第39章 ALMOST A LADY(4)

The Prince was then sixty-six years old.In the course of nature he was almost bound to predecease her.His wealth was enormous, and out of it Sophie wanted as much by bequest as she could get.She was much too shrewd, however, to imagine that, even if she did contrive to be made his sole heir, the influential families who had an eye upon the great possessions of the Prince, and who through relationship had some right to expect inheritance, would allow such a will to go uncontested.She therefore looked about among the Prince's connexions for some one who would accept coheirship with herself, and whose family would be strong enough in position to carry through probate on such terms, but at the same time would be grateful enough to her and venal enough to further her aim of being reinstated at Court.Her choice in this matter shows at once her political cunning, which would include knowledge of affairs, and her ability as a judge of character.

It should be remembered that, in spite of his title of Duc de Bourbon,Sophie's elderly protector was only distantly of that family.He was descended in direct line from the Princes de Conde, whose connexion with the royal house of France dated back to the sixteenth century.The other line of `royal' ducs in the country was that of Orleans, offshoot of the royal house through Philippe, son of Louis XIII, and born in 1640.Sophie's protector, Louis-Henri-Joseph, Prince de Conde, having married Louise- Marie, daughter of the great-grandson of this Philippe, was thus the brother-in-law of that Louis-Philippe, Duc d'Orleans, who in the Revolution was known as Egalite.'' This was a man whom, for his political opinion and for his failure to stand by the King, Louis XVI, the Prince de Conde utterly detested in memory.As much, moreover, as he had hated the father did the Prince de Conde detest Egalite's son.But it was out of this man's family that Sophie selected, though ultimately, her coheir.

Before she arrived at this point, however, Sophie had been at pains to do some not very savoury manoeuvring.

By a dancer at the Opera, called Mimi, the Prince de Conde had an illegitimate daughter, whom he had caused to be educated and whom he had married to the Comte de Rully.The Comtesse de Rully and her husband had a suite at Chantilly.This was an arrangement which Sophie, as reigning Queen of Chantilly, did not like at all.While the Rully woman remained at Chantilly Sophie could not think that her sway over the Prince was quite as absolute as she wished.It took her six years of badgering her protector, from 1819 to 1825, to bring about the eviction.

But meantime (for Sophie's machinations must be taken as concurrent with events as they transpire) the Baronne de Feucheres had approached the son of Philippe-Egalite, suggesting that the last-born of his six children, the Duc d'Aumale, should have the Prince de Conde for godfather.If she could persuade her protector to this the Duc d'Orleans, in return, was to use his influence for her reinstatement at Court.And persuade the old man to this Sophie did, albeit after a great deal of badgering on her part and a great deal of grumbling on the part of the Prince.

The influence exerted at Court by the Duc d'Orleans does not seem to have been very effective.The King who had dismissed her the Court,Louis XVIII, died in 1824.His brother, the Comte d'Artois, ascended the throne as Charles X, and continued by politically foolish recourses, comparable in history to those of the English Stuarts, to alienate the people by attempting to regain that anachronistic absolute power which the Revolution had destroyed.He lasted a mere six years as king.The revolution of 1830 sent him into exile.But up to the last month or so of those six years he steadfastly refused to have anything to do with the Baronne de Feucheres--not that Sophie ever gave up manoeuvring and wheedling for a return to Court favour.

About 1826 Sophie had a secret proposition made to the King that she should try to persuade the Prince de Conde to adopt as his heir one of the brothers of the Duchesse de Berry, widow of the King's second son--or would his Majesty mind if a son of the Duc d'Orleans was adopted? The King did not care at all.

After that Sophie pinned her faith in the power possessed by the Duc d'Orleans.She was not ready to pursue the course whereby her return to Court might have been secured--namely, to abandon her equivocal position in the Prince de Conde's household, and thus her power over the Prince.She wanted first to make sure of her share of the fortune he would leave.She knew her power over the old man.Already she had persuaded him to buy and make over to her the estates of Saint-Leu and Boissy, as well as to make her legacies to the amount of a million francs.Much as she wanted to be received again at Court, she wanted more just as much as she could grab from the Prince's estate.To make her inheritance secure she needed the help of the Duc d'Orleans.

The Duc d'Orleans was nothing loth.He had the mind of a French bourgeois, and all the bourgeois itch for money.He knew that the Prince de Conde hated him, hated his politics, hated his very name.But during the seven years it took Sophie to bring the Prince to the point of signing the will she had in mind the son of Philippe-Egalite fawned like a huckster on his elderly and, in more senses than one, distant relative.The scheme was to have the Prince adopt the little Duc d'Aumale, already his godchild, as his heir.