was
wholly given up to the influence of his daughter. She feared
ill-treatment; she felt certain at least that once in Normandy she would
no more quit it, and that her time would be passed between an aged,
irritated husband, and an overruling step-daughter, who would apply
themselves in concert to retain her in the solitude of a province, and
perhaps to make her expiate in confinement her bygone triumphs. The idea
of the sorrowful life which awaited her in Normandy produced very nearly
the same effect upon her as the thought of a second imprisonment upon
the mind of Conde. She sought for a means of avoiding that which was to
her the worst of all evils; there was an assured though dangerous
one--war, which would prevent her from repairing to Normandy, under the
pretext more or less specious that she could not abandon her brother.
Such was the design she formed within herself and very soon resolved
upon adopting, and the fresh negotiations which La Rochefoucauld
proposed thwarted her doubly. Should those negotiations prove successful
they would deprive her of the only pretext she had for not rejoining
her husband in Normandy, and she thought it strange that it was La
Rochefoucauld who would expose her to that peril. From that moment
doubtless angry explanations took place between them. She perceived that
La Rochefoucauld was wearied of his sacrifices, that he wished to
reconcile himself with the Court, repair his fortunes, and taste the
sweets of peace; whilst in the eyes of the superb princess the paramount
consideration with him, for whom she had done so much, ought to have
been never to forsake her, should they both together rush to certain
ruin. But La Rochefoucauld was no longer wound up to a tone so lofty,
worthy of the Great Cyrus and of their chivalrous love of 1648, and the
haughty Madame[8] was deeply wounded at the discovery. Nevertheless, she
was not insensible to what there was of reasonable in La Rochefoucauld's
advice, and not to incur the entire responsibility of the part which her
brother might take, she consented to follow her sister-in-law, the
Princess de Conde, and her nephew, the Duke d'Enghien, into Berri, one
of Conde's governments:--a journey which moreover had the advantage of
separating her from her husband. She set out, therefore, on the 18th of
July for Bourges, taking with her the elder of her two sons, the
younger, Charles de Paris, born in 1649, not being able to bear the
fatigue of the jour