On that point Madame de Motteville was in error. Which of the two--M. de Beaufort or M. de Rance--was most beloved it would be difficult to determine. But this is so far certain, that M. de Rance, the future founder of La Trappe, was the lover who regretted her the most sincerely. He had hastened to her sick couch so soon as he heard of her illness; and he had arrived, not too late, and only to find himself the spectator of a most horrible sight, as has frequently been related with much romantic and dramatic detail, but soon enough to pass within her chamber the last hours left to her of life. "Already balancing and wrestling between heaven and this world," says Saint Simon, who was in his confidence, "the sight of that so sudden death achieved in him the determination of withdrawing from the world which he had for some time meditated." Among the different versions of this catastrophe, Laroque asserts that, after an absence on a long journey, on De Rance's return, he called at the Hotel Montbazon, and then learned, for the first time, the death of the Duchess; that he was shown into her room, where, to his horror, the headless body lay in its coffin. The head had been cut off, either because the lead coffin was not made long enough or for the purpose of an anatomical study. Some assert that De Rance took the head, and that the skull of the woman he loved so well was found in his cell at La Trappe. History, however, will not accept this romantic incident. Touching the fate of De Rance's rival--when Louis XIV. returned to Paris in 1652, the Duke de Beaufort submitted to the royal authority, and took no further part in the civil war, which the Prince de Conde carried on for several years longer. Later, the Duke obtained the command of the royal fleet. In 1664 and 1665, he was at the head of several expeditions against the African corsairs. In 1666 he commanded the French men-of-war ordered to join those of Holland against England. Finally, in 1669, he went to the aid of the Venetians, attacked by the Turks in the island of Candia. The galleys and vessels, newly constructed in the port of Toulon, disembarked seven thousand men under Beaufort--a contingent too weak for such a dangerous undertaking. That aid only served to retard the taking of Candia for a few days, and was the means of useless bloodshed. In a sortie, the rash and impetuous grandson of Henry the Great was cut to pieces in the most merciless way; and as his body could not be found after the fight, his death gave rise to fables sought to be rendered probable by the remembrance of the eccentric part he had previously played. CHAPTER V. MADEMOISELLE DE MONTPENSIER.