband.
There was at this time in Paris an Italian banker named Scipion Sardini, who, by the favour of Catherine de’ Medici, who appears to have dipped pretty frequently into his purse, had contrived to amass an immense fortune, and “from a little sardine had grown into a big whale.” He had recently acquired the estate and the beautiful château of Chaumont-sur-Loire and the title of baron to go with it, and desired to find a high-born damsel who would be willing to share his prosperity. Since however, high-born damsels were, for the most part, inclined to look askance at a suitor whose origin was shrouded in impenetrable obscurity, he cast his eyes in the direction of Isabelle, who, he judged, could not afford to be so fastidious; and laid his heart, his fortune, and his brand-new title at her feet. She condescended to accept them, and went to live at the sumptuous Hôtel Sardini, situated in the Quartier Saint-Marcel, at the corner of the Rue de la Barre. The union was not an unqualified success, for Isabelle’s misfortunes had soured her temper, and the pretentious parvenu whom she had married had good reason to regret that he had not contented himself with a more amiable, if less aristocratic, consort. A great lady still, despite her lost reputation, she never forgave her husband his lowly origin, and permitted no opportunity to pass of allowing him to see how much she despised him; and, whenever he had been so unfortunate as to displease her, which appears to have happened pretty frequently, she would remind the poor man of the honour which she, a woman of such noble birth, had done him in giving him her hand. To which Sardini would reply, not without reason: “I have done more for you; I have dishonoured myself in order to restore you your honour!” Then Isabelle would hurl at him a perfect volley of invective, until, fearing that it might be followed by missiles of a more substantial kind, he would fly from her presence and take refuge in his own apartments.
These perpetual quarrels, however, did not prevent this ill-assorted couple from having three children: two sons and a daughter, of whom the latter, Madeleine Sardini, is said to have inherited not a little of her mother’s beauty. Unfortunately, she appears to have inherited her quarrelsome disposition as well, as did her brothers, for, after their parents’ death, they went to law over the division of the Sardini fortune and provided the gentlemen of the long robe with some very pretty pickings.