During her last days, the old princess had fallen very much under the influence of Madame de Châtillon, who, as avaricious as she was unprincipled, had determined to obtain a share of her property. In this she was but too successful. “The Duchesse de Châtillon, who was the most astute woman in the world,” observes Lenet, “had so well understood how to employ her adroit and subtle mind and her agreeable and insinuating manners as to make herself so completely mistress of the princess-dowager, that she saw only with her eyes and spoke only with her mouth.” It was with the idea of separating the old princess from all the friends and servants who might endeavour to frustrate her designs that the duchess had persuaded her to take up her residence at Châtillon-sur-Loing, where she was careful not to permit any one to approach her, except Madame de Bourgneuf, the _gouvernante_ of Madame de Longueville’s children, and _Madame la Princesse’s_ confessor, a worldly and intriguing abbé named Cambriac, both of whom she had succeeded in gaining over to her cause. The outcome of these manœuvres was that the dowager bequeathed to Madame de Châtillon nearly the whole of her jewellery--in itself a respectable fortune--and the revenues for life of several of her estates, including that of Merlou, near Pontoise. The young Princesse de Condé was at the Château of Montrond, whither she had proceeded on leaving Guienne, when she learned of the death of her mother-in-law. Well aware of the rapacity of the fair Isabelle, she at once despatched Lenet to Châtillon to watch over her husband’s interests; and this intervention obliged the impatient legatee to make a journey to Montrond to ask the princess’s permission to take possession of the jewellery bequeathed to her. The interview between the two ladies was rendered the more piquant by an incident which afforded Claire-Clémence an opportunity for enjoying a malicious triumph over the too-coquettish mistress of her husband.