Unhappily, this hope proved illusive, for Enghien did not depart from that studiously courteous but cold and distant attitude which he had adopted towards his wife from the first day of his marriage. The poor little duchess was bitterly disappointed, but she had schooled herself to suffer in silence, and courageously refused to allow the world to perceive how keenly she felt her husband’s neglect. Fresh trials, however, awaited her. Hitherto, she had, at least, had the consolation of believing that Enghien was still faithful to his marriage-vows, in deed, if not in thought, for the virtue of Mlle. du Vigean had proved a more impregnable fortress than Thionville, and his passion for her seems to have preserved him from the wiles of more facile beauties. But now even this was to be denied her. The moment it became known that Enghien had broken definitely with Mlle. du Vigean, the heart over which the latter had so long reigned supreme was fiercely disputed by the ladies of the Court, and the young hero became the object of the most singular advances. The majestic Duchesse de Montbazon,[193] the fire of whose splendid eyes “penetrated even the most insensible hearts,”[194] charged their common friend, the Duc de Rohan, to acquaint the prince with the sentiments which she entertained for him. Mlle. de Neuillant, afterwards Duchesse de Navailles, one of the Queen-Mother’s filles d’honneur, made similar overtures, with more diplomacy, but with equal ardour, and left no means untried to engage the affections of his Highness. But neither of these ladies appear to have made much impression upon their quarry, and it was a colleague of Mlle. de Neuillant, the charming Louise de Prie, Mlle. de Toussy, who came nearest to success. For some little time Enghien paid her the most assiduous attentions, and negotiations of a very equivocal nature were carried on between the prince and the damsel’s relatives, through the medium of the Chevalier de la Rivière. But, either because Mlle. de Toussy’s family was inclined to be too exorbitant in its demands upon Enghien’s generosity, or, more probably, because she herself was only willing to be a mistress in the poetic acceptation of the term, the ducal ardour soon cooled, and the young lady consoled herself for her admirer’s defection by marrying the Duc de la Mothe-Houdancourt.
But, if no woman were permitted to succeed to the place which Marthe du Vigean had occupied in Enghien’s affections, the ardent nature which he had inherited together with the courage of his ancestors soon found satisfaction in amours of a less sentimental character, and his life became so dissipated that, during the summer of 1646, the Prince de Condé felt obliged to remonstrate with him in the strongest terms. “My son,” he writes, “God bless you. Cure yourself, or, it is better to poniard yourself than lead the life that you are doing.... I pray God to console me. I write to you in despair, and am, Monsieur, your good father and friend....”[195]
The Duc d’Enghien did not poniard himself, but neither did he amend his ways to any appreciable extent. His conquests in the pays de tendre far outnumbered those beyond the Rhine, but the very ease with which they were achieved deprived them of all value in his eyes and speedily quenched the flame of passion: indeed, the only woman to whose charms he seems to have been really sensible was the celebrated Ninon de l’Enclos, to whom his attention seems first to have been drawn by the enthusiastic praises of their common friend Saint-Évremond. For a year or two the prince was a frequent visitor at Ninon’s hôtel in the Rue des Tournelles, and the lady, whose vanity was flattered by the admiration of the hero of the hour, was very kind to him indeed. But it was not in Ninon’s nature to be faithful to any one for long—“I shall love you for three months,” she once wrote to a new admirer, “and three months is an eternity!”—and, besides, the victor of Rocroi made war a great deal better than he made love, and preferred to receive homage rather than to offer it. So gradually her affection cooled, and when the prince, on his return from the campaign of 1648, reproached her for having encouraged the intrigue between his sister Madame Longueville and La Rochefoucauld, and for permitting the lovers to meet at her house, she dismissed him and consoled herself with the Marquis de Villarceaux, who had long sued for her favours.
At the beginning of December, the Prince de Condé, who had been in failing health for the last eighteen months, was taken seriously ill, and at midnight on the 26th he died, in his fifty-seventh year. He made, we are assured, a very Christian end, in the presence of his wife and his two sons—Madame de Longueville had followed her husband to the Congress of Münster—and “parted from Madame la Princesse as though he had loved her all his life.”[196] In his will, he left large sums to the poor, “deeming it incumbent upon him to restore the profits of the benefices that he had wrongly enjoyed,” and even the humblest of his servants was not forgotten. His body was interred in the parish church of Valery; his heart he bequeathed to the Jesuits of the Rue Saint-Antoine, an example which was followed by his descendants.
Morose and bigoted, self-seeking and avaricious, the third Prince de Condé is far from an attractive personality. Nevertheless, his death was a sensible loss both to his family and to France. Selfish and turbulent though his conduct had been during the regency of Marie de’ Medici, when once he had decided that his own interests would be better served by loyalty than by opposition to the Crown, he certainly spared no effort to deserve the important offices and immense pensions which were the reward of his fidelity; and the steady support he gave to Anne of Austria and Mazarin since the beginning of the new reign had been of the highest value to the Government. “As sparing of the King’s money as his own,” writes the Duc d’Aumale, “his ideas on financial matters were sound; he desired that the public debts should be regularly discharged, and opposed extravagance and the constant augmentation of expenses, as well as increased taxation. He inspired confidence in serious men of affairs, who never wished to conclude a treaty when he did not assist at the Council. The quack financiers, the d’Émeris and the rest, feared him and rejoiced at his death. They played a fine game after he was gone.”[197]
NINON DE L’ENCLOS
FROM A MINIATURE IN THE SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM
His authority over his family was absolute. His children, if they did not love him, both feared and respected him, and to the last Enghien, so impatient of all control, showed towards his father the greatest deference. Had Henri de Bourbon lived a few years longer, his sound common-sense would certainly have saved them from the disasters they brought upon themselves and France; and the Fronde might have been, after all, merely “a blaze of straw.”
Charlotte de Montmorency had the enjoyment for her life of the whole of her deceased husband’s property, subject only to an annual charge of 80,000 livres in favour of her elder son, and 10,000 in favour of the younger. This arrangement was no doubt a just one, seeing that the large fortune which his wife brought him had been the basis of Henri de Bourbon’s great wealth. But it, nevertheless, weighed very hardly on his successor, who had received comparatively little with Mlle. de Brézé, and, being as liberal as his father was the reverse, soon found himself seriously embarrassed to maintain his position as first Prince of the Blood, notwithstanding the revenues he derived from his offices and governments.