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The king, who abhorred degrading actions, did not like the duc de Fronsac, but was full of kindly feeling towards the duc d'Aiguillon. The latter experienced the extent of his favor in his long and obstinate struggle with the parliament of Bretagne.
The office of hearer of rehearsals, prompter, and stage manager was given to my father-in-law. The Duc de Fronsac, first gentleman of the chamber, was much hurt at this. He thought himself called upon to make serious remonstrances upon the subject, and wrote to the Queen, who made him the following answer: "You cannot be first gentleman when we are the actors.
I have made no duplicata for you, because I write to you by every opportunity. Give news of me, also, to M. Margelay,~ the Abbe Fayon, and Desplaces. A thousand tender regards to my sisters; I permit them to despise me as an infamous deserter but they must also love me at the same time. My respects to Madame la Comtesse Auguste, and Madame de Fronsac.
With all the atrocity of his execrable character, he was certainly a man of courage, and was in his youth made knight in the breach of Fronsac, with a great number of other young nobles, by the honour giving hand of the elder Dunois, the celebrated hero of Charles the Fifth's reign.
You will be satisfied with him, madame, much more than with my son, who only resembles the family in his defects." The duc de Fronsac was justly hated by his father; he was what is called a decided scamp, without one redeeming point or virtue. Dissipated without agreeableness, a courtier without address, a soldier without courage, he thoroughly deserved his bad reputation.
The Duc de Fronsac also, from some situation he held at Court, though not included in the private household of Her Majesty at Trianon, conceiving himself highly injured by not being suffered to interfere, was much exasperated, and took no pains to prevent others from receiving the infection of his resentment. "Of all the arts, music was the only one which Her Majesty ever warmly patronised.
In the spring of the following year Charles VII. authorized the Count of Armagnac to take the field, and sent Dunois to assume the command-in-chief. An army of twenty thousand men mustered under his orders; and, in the course of May, 1451, some of the principal places of Guyenne, such as St. Emillon, Blaye, Fronsac, Bourg-en-Mer, Libourne, and Dax were taken by assault or capitulated.
The king, who abhorred degrading actions, did not like the duc de Fronsac, but was full of kindly feeling towards the duc d'Aiguillon. The latter experienced the extent of his favor in his long and obstinate struggle with the parliament of Bretagne.
The planets were consulted, and the answer received was, that two centuries from the day on which Providence had so highly elevated himself, the family, upon whom rested all his hopes of perpetuating his name, should fail entirely in its male descent. You see that the duc de Fronsac has only one child, an infant not many days old.
The diminutive Duc de Fronsac never failed, when he came to pay his respects to the Queen at her toilet, to turn the conversation upon Trianon, in order to make some ironical remarks on my father-in-law, of whom, from the time of his appointment, he always spoke as "my colleague Campan."
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