His father, Prince Henri II de Condé, thought it wise, after the execution of his brother-in-law Henri de Montmorency and his own imprisonment, to contract a matrimonial alliance with the all-powerful Cardinal; especially as Richelieu was obsessed by the desire that one of his nieces should become a Royal Princess. A marriage was therefore arranged between the twelve-year-old Duc d'Enghien and the little Claire-Clemence, then barely five. This _mariage de convenance_ brought no happiness to the parties concerned, and ended in completely crushing the unloved wife. In a book recently published, "_Sur la femme du Grand Condé_,"[9] the excellent qualities of Claire-Clemence--so little appreciated during her lifetime--have been set out for us. At a court where women were chiefly given over to pleasure and amusement, it is but natural that soberer qualities such as hers should have passed unnoticed, or even have aroused opposition. Between her brilliant mother-in-law, Charlotte de Montmorency, and her beautiful but vain sister-in-law, Geneviève de Bourbon[10] (subsequently Madame de Longueville), to the courtiers of her time Claire-Clemence appeared to be lacking both in beauty and _savoir-faire_. A fall on the very day of her marriage, caused by her high heels when dancing a minuet which Anne of Austria had opened with the Duc d'Enghien, was recorded with great glee by the Grande Mademoiselle, daughter of Gaston d'Orléans. The prospects of this new establishment were not exactly promising, since Claire-Clemence received no support from her parents, whom she hardly knew. When her uncle, the Cardinal, decided to make an instrument of her to serve his purposes, he took her away from her egoistical and immoral father, the Maréchal de Brézé, and her sickly mother, who suffered from transitory attacks of madness. Claire-Clemence had been educated, therefore, in accordance with the high station for which she was intended. After her marriage Richelieu watched over her welfare and superintended arrangements by which she and her princely husband should have a suitable establishment in Paris; where, it was said, the young couple led _un train de Prince_.