She learned, too, that the position of _Monsieur le Duc_ was far from secure, and that he had many powerful enemies, who were continually intriguing against him and who would not scruple to employ every possible means to reduce him to political impotence. This, however, requires a word of explanation. For some years past the bitterest antipathy had existed between the Houses of Orléans and Condé. This feud had its origin in the aversion which the two daughters of Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan had always entertained for each other, and which, in their younger days, had so much disturbed the harmony of the royal circle that the King was at length obliged to threaten them with banishment from the Court if they could not live peaceably together. The hatred between the two sisters had been communicated to their sons, the Duc de Chartres and _Monsieur le Duc_, and intensified by the lawsuit over the will of the late _Monsieur le Prince_ and by the prominence taken by _Monsieur le Duc_ in the campaign against the legitimated princes, whose cause the Duchesse d’Orléans had espoused with the most passionate enthusiasm. The Regent did not share the antipathy of his wife and son to the Condés; indeed, he regarded the proceedings of them and the faction which they had gathered about them with the gravest suspicion, which is hardly surprising, having regard to the ambitions with which they were generally credited. These included his own deposition and the substitution of the Duchesse d’Orléans as Regent, the banishment of _Monsieur le Duc_ and the Condés, the re-establishment of the legitimated princes in their titles and dignities, the constitution of a new Ministry, and a _rapprochement_ with Spain. The party was numerically powerful, including as it did a number of the _protégés_ of the House of Orléans, and many discontented and ambitious persons. It also comprised some very distinguished names: the Duc and Duchesse du Maine, the Comte de Toulouse, the Prince de Condé, the Rohans, the Duc de Montemart, and the Maréchaux de Villeroy, Berwick and Tallard. But its most active and formidable members were three men of middle-class origin: the Secretary of State for War, Le Blanc, the Comte, afterwards the Maréchal de Belle-Isle, and his younger brother, the Chevalier de Belle-Isle. [Illustration: LOUIS HENRI, DUC DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ (CALLED MONSIEUR LE DUC) FROM AN ENGRAVING BY P. DREVET, AFTER THE PAINTING BY GOBERT]