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.
By his marriage with Mlle. de Nantes, Louis III., Duc de Bourbon, had
had nine children--three sons and six daughters--all of whom survived
him.[252] The eldest son, Louis Henri, hitherto known as the Duc
d’Enghien, was, at the time of his father’s death, in his eighteenth
year. Like the latter, he preferred the title of Duc de Bourbon to that
of Prince de Condé, and, like him, was henceforth styled _Monsieur
le Duc_. In contrast to his father, who had been very short and
rather thick-set, Louis Henri de Bourbon-Condé was tall and thin, with
a long face and prominent cheek-bones. At this period, however, he was
not considered an ill-looking young man, but two years later he had the
misfortune to meet with an accident which disfigured him.
In the winter of 1712--that fatal winter which witnessed the successive
deaths of the charming Duchesse de Bourgogne, her husband, and their
eldest son, the little Duc de Bretagne--he took part in a battue at
Marly with the Dauphin and that prince’s younger brother, the Duc de
Berry. _Monsieur le Duc_ and the Duc de Berry were standing facing
one another, on opposite sides of a frozen pool. The latter fired at a
bird, which was flying very low, and missed it; and part of the charge,
rebounding from the ice, struck _Monsieur le Duc_ in the left eye,
the sight of which was destroyed.
The young prince succeeded to his father’s post of Grand Master of the
King’s Household, to his government of Burgundy, and to the command
of the cavalry and infantry regiments of Condé. In 1711 he took part
in the Flemish campaign under Villars, and in the assault on Hordain
showed that he had inherited the courage of his race. In the following
year, he was in nominal command of the cavalry of the Army of Flanders,
and assisted at the sieges of Douai, Le Quesnoy, and Bouchain; while
in 1713 he followed Villars to the Rhine, was present at the sieges of
Landau and Freiburg, and was made _maréchal de camp_.
In his will, Louis XIV. had named the Duc de Bourbon a member of the
Council of Regency, as soon as he should reach the age of twenty-four;
but on the death of _le Grand Monarque_, his wishes were
immediately set aside, and the Regent, the Duc d’Orléans, proceeded
to appoint the Council himself, with _Monsieur le Duc_ as its
president. Apart, however, from the share he took in the campaign
against the legitimated sons of the late King, the Duc du Maine and
the Comte de Toulouse, with the object of reducing them to the rank of
simple peers of the realm, the prince appears to have occupied himself
very little with politics during the first years of the Regency, and
confined his activities to the financial speculations in which half
Paris was then engaging. With so much ardour, indeed, did he espouse
the cause of the Scotch adventurer Law that he was accused of being
one of the authors of the “System” which involved the country in such
disaster. Any way, he had the courage to defend the fallen idol to the
very last, and when Law, his life being no longer safe in Paris, made
his escape to Flanders, it was one of the Duc de Bourbon’s carriages
which conveyed him to the frontier.
Very wealthy before the “System,” his great fortune was materially
increased by successful speculation. In 1720 it was computed at not
less than sixty million livres.
The character of the prince is very diversely estimated by his
contemporaries. Some writers, such as Marais, Barbier, and Duclos,
judge him severely, and describe him as hasty in temper, brusque in his
manners, debauched, dishonourable, rapacious, and entirely destitute of
political capacity. Others, like Saint-Simon and the Dowager-Duchess
d’Orléans, recognize in him a certain merit. The former acknowledges
that, with all his faults, he had “an indomitable obstinancy, an
inflexible firmness;” while the mother of the Regent, whose opinions at
least possess the advantage of being consistently sincere, writes of
him in 1719:
“_Monsieur le Duc_ has many good qualities and many friends. He is
polished and knows how to behave well, but his attainments are not very
extensive. Nor is he better informed, but there is a loftiness and a
nobility in his character, and he knows how to uphold his rank.”
Louis Henri de Bourbon-Condé, in fact, was neither the odious nor the
incapable person whom certain historians have depicted. His courage
was indisputable; if he was rapacious, he was also generous and
open-handed; if he was a bad enemy, he was also a faithful friend; he
possessed cultured tastes, and beneath his love of pleasure and his
apparent indifference to public affairs he concealed qualities which
only required to be stimulated into activity to make of him, if not a
statesman, at least a formidable party-leader.
In the summer of 1713, _Monsieur le Duc_ was married to his
cousin, Marie Anne de Bourbon-Conti, at the same time as his second
sister, Mlle. de Bourbon, became the wife of the young Prince de Conti.
This double marriage, which was regarded with more or less repugnance
by all four of the parties concerned, affords a curious illustration
of the despotism exercised by Louis XIV. over the members of the Royal
House.
The death of _Monsieur le Prince_, in 1709, had been followed by a
most acrimonious lawsuit over his will between the Condés and Contis,
which, suspended for a while by the sudden demise of his successor, had
been resumed with redoubled bitterness as soon as decency permitted.
Nothing was further from the thoughts of the Contis than an alliance
with their detested cousins, and, in point of fact, secret negotiations
had been for some time in progress between them and the Orléans family
for the marriage of the Prince de Conti to Mlle. de Chartres, second
daughter of the future Regent.
Now, _Madame la Princesse_, a pious and gentle soul, had been
terribly distressed by this family quarrel, and had made several futile
efforts to induce the litigants to come to an arrangement. By some
means, she got wind of the matrimonial negotiations just mentioned,
which opened her eyes to a very natural means of accommodation which
had not yet occurred to her, namely, a double marriage between her
grandchildren. Aware that she herself would never be able to bring this
about, she determined to appeal to Louis XIV., who had also endeavoured
to reconcile the parties, and had been more than once on the point of
employing his authority to put a stop to proceedings so prejudicial to
the dignity of the Royal House, and who, she knew, would be the more
ready to listen to her, since he could hardly fail to be extremely
irritated to learn, from an outside source, of the projected marriage
of the Prince de Conti and a daughter of the Duc d’Orléans.
She had not miscalculated. The King at once expressed his warm
approval of her proposal, and lost no time in sending for _Madame
la Duchesse_, whom he informed of his wishes. That lady began to
remonstrate vigorously, but his Majesty “spoke to her, not as a
father, but as a master who intends to be obeyed without hesitation,”
and she reluctantly yielded. Next came the turn of the Princesse de
Conti, who offered the same stubborn resistance, and only capitulated
when the King, losing all patience, informed her that, if she
refused to give her consent, he would cause the double marriage to
be celebrated without it. As for the parties most nearly concerned,
his Majesty did not even trouble to go through the form of consulting
them, and on 9 July the marriages were celebrated, in the chapel at
Versailles, by the Cardinal de Rohan.
The new Duchesse de Bourbon, who was nearly five years older than
her husband, was an extremely pretty young woman, and “possessed of
much intelligence, amiability, and charm of manner.”[253] Neither the
attractions of her mind nor of her person, however, appear to have
made any impression upon _Monsieur le Duc_, for which he was not
perhaps wholly to blame, having regard to the peculiar circumstances in
which the marriage had taken place, besides which it would seem that
his wife made very little attempt to understand him. Any way, he never
entertained for her the smallest affection, and the tie which bound
them was never more than a nominal one.
Such being the relations between _Monsieur le Duc_ and his
consort, it was but natural that the former should have become the
quarry of all the _dames galantes_ of the time. Madame de Sabran,
one time mistress of the Regent, Madame de Zurlauben, Madame de
Polignac, Madame de Nesle, mother of the too-celebrated sisters who
were to succeed one another in the affections of Louis XV., and other
facile beauties seem to have dipped their pretty fingers freely into
his coffers; but none of these _liaisons_ was of long duration,
and it was not until the prince was approaching his thirtieth year that
he found a woman capable of fixing his affections.
* * * * *
In the closing years of the reign of Louis XIV. there lived in a
magnificent hôtel at the corner of the Rues de Cléry and Poissonière a
family of the name of Berthelot de Pléneuf. The father of the family,
Étienne Berthelot de Pléneuf, was a wealthy Government official and
army-contractor, a younger son of François Berthelot, a person of
comparatively humble origin, who had amassed an enormous fortune,
partly by judicious land-speculation in Canada, where he owned “estates
of the value of a province,” which the King had transformed for him
into the county of Saint-Laurent, and partly as a revenue-farmer and
commissary. Old Berthelot had employed a considerable portion of his
wealth in the purchase of lucrative Government posts and estates in
France, which he distributed among his sons, to Étienne’s share falling
the office of Director-General of the Powders and Saltpetres of France
and the seigneurie of Pléneuf, which entitled him to style himself the
seigneur de Pléneuf.
In 1696, Pléneuf, who was then about thirty-five, had married, _en
secondes noces_, a Mlle. Agnès Riault d’Ouilly, a daughter of a rich
bourgeois family, which, like his own, had been recently ennobled.
The second Madame de Pléneuf, who, it may be mentioned, was nearly
twenty years her husband’s junior, had been one of the prettiest girls
in Paris, and in due course she became one of its most beautiful and
fascinating women. “Tall, perfectly shaped, with an extremely agreeable
countenance, intelligence, grace, tact, and _savoir-vivre_,”[254]
she triumphed like a queen, and as Pléneuf, proud of her success,
denied her nothing, the salons in the Rue de Cléry soon became the
rendezvous of all fashionable Paris.
If in beauty and intelligence Madame de Pléneuf left little to be
desired, the same, unfortunately, could not be said for her reputation.
The prolonged absences of her husband with the army provided her
with abundant opportunities for receiving the homage of her numerous
admirers, and she took advantage of them so freely that she earned for
herself the name of the Messalina of her time. To no lady in Paris did
gossip ascribe so many lovers, and, in most cases, it is to be feared,
with only too much justification. There was a Lorraine prince, the
Prince Charles d’Armagnac; the Cardinal de Rohan; the Ducs de Duras
and de la Vallière; the versatile Marquis de Dangeau, author of the
famous “Journal”; Canon Destouches, father of Néricault-Destouches,
the diplomatist and playwright; young La Baume, son of the Maréchal
de Tallard; the Marquis de Cany, son of the War Minister Chamillard;
the dashing Comte de Gacé, who, in February, 1716, fought the famous
midnight duel with the Duc de Richelieu in the middle of the Rue
Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre. And the list might be considerably extended.
But if Madame de Pléneuf were an immoral, she was also a very clever
woman, and displayed really remarkable address in managing her crowd
of _soupirants_ and avoiding anything approaching a scandal.
“Enamoured of herself to the last degree,” writes Saint-Simon, “she
desired that others should be so, but it was necessary to obtain
permission. She knew how to pick and choose among her admirers, and
so well did she understand how to establish her empire that complete
happiness never exceeded, in appearance, the bounds of respect and
propriety; and there was not one of the chosen band who dared to show
either jealousy or mortification. Each one hoped for his turn, and,
while waiting, the choice more than suspected was respected by all in
perfect silence, without the least altercation amongst them. It is
astonishing how this conduct gained her friends of importance, who
always remained attached to her, without there being any question of
anything more than friendship, and whom she found, in case of need,
the most eager to serve her in her affairs. She was at this time in
the best and the most aristocratic society, as much as the wife of
Pléneuf was able to be; and there she has remained since, among all the
vicissitudes which she has experienced.”
Saint-Simon does not exaggerate. Madame de Pléneuf never encountered
among her admirers any resistance to the regulations which she imposed
upon them. All submitted to them with a good grace; all passed without
protest from the rank of candidates for her favour to that of lover,
and from that of lover to that of friend, and of friends, in some
instances, ready to make considerable sacrifices for her sake.
Among several children, Madame de Pléneuf had a daughter, born in
1698, some two years after the marriage of her parents, to whom she had
given her own name of Agnès. Beautiful as was the mother, the daughter
promised to be more beautiful still, and with her physical perfections
she combined vivacity, intelligence, and the most charming manners.
“A figure supple and above the middle height, the air of a nymph, a
delicate face, pretty cheeks, a well-formed nose, blonde hair, eyes
a trifle small, but bright and expressive; in a word, a physiognomy
refined and distinguished, and a voice as charming as her face.” Such
is the description given of her, when she was fifteen, by the Président
Hénault, and his praises are echoed by practically all contemporary
writers. Saint-Simon declares that she was “beautiful, well-made, more
charming by reason of those indescribable things which captivate, and
with much intelligence carefully cultivated”; Marais admits that there
was “much that was agreeable in her countenance, in her mind, and in
all her manners”; d’Argenson proclaims her “_la fleur des pois_”;
while in the eyes of Duclos, she “possessed more than beauty,” and
“everything about her was seductive.”
Now, while Agnès remained a child, Madame de Pléneuf would appear
to have been quite a devoted mother, and “it was the passion and
occupation of her life to bring her up well.” But, as the little girl
advanced towards womanhood, and gained every day what she herself was
losing in attractions, with the result that the homage of some of the
gallants who frequented the Hôtel de Pléneuf began to be transferred
from the mother to the daughter, the affection which she had once
entertained for her gradually changed to dislike, and eventually to
the bitterest jealousy and hatred. “In proportion as the daughter
pleased by a hundred attractions,” writes Saint-Simon, “she displeased
her mother. Madame de Pléneuf could not endure the sight of homage
addressed to others than herself at her own house. The advantages of
youth irritated her. Her daughter, whom she was unable to prevent from
perceiving it, suffered her dependence, endured her murmurs, supported
the constraints imposed upon her, but she began to be annoyed by them.
Pleasantries concerning the jealousy of her mother escaped her, which
were reported to Madame de Pléneuf. The latter felt the ridicule of
them. She flew into a passion. The girl retorted, and Pléneuf, more
prudent than she was, dreading a scandal which might prejudice the
establishment of his daughter in life, decided to provide her with a
husband.”
It was certainly high time to separate mother and daughter, for the
enmity between them was increasing every day, and at the beginning of
1713 an incident occurred which brought matters to a crisis and made it
impossible for them to remain any longer under the same roof.
Among the admirers of Madame de Pléneuf was a certain Comte d’Angennes.
Young, handsome, and of charming manners, he had not been permitted to
sigh in vain; indeed, the lady appears to have conceived for him a most
violent passion. In a surprisingly short time, however, she perceived
that the ardour of her new lover was beginning to cool, for, though
frequenting the house as assiduously as ever, he no longer sought
opportunities of being alone with his hostess. Madame de Pléneuf, her
suspicions aroused, watched him closely, and more than once detected
him talking in low tones to Agnès, with an expression on his face which
there was no mistaking.
Thenceforth the jealous woman’s hatred of her too attractive daughter
knew no bounds. No longer did she trouble to dissimulate her feelings
from her friends, but actually incited the most devoted of them to
imitate the attitude she adopted towards the girl, with the result that
poor Agnès’s life became almost unendurable.
Unendurable, too, was the sight of her to her unnatural mother, and she
importuned her husband until he consented that the girl should leave
the house and be placed in a convent, while awaiting the appearance on
the scene of an eligible suitor. Several gentlemen who answered more or
less to this description speedily presented themselves, and, after some
hesitation, M. de Pléneuf decided in favour of the Marquis de Prie.
The marquis was twenty-five years older than Agnès and, though he was
the possessor of large estates, they were either so unproductive or
so heavily mortgaged that they brought him in next to nothing. But he
was a member of a very ancient House, connected with several of the
most illustrious families in France, was governor of Bourbon-Lancy,
colonel of the cavalry regiment which bore his name, held the rank of
brigadier-general in the Army, and, finally, was one of the godfathers
of the heir to the throne.
This last honour, which he owed to his good fortune in happening to
be with his aunt the Duchesse de Ventadour, _gouvernante_ to the
Duc d’Anjou, in Louis XIV.’s cabinet, at the moment when the infant
prince was brought thither for his Majesty’s inspection, seems to have
had great weight with M. de Pléneuf, who was intoxicated with the
idea of an alliance with the godfather of his future King. As for the
marquis, it is probable that M. de Pléneuf’s money-bags constituted a
far more potent attraction for him than the _beaux yeux_ of his
lovely daughter. He was not only poor, but ambitious, and, now that the
approach of peace threatened to put an end to his hopes of military
distinction, he had decided to embark upon a diplomatic career, and
aspired to an embassy, for which, of course, the possession of a long
purse was an indispensable qualification.
The preliminaries were soon concluded, and on 27 December, 1713, Agnès
Berthelot de Pléneuf became the Marquise de Prie. Taken to Versailles
by the Duchesse de Ventadour, to be presented to Louis XIV., she
astonished all the Court by her dazzling beauty and her precocious
airs of a woman of the world; and even those who had been inclined to
condemn M. de Prie for having contracted a _mésalliance_ were
obliged to admit that he had married a wife of whom any man might be
proud. Almost immediately after his marriage, the marquis was nominated
Ambassador to the King of Sardinia, and set out for Turin, whither,
after a short interval, his wife followed him.
At Turin Madame de Prie remained five years. For the first two or
three, during which a little daughter was born to her, everything
went smoothly. Her husband was kind and attentive, and, if she felt
for him no affection and some contempt--for he was a pompous and
self-opinionated person, with abilities as slender as his ambitions
were lofty--she, at least, tolerated him; while, as the Ambassadress of
the greatest King in the world, and one of the most beautiful women in
the Piedmontese capital, she was the object of universal homage, and no
social gathering was deemed complete which she did not grace with her
presence. But towards the end of 1716 an event occurred which was to
effect a great change in the fortunes of the Pries.
For some time past a very ugly cloud had been slowly gathering over the
head of M. de Pléneuf. At this period, and, indeed, until a very much
later date, most gentlemen connected with the commissariat department
of the Army were but indifferently honest; but long impunity had
rendered Pléneuf unusually audacious, and so outrageously did he rob
the Army of Italy, of which he had acted as chief commissary, that in
1706 Louis XIV. ordered an inquiry to be instituted.
Matters would probably have gone hardly with Pléneuf, if he had not
had the good fortune to possess powerful protectors. Thanks to their
efforts, not only were the charges against him not pressed, but, a
little while afterwards, he was actually appointed chief clerk at the
War Office.
Nevertheless, his peculations, and those of his colleagues, were not
forgotten, and in 1714 the Government decided upon a new revision of
the accounts of the Army of Italy. This investigation, temporarily
interrupted by the last illness and death of Louis XIV., was resumed
some months later, when Philippe d’Orléans, eager to court popularity,
determined to make the revenue-farmers and commissaries disgorge their
ill-gotten gains; and Pléneuf was the first to be summoned before the
Court instituted for that purpose. This time, there was no one to
intervene in his favour, and, warned that his arrest was imminent, he
fled to Switzerland, and thence made his way to his daughter at Turin.
In saving his person, however, he had not succeeded in saving his
property; and his hôtel in Paris and his country-estates were
sequestrated until such time as he should make restitution of the
immense sums of which he had defrauded the State.
The disgrace and bankruptcy of Pléneuf was a terrible blow to the
de Pries. They might have stomached the loss of the old gentleman’s
reputation, for the offence of which he had been guilty was of such
common occurrence in those days as to be regarded with a very lenient
eye, and, indeed, he appears to have received quite a warm welcome
at the Court of Turin; but the loss of his money was another matter
altogether.
With the laudable desire of upholding the honour of France, both the
Ambassador and his wife had incurred heavy expenditure during their
residence in Italy; de Prie’s small fortune was entirely exhausted, and
very little was left of Agnès’s dowry. It was to the purse of Pléneuf
that they had been looking to replenish their empty coffers, and here
he was quartered upon them, with a healthy appetite and extravagant
tastes, but without a crown in his pocket. In short, the ambassadorial
_ménage_ found itself reduced to the direst extremities, and it
was only by pawning his plate and borrowing money at usurious interest
that the unfortunate representative of the might and majesty of France
was able to continue at his post.
Towards the end of the year 1718, matters had reached such a pass that
no hope of escaping from his difficulties remained to him save by the
intervention of his Government. Again and again he had appealed to
Torcy, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, for assistance; but the answer
was always the same: the Royal Treasury was empty; it was impossible at
present even to pay his Excellency’s salary, much less to discharge his
debts.
In despair, the Ambassador determined to send his wife to Paris to
plead their cause with the Government, and at the beginning of December
Madame de Prie set out for France.
The young woman who returned to Paris was a very different person
from the girl who had quitted it five years before. Not only had
she gained in outward attractions, but she had gained enormously in
worldly knowledge. She had learned the ways of Courts, and had learned
them at one where falsehood and dissimulation were considered the
first essentials of every good politician. She had learned some of
the subtleties of diplomacy, for the Marquis de Prie, who had been
no match for Victor Amadeus and his Ministers, had been only too
thankful to avail himself of the advice and assistance of his clever
wife and father-in-law; indeed, for some months past it was they who
had conducted the real work of the embassy. She had learned too to
understand the power of her beauty, for, though there would appear to
be no reason to believe that she had ever surrendered to love, she had
certainly known how to inspire it, and a prince of the Royal House
of Savoy--the Prince di Carignano--the Baron Ferron, Prime Minister
of Victor Amadeus, the Chevalier de Lozilières, first secretary to
the embassy, and the Marquis d’Alincourt, son of the Maréchal de
Villeroy, who stayed for some time in Turin on his return from a
campaign against the Turks, had been all devoted admirers. “But, above
all,” observes her admiring biographer, M. Thirion, “she had learned
how to toil, to suffer, to defend herself against the ills of life,
to struggle and to combat, in order to satisfy the exigencies of an
uncertain hand-to-mouth existence, in such fashion that, beneath the
frail envelope of this adorable young body, there beat an almost virile
heart, there resided a soul matured before its time, disciplined and
for ever superior to cowardly weaknesses.”[255]
And it was a very different Paris to which she returned. The austere
and bigoted _régime_ of Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon,
where even the most profligate and reckless had been constrained to
some semblance of decorum, was no more, and the pent-up impatience
of a corrupt society was finding relief in a veritable saturnalia of
sensuality. Vice, which for so many years had scarcely dared to rear
its head, now stalked abroad, naked and unashamed; virtue, and even
ordinary decency, was mocked at and derided. The Regent himself set the
tone in moral depravity, and his example was followed by the Princes
and Princesses of the Blood, by the bulk of the nobility and by a
considerable proportion of the wealthy middle-class.
“The disorderly and foolish life in Paris,” writes the old Duchesse
d’Orléans, “becomes every day more detestable and more horrible. Every
time it thunders I tremble for this town.”[256]
To send a beautiful and unprotected young woman into the midst of so
licentious a Court was, to say the least of it, a very injudicious
action on de Prie’s part, and some contemporary writers are of opinion
that it was his deliberate intention to launch her upon some gallant
adventure. In this, as we shall presently see, they have probably done
him an injustice; but, however that may be, nothing in the conduct of
his wife during the first months after her arrival in Paris indicates
that she had the least idea of speculating in her charms.
Since it was, of course, out of the question for her to demand the
hospitality of her detestable mother, she installed herself with her
little daughter in a small house close to the Convent of La Conception,
belonging to one of her aunts, Madame de Séchelles, to whom she paid
an annual rent of 500 livres, for the use of a portion of it. She
lived very quietly, for she was almost entirely without resources, and
seldom went into Society, though, in accordance with her husband’s
instructions, she solicited audiences of the Regent, the Abbé Dubois,
Torcy, and, indeed, every one who might be able to be of assistance to
the impecunious Ambassador.
The interviews which took place between her detested daughter and these
distinguished persons did not escape Madame de Pléneuf, and, thanks to
the malevolent activity of her and her friends, a rumour soon began to
spread that the young Ambassadress, whose beauty never failed to cause
a sensation wherever she appeared, was employing her charms to mend
her broken fortunes. She was accused of prostituting herself to the
Maréchal de la Feuillade, to d’Alincourt and to Torcy, and of having
made an attempt to subjugate the heart of the Regent, who, it was
added, had repulsed her, either because she had not pleased him, or
because he regarded her as too dangerous a mistress.
There seems to have been no truth whatever in these allegations. La
Feuillade was in very bad health; d’Alincourt on the eve of espousing
a wealthy heiress, and Torcy approaching his sixtieth year. As for the
Regent, well, the post of chief sultana to his Highness was not just
then vacant, being occupied by Madame de Parabère; and Madame de Prie
was certainly not the kind of woman either to risk the humiliation of
a rebuff or to be content with a subordinate position. Moreover, no
trustworthy contemporary chronicler has charged the lady with any such
ambition as gossip ascribed to her.
If, however, the Regent did not fall in love with Madame de Prie, she
seems to have made a very favourable impression upon him, and she was
several times invited to assist at those too-celebrated _petits
soupers_ at which the ruler of France was accustomed to seek
relaxation from the cares of State. However, such orgies were but
little to her taste, and when she had at length succeeded in obtaining
from him a promise that her husband’s debts at Turin should be settled,
or that he should be permitted to resign his post, she ceased to appear
at the Palais-Royal.
Meanwhile, the favour with which Madame de Prie was regarded in high
places had begun to alarm Madame de Pléneuf and her coterie. Since
her daughter’s return to Paris that amiable lady had not ceased to
aim at her every kind of shaft that hatred and malice could forge
and to incite her docile admirers to do the same. When, however,
they saw her a welcome guest at the Palais-Royal, they began to ask
themselves if they had not carried their hostility a little too far;
and, though Madame de Pléneuf herself professed to be implacable,
some of her friends began to make overtures to her daughter, with a
view to bringing about a reconciliation. Nothing, however, came of
these negotiations, for, before they had proceeded very far, an event
occurred which was to fan the dying embers of the old feud into the
flame of a new and interminable war.