The Prince de Leon had an adventure just about this time, which made much noise.  He was a great, ugly, idle, mischievous fellow, son of the Duc de Rohan, who had given him the title I have just named.  He had served in one campaign very indolently, and then quitted the army, under pretence of ill-health, to serve no more.  Glib in speech, and with the manners of the great world, he was full of caprices and fancies; although a great gambler and spendthrift, he was miserly, and cared only for himself.  He had been enamoured of Florence, an actress, whom M. d’Orleans had for a long time kept, and by whom he had children, one of whom is now Archbishop of Cambrai.  M. de Leon also had several children by this creature, and spent large sums upon her.  When he went in place of his father to open the States of Brittany, she accompanied him in a coach and six horses, with a ridiculous scandal.  His father was in agony lest he should marry her.  He offered to insure her five thousand francs a-year pension, and to take care of their children, if M. de Leon would quit her.  But M. de Leon would not hear of this, and his father accordingly complained to the King.  The King summoned M. de Leon into his cabinet; but the young man pleaded his cause so well there, that he gained pity rather than condemnation.  Nevertheless, La Florence was carried away from a pretty little house at the Ternes, near Paris, where M. de Leon kept her, and was put in a convent.  M. de Leon became furious; for some time he would neither see nor speak of his father or mother, and repulsed all idea of marriage.

At last, however, no longer hoping to see his actress, he not only consented, but wished to marry.  His parents were delighted at this, and at once looked about for a wife for him.  Their choice, fell upon the eldest daughter of the Duc de Roquelaure, who, although humpbacked and extremely ugly, she was to be very rich some day, and was, in fact, a very good match.  The affair had been arranged and concluded up to a certain point, when all was broken off, in consequence of the haughty obstinacy with which the Duchesse de Roquelaure demanded a larger sum with M. de Leon than M. de Rohan chose to give.

The young couple were in despair:  M. de Leon, lest his father should always act in this way, as an excuse for giving him nothing; the young lady, because she, feared she should rot in a convent, through the avarice of her mother, and never marry.  She was more than twenty-four years, of age; he was more than eight-and-twenty.  She was in the convent of the Daughters of the Cross in the Faubourg Saint Antoine.

As soon as M. de Leon learnt that the marriage was broken off, he hastened to the convent; and told all to Mademoiselle de Roquelaure; played the passionate, the despairing; said that if they waited for their parents’ consent they would never marry; and that she would rot in her convent.  He proposed, therefore, that, in spite of their parents, they should marry and be their own guardians.  She agreed to this project; and he went away in order to execute it.