But the important point of the affair, as far as this chapter on it is concerned, is the relation of Sophie Dawes with it on the conclusion of murder. How deeply was she implicated? Let us see how she acted on hearing that there was no reply to Lecomte's knocking, and let us examine her conduct from that moment on. Note that the Baronne de Feucheres was the first person whom Lecomte and the Prince's surgeon apprised of the Prince's silence. She rushed out of her room and made for the Prince's, not by the secret staircase, but by the main one. She knew, however, that the door to the secret staircase from the Prince's room was not bolted that night. This knowledge was admitted for her later by the Prince's surgeon, M. Bonnie. She had gone up to the Prince's room by the main staircase in order to hide the fact, an action which gives a touch of theatricality to her exhibited concern about the Prince's silence. The search for documents spoken of by M. Pasquier in his letter to the King had been carried out by Sophie in person, with the aid of her nephew de Flassans and the Abbe Briant. It was a thorough search, and a piece of indecorousness which she excused on the ground of being afraid the Prince's executors might find a will which made her the sole heir, to the exclusion of the Duc d'Aumale. Regarding the 'accident' which had happened to the Prince on the 11th of August, she said it was explained by an earlier attempt on his part to do away with himself. She tried to deny that she had been at Saint-Leu at the time of the actual happening, when the fact was that she only left for Paris some hours later. When, some time later, the Prince's faithful valet Manoury made mention of the fact that the Prince had wanted to put the width of the country between himself and his mistress, Sophie first tried to put the fear of Louis-Philippe into the man, then, finding he was not to be silenced that way, tried to buy him with a promise of employment. It is beyond question that the Prince de Conde was murdered. He was murdered in a wing of the chateau in which he was hemmed in on all sides by Sophie's creatures. It is impossible that Sophie was not privy, at the least, to the deed. It is not beyond the bounds of probability that she was an actual participator in the murder. She was a violent woman, as violent and passionate as she was determined. Not once but many times is it on record that she physically ill-used her elderly lover. There was one occasion, it is said, when the Prince suddenly came upon her in a very compromising position with a younger man in the park of one of his chateaux. Sophie, before the Prince could utter a protest, cut him across the face with her riding-whip, and finished up by thrashing him with his own cane.