_Monsieur le Duc_ survived his mistress nearly fourteen years. In 1730, he was pardoned and returned to Court, but he never reappeared again on the political stage, and consecrated the last years of his life to the study of chemistry and natural history. In 1728, he took unto himself a second wife, in the person of the Princess Charlotte of Hesse-Rheinfels, who is described as “_blonde et d’un embonpoint agréable_,” with whom he seems to have lived very contentedly, notwithstanding the fact that she is said to have been erased from the list of eligible princesses at the time of the marriage of Louis XV. on account of her bad temper. By her he left one son, Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, the organizer and leader of the “Army of Condé,” which played so gallant a part in the Wars of the French Revolution. _Monsieur le Duc_ died on the 27 January, 1740, in his forty-ninth year. PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES FOOTNOTES: [1] The Court was staying at the Château of la Roche-Guyon, not far from Mantes. As there had been a heavy fall of snow, François I. suggested that the younger members of the Court should organize a snowball-fight. Sides were accordingly formed; one led by the Dauphin and François de Lorraine, afterwards Duc de Guise, defending a house; the other, led by Enghien, besieging it. “During the combat,” says Martin du Bellay, “some ill-advised person threw a linen-chest out of the window, which fell on the Sieur d’Enghien’s head, and inflicted such injuries that he died a few days later.” Du Bellay does not give the name of the “ill-advised person,” but certain writers, less reticent, name François de Guise, and have even gone so far as to assert that he acted by orders of the Dauphin, who was jealous of Enghien’s military fame, while others say that he was a certain Conte di Bentivoglio, an Italian noble in the service of the Guises, whom they accuse of having instigated the deed. It is probable, however, that the death of Enghien was due merely to one of those acts of brutal horse-play so common at this epoch, and that the culprit, whoever he may have been, was innocent of any homicidal intention. See on this matter the author’s “Henri II.: his Court and Times” (London, Methuen; New York, Scribner, 1910). [2] “Histoire des Princes de Condé.” [3] Comte Jules Delaborde, “Éléonore de Roye, Princesse de Condé, 1535–1564.” [4] Brantôme. [5] Ibid. [6] Beaucaire. [7] Vincent Carloix, “Mémoires sur le maréchal de Vieilleville.” [8] Antoinette de Bourbon, sister to Charles de Bourbon, Duc de Vendôme, Condé’s father, had married Claude de Lorraine, Duc de Guise, and was the mother of Duc François de Guise and his brothers. [9] De Thou. [10] By her marriage with Fery II. de Mailly, Baron de Conty. [11] Comte Jules Delaborde, “Éléonore de Roye, Princesse de Condé.” [12] “Additions aux Mémoires de Castelnau.”