5i2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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 Eetz pictured him as extravagant, but sufficiently to the taste of the 

 king for him to permit the marshals' tirades against the greatest person- 

 ages of the court. So much for the father; the mother, Nicole, was 

 insane, and the daughter, Clementia, was woman 'energetique vaillante 

 ct meme cruelle.'* 



The Great Conde had but one child. If he had been the father 

 of several, we might expect some to have been very brilliant and per- 

 haps escape the taint. This one son was Henri Jules. Eight lines 

 are devoted to him in 'Lippincott's' and read as follows: 



Conde de Henri (Jules de Bourbon ), Prince, the only son of the Great 

 Conde, 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 him- 

 self 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 undis- 

 tinguished branch of the Palatine House and mother's family, 

 Xevers, 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 beauti- 

 ful mansion at Sceaux, surrounded by men most eminent for genius and learn- 

 ing. It was she who first patronized the muse of Voltaire, t 



The intellectual qualities being the interesting thing to trace in 

 the family of Conde, nothing further need be said save that the remain- 

 ing nine showed no marked genius. The five in the next generation 

 exhibited two instances of extreme cruelty. These were Louis IV., 

 Prince of Conde, 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. J 



* Jacobi, ' Selection chez les aristocrats,' p. 414. 

 fTaylor, 'Memoires Origans,' I., p. 211. 

 J Taylor, ' Memoires Orleans,' I., p. 383. 



