g the truncheon of command. No greater harmony existed between
the Prince de Conti and Madame de Longueville than when La Rochefoucauld
severed them. At Bordeaux they favoured opposite parties, and
contributed to augment the discord prevailing, and to weaken the party
of the Princes by dividing it. The Duchess de Longueville, when no
longer guided by La Rochefoucauld, did not fail to lose herself in
aimless projects, and to compromise herself in intrigues without result.
On Nemours being wounded, his wife repaired to the army to tend him, and
the Duchess de Chatillon, under pretext of visiting one of her
chateaux, accompanied her as far as Montargis; thence she went to the
convent of Filles de Sainte-Marie, where, believing herself quite
incognita, she went, under various disguises, to see him whom she had
never ceased to love. These mysterious visits soon became no longer a
secret to any one; and then Conde and his sister could convince
themselves how different are the sentiments which love inspires and
those which self-interest and vanity simulate. The great Conde, by his
intelligence and bearing, had all the means of pleasing women; but
obtained small success notwithstanding. Mademoiselle Vigean excepted, he
appears to have been incapable of inspiring the tender passion, in the
truest acceptation of the phrase. He went further than his sister, it
seems, in the neglect of his person. It was his habit of life to be
almost always badly dressed, and only appeared radiant on the field of
battle. So that the Duke de Nemours was not the only rival with whom
Conde had to contend for the favours of that beauty for whom Louis XIV.
in his boyish amusements had shown a preference, and which has furnished
a theme for some agreeable trifling to the sparkling muse of Benserade.
An abbe, named Cambiac, in the service of the house of Conde, balanced
for some time the passion to which Nemours had given birth in the bosom
of the Duchess de Chatillon, and the jealousy of Nemours failed to expel
Cambiac. The Duchess kept fair with him as the man who had obtained the
greatest sway over her relation, the Princess-dowager de Conde. The
condescension of the Duchess de Chatillon towards this intriguing and
licentious priest procured her, on the part of the Princess-dowager, a
legacy of more than a hundred thousand crowns in Bavaria, and the
usufruct of an estate worth twenty thousand livres in rent per annum.
Cambiac, however, retired, when he