While she had been looking after herself Sophie Dawes had not been
unmindful ofthe advancement of hangers-on of her own family. She had
about her a nephew and a niece. The latter, supposed by some to have a
closer relationship to Sophie than that of mere niece, she had contrived
to marry off to a marquis. The Marquise de Chabannes de la Palice need
not here concern us further. But notice must be taken of the nephew.
A few million francs, provided by the Prince de Conde, had secured for
this James Dawes the title of Baron de Flassans, from a domain also
bestowed upon him by Sophie's elderly lover. De Flassans, with some
minor post in the Prince's household, acted as his aunt's jackal.
If Sophie, after the election to kingship of Louis-Philippe, found
it necessary to be in Paris a great deal to worship at the throne her
nephew kept her well informed about the Prince de Conde's activities.
The old man, it appeared, had suddenly developed the habit of writing
letters. The Prince, then at the chateau of Saint-Leu expressed a desire
to remove to Chantilly. He was behaving very oddly all round, was glad
to have Sophie out of his sight, and seemed unwilling even to hear her
name. The projected move to Chantilly, as a fact, was merely a blind to
cover a flight out of Sophie's reach and influence. Rumour arose about
Saint-Leu and in Paris that the Prince had made another will--one in
which neither Sophie nor the Duc d'Aumale was mentioned. This was a move
of which Sophie had been afraid. She saw to it that the Prince did not
get away from Saint-Leu. Rumour and the Prince's conduct made Sophie
very anxious. She tried to get him to make over to her in his lifetime
those properties which he had left to her in his will, and it is
probable enough that she would have forced this request but for the fact
that, to raise the legal costs, the property of Saint-Leu would have had
to be sold.
This was the position of affairs about the middle of August 1830. It was
believed the Prince had already signed a will in favour of the exiled
little Duc de Bordeaux, but that he had kept the act secret from his
mistress.
On the morning of the 11th of the month the Prince was met outside his
bedroom in his night attire. It was a young man called Obry who thus met
the Prince. He was the old man's godchild. The old man's left eye
was bleeding, and there was a scratch on his cheek as if made by a
fingernail. To Obry the Prince attributed these wounds to the spite of
the Baronne de Feucheres. Half an hour later he told his valet he had
hit his head against a night-table. Later again in the day he gave
another version still: he had fallen against the door to a secret
staircase from his bedroom while letting the Baronne de Feucheres
out, the secret staircase being in communication with Sophie's private
apartments.
For the next ten days or so the Prince was engaged in contriving his
flight from the gentle Sophie, a second plan which again was spoiled by
Sophie's spies. There was something of a fete at Saint-Leu on the 26th,
the Prince's saint's day. There was a quarrel between Sophie and the
Prince on the morning of the 26th in the latter's bedroom. Sophie had
then been back in Saint-Leu for three days. At midnight on the 26th the
old man retired after playing a game or two at whist. He was to go on
the 30th to Chantilly. He was accompanied to his bedroom by his surgeon
and a valet, one Lecomte, and expressed a desire to be called at eight
o'clock. Lecomte found a paper in the Prince's trousers and gave it to
the old man, who placed it on the mantelshelf. Then the valet, as he
said later, locked the door of the Prince's dressing-room, thus--except
for the entrance from the secret staircase--locking the old man in his
room.
The Prince's apartments were on the first floor of the chateau. His
bedroom was approached through the dressing-room from the main corridor.
Beyond the dressing-room was a passage, turning left from which was
the bedroom, and to the right in which was an entrance to an anteroom.
Facing the dressing-room door in this same passage was the entrance to
the secret staircase already mentioned. The staircase gave access to the
Baronne de Feucheres' apartments on the entrance floor. These, however,
were not immediately under the Prince's rooms. An entresol intervened,
and here the rooms were occupied by the Abbe Briant, a creature of
Sophie's and her secretary, the Widow Lachassine, Sophie's lady's-maid,
and a couple named Dupre. These last, also spies of Sophie's, had their
room direcdy below the Prince's bedroom, and it is recorded that the
floor was so thin that they could hear not only the old man's every
movement, but anything he said.
Adjacent to the Prince's room, and on the same floor, were the rooms
occupied by Lambot, the Prince's aide, and the valet Lecomte. Lambot was
a lover of Sophie's, and had been the great go-between in her intrigues
with the Orleans family over the will. Lecomte was in Sophie's pay.
Close to Sophie's apartments on the entrance floor were the rooms
occupied by her nephew and his wife, the de Flassans. It will be seen,
therefore, that the wing containing the Prince's rooms was otherwise
occupied almost completely by Sophie's creatures.
You have, then, the stage set for the tragedy which was about to ensue:
midnight; the last of the Condes peaceably in his bedroom for the night,
and locked in it (according to Lecomte). About him, on all sides, are
the creatures of his not too scrupulous mistress. All these people, with
the exception of the Baronne de Flassans, who sat up writing letters
until two, retire about the same time.
And at eight o'clock next morning, there being no answer to Lecomte's
knocking to arouse the Prince, the door is broken open at the orders of
the Baronne de Feucheres. The Prince is discovered dead in his bedroom,
suspended by the neck, by means of two of his own handkerchiefs knotted
together, from the fastening of one of the French windows.
The fastening was only about two and a half feet off the floor.
The handkerchief about the dead man's neck was loose enough to have
permitted insertion of all the fingers of a hand between it and the
neck. The second handkerchief was tied to the first, and its other end
was knotted to the window-fastening, and the dead man's right cheek was
pressed against the closed shutter. The knees were bent a little,
the feet were on the floor. None of the usual indications of death by
strangulation were present. The eyes were half closed. The face was pale
but not livid. The mouth was almost closed. There was no protrusion of
the tongue.
On the arrival of the civil functionaries, the Mayor of Saint-Leu and
a Justice of the Peace from Enghien, the body was taken down and put
on the bed. It was then found that the dead man's ankles were greatly
bruised and his legs scratched. On the left side of the throat, at a
point too low for it to have been done by the handkerchief, there was
some stripping of the skin. A large red bruise was found between the
Prince's shoulders.
The King, Louis-Philippe, heard about the death of the Prince de
Conde at half-past eleven that same day. He immediately sent his High
Chancellor, M. Pasquier, and his own aide-de-camp, M. de Rumigny, to
inquire into the matter. It is not stretching things too far to say
that the King's instructions to these gentlemen are revealed in phrases
occurring in the letters they sent his Majesty that same evening. Both
recommend that Drs. Marc and Marjolin should be sent to investigate
the Prince's tragic death. But M. Pasquier mentions that "not a single
document has been found, so a search has already been made." And M. de
Rumigny thinks "it is important that nobody should be accused who
is likely to benefit by the will." What document was expected to be
discovered in the search? Why, a second will that would invalidate
the first. Who was to benefit by the first will? Why, the little Duc
d'Aumale and Dame Sophie Dawes, Baronne de Feucheres!
The post-mortem examination was made by the King's own physicians.
During the examination the Prince's doctors, MM. Dubois and Gendrin,
his personal secretary, and the faithful one among his body-servants,
Manoury, were sent out of the room. The verdict was suicide. The
Prince's own doctors maintained that suicide by the handkerchiefs from
the window-fastening was impossible. Dr Dubois wrote his idea of how the
death had occurred:
The Prince very likely was asleep in his bed. The murderers must have
been given entrance to his bedroom--I have no wish to ask how or by
whom. They then threw themselves on the Prince, gripped him firmly,
and could easily pin him down on his bed; then the most desperate and
dexterous of the murderers suffocated him as he was thus held firmly
down; finally, in order to make it appear that he had committed suicide
and to hinder any judicial investigations which might have discovered
the identity of the assassins, they fastened a handkerchief about their
victim's neck, and hung him up by the espagnolette of the window.
And that, at all hazards, is about the truth of the death of the Duc de
Bourbon and Prince de Conde. There was some official display of rigour
in investigation by the Procureur; there was much play with some
mysterious papers found a good time after the first discovery
half-burned in the fireplace of the Prince's bedroom; there was a lot
put forward to support the idea of suicide; but the blunt truth of the
affair is that the Prince de Conde was murdered, and that the murder
was hushed up as much as possible. Not, however, with complete success.
There were few in France who gave any countenance to the theory of
suicide.
The Prince, it will be remembered, had a practically disabled left arm.
It is said that he could not even remove his hat with his left hand. The
knots in the handkerchiefs used to tie him to the espagnolette were both
complicated and tightly made. Impossible for a one-handed man. His bed,
which at the time of his retiring to it stood close to the alcove
wall, was a good foot and a half away from that wall in the morning.
Impossible feat also for this one-handed man. It was the Prince's habit
to lie so much to one side of the bed that his servants had to prop the
outside edge up with folded blankets. On the morning when his death was
discovered it was seen that the edges still were high, while the centre
was very much pressed down. There was, in fact, a hollow in the bed's
middle such as might have been made by some one standing on it with
shoes on. It is significant that the bedclothes were neatly turned down.
If the Prince had got up on a sudden impulse to commit suicide he is
hardly likely, being a prince, to have attempted remaking his bed. He
must, moreover, since he could normally get from bed only by rolling on
his side, have pressed out that heightened edge. Manoury, the valet who
loved him, said that the bed in the morning looked more as if it had
been SMOOTHED OUT than remade. This would tend to support the theory of
Dr Dubois. The murderers, having suffocated the Prince, would be likely
to try effacing the effects of his struggling by the former method
rather than the latter.
But the important point of the affair, as far as this chapter on it is
concerned, is the relation of Sophie Dawes with it on the conclusion
of murder. How deeply was she implicated? Let us see how she acted
on hearing that there was no reply to Lecomte's knocking, and let us
examine her conduct from that moment on.
Note that the Baronne de Feucheres was the first person whom Lecomte and
the Prince's surgeon apprised of the Prince's silence. She rushed out of
her room and made for the Prince's, not by the secret staircase, but by
the main one. She knew, however, that the door to the secret staircase
from the Prince's room was not bolted that night. This knowledge was
admitted for her later by the Prince's surgeon, M. Bonnie. She had gone
up to the Prince's room by the main staircase in order to hide the fact,
an action which gives a touch of theatricality to her exhibited concern
about the Prince's silence.
The search for documents spoken of by M. Pasquier in his letter to
the King had been carried out by Sophie in person, with the aid of her
nephew de Flassans and the Abbe Briant. It was a thorough search, and a
piece of indecorousness which she excused on the ground of being afraid
the Prince's executors might find a will which made her the sole heir,
to the exclusion of the Duc d'Aumale.
Regarding the 'accident' which had happened to the Prince on the 11th of
August, she said it was explained by an earlier attempt on his part to
do away with himself. She tried to deny that she had been at Saint-Leu
at the time of the actual happening, when the fact was that she only
left for Paris some hours later.
When, some time later, the Prince's faithful valet Manoury made mention
of the fact that the Prince had wanted to put the width of the country
between himself and his mistress, Sophie first tried to put the fear
of Louis-Philippe into the man, then, finding he was not to be silenced
that way, tried to buy him with a promise of employment.
It is beyond question that the Prince de Conde was murdered. He was
murdered in a wing of the chateau in which he was hemmed in on all sides
by Sophie's creatures. It is impossible that Sophie was not privy, at
the least, to the deed. It is not beyond the bounds of probability that
she was an actual participator in the murder.
She was a violent woman, as violent and passionate as she was
determined. Not once but many times is it on record that she physically
ill-used her elderly lover. There was one occasion, it is said, when
the Prince suddenly came upon her in a very compromising position with
a younger man in the park of one of his chateaux. Sophie, before
the Prince could utter a protest, cut him across the face with her
riding-whip, and finished up by thrashing him with his own cane.
Here you have the stuff, at any rate, of which your murderesses of the
violent type are made. It is the metal out of which your Kate Websters,
your Sarah Malcolms, your Meteyards and Brownriggs fashion themselves.
It takes more than three years of scholastic self-discipline, such as
Sophie Dawes in her ambition subjected herself to, to eradicate the
inborn harridan. The very determination which was at the back of
Sophie's efforts at self-education, that will to have her own way, would
serve to heighten the sick rage with which she would discover that her
carefully wrought plans of seven years had come to pieces. What was
it that the Abbe Pelier de Lacroix had in "proof of the horrible
assassination" of the Prince de Conde, but that he was prevented from
placing before the lawyers in charge of the later investigation, if not
the fact that the Prince had made a later will than the one by which
Sophie inherited so greatly? The Abbe was the Prince's chaplain. He
published a pamphlet declaring that the Prince had made a will leaving
his entire fortune to the little Duc de Bordeaux, but that Sophie had
stolen this later will. Who likelier to be a witness to such a will than
the Prince's chaplain?
It needs no great feat of imagination to picture what the effect of
such a discovery would be on a woman of Sophie's violent temper, or to
conceive how little the matter of taking a life especially the life of
a feeble old man she was used to bullying and mishandling--would be
allowed to stand in the way of rescuing her large gains. Murder of the
Prince was her only chance. It had taken her seven years to bring him to
the point of signing that first will. He was seventy-four years of age,
enfeebled, obstinate, and she knew of his plans to flee from her. Even
supposing that she could prevent his flight, could she begin all over
again to another seven years of bullying and wheedling--always with
the prospect of the old man dying before she could get him to the point
again of doing as she wished? The very existence of the second will was
a menace. It only needed that the would-be heirs of the Prince should
hear of it, and there would be a swoop on their part to rescue the
testator from her clutches. In the balance against 2,000,000 francs and
some halfdozen castles with their estates the only wonder is that any
reasonable person, knowing the history of Sophie Dawes, should hesitate
about the value she was likely to place on the old man's life.
The inquiry begun in September of 1830 into the circumstances
surrounding the death of the Prince was cooked before it was dressed.
The honest man into whose hands it was placed at first, a M. de la
Hurpoie, proved himself too zealous. After a night visit from the
Procureur he was retired into private life. After that the investigators
were hand-picked. They concluded the investigation the following June,
with the declaration that the Prince had committed suicide, a verdict
which had its reward--in advancement for the judges.
In the winter of 1831-32 there was begun a lawsuit in which the Princes
de Rohan brought action against Sophie and the Duc d'Aumale for the
upsetting of the will under which the latter two had inherited the
Prince de Conde's fortune. The grounds for the action were the undue
influence exerted by Sophie. The Princes de Rohan lost.
Thus was Sophie twice 'legally' vindicated. But public opinion refused
her any coat of whitewash. Never popular in France, she became less and
less popular in the years that followed her legal triumphs. Having used
her for his own ends, Louis-Philippe gradually shut off from her the
light of his cod-like countenance.[29]
Sophie found little joy in her wide French possessions. She found
herself without friends before whom she could play the great lady in her
castles. She gradually got rid of her possessions, and returned to her
native land. She bought an estate near Christchurch, in Hampshire, and
took a house in Hyde Park Square, London. But she did not long enjoy
those English homes. While being treated for dropsy in 1840 she died
of angina. According to the famous surgeon who was at her bedside just
before her demise, she died "game."
It may almost be said that she lived game. There must have been a
fighting quality about Sophie to take her so far from such a bad start.
Violent as she was of temper, greedy, unscrupulous, she seems yet to
have had some instincts of kindness. The stories of her good deeds are
rather swamped by those of her bad ones. She did try to do some good
with the Prince's money round about Chantilly, took a definite and
lasting interest in the alms-houses built there by "the Great Conde,"
and a request in her own will was to the effect that if she had ever
done anything for the Orleans gang, the Prince de Conde's wishes
regarding the use of the chateau of Ecouen as an orphanage might be
fulfilled as a reward to her. The request never was fulfilled, but it
does show that Sophie had some affinity in kindness to Nell Gwynn.
How much farther--or how much better--would Sophie Dawes have fared had
her manners been less at the mercy of her temper? It is impossible
to say. That she had some quality of greatness is beyond doubt. The
resolution of character, the will to achieve, and even the viraginous
temper might have carried her far had she been a man some thirty years
earlier in the country of her greater activities. Under Napoleon, as
a man, Sophie might have climbed high on the way to glory. As a woman,
with those traits, there is almost tragic inevitability in the manner
in which we find her ranged with what Dickens called "Glory's bastard
brother"--Murder.