The prince could well afford to indulge his taste for the embellishment of Chantilly, since he had inherited the business acumen of his grandfather and amassed a great fortune, though, according to Saint-Simon, he was “a beggar in comparison with those who came after him.” He does not appear to have been over scrupulous in his methods of acquiring wealth, and made a practice of lending large sums to the members of the Parlement of Paris, in order to ensure their support in the lawsuits in which he was perpetually engaged, in view of which it is not surprising to learn that it was very rarely that a verdict was given against him. With his son, who, on the death of the Great Condé, had retained the title of Duc de Bourbon, instead of assuming that of Enghien, which both his grandfather and father had borne, but was now officially styled _Monsieur le Duc_, he appears to have been on anything but cordial terms, though the harshness with which he sometimes treated him was tempered by a wholesome fear of the King, whose son-in-law he was. It must be admitted, however, that the Duc de Bourbon was scarcely the kind of son to inspire affection, even in a parent with an infinitely greater capacity for it than _Monsieur le Prince_ possessed. Not only was he almost repulsive in appearance, but he was cursed with so violent a temper that it was positively dangerous to contradict him. One evening, when entertaining some friends at Saint-Maur, he had an argument with the Comte de Fiesque over some historical incident. When the count refused to admit that he was wrong, _Monsieur le Duc_ sprang to his feet in a violent rage, and, snatching up a plate, hurled it at his guest’s head, and then turned him out of the house, although, having been invited to stay the night, he had sent away his coach. The unfortunate Fiesque was obliged to make his way to the house of the curé of the parish and beg a bed from him. He was, moreover, exceedingly vindictive, and any one whom he even suspected of doing him an ill turn speedily had cause to rue it. Thus, on one occasion, having reason to believe that a certain escapade of his in Paris, which had earned him a severe reprimand from his royal father-in-law, had been brought to the King’s notice by the Marquis de Termes, one of his Majesty’s _premiers valets de chambre_, he despatched several of his servants, armed with stout canes, to lie in wait for the supposed informer. They ambushed him successfully and administered so unmerciful a castigation that he was obliged to keep his bed for several days. Saint-Simon accuses him of a love of brutal practical jokes, and asserts that the death of the Latin poet Santeuil, at Dijon, in 1694, was due to his having given him a glass of champagne into which he had emptied the contents of his snuff-box. But we can find no confirmation of this story, and probably there is no more truth in it than in a good many other of Saint-Simon’s anecdotes.