During the latter years of his life the eccentricity for which he had always been noted had become more and more pronounced, until at last, if Saint-Simon is to be believed, it was hardly distinguishable from madness. Calling one morning on the Maréchale de Noailles, at the moment when her bed was being made, and there only remained the counterpane to be put on, he paused for a moment at the door, and then, crying out in a transport of delight: “Oh! le beau lit, le beau lit, qu’il est appétisant!” he took a flying leap on to the bed and rolled over several times. Then he got down and made his excuses to the astonished old lady, saying that her bed looked so clean and so beautifully made that he had been unable to resist the temptation to roll in it.

It was whispered that there were times when he imagined himself a dog or some other animal, and Saint-Simon declares that “people very worthy of belief had assured him that they had seen the prince at the King’s coucher suddenly throw his head into the air several times running and open his mouth quite wide, like a dog while barking, yet without making a noise.”

He also began attending in a ridiculously minute manner to his diet, and insisted that everything he ate should first be carefully weighed. In the course of his last illness, which was a very protracted one, he suddenly announced that he was dead, and refused all nourishment, on the ground that dead men did not eat. The doctors were in despair, but, at length, they decided to humour him in his delusion that he had ceased to exist, but to maintain that dead men did occasionally eat. They offered to produce examples of their contention, and several men unknown to their illustrious patient were accordingly brought in, who pretended to be dead, but ate nevertheless. This trick succeeded, and for the remaining weeks of his life the prince consented to take food, but only in the presence of the doctors and his fellow-corpses.

As Monsieur le Prince grew worse, his wife summoned up sufficient courage to beg him to think of his conscience and to see a confessor. He angrily refused, and persisted in his refusal, notwithstanding her tears and supplications. As a matter of fact, he had been seeing Père de la Tour of the Oratory for some months past, though in the strictest secrecy. He had at first demanded that the reverend father should come to him by night, and in disguise. Père de la Tour replied that he would be quite willing to visit Monsieur le Prince under cover of darkness, but that the respect he owed to the cloth would not permit him to masquerade in the attire of a layman. After some hesitation, the penitent consented to waive this condition; but he caused the most elaborate precautions to be taken to prevent his visitor being recognized. He was admitted, at dead of night, by a little back door, where a confidential servant of the prince, with a lantern in one hand and a bunch of keys in the other, was waiting to receive him, and conducted to the sick-room along dark passages and through many doors, which were unlocked and locked again after him as he passed. Having at length reached his destination, he confessed Monsieur le Prince, and was then conducted out of the house by the same way and in the same manner as he had entered it. Similar precautions were observed on each of his subsequent visits.

Henri Jules de Bourbon, fifth Prince de Condé, died on 1 April, 1709, at the age of sixty-six. His last instructions to his son were to carry out all the improvements which he had projected at Chantilly, and to take care that none of the honours due to his rank were omitted at his funeral.

And so he passed away, “regretted by no one, neither by servants nor friends, neither by child nor wife. Indeed, Madame la Princesse was so ashamed of her tears that she made excuses for them.”[249]

The Duc de Bourbon, for he preferred to retain his old title, instead of assuming that which his grandfather had rendered so illustrious—an example which was followed by his son, and, a century later, by the last head of his House—did not live to carry out his father’s projects at Chantilly, since he survived him less than a year. He had been suffering for some time from continual pains in the head, “which tempered the joy he felt at being delivered from his troublesome father and brother-in-law.”[250] His mother, much alarmed, had besought him to think of his soul, and this he had promised to do, as soon as the Carnival and its pleasures were over and the fashionable season for penitence had arrived. On the evening of Shrove Monday (3 March, 1710), as he was driving home over the Pont-Royal from the Hôtel de Coislin, he was seized with a fit and carried in an unconscious condition to the Hôtel de Condé. Priests and doctors were speedily in attendance, but he never recovered consciousness, and died about four o’clock in the morning.

“Madame la Duchesse,” writes Madame de Caylus, “appeared infinitely afflicted by his death, and I believe she was sincere.” But the chronicler is careful to explain that this affliction was not caused by any love for the departed prince, but “because, since the death of the Prince de Conti, her mind and heart were occupied by nothing but ambition,[251] and Monsieur le Duc possessed all the qualities necessary to make her conceive great hopes in that direction.”

CHAPTER XX

Louis Henri de Bourbon-Condé—He assumes the title of Duc de Bourbon, instead of that of Prince de Condé, and is known as Monsieur le Duc—His personal appearance—He loses an eye by a shooting-accident—His military career—He becomes President of the Council of Regency on the death of Louis XIV.—His protection of John Law—His wealth—His character—His marriage with Marie Anne de Bourbon-Conti—Singular intrigue which precedes it—His indifference to his wife—His amours—The financier Berthelot de Pléneuf—Gallantries of Madame de Pléneuf—Saint-Simon’s portrait of her—Her daughter, Agnès de Pléneuf—Singular beauty and intelligence of this young girl—Violent jealousy which her mother conceives for her—Marriage of Agnès to the Marquis de Prie, who is soon afterwards appointed Ambassador at Turin—Her life at Turin—Disgrace and bankruptcy of Berthelot de Pléneuf—Financial straits of the de Pries—Madame de Prie comes to Paris to intercede with the Government on her husband’s behalf—Calumnies concerning her spread by her mother and her partisans—Her relations with the Regent.