“I have just been told of an extraordinary adventure which occurred at the Hôtel de Condé, and which deserves to be related to you. Here it is: _Madame la Princesse_ having conceived an affection for one of her footmen named Duval, the latter was foolish enough to suffer impatiently the good-will which she likewise testified for the young Rabutin, who had been her page. One day, when they both happened to be in her chamber, Duval having said something that was wanting in respect to the princess, Rabutin drew his sword to chastise him. Duval drew his also, and the princess, throwing herself between them to separate them, was wounded in the breast. Duval has been arrested, and Rabutin has taken to flight. However honourable the subject of the quarrel may be, I like not the name of a footman coupled with that of Rabutin.”[213] To which her scandal-loving correspondent replies: “Our cousin’s adventure is neither beautiful nor ugly; the mistress does him honour, and the rival shame.” At the same time, most of her contemporaries refused to believe that the sweet and unfortunate Claire-Clémence had been seriously culpable, and, though several of Condé’s biographers, to efface a stain on the escutcheon of their hero, have not hesitated to reproduce this calumny, others, such as Louis Joseph de Bourbon and Earl Stanhope, are of a different opinion, and blame severely the conduct of the prince.[214] “How is it possible,” asks the latter, “to think that the suspicion of the prince was well founded? How can we believe that a princess married nearly thirty years, and, up to this time, entirely free from the slightest imputation--always held sacred by calumny, which spares so few, ever irreproachable in the midst of a most corrupt Court--could have waited till the age when passions have subsided to indulge them? How reconcile such irregularities with that exalted piety which she had practised from her youth upwards? How can we, without any proof, admit such accusations against the woman who had always devoted herself so courageously and constantly to the service of a husband who slighted her? Against the heroine of Montrond and Bordeaux; against Clémence de Maillé? And again, what accusations? Not only of an illicit attachment, but the shameless sharing of her favours between two of her own domestics!”[215] Condé, who had never scrupled to jeer at the conjugal misfortunes of others, now, in his turn, became an object of ridicule. Chansons and epigrams at his expense began to circulate in Paris, and served to exasperate him still further against his wife. In the first days of February, he again demanded of the King a _lettre de cachet_, and this time Louis XIV. did not refuse, and signed an order which exiled the princess to the Château of Châteauroux, in Berry. No time was lost in executing it, and as soon as the doctors pronounced her able to stand the fatigue of the journey, she left Paris.