Lenet said that he was under the possession of a woman (la Dervois), the widow of one of his valets, ugly but of quick and forceful mind, who governed his entire fortunes up to the last breath of his life. Cardinal de Retz pictured him as extravagant, but sufficiently to the taste of the king for him to permit the marshals' tirades against the greatest personages of the court. So much for the father; the mother, Nicole, was insane, and the daughter, Clementia, was woman 'energetique vaillante et même cruelle.'[1]
The Great Condé had but one child. If he had been the father of several, we might expect some to have been very brilliant and perhaps escape the taint. This one son was Henri Jules. Eight lines are devoted to him in 'Lippincott's' and read as follows:
Condé de Henri (Jules de Bourbon), Prince, the only son of the Great Condé, was born in 1643. He distinguished himself at the siege of Tournay in 1665, and in 1674 took part in the battle of Seneffe, where he is said to have saved his father's life. Saint-Simon gives a just but most favorable view of his character. Towards the end of his life he became insane and fancied himself a dead man. Died in 1709.
Brilliancy, bad character and congenital insanity was then united with mediocrity, since the mother of the next generation was from an undistinguished branch of the Palatine House and mother's family, Nevers, is also 'obscure' at this point.
Of the four adult children of Henri Jules, Anne Louisa, Duchess of Maine, alone has left a fame that has come down to us.
She had more than an ordinary share of the pride of birth by which that branch of the Bourbons was distinguished. She was highly educated and a great patroness of literature and art. Most of her life was spent in her beautiful mansion at Sceaux, surrounded by men most eminent for genius and learning. It was she who first patronized the muse of Voltaire.[2]
The intellectual qualities being the interesting thing to trace in the family of Condé, nothing further need be said save that the remaining nine showed no marked genius. The five in the next generation exhibited two instances of extreme cruelty. These were Louis IV., Prince of Condé, and his brother Charles, Count de Charlais.
Bad as the Duke de Bourbon was his brother the Count de Charlais was infinitely worse. He excited public execration by acts of such ferocious atrocity that they seem to belong to the worst tyrants of antiquity. Like all the nobles who had been educated under the regency he had abandoned himself to the wildest and most profligate debauchery which however did not satisfy him unless it was accompanied by the most savage cruelty. He murdered one of his servants whose wife, fondly attached to her husband, refused to receive his addresses. He fired at the slaters employed on the tops of houses and when he brought down one of his human game he hastened to gratify himself by watching his last agonies.[3]
↑Jacobi, 'Selection chez les aristocrats,' p. 414.
