This first campaign of the Great Condé was short and easy, terminating on 9 August with the taking of Arras. The young soldier earned golden opinions from all his superiors by the promptitude and intelligence with which he executed everything entrusted to him, and gave abundant proofs of the courage for which he was soon to become so celebrated in a cavalry skirmish before the beleaguered town. The campaign over, the duke, by his father’s instructions, returned to Dijon without passing through Paris, to the great chagrin of his sister and her friends, who were naturally anxious to celebrate his exploits. But _Monsieur le Prince_, like a prudent father, had decided that, until his son was safely married, it would be as well for him to shun the society of those dangerously fascinating damsels, and of one of them in particular. The Cardinal, unaware that Enghien had been merely following the paternal orders, saw in this avoidance of Paris a confirmation of the persistent rumour that was going about the Court that the young prince “had no taste for his _fiancée_.” In high indignation, he despatched Chavigny to Dijon, to invite him to explain his conduct and to say candidly whether or no he desired the alliance which his father had solicited for him. There can be very little doubt what answer Enghien would have returned had circumstances permitted him to express his real sentiments; but, with the fear of both the Cardinal and _Monsieur le Prince_ before his eyes, he indignantly denied the truth of the report that was in circulation, and begged Chavigny to assure his Eminence that his heart was entirely set upon the marriage. “I feel myself obliged to inform you,” he writes to his father, “that M. de Chavigny came yesterday to see me and told me that he had something of importance to say to me. It is that a gentleman had told him that a rumour ran that I had no inclination for Mlle. de Brézé; that I regarded this marriage with aversion, and that people remarked that my countenance was very melancholy, and, finally, that he begged me to be on my guard. I replied that the person who had told him this was a wicked man, as were those who circulated these false reports; that I looked upon this marriage as a great honour and favour; that it was the thing in the world that you and I desired the most, and that all those who spread these reports were his enemies and mine, and that, far from being melancholy, I had never been so gay.”[182]