This old man, rich, childless, and miserable, had had a romantic history.  When very young he had fallen violently in love with his cousin, the Princess Louise of Orleans.  He was permitted to marry her, but only on condition that they should part at the church door,—­she to enter a convent for two years, he to serve for the same time in the French army.  They were married with all pomp and ceremony; but that night the ardent bridegroom scaled the walls of the convent and bore away his bride.  Unhappily their mutual attachment did not last long.  “It went out,” says a contemporary memoir-writer, “like a fire of straw."[1] At last hatred took the place of love, and the quarrels between the Prince de Conde (as the Duc de Bourbon was then called) and his wife were among the scandals of the court of Louis XVI., and helped to bring odium on the royal family.

[Footnote 1:  Madame d’Oberkirch.]

The only child of this marriage was the Duc d’Enghien.  The princess died in the early days of the Revolution.  Her husband formed the army of French emigres at Coblentz, and led them when they invaded their own country.  On the death of his father he became Duke of Bourbon, but his promising son, D’Enghien, was already dead.  The duke married while in exile the princess of Monaco, a lady of very shady antecedents.  She was, however, received by Louis XVIII. in his little court at Hartwell.  She died soon after the Restoration.

In 1830 the old duke, worn out with sorrows and excesses, was completely under the power of an English adventuress, a Madame de Feucheres.[1] He had settled on her his Chateau de Saint-Leu, together with very large sums of money.  Several years before 1830 it had occurred to Madame de Feucheres that the De Rohans, who were related to the duke on his mother’s side, might dispute these gifts and bequests, and by way of making herself secure, she sought the protection of Louis Philippe, then Duke of Orleans.  She offered to use her influence with the Duke of Bourbon to induce him to make the Duc d’Aumale, who was his godson, his heir, if Louis Philippe would engage to stand her friend in any trouble.

[Footnote 1:  Louis Blanc.]

The relations of the Duc de Bourbon to this woman bore a strong resemblance to those that Thackeray has depicted between Becky Sharp and Jos Sedley.  The old man became thoroughly in fear of her; and when the Revolution broke out later, he was also much afraid of being plundered and maltreated at Saint-Leu by the populace,—­not, however, because he had any great regard for his cousin Charles X., with whom in his youth he had fought a celebrated duel.  Impelled by these two fears, he resolved to escape secretly from France, and so rid himself of the tyranny of Madame de Feucheres and the dangers of Revolution.