At last, after nearly three years of imprisonment when her little daughter Geneviève de Bourbon was born, their prison-walls opened and they were free at last.
But presently Henri de Montmorency, the Princess’s brother, who had but recently succeeded his father as Lord of Chantilly, was thrown into a dungeon, whence he only emerged to be guillotined later at Toulouse. Unfortunately he had sided with Gaston, the King’s brother, in a conspiracy against the mighty Cardinal. In vain his wife, Marie Felice Orsini, pleaded for her husband. She herself was imprisoned for two years for doing so; and when finally released, retired for the rest of her life to a convent at Moulins, where she was known and much beloved as “Sister Marie.”
The whole property of the last Montmorency, the last scion of so illustrious a race, was confiscated after his execution, and Chantilly fell to the Crown. A house called La Cabotière, bearing to this day the Royal coat-of-arms, marks this transition period; and not far from it is the so-called Maison de Sylvie, which recalls Marie Felice Orsini. It was there that she and her husband hid the poet Théophile de Viau, who had been condemned to death; and from this retreat he sang in charming verses the beauty and the noble qualities of the Princess under the name of “Sylvie.”
These cruelties against the Montmorencys and the Condés, Louis XIII in after-years never ceased to regret, and when on his deathbed he wished to atone for them he summoned Henri II, Prince de Condé, and told him that Chantilly should be restored to his wife, the Princess, as sister of the last Montmorency. Thus Chantilly came back to its rightful owners.
CHAPTER III
THE GRAND CONDÉ
WITH Charlotte, wife of Prince Henri II de Condé, Chantilly passed into the possession of the Princes of Bourbon Condé, and its history from that date becomes part of the history of France. The son of Charlotte, Louis II de Bourbon, when barely twenty-two years of age, was already called the “Hero,” in consequence of his victory at Rocroy (1643) over the German and Spanish armies. This famous descendant of Huguenot Princes was, at the age of four years, baptized a Roman Catholic, with great pomp, in the Cathedral at Bourges. Both Marie de Medicis, the Queen-Regent, and Charlotte de la Trémoille, the Dowager Princess de Condé, were present; and the infant Prince, though so young, recited his Credo without a hitch. His education was subsequently placed in the hands of the Jesuit Fathers at Bourges, who commended his clear intellect and excellent memory. He received the title of “Duc d’Enghien,” a title which became thereafter hereditary in the Condé family.
His father, Prince Henri II de Condé, thought it wise, after the execution of his brother-in-law Henri de Montmorency and his own imprisonment, to contract a matrimonial alliance with the all-powerful Cardinal; especially as Richelieu was obsessed by the desire that one of his nieces should become a Royal Princess. A marriage was therefore arranged between the twelve-year-old Duc d’Enghien and the little Claire-Clemence, then barely five. This mariage de convenance brought no happiness to the parties concerned, and ended in completely crushing the unloved wife. In a book recently published, “Sur la femme du Grand Condé,”[9] the excellent qualities of Claire-Clemence—so little appreciated during her lifetime—have been set out for us. At a court where women were chiefly given over to pleasure and amusement, it is but natural that soberer qualities such as hers should have passed unnoticed, or even have aroused opposition. Between her brilliant mother-in-law, Charlotte de Montmorency, and her beautiful but vain sister-in-law, Geneviève de Bourbon[10] (subsequently Madame de Longueville), to the courtiers of her time Claire-Clemence appeared to be lacking both in beauty and savoir-faire. A fall on the very day of her marriage, caused by her high heels when dancing a minuet which Anne of Austria had opened with the Duc d’Enghien, was recorded with great glee by the Grande Mademoiselle, daughter of Gaston d’Orléans. The prospects of this new establishment were not exactly promising, since Claire-Clemence received no support from her parents, whom she hardly knew. When her uncle, the Cardinal, decided to make an instrument of her to serve his purposes, he took her away from her egoistical and immoral father, the Maréchal de Brézé, and her sickly mother, who suffered from transitory attacks of madness. Claire-Clemence had been educated, therefore, in accordance with the high station for which she was intended. After her marriage Richelieu watched over her welfare and superintended arrangements by which she and her princely husband should have a suitable establishment in Paris; where, it was said, the young couple led un train de Prince.
Presently, however, the sharp-eyed Cardinal became aware that the Duc d’Enghien was neglecting his young wife, and was constantly in the company of the charming Marthe de Vigeau, of whom he had become wildly infatuated and whom he constantly met at the house of his sister. His Eminence, therefore, decided to send the young Duke to Burgundy, of which province he was supposed to be the Governor; and for Claire-Clemence he arranged a temporary retirement in the convent of Saint-Denis, there to escape the intrigues which would, as he said, naturally arise round a young wife so completely neglected by her husband. She was accompanied to the convent by a small Court, consisting of Madame la Princesse Douarière de Condé, Madame d’Aiguillon, Madame de Longueville, and Mademoiselle de la Croix. This last was her constant companion, and wrote to Richelieu that Her Serene Highness did everything in the convent which His Eminence desired her to do. In very truth she soon became a great favourite at Saint-Denis, where she did a great deal of good among the sick and poor.
Plate XI.