She had come to the fête furnished with a pair of enormously high-heeled shoes, which she had been made to don in order to increase her stature, which, as we have said, was very short, even for her years. It was only with the greatest difficulty that she was able to preserve her equilibrium, and, while dancing a _courante_, she slipped and fell sprawling on the floor. _La Grande Mademoiselle_, who recounts this misadventure, declares that “no considerations of respect could hinder all the company from giving vent to their merriment, not even excepting the Duc d’Enghien.”[183] On 7 February, the marriage-contract was signed in the King’s cabinet at the Louvre, as was the custom when Princes of the Blood were wed. The Prince and Princesse de Condé promised the young couple settlements to the value of 80,000 livres a year and an annual pension of 40,000 livres. His Eminence gave his niece the seigneuries of Ansac, Moy, Cambronne, and Plessis-Billebault, together with the sum of 300,000 livres, but under the express condition that she should renounce all claim to the rest of his property in the event of his death. “It was impossible,” observe Claire-Clémence’s biographers, MM. Homberg and Jousselin, “to manifest more clearly, in the eyes of all, that the niece of Richelieu had been sought by the House of Condé, less for wealth, which was by no means out of the ordinary, than for the advantages of a connexion with him whom the courtiers called “the All-powerful.”[184] The stipulation regarding Richelieu’s property greatly disgusted _Monsieur le Prince_, who was as greedy as he was ambitious; and, though he had not ventured to contest the matter with the Cardinal, he made, together with his son, a formal protest, in the presence of a notary, against the renunciation exacted by his Eminence. After the signing of the contract, Richelieu gave a magnificent ballet at the Palais-Cardinal, entitled “La Prospérité des armes de France.” This ballet, we are told, delighted every one save the King, who appeared to be displeased at the sight of the Duc d’Enghien descending from heaven, surrounded by dazzling sunbeams, to make his entry. On 11 February, the marriage was celebrated in the chapel of Palais-Cardinal, by the Archbishop of Paris. After the ceremony, the bridal pair and their relatives were entertained to a sumptuous banquet, and in the evening a play, followed by a supper, was given by Richelieu at the Palais-Cardinal. “Never had his Eminence been seen in a better temper,”[185] writes a witness of the marriage fêtes, on which the Cardinal is said to have expended upwards of a million livres. Supper over, the company adjourned to the Hôtel de Condé, to put the bridal pair to bed, according to custom. CHAPTER XIV