She Stands Accused
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Victor MacClure >> She Stands Accused
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The great grief of the Prince's life was the loss of his son, the
young Duc d'Enghien, shamefully destroyed by Bonaparte. It is
possible that much of the Prince's inertia was due to this blow.
He had married, at the early age of fourteen,
Louise-Marie-Therese-Mathilde d'Orleans, daughter of
Louis-Philippe, Duc d'Orleans and the Duchesse de Chartres, the
bride being six years older than her husband. Such a marriage
could not last. It merely sustained the honeymoon and the birth
of that only son. The couple were apart in eighteen months, and
after ten years they never even saw each other again. About the
time when Sophie's husband found her out and departed the
Princesse died. The Prince was advised to marry again, on the
chance that an heir might be born to the large fortune he
possessed. But Sophie by then had become a habit with the
Prince--a bad one--and the old man was content to be left to his
continual hunting, and not to bother over the fact that he was
the last of his ancient line.
It may be easily believed that the Prince's disinclination to
marry again contented Sophie very well. And the fact that he had
no direct heir was one in which she saw possibilities
advantageous to herself.
The Prince was then sixty-six years old. In the course of nature
he was almost bound to predecease her. His wealth was enormous,
and out of it Sophie wanted as much by bequest as she could get.
She was much too shrewd, however, to imagine that, even if she
did contrive to be made his sole heir, the influential families
who had an eye upon the great possessions of the Prince, and who
through relationship had some right to expect inheritance, would
allow such a will to go uncontested. She therefore looked about
among the Prince's connexions for some one who would accept
coheirship with herself, and whose family would be strong enough
in position to carry through probate on such terms, but at the
same time would be grateful enough to her and venal enough to
further her aim of being reinstated at Court. Her choice in this
matter shows at once her political cunning, which would include
knowledge of affairs, and her ability as a judge of character.
It should be remembered that, in spite of his title of Duc de
Bourbon, Sophie's elderly protector was only distantly of that
family. He was descended in direct line from the Princes de
Conde, whose connexion with the royal house of France dated back
to the sixteenth century. The other line of `royal' ducs in the
country was that of Orleans, offshoot of the royal house through
Philippe, son of Louis XIII, and born in 1640. Sophie's
protector, Louis-Henri-Joseph, Prince de Conde, having married
Louise-Marie, daughter of the great-grandson of this Philippe,
was thus the brother-in-law of that Louis-Philippe, Duc
d'Orleans, who in the Revolution was known as ``Egalite.'' This
was a man whom, for his political opinion and for his failure to
stand by the King, Louis XVI, the Prince de Conde utterly
detested in memory. As much, moreover, as he had hated the
father did the Prince de Conde detest Egalite's son. But it was
out of this man's family that Sophie selected, though ultimately,
her coheir.
Before she arrived at this point, however, Sophie had been at
pains to do some not very savoury manoeuvring.
By a dancer at the Opera, called Mimi, the Prince de Conde had an
illegitimate daughter, whom he had caused to be educated and whom
he had married to the Comte de Rully. The Comtesse de Rully and
her husband had a suite at Chantilly. This was an arrangement
which Sophie, as reigning Queen of Chantilly, did not like at
all. While the Rully woman remained at Chantilly Sophie could
not think that her sway over the Prince was quite as absolute as
she wished. It took her six years of badgering her protector,
from 1819 to 1825, to bring about the eviction.
But meantime (for Sophie's machinations must be taken as
concurrent with events as they transpire) the Baronne de
Feucheres had approached the son of Philippe-Egalite, suggesting
that the last-born of his six children, the Duc d'Aumale, should
have the Prince de Conde for godfather. If she could persuade
her protector to this the Duc d'Orleans, in return, was to use
his influence for her reinstatement at Court. And persuade the
old man to this Sophie did, albeit after a great deal of
badgering on her part and a great deal of grumbling on the part
of the Prince.
The influence exerted at Court by the Duc d'Orleans does not seem
to have been very effective. The King who had dismissed her the
Court, Louis XVIII, died in 1824. His brother, the Comte
d'Artois, ascended the throne as Charles X, and continued by
politically foolish recourses, comparable in history to those of
the English Stuarts, to alienate the people by attempting to
regain that anachronistic absolute power which the Revolution had
destroyed. He lasted a mere six years as king. The revolution
of 1830 sent him into exile. But up to the last month or so of
those six years he steadfastly refused to have anything to do
with the Baronne de Feucheres--not that Sophie ever gave up
manoeuvring and wheedling for a return to Court favour.
About 1826 Sophie had a secret proposition made to the King that
she should try to persuade the Prince de Conde to adopt as his
heir one of the brothers of the Duchesse de Berry, widow of the
King's second son--or would his Majesty mind if a son of the Duc
d'Orleans was adopted? The King did not care at all.
After that Sophie pinned her faith in the power possessed by the
Duc d'Orleans. She was not ready to pursue the course whereby
her return to Court might have been secured--namely, to abandon
her equivocal position in the Prince de Conde's household, and
thus her power over the Prince. She wanted first to make sure of
her share of the fortune he would leave. She knew her power over
the old man. Already she had persuaded him to buy and make over
to her the estates of Saint-Leu and Boissy, as well as to make
her legacies to the amount of a million francs. Much as she
wanted to be received again at Court, she wanted more just as
much as she could grab from the Prince's estate. To make her
inheritance secure she needed the help of the Duc d'Orleans.
The Duc d'Orleans was nothing loth. He had the mind of a French
bourgeois, and all the bourgeois itch for money. He knew that
the Prince de Conde hated him, hated his politics, hated his very
name. But during the seven years it took Sophie to bring the
Prince to the point of signing the will she had in mind the son
of Philippe-Egalite fawned like a huckster on his elderly and, in
more senses than one, distant relative. The scheme was to have
the Prince adopt the little Duc d'Aumale, already his godchild,
as his heir.
The ways by which Sophie went about the job of persuading her old
lover do not read pleasantly. She was a termagant. The Prince
was stubborn. He hated the very idea of making a will--it made
him think of death. He was old, ill, friendless. Sophie made
his life a hell, but he had become dependent upon her. She
ill-used him, subjecting him to physical violence, but yet he was
afraid she might, as she often threatened, leave him. Her way of
persuading him reached the point, it is on record, of putting a
knife to his throat. Not once but several times his servants
found him scratched and bruised. But the old man could not
summon up the strength of mind to be quit of this succubine
virago.
At last, on the 29th of August, 1829, Sophie's `persuasions'
succeeded. The Prince consented to sign the will, and did so the
following morning. In its terms the Duc d'Aumale became
residuary legatee, and 2,000,000 francs, free of death-duty, were
bequeathed to the Prince's ``faithful companion, Mme la baronne
de Feucheres,'' together with the chateaux and estates of
Saint-Leu-Taverny, Boissy, Enghien, Montmorency, and
Mortefontaine, and the pavilion in the Palais-Bourbon, besides
all the Prince's furniture, carriages, horses, and so on.
Moreover, the estate and chateau of Ecouen was also given her, on
condition that she allowed the latter to be used as an orphanage
for the descendants of soldiers who had served with the Armies of
Conde and La Vendee. The cost of running this establishment,
however, was to be borne by the Duc d'Aumale.
It might be thought that Sophie, having got her way, would have
turned to kindness in her treatment of her old lover. But no.
All her mind was now concentrated on working, through the Duc
d'Orleans, for being received again at Court. She ultimately
succeeded in this. On the 7th of February, 1830, she appeared in
the presence of the King, the Dauphin and Dauphine. In the
business of preparing for this great day Chantilly and the Prince
de Conde were greatly neglected. The beggar on horseback had to
be about Paris.
But events were shaping in France at that time which were to be
important to the royal family, to Sophie and her supporters of
the house of Orleans, and fatal in consequence to the old man at
Chantilly.
On the 27th of July revolution broke out in France. Charles X
and his family had to seek shelter in England, and
Louis-Philippe, Duc d'Orleans, became--not King of France, but
``King of the French'' by election. This consummation had not
been achieved without intrigue on the part of Egalite's son. It
was not an achievement calculated to abate the Prince de Conde's
hatred for him. Rather did it inflame that hatred. In the
matter of the famous will, moreover, as the King's son the little
Duc d'Aumale would be now in no need of the provision made for
him by his unwilling godfather, while members of the exiled royal
family--notably the grandson of Charles, the Duc de Bordeaux,
certainly cut out of the Prince's will by the intrigues of Sophie
and family--were in want of assistance. This is a point to be
remembered in the light of subsequent events.
% IV
While she had been looking after herself Sophie Dawes had not
been unmindful ofthe advancement of hangers-on of her own family.
She had about her a nephew and a niece. The latter, supposed by
some to have a closer relationship to Sophie than that of mere
niece, she had contrived to marry off to a marquis. The Marquise
de Chabannes de la Palice need not here concern us further. But
notice must be taken of the nephew. A few million francs,
provided by the Prince de Conde, had secured for this James Dawes
the title of Baron de Flassans, from a domain also bestowed upon
him by Sophie's elderly lover. De Flassans, with some minor post
in the Prince's household, acted as his aunt's jackal.
If Sophie, after the election to kingship of Louis-Philippe,
found it necessary to be in Paris a great deal to worship at the
throne her nephew kept her well informed about the Prince de
Conde's activities. The old man, it appeared, had suddenly
developed the habit of writing letters. The Prince, then at the
chateau of Saint-Leu expressed a desire to remove to Chantilly.
He was behaving very oddly all round, was glad to have Sophie out
of his sight, and seemed unwilling even to hear her name. The
projected move to Chantilly, as a fact, was merely a blind to
cover a flight out of Sophie's reach and influence. Rumour arose
about Saint-Leu and in Paris that the Prince had made another
will--one in which neither Sophie nor the Duc d'Aumale was
mentioned. This was a move of which Sophie had been afraid. She
saw to it that the Prince did not get away from Saint-Leu.
Rumour and the Prince's conduct made Sophie very anxious. She
tried to get him to make over to her in his lifetime those
properties which he had left to her in his will, and it is
probable enough that she would have forced this request but for
the fact that, to raise the legal costs, the property of
Saint-Leu would have had to be sold.
This was the position of affairs about the middle of August 1830.
It was believed the Prince had already signed a will in favour of
the exiled little Duc de Bordeaux, but that he had kept the act
secret from his mistress.
On the morning of the 11th of the month the Prince was met
outside his bedroom in his night attire. It was a young man
called Obry who thus met the Prince. He was the old man's
godchild. The old man's left eye was bleeding, and there was a
scratch on his cheek as if made by a fingernail. To Obry the
Prince attributed these wounds to the spite of the Baronne de
Feucheres. Half an hour later he told his valet he had hit his
head against a night-table. Later again in the day he gave
another version still: he had fallen against the door to a secret
staircase from his bedroom while letting the Baronne de Feucheres
out, the secret staircase being in communication with Sophie's
private apartments.
For the next ten days or so the Prince was engaged in contriving
his flight from the gentle Sophie, a second plan which again was
spoiled by Sophie's spies. There was something of a fete at
Saint-Leu on the 26th, the Prince's saint's day. There was a
quarrel between Sophie and the Prince on the morning of the 26th
in the latter's bedroom. Sophie had then been back in Saint-Leu
for three days. At midnight on the 26th the old man retired
after playing a game or two at whist. He was to go on the 30th
to Chantilly. He was accompanied to his bedroom by his surgeon
and a valet, one Lecomte, and expressed a desire to be called at
eight o'clock. Lecomte found a paper in the Prince's trousers
and gave it to the old man, who placed it on the mantelshelf.
Then the valet, as he said later, locked the door of the Prince's
dressing-room, thus --except for the entrance from the secret
staircase--locking the old man in his room.
The Prince's apartments were on the first floor of the chateau.
His bedroom was approached through the dressing-room from the
main corridor. Beyond the dressing-room was a passage, turning
left from which was the bedroom, and to the right in which was an
entrance to an anteroom. Facing the dressing-room door in this
same passage was the entrance to the secret staircase already
mentioned. The staircase gave access to the Baronne de
Feucheres' apartments on the entrance floor. These, however,
were not immediately under the Prince's rooms. An entresol
intervened, and here the rooms were occupied by the Abbe Briant,
a creature of Sophie's and her secretary, the Widow Lachassine,
Sophie's lady's-maid, and a couple named Dupre. These last, also
spies of Sophie's, had their room direcdy below the Prince's
bedroom, and it is recorded that the floor was so thin that they
could hear not only the old man's every movement, but anything he
said.
Adjacent to the Prince's room, and on the same floor, were the
rooms occupied by Lambot, the Prince's aide, and the valet
Lecomte. Lambot was a lover of Sophie's, and had been the great
go-between in her intrigues with the Orleans family over the
will. Lecomte was in Sophie's pay. Close to Sophie's apartments
on the entrance floor were the rooms occupied by her nephew and
his wife, the de Flassans. It will be seen, therefore, that the
wing containing the Prince's rooms was otherwise occupied almost
completely by Sophie's creatures.
You have, then, the stage set for the tragedy which was about to
ensue: midnight; the last of the Condes peaceably in his bedroom
for the night, and locked in it (according to Lecomte). About
him, on all sides, are the creatures of his not too scrupulous
mistress. All these people, with the exception of the Baronne de
Flassans, who sat up writing letters until two, retire about the
same time.
And at eight o'clock next morning, there being no answer to
Lecomte's knocking to arouse the Prince, the door is broken open
at the orders of the Baronne de Feucheres. The Prince is
discovered dead in his bedroom, suspended by the neck, by means
of two of his own handkerchiefs knotted together, from the
fastening of one of the French windows.
The fastening was only about two and a half feet off the floor.
The handkerchief about the dead man's neck was loose enough to
have permitted insertion of all the fingers of a hand between it
and the neck. The second handkerchief was tied to the first, and
its other end was knotted to the window-fastening, and the dead
man's right cheek was pressed against the closed shutter. The
knees were bent a little, the feet were on the floor. None of
the usual indications of death by strangulation were present.
The eyes were half closed. The face was pale but not livid. The
mouth was almost closed. There was no protrusion of the tongue.
On the arrival of the civil functionaries, the Mayor of Saint-Leu
and a Justice of the Peace from Enghien, the body was taken down
and put on the bed. It was then found that the dead man's ankles
were greatly bruised and his legs scratched. On the left side of
the throat, at a point too low for it to have been done by the
handkerchief, there was some stripping of the skin. A large red
bruise was found between the Prince's shoulders.
The King, Louis-Philippe, heard about the death of the Prince de
Conde at half-past eleven that same day. He immediately sent his
High Chancellor, M. Pasquier, and his own aide-de-camp, M. de
Rumigny, to inquire into the matter. It is not stretching things
too far to say that the King's instructions to these gentlemen
are revealed in phrases occurring in the letters they sent his
Majesty that same evening. Both recommend that Drs Marc and
Marjolin should be sent to investigate the Prince's tragic death.
But M. Pasquier mentions that ``not a single document has been
found, so a search has already been made.'' And M. de Rumigny
thinks ``it is important that nobody should be accused who is
likely to benefit by the will.'' What document was expected to
be discovered in the search? Why, a second will that would
invalidate the first. Who was to benefit by the first will?
Why, the little Duc d'Aumale and Dame Sophie Dawes, Baronne de
Feucheres!
The post-mortem examination was made by the King's own
physicians. During the examination the Prince's doctors, MM.
Dubois and Gendrin, his personal secretary, and the faithful one
among his body-servants, Manoury, were sent out of the room. The
verdict was suicide. The Prince's own doctors maintained that
suicide by the handkerchiefs from the window-fastening was
impossible. Dr Dubois wrote his idea of how the death had
occurred:
The Prince very likely was asleep in his bed. The murderers must
have been given entrance to his bedroom--I have no wish to ask
how or by whom. They then threw themselves on the Prince,
gripped him firmly, and could easily pin him down on his bed;
then the most desperate and dexterous of the murderers suffocated
him as he was thus held firmly down; finally, in order to make it
appear that he had committed suicide and to hinder any judicial
investigations which might have discovered the identity of the
assassins, they fastened a handkerchief about their victim's
neck, and hung him up by the espagnolette of the window.
And that, at all hazards, is about the truth of the death of the
Duc de Bourbon and Prince de Conde. There was some official
display of rigour in investigation by the Procureur; there was
much play with some mysterious papers found a good time after the
first discovery half-burned in the fireplace of the Prince's
bedroom; there was a lot put forward to support the idea of
suicide; but the blunt truth of the affair is that the Prince de
Conde was murdered, and that the murder was hushed up as much as
possible. Not, however, with complete success. There were few
in France who gave any countenance to the theory of suicide.
The Prince, it will be remembered, had a practically disabled
left arm. It is said that he could not even remove his hat with
his left hand. The knots in the handkerchiefs used to tie him to
the espagnolette were both complicated and tightly made.
Impossible for a one-handed man. His bed, which at the time of
his retiring to it stood close to the alcove wall, was a good
foot and a half away from that wall in the morning. Impossible
feat also for this one-handed man. It was the Prince's habit to
lie so much to one side of the bed that his servants had to prop
the outside edge up with folded blankets. On the morning when
his death was discovered it was seen that the edges still were
high, while the centre was very much pressed down. There was, in
fact, a hollow in the bed's middle such as might have been made
by some one standing on it with shoes on. It is significant that
the bedclothes were neatly turned down. If the Prince had got up
on a sudden impulse to commit suicide he is hardly likely, being
a prince, to have attempted remaking his bed. He must, moreover,
since he could normally get from bed only by rolling on his side,
have pressed out that heightened edge. Manoury, the valet who
loved him, said that the bed in the morning looked more as if it
had been SMOOTHED OUT than remade. This would tend to support
the theory of Dr Dubois. The murderers, having suffocated the
Prince, would be likely to try effacing the effects of his
struggling by the former method rather than the latter.
But the important point of the affair, as far as this chapter on
it is concerned, is the relation of Sophie Dawes with it on the
conclusion of murder. How deeply was she implicated? Let us see
how she acted on hearing that there was no reply to Lecomte's
knocking, and let us examine her conduct from that moment on.
Note that the Baronne de Feucheres was the first person whom
Lecomte and the Prince's surgeon apprised of the Prince's
silence. She rushed out of her room and made for the Prince's,
not by the secret staircase, but by the main one. She knew,
however, that the door to the secret staircase from the Prince's
room was not bolted that night. This knowledge was admitted for
her later by the Prince's surgeon, M. Bonnie. She had gone up to
the Prince's room by the main staircase in order to hide the
fact, an action which gives a touch of theatricality to her
exhibited concern about the Prince's silence.
The search for documents spoken of by M. Pasquier in his letter
to the King had been carried out by Sophie in person, with the
aid of her nephew de Flassans and the Abbe Briant. It was a
thorough search, and a piece of indecorousness which she excused
on the ground of being afraid the Prince's executors might find a
will which made her the sole heir, to the exclusion of the Duc
d'Aumale.
Regarding the `accident' which had happened to the Prince on the
11th of August, she said it was explained by an earlier attempt
on his part to do away with himself. She tried to deny that she
had been at Saint-Leu at the time of the actual happening, when
the fact was that she only left for Paris some hours later.
When, some time later, the Prince's faithful valet Manoury made
mention of the fact that the Prince had wanted to put the width
of the country between himself and his mistress, Sophie first
tried to put the fear of Louis-Philippe into the man, then,
finding he was not to be silenced that way, tried to buy him with
a promise of employment.
It is beyond question that the Prince de Conde was murdered. He
was murdered in a wing of the chateau in which he was hemmed in
on all sides by Sophie's creatures. It is impossible that Sophie
was not privy, at the least, to the deed. It is not beyond the
bounds of probability that she was an actual participator in the
murder.
She was a violent woman, as violent and passionate as she was
determined. Not once but many times is it on record that she
physically ill-used her elderly lover. There was one occasion,
it is said, when the Prince suddenly came upon her in a very
compromising position with a younger man in the park of one of
his chateaux. Sophie, before the Prince could utter a protest,
cut him across the face with her riding-whip, and finished up by
thrashing him with his own cane.
Here you have the stuff, at any rate, of which your murderesses
of the violent type are made. It is the metal out of which your
Kate Websters, your Sarah Malcolms, your Meteyards and Brownriggs
fashion themselves. It takes more than three years of scholastic
self-discipline, such as Sophie Dawes in her ambition subjected
herself to, to eradicate the inborn harridan. The very
determination which was at the back of Sophie's efforts at
self-education, that will to have her own way, would serve to
heighten the sick rage with which she would discover that her
carefully wrought plans of seven years had come to pieces. What
was it that the Abbe Pelier de Lacroix had in ``proof of the
horrible assassination'' of the Prince de Conde, but that he was
prevented from placing before the lawyers in charge of the later
investigation, if not the fact that the Prince had made a later
will than the one by which Sophie inherited so greatly? The Abbe
was the Prince's chaplain. He published a pamphlet declaring
that the Prince had made a will leaving his entire fortune to the
little Duc de Bordeaux, but that Sophie had stolen this later
will. Who likelier to be a witness to such a will than the
Prince's chaplain?
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