Chapter II · 1635 to 1642. (continued 2)

Such a passion was too violent to continue for a great length of time; it was prolonged even beyond ordinary bounds. Mademoiselle Du Vigean would consent to be the wife alone of Condé, and the marriage of the latter could not be broken: things advanced on neither side, and every one grew weary.

It may be imagined that the interest which Condé manifested for Mademoiselle Du Vigean intimidated those who would have aspired to her hand. Two marriages were proposed to her. Among her admirers was the Marquis d’Huxelles, who afterwards married Marie de Bailleul, daughter of the Superintendent of Finances. D’Huxelles was a very distinguished military man, who expected to become Marshal of France, and whose services and premature death in consequence of his wounds,⁠[204] enabled his son to obtain that honor. He thought very seriously of marrying Mademoiselle Du Vigean.⁠[205] He hesitated on account of the reports which did not fail to find circulation. “Although,” says Lenet, from whom we obtain these facts, “I know with all the certainty that one can have in regard to matters of this kind, that love was never more passionate than that on the part of the prince, nor listened to with more discretion and modesty, than was exhibited on the part of Mademoiselle Du Vigean.” And in this Madame de Motteville and Mademoiselle agree perfectly with Lenet.

Mademoiselle Du Vigean had been also sought by another amiable and brave gentleman, the Marquis Jacques Stuart de Saint-Mégrin, brother of the beautiful Saint-Mégrin of whom the Duke d’Orleans was so fond. Saint-Mégrin continued for a long time his affection for Mademoiselle Du Vigean;⁠[206] but he dared not come in competition with Condé. At a later period he learned with extreme joy that his suit might be heard; and he addressed himself at once to the parents of Mademoiselle Du Vigean. The marriage did not take place: a passion such as that which we have just described was destined to have a very different dénouement.

It is known that after the German campaign of 1645, and the disputed victory of Nortlingen, Condé was seized with a violent sickness. It was then that, despairing of a dissolution of his marriage, and of conquering the virtuous scruples of Mademoiselle Du Vigean, he resolved to turn his thoughts in another direction. Mademoiselle Du Vigean did not complain; she closed her ears to all propositions, resisted the counsels and even the orders of her family, and in the full splendor of her beauty and her youth she cast herself among the Carmelites of the Rue Saint-Jacques.⁠[207] Condé did not attempt to see her again, but he always preserved for her, says Lenet, a remembrance full of respect.⁠[208] The love of Condé was not, then, a transient caprice. It began before his marriage; it continued four long years; it remained ardent and pure in the midst of camps, and was extinguished only in the despair of bringing it to a happy conclusion, and after a long and critical disorder, from which the hero of Nortlingen arose ever to renounce love for glory and ambition.

It would be gratifying to follow Mademoiselle Du Vigean to the convent of the Carmelites, to know at what time precisely she entered it, what occupied her there, and when she died. These are points upon which no contemporaries enlighten us, and all that we are now able to assert with certainty is, that Mademoiselle Du Vigean made a profession in 1649. Thus, she must have joined the Carmelites in 1647, since the vows can be taken only after a service of one or two years as a candidate and a novice. She took the name of sister Marthe de Jésus;⁠[209] she died in 1665; she was never prioress; she was sub-prioress in 1659, and ceased to be so in 1662. According to custom, she must have held this situation six years, and consequently her term of service was between the years 1656 and 1662; whence it follows that all the letters of Madame de Longueville, addressed to sister Marthe and to the Mother Sub-prioress, between 1656 and 1662, are to the same nun, and that this nun was Mademoiselle Du Vigean, which accounts for the particularly affectionate tone of these letters. In fact, we have found in the National Library, in the collection of Doctor Vallant⁠[210] and in those of Gaignières,⁠[211] two billets from Mademoiselle Du Vigean, then sister Marthe, to Madame de Sablé, and another to that very Marchioness d’Huxelles whose place she might have occupied. These billets are the only relics which remain to us of this interesting person, who, because she was too pleasing to a prince, was compelled to bury her beauty and her virtue in a cloister.

Such is often the end of the pleasures of youth, the inclinations of the most generous, the feasts of the heart and of life. Mademoiselle de Bourbon witnessed the birth, growth, and death of the loves of Condé and of Mademoiselle Du Vigean. Villefore says that she thwarted them, but he produces no proof of this. It is at least very certain that she strove to repair, as much as she could, the injury which her brother had done to her young and charming friend. For her sake, she loaded her sister with benefits, and, when the poor forlorn creature sought an asylum among the Carmelites, she maintained with her an affectionate intercourse; she visited her, wrote to her often, and, even to the end of life, retained for her a place in her heart by the side of Madame de Sablé.

But let us not anticipate the future. We are still amid the illusions of youth, still in the season of pleasures and love. Whilst around her, at the hôtel de Rambouillet and at the hôtel de Condé, at Chantilly, at Ruel, at Liancourt, all was heroism and gallantry, whilst surrounded by young and brilliant cavaliers, destined to become great captains; with agreeable female friends who drew after them all hearts, what did Mademoiselle de Bourbon do with her own? Did she bestow it as did Mademoiselle Du Vigean and Mademoiselle de Boutteville? Among so many adorers who crowded around her, did she distinguish none? Tender and somewhat coquettish, with the soul and the eyes of Chimène, what Rodrigue among the heroes of her brother’s court found her sensible? At the age of nineteen, she had been promised to the Prince de Joinville, son of Henri de Lorraine, Duke de Guise. A powerful alliance would this have been, which had united the Montmorencys, the Condés, and the Guises; but the Prince de Joinville died in Italy, where he went to meet his father, in the violent and obstinate persecution which the implacable avenger and indefatigable promoter of royal authority, Cardinal de Richelieu, did not cease to exercise against the Guises in remembrance of the League. It is said that a marriage was also contemplated between her and d’Armand, Marquis de Brézé, nephew of Cardinal Richelieu, brother of her who was forced upon the Duke d’Enghien, the intrepid sailor who twice beat the fleets of Spain, and perished at the age of twenty-seven, from a cannon shot, at the siege of Orbitello, in 1646. This marriage would have placed in the hands of the house of Condé, by means of the two heroic brothers-in-law, all the forces of France, both by sea and land; but this marriage was defeated, for reasons in regard to which there are various opinions.⁠[212]

Mademoiselle de Bourbon attracted whilst she discouraged. There was not a gentleman who would not have given his life for her favor; but no one was rash enough to aspire to her hand. Many then sighed for her, and some even paid her the most marked homage. Mention is made, among others, of the Duke de Beaufort, more brave than witty, loyal and chivalrous enough, who, being politely rejected, fell at the feet of Madame de Montbazon, and served her till death. Especial notice is taken of Maurice de Coligny, the son of Marshal de Châtillon. In 1642 M. the Prince and Madame the Princess, not finding a single young lord in all the kingdom to whom policy permitted them to give Mademoiselle de Bourbon, proposed to her the greatest lord of France, after the princes of the blood, the Duke de Longueville. He was the widower of Louise de Bourbon, daughter of the Count de Soissons, by whom he had Marie d’Orleans, who was already seventeen or eighteen years of age: he was forty-seven, and even at this age was said to be still attached to Madame de Montbazon. Mademoiselle de Bourbon resisted, or at least testified at first a great repugnance; it was, however, necessary to yield; herein she displayed the resolution which she testified on all great occasions. She married then on the 2d of June, 1642, at the age of twenty-three years, her heart and mind filled with poetry and gallantry, a man much older than herself, and who was not even sufficiently touched with her charms to renounce his old mistress.

The fêtes on the occasion of this marriage were still more brilliant than those which took place at the marriage of the Duke d’Enghien. Mademoiselle de Bourbon walked to the altar with a sort of intrepidity, and she seemed almost gay at the hôtel de Longueville, occupying the spectators so much with her dazzling beauty that they did not remark the violence which she did to her feelings. It is her historian, the Jansenist Villefore, who has preserved for us this tradition. Scarcely a year had flown by, when, without even giving her heart, for a long time yet unoccupied, she was the involuntary cause of a most tragic quarrel, in which Coligny, who had sighed for her, perished in the flower of youth, and perhaps under her own eyes, by the hand of one of those Guises to whom she had been for a moment destined. Sinister prelude of the storms that awaited her first adventure, which consecrated her beauty in so sad a manner, and which won for her, at the age of twenty-four years, in the world of gallantry, a renown, a popularity even, almost equal to that which victory had achieved for her brother, the Duke d’Enghien.