Il tenait dans ses mains et la mort et la vie:
Vos yeux se sont acquis les mêmes sur nous.”
Marthe du Vigean was a very different kind of girl. Modest and gentle, she hardly seemed to be aware of the admiration which she aroused:
“Sans savoir ce que c’est qu’amour
Ses beaux yeux le mettent au jour,
Et partout elle le fait naître
Sans le connoître,”
wrote Voiture. Unfortunately, no portrait of her, either painted or engraved, has been preserved, nor have we any detailed description of her among the writings of her contemporaries which can supply its place. But her beauty would appear to have been of a peculiarly appealing type, the reflection of a character gentle, pure and unselfish.
In love, it is said, people are most frequently attracted by those who least resemble them. However that may be, the haughty, vain, egotistical young Duc d’Enghien, for a moment subjugated by the more dazzling charms of Isabelle de Boutteville, to whose yoke he will return in years to come, speedily transferred his affections to this gentle, retiring maiden, for whom he conceived the one great and pure passion of his stormy life. The girl reciprocated his affections, and loved him with an intensity of devotion which never wavered for a moment to her life’s end. To her, this young prince, with his eagle glance and his fiery courage, was a veritable hero of romance, a seventeenth-century Bayard, “sans peur et sans reproche.”
Although not in the first rank of the French nobility, the Du Vigeans were high in favour at Court, and Madame du Vigean was one of Madame la Princesse’s most intimate friends. She was very rich and gave magnificent fêtes at her country-seat of La Barre, and Marthe was a considerable heiress. In ordinary circumstances, therefore, the Duc d’Enghien might not have despaired of obtaining his father’s and the King’s—that is to say, Richelieu’s—consent to the match, for the princes of the House of Bourbon had often sought their wives among the daughters of noble and wealthy French families. But, unhappily for the lovers, Monsieur le Prince had other views for his son, and had long since selected a wife for him.