M. de Montpensier appears to have lived a great deal at Champigny, a favourite among his many châteaux. Thirty years after his death, on her way to visit the new splendours of Richelieu, his granddaughter found that he was still beloved there, although the almighty Cardinal, levelling his house with the ground, would gladly have destroyed his memory. The Duke died at his hôtel in Paris on the last day of February 1608, wasted by a long decline, and devotedly nursed to the end by his eccentric Capuchin father-in-law, Père Ange, in the world Duc de Joyeuse. “Bon prince,” l’Estoile says of Montpensier, “and as such regretted and mourned by the King, the nobility and all the people.” The usual amusements of the Carnival were stopped; even the little Dauphin was not allowed to dance his ballet before the King. Three weeks later a funeral service was held at Notre Dame, with an oration by the popular preacher M. Fenouillet, Bishop of Montpellier. The ceremony, which was simple, derived dignity from the presence of one hundred and twenty poor men in long robes, carrying torches. Another and grander service was held in April. Between these two occasions, the last male descendant of Robert, son of Saint Louis, was conveyed with an escort of three hundred horse to Champigny, and was buried in the chapel which still exists there. The Duc de Montpensier’s widow married Charles, Duc de Guise, who, with his brothers, represented the princely House of Lorraine at the French Court. By birth and position, of course, he was one of the first men in France; personally he was of little account, and hardly a worthy descendant of the great Dukes of the sixteenth century. He had not even their looks, being short and snub-nosed. He was witty, agreeable and generous, very frivolous and a great flirt. Richelieu, in the first volume of his _Memoirs_, gives Henry IV.’s own estimate of this head of the Guise family: “Plus de montre que d’effet”; rather brilliant in company, and judged capable of great things by those who did not know him; but so slothful and lazy that he cared for nothing but pleasure, “et qu’en effet son esprit n’était pas plus grand que son nez.” [Illustration: CLOISTER AT CHAMPIGNY] Among the more conspicuous nobles, the Duc de Bouillon, the malcontent leader of the Protestants, was a constant thorn in the King’s side. The Duc d’Épernon, an ambitious, adventurous courtier of Gascon origin, had been a favourite of Henry III., and was not much loved by Henry IV., who did not trust him. His son, Bernard, married Gabrielle-Angélique de Bourbon, the King’s daughter by the Marquise de Verneuil. This alliance was roughly declined by the old Duc de Montmorency, Constable of France, to whom Henry proposed it for his splendid young son, that Henry de Montmorency, last of the direct line, whose high head was among those to be mown down, at a future day, by the implacable Cardinal.