Louis-Henri-Joseph, Duc de Bourbon and Prince de Conde, seems to have
been rather a simple old man: a useless old sinner, true enough,
but relatively harmless in his sinning, relatively venial in his
uselessness. It were futile to seek for the morality of a later age in a
man of his day and rank and country, just as it were obtuse to look for
greatness in one so much at the mercy of circumstance. As far as bravery
went he had shown himself a worthy descendant of "the Great Conde." But,
surrounded by the vapid jealousies of the most useless people who had
ever tried to rule a country, he, no more than his father, had
the faintest chance to show the Conde quality in war. Adrift as a
comparatively young man, his world about his ears, with no occupation,
small wonder that in idleness he fell into the pursuit of satisfactions
for his baser appetites. He would have been, there is good reason to
believe, a happy man and a busy one in a camp. There is this to be
said for him: that alone among the spineless crowd of royalists feebly
waiting for the miracle which would restore their privilege he attempted
a blow for the lost cause. But where in all that bed of disintegrating
chalk was the flint from which he might have evoked a spark?
The great grief of the Prince's life was the loss of his son, the young
Duc d'Enghien, shamefully destroyed by Bonaparte. It is possible that
much of the Prince's inertia was due to this blow. He had married, at
the early age of fourteen, Louise-Marie-Therese-Mathilde d'Orleans,
daughter of Louis-Philippe, Duc d'Orleans and the Duchesse de Chartres,
the bride being six years older than her husband. Such a marriage could
not last. It merely sustained the honeymoon and the birth of that only
son. The couple were apart in eighteen months, and after ten years they
never even saw each other again. About the time when Sophie's husband
found her out and departed the Princesse died. The Prince was advised
to marry again, on the chance that an heir might be born to the large
fortune he possessed. But Sophie by then had become a habit with
the Prince--a bad one--and the old man was content to be left to his
continual hunting, and not to bother over the fact that he was the last
of his ancient line.
It may be easily believed that the Prince's disinclination to marry
again contented Sophie very well. And the fact that he had no direct
heir was one in which she saw possibilities advantageous to herself.
The Prince was then sixty-six years old. In the course of nature he was
almost bound to predecease her. His wealth was enormous, and out of
it Sophie wanted as much by bequest as she could get. She was much too
shrewd, however, to imagine that, even if she did contrive to be made
his sole heir, the influential families who had an eye upon the great
possessions of the Prince, and who through relationship had some right
to expect inheritance, would allow such a will to go uncontested. She
therefore looked about among the Prince's connexions for some one who
would accept coheirship with herself, and whose family would be strong
enough in position to carry through probate on such terms, but at the
same time would be grateful enough to her and venal enough to further
her aim of being reinstated at Court. Her choice in this matter shows
at once her political cunning, which would include knowledge of affairs,
and her ability as a judge of character.
It should be remembered that, in spite of his title of Duc de Bourbon,
Sophie's elderly protector was only distantly of that family. He was
descended in direct line from the Princes de Conde, whose connexion with
the royal house of France dated back to the sixteenth century. The other
line of 'royal' ducs in the country was that of Orleans, offshoot of
the royal house through Philippe, son of Louis XIII, and born in 1640.
Sophie's protector, Louis-Henri-Joseph, Prince de Conde, having married
Louise-Marie, daughter of the great-grandson of this Philippe, was thus
the brother-in-law of that Louis-Philippe, Duc d'Orleans, who in
the Revolution was known as "Egalite." This was a man whom, for his
political opinion and for his failure to stand by the King, Louis XVI,
the Prince de Conde utterly detested in memory. As much, moreover, as he
had hated the father did the Prince de Conde detest Egalite's son. But
it was out of this man's family that Sophie selected, though ultimately,
her coheir.
Before she arrived at this point, however, Sophie had been at pains to
do some not very savoury manoeuvring.
By a dancer at the Opera, called Mimi, the Prince de Conde had an
illegitimate daughter, whom he had caused to be educated and whom he had
married to the Comte de Rully. The Comtesse de Rully and her husband had
a suite at Chantilly. This was an arrangement which Sophie, as reigning
Queen of Chantilly, did not like at all. While the Rully woman remained
at Chantilly Sophie could not think that her sway over the Prince was
quite as absolute as she wished. It took her six years of badgering her
protector, from 1819 to 1825, to bring about the eviction.
But meantime (for Sophie's machinations must be taken as concurrent with
events as they transpire) the Baronne de Feucheres had approached
the son of Philippe-Egalite, suggesting that the last-born of his
six children, the Duc d'Aumale, should have the Prince de Conde
for godfather. If she could persuade her protector to this the Duc
d'Orleans, in return, was to use his influence for her reinstatement at
Court. And persuade the old man to this Sophie did, albeit after a great
deal of badgering on her part and a great deal of grumbling on the part
of the Prince.
The influence exerted at Court by the Duc d'Orleans does not seem to
have been very effective. The King who had dismissed her the Court,
Louis XVIII, died in 1824. His brother, the Comte d'Artois, ascended
the throne as Charles X, and continued by politically foolish recourses,
comparable in history to those of the English Stuarts, to alienate the
people by attempting to regain that anachronistic absolute power which
the Revolution had destroyed. He lasted a mere six years as king. The
revolution of 1830 sent him into exile. But up to the last month or so
of those six years he steadfastly refused to have anything to do with
the Baronne de Feucheres--not that Sophie ever gave up manoeuvring and
wheedling for a return to Court favour.
About 1826 Sophie had a secret proposition made to the King that she
should try to persuade the Prince de Conde to adopt as his heir one
of the brothers of the Duchesse de Berry, widow of the King's second
son--or would his Majesty mind if a son of the Duc d'Orleans was
adopted? The King did not care at all.
After that Sophie pinned her faith in the power possessed by the Duc
d'Orleans. She was not ready to pursue the course whereby her return to
Court might have been secured--namely, to abandon her equivocal position
in the Prince de Conde's household, and thus her power over the Prince.
She wanted first to make sure of her share of the fortune he would
leave. She knew her power over the old man. Already she had persuaded
him to buy and make over to her the estates of Saint-Leu and Boissy, as
well as to make her legacies to the amount of a million francs. Much as
she wanted to be received again at Court, she wanted more just as much
as she could grab from the Prince's estate. To make her inheritance
secure she needed the help of the Duc d'Orleans.
The Duc d'Orleans was nothing loth. He had the mind of a French
bourgeois, and all the bourgeois itch for money. He knew that the Prince
de Conde hated him, hated his politics, hated his very name. But during
the seven years it took Sophie to bring the Prince to the point of
signing the will she had in mind the son of Philippe-Egalite fawned
like a huckster on his elderly and, in more senses than one, distant
relative. The scheme was to have the Prince adopt the little Duc
d'Aumale, already his godchild, as his heir.
The ways by which Sophie went about the job of persuading her old lover
do not read pleasantly. She was a termagant. The Prince was stubborn. He
hated the very idea of making a will--it made him think of death. He
was old, ill, friendless. Sophie made his life a hell, but he had
become dependent upon her. She ill-used him, subjecting him to physical
violence, but yet he was afraid she might, as she often threatened,
leave him. Her way of persuading him reached the point, it is on
record, of putting a knife to his throat. Not once but several times
his servants found him scratched and bruised. But the old man could not
summon up the strength of mind to be quit of this succubine virago.
At last, on the 29th of August, 1829, Sophie's 'persuasions' succeeded.
The Prince consented to sign the will, and did so the following morning.
In its terms the Duc d'Aumale became residuary legatee, and 2,000,000
francs, free of death-duty, were bequeathed to the Prince's "faithful
companion, Mme la baronne de Feucheres," together with the chateaux
and estates of Saint-Leu-Taverny, Boissy, Enghien, Montmorency, and
Mortefontaine, and the pavilion in the Palais-Bourbon, besides all the
Prince's furniture, carriages, horses, and so on. Moreover, the estate
and chateau of Ecouen was also given her, on condition that she allowed
the latter to be used as an orphanage for the descendants of soldiers
who had served with the Armies of Conde and La Vendee. The cost
of running this establishment, however, was to be borne by the Duc
d'Aumale.
It might be thought that Sophie, having got her way, would have turned
to kindness in her treatment of her old lover. But no. All her mind
was now concentrated on working, through the Duc d'Orleans, for being
received again at Court. She ultimately succeeded in this. On the 7th
of February, 1830, she appeared in the presence of the King, the Dauphin
and Dauphine. In the business of preparing for this great day Chantilly
and the Prince de Conde were greatly neglected. The beggar on horseback
had to be about Paris.
But events were shaping in France at that time which were to be
important to the royal family, to Sophie and her supporters of the house
of Orleans, and fatal in consequence to the old man at Chantilly.
On the 27th of July revolution broke out in France. Charles X and
his family had to seek shelter in England, and Louis-Philippe, Duc
d'Orleans, became--not King of France, but "King of the French" by
election. This consummation had not been achieved without intrigue on
the part of Egalite's son. It was not an achievement calculated to abate
the Prince de Conde's hatred for him. Rather did it inflame that hatred.
In the matter of the famous will, moreover, as the King's son the little
Duc d'Aumale would be now in no need of the provision made for him
by his unwilling godfather, while members of the exiled royal
family--notably the grandson of Charles, the Duc de Bordeaux, certainly
cut out of the Prince's will by the intrigues of Sophie and family--were
in want of assistance. This is a point to be remembered in the light of
subsequent events.