The prince was faithful to the rendezvous, but the fair inconnue seemed disinclined to fulfil her promise; and it was only after many refusals and many protestations that she at length consented to remove her mask, and to reveal the adorable features of Madame de Prie, at sight of which Monsieur le Duc incontinently succumbed.
Such is the version of the affair which has found favour with the majority of historians. It is doubtful, however, if it is the correct one, and, any way, it is strangely inconsistent with the account given by Caylus—no friend, by the way, of Madame de Prie—of the repulsion with which the first solicitations of Monsieur le Duc inspired the object of his desires:
“However ambitious Madame de Prie may have been, when she saw herself on the point of surrendering to a man whose face was extremely repulsive, although he was rather well-made, she experienced a frightful repugnance, and was a hundred times ready to renounce her project.”
A more plausible explanation of the origin of this passion, which, owing to its consequences, belongs to history, is that Madame de Prie’s aunt, Madame de Séchelles, who was on friendly terms with Marie Anne de Bourbon-Conti, the first wife of Monsieur le Duc, and a frequent visitor at the Hôtel de Condé, brought her niece there; that Monsieur le Duc saw her and fell desperately in love with her, and that certain partisans of the House of Condé, who were anxious to find some intelligent woman capable of guiding the prince amidst the bewildering chaos of passions and intrigues in which he found himself, and of awakening in him those ambitions which they themselves had vainly endeavoured to arouse, persuaded her, weary as she was of the trials and humiliations of poverty and eager once again to possess the good things of life, to become his mistress.
What, however, is incontestable, is the completeness of her triumph. From the first hour until the time, six years later, when circumstances over which neither of them had any control came to force them apart, she dominated Monsieur le Duc entirely, and he adored her with an intensity of devotion of which no one had believed him capable. The Sabrans, the Nesles, the Polignacs and the rest were as entirely forgotten as if they had never existed; never was there so much as a whisper of a rival in his affections. He consecrated himself to her body and soul.
Nor is this a matter for surprise, since Madame de Prie was no ordinary mistress. Not only did she possess in a superlative degree all that could charm the senses, but she had intelligence, culture, and exquisite tact, and, she understood to perfection the art of pleasing. “She amused him, she distracted him, she showed a profound respect for his decisions, which flattered him in confirming him in the idea that he acted always on his own initiative. She never gave him advice except after being asked for it, and in subordinating it, in appearance, to the superior intelligence of her lover, although it was frequently her counsel which prevailed.”[257] Thus, she insinuated herself into the mind and heart of the prince and “disposed of him as a slave.”[258] Never did he dream of rebelling against his fetters, since he was barely conscious of them.
For a while, Madame de Prie gave herself up to the enjoyment of all the luxury and splendour with which her princely lover hastened to surround her with the zest which only a pretty young woman can feel who, after once being in a position to indulge all her caprices, has for several years been compelled to deny herself even the necessaries—or what the feminine mind considers the necessaries—of existence. She passed long delightful hours in the shops of fashionable couturiers and made extensive purchases, which, let us hope, Monsieur le Duc paid for in hard cash, and not in the notes of his protégé Law’s unfortunate bank. She visited the ateliers of the artists, of whom she had in former days been a generous patron, and commissioned a portrait of herself from Van Loo, and another from Rosalba, whom she had patronised at Turin, and who had just completed a pastel of Madame de Parabère. Arrayed in ravishing toilettes and blazing with diamonds, she did the honours of the Hôtel de Condé, of Chantilly and of Saint-Maur, for, very opportunely for her, the unloved wife of Monsieur le Duc had, after a long and painful illness, recently departed to another world, leaving the field quite free for the sultana. And she profoundly troubled the salons by launching an entirely novel method of arranging the hair, which became her à merveille, but caused serious inconvenience to some of the fashionable dames who felt constrained to adopt it.
But, after some weeks, she was obliged to give her mind to more serious matters. The “elevation” of a petite bourgeoise, daughter of a fraudulent financier and of a woman universally despised, to be the favourite of a prince who stood so near the throne and might even one day ascend it, had not taken place without exciting the most rancorous jealousy and hatred. Chansons, venomous satires, slanders, calumnies, rained upon her, until, if she had been a more sensitive woman, she might well have been driven to the verge of despair. She was charged with having led a life of debauchery from her earliest youth; of having bewitched Monsieur le Duc by initiating him into vices imported by her from Italy and hitherto unknown in France; of having ruined her husband by her scandalous extravagance; of having treated an unselfish and devoted mother with the most outrageous cruelty and ingratitude. She learned that in Madame de Pléneuf’s circle it was predicted that her triumph would be of very brief duration; that they would soon succeed in disgusting Monsieur le Duc with his choice, and that when she had fallen from her high estate and had been abandoned by the prince, they would make her bitterly repent of her victory.
She learned, too, that the position of Monsieur le Duc was far from secure, and that he had many powerful enemies, who were continually intriguing against him and who would not scruple to employ every possible means to reduce him to political impotence. This, however, requires a word of explanation.
For some years past the bitterest antipathy had existed between the Houses of Orléans and Condé. This feud had its origin in the aversion which the two daughters of Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan had always entertained for each other, and which, in their younger days, had so much disturbed the harmony of the royal circle that the King was at length obliged to threaten them with banishment from the Court if they could not live peaceably together. The hatred between the two sisters had been communicated to their sons, the Duc de Chartres and Monsieur le Duc, and intensified by the lawsuit over the will of the late Monsieur le Prince and by the prominence taken by Monsieur le Duc in the campaign against the legitimated princes, whose cause the Duchesse d’Orléans had espoused with the most passionate enthusiasm.