If Condé’s efforts on behalf of his co-religionists should have sheltered him from such accusations, his private life, it must be admitted, was very far from being in accordance with the austere religion which he professed, and was calculated to arouse grave apprehensions among the Protestants. Deceived in his ambition, mortified by the hostility which his well-intentioned efforts had been received by the extremists of both parties, he had turned to pleasure for consolation and surrendered himself unreservedly to all the temptations of that gay and dissolute Court. His days were passed in the hunting-field, the tennis-court, and the tilt-yard; his nights at the ball, the play, or the card-table, and often in more questionable amusements. Grave Huguenots who came to lay their grievances before him were indignant to find the chief of their party, who should have been occupying himself with the interests of religion and setting an example of godly living to those about him, mingling in all the profane diversions of the Court, as though he had not a care in the world, and inexpressibly shocked to learn that he was forgetting his devoted wife in the embraces of “Midianitish women.” For Isabelle de Limeuil, if she occupied the premier place in Condé’s affections, could not claim a monopoly of them. His Highness, in point of fact, disdained few _bonnes fortunes_, and the complaisant beauties of Catherine’s Court were generally ready to meet the advances of the first Prince of the Blood a good deal more than halfway. Among those who entered the lists against Isabelle, the most redoubtable was Marguerite de Lustrac, the widow of the unfortunate Maréchal de Saint-André, so foully slain at Dreux. Although no longer in her first youth, Madame la Maréchale was still one of the most beautiful and fascinating women at the Court--“_la Marguerite de douceur_,”[44] a contemporary writer calls her. She was also extremely wealthy and gave herself the airs of a queen, being always attended by an immense retinue, which included cadets of the noblest families in France.