e Bourbon, was surely destined, it might be thought, to contract an
early and altogether suitable matrimonial alliance. It was therefore
somewhat surprising to find how much difficulty there was in mating her.
Foremost among those who sought her hand was that hair-brained,
handsome, coarse-mannered Duke de Beaufort, younger son of Caesar de
Vendome, himself the bastard of the jovial Bearnois by the _Fair
Gabrielle_.[1] Beaufort inherited his unfortunate grand-dame's
beauty--had a Phoebus-Apollo style of head, set off with a profusion
of long, curly, golden locks; was a young, brave, and flourishing
gallant, and somewhat later (during the Fronde), from his blunt speech
and familiar manners with the Parisian mob, became the idol of the
market-women, and was therefore dubbed _Roi des Halles_. But this
scapegrace suitor withdrew his pretensions in order to gratify, it is
said, the handsome though decried Duchess de Montbazon, who had
enthralled him in her flowery chains as a led-captain. On entering her
nineteenth year Mdlle. de Bourbon was promised in marriage to the Prince
de Joinville, son of Charles of Lorraine (Duke de Guise), but that young
nobleman having died prematurely in Italy, no other serious matrimonial
project seems to have been entertained until the Princess had reached
her twenty-third year. The fortunate suitor was one of Beaufort's
rivals--or, rather, colleagues--for that would be the more correct term
when designating their mutual relations to the unscrupulous Duchess de
Montbazon. The widower, Henry of Orleans (Duke de Longueville), by
birth, dignity, and wealth was looked upon as the first match in France.
Unfortunately, in his case, those dazzling attributes were materially
abated through disparity of age, for he had reached the ripe maturity of
forty-seven, whilst the bride of his choice had not yet seen half that
cycle of summers. To be twenty-four years her senior was, for the
husband of a youthful princess so excelling in wit and beauty, certainly
a formidable inequality, and so Mdlle. de Bourbon seems to have thought.
At the command, however, of her father, who intimated that his
determination was inflexible in thus disposing of his daughter's hand,
Anne Genevieve meekly complied, and was espoused in June, 1642, to Henri
de Bourbon, Duke de Longueville.[2]

[1] Created Duchess de Beaufort by Henry IV.

[2] The Duke was descended from the "brave Dunois," bastard of
Orleans.

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