Birth of Louis de Bourbon, Duc d’Enghien (the Great Condé)--His early years at the Château of Montrond--His education--His personal appearance and character--Wealth of the Condés--Life at Chantilly--Isabelle de Boutteville and Marthe du Vigean--Tender attachment of the Duc d’Enghien and Mlle. du Vigean--Subserviency of the Prince de Condé towards Richelieu--He solicits for Enghien the hand of the Cardinal’s niece, Claire-Clémence de Maillé-Brézé--The young prince protests against the sacrifice demanded of him, but eventually consents--He is presented to Mlle. de Maillé-Brézé--First campaign of the Great Condé--He denies the rumour that he has “no taste for his _fiancée_”--Fête at the Palais-Cardinal: a ludicrous incident--Marriage of the Duc d’Enghien. Voltaire has observed that the sole claim of the third Prince de Condé to remembrance is that he begat one of France’s most famous generals. To be just, he should have added that the claim is a twofold one, inasmuch as not only was he the father of the Great Condé, but gave him one of the most thorough military educations that prince ever received, and but for which, though his fiery valour would doubtless have gained him some distinction in the field, it is scarcely probable that he would ever have earned the title of “_le Grand_.” The birth of this shoot of the royal race was an event of importance, for, after five years, the union of Louis XIII. with Anne of Austria still remained without result, and the Duc d’Orléans, the King’s younger brother, did not seem inclined to take a wife; but, at the moment when it occurred, the attention of the Parisians was occupied by the arrival of a Carmelite monk, Père Dominique de Jésus-Maria, to whom miraculous powers were ascribed, and it passed almost unnoticed. Condé was in his government of Berry when the news that he had a son reached him, and, as soon as she was able to travel, _Madame la Princesse_ set out for Bourges, to take the boy to his father. The latter had already made up his mind as to the way in which his heir was to be brought up. As the little prince was fragile and sickly, and he dreaded for him the air of Paris, the cares of an over-indulgent mother, and the influence of the fashionable ladies by whom the princess was always surrounded, he had decided to break with tradition and to establish him at the Château of Montrond, a fortified castle belonging to him, situated at the confluence of the Marmande and the Cher, overlooking the little town of Saint-Amand, where he would be placed under the care of some intelligent women of the middle class, who could be trusted to carry out his instructions with unquestioning obedience.