The inquiry begun in September of 1830 into the circumstances surrounding the death of the Prince was cooked before it was dressed. The honest man into whose hands it was placed at first, a M. de la Hurpoie, proved himself too zealous. After a night visit from the Procureur he was retired into private life. After that the investigators were hand-picked. They concluded the investigation the following June, with the declaration that the Prince had committed suicide, a verdict which had its reward--in advancement for the judges. In the winter of 1831-32 there was begun a lawsuit in which the Princes de Rohan brought action against Sophie and the Duc d'Aumale for the upsetting of the will under which the latter two had inherited the Prince de Conde's fortune. The grounds for the action were the undue influence exerted by Sophie. The Princes de Rohan lost. Thus was Sophie twice 'legally' vindicated. But public opinion refused her any coat of whitewash. Never popular in France, she became less and less popular in the years that followed her legal triumphs. Having used her for his own ends, Louis-Philippe gradually shut off from her the light of his cod-like countenance.[29] Sophie found little joy in her wide French possessions. She found herself without friends before whom she could play the great lady in her castles. She gradually got rid of her possessions, and returned to her native land. She bought an estate near Christchurch, in Hampshire, and took a house in Hyde Park Square, London. But she did not long enjoy those English homes. While being treated for dropsy in 1840 she died of angina. According to the famous surgeon who was at her bedside just before her demise, she died "game." It may almost be said that she lived game. There must have been a fighting quality about Sophie to take her so far from such a bad start. Violent as she was of temper, greedy, unscrupulous, she seems yet to have had some instincts of kindness. The stories of her good deeds are rather swamped by those of her bad ones. She did try to do some good with the Prince's money round about Chantilly, took a definite and lasting interest in the alms-houses built there by "the Great Conde," and a request in her own will was to the effect that if she had ever done anything for the Orleans gang, the Prince de Conde's wishes regarding the use of the chateau of Ecouen as an orphanage might be fulfilled as a reward to her. The request never was fulfilled, but it does show that Sophie had some affinity in kindness to Nell Gwynn.