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The start was made at seven o'clock in the morning, and usually I was in the carriage of the Prince with the everlasting Madame de Feucheres. The hunting-lodge was delightful and in a most picturesque situation. There twenty or thirty persons met to the sound of horns, in the midst of dogs, horses, and huntsmen. The coursing train of the Prince was finer and more complete than that of the King.
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.
His great passion was for sport, in which he excelled; and my father had made a friend of him by giving him the hunting in all his forests. There was another reason too, and perhaps after all it was the chief one, for this cordiality, that my parents had consented to receive the Baronne de Feucheres, who held great sway over the Duke, but who had never been admitted to Court.
"Do you really suggest that De Gex, one of the best-known and most philanthropic men in Europe, actually hired Despujol to go to your room that night?" my companion asked, his eyes following the trio as they walked together and chatted beneath the trees of the Avenue Feuchères. "I do. And further, De Gex has every motive in closing my lips." "Ah!
It is generally believed. As to M. de Feucheres, convinced that his wife was the daughter of the Prince, he had no suspicion. It was Sophie Dawes herself who enlightened him, to drive him away. The effect of the revelation was terrible. M. de Feucheres, indignant, quitted his wife. There no longer remained about the Prince any but the creatures of Madame de Feucheres.
They entered on negotiations a long time in advance with the Baroness of Feucheres, who was in reality the arbiter of the situation. M. Nettement relates that the first time that Marie-Amelie pronounced the name of the Baroness in the presence of the Duchess of Angouleme, the daughter of Louis XVI. said to her: "What! you have seen that woman!"
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.
Impelled by these two fears, he resolved to escape secretly from France, and so rid himself of the tyranny of Madame de Feuchères and the dangers of Revolution. He arranged his flight with a trusted friend; it was fixed for the day succeeding Aug. 31, 1830, a month after the Revolution.
Several years before 1830 it had occurred to Madame de Feuchères that the De Rohans, who were related to the duke on his mother's side, might dispute these gifts and bequests, and by way of making herself secure, she sought the protection of Louis Philippe, then Duke of Orleans.
She died soon after the Restoration. In 1830 the old duke, worn out with sorrows and excesses, was completely under the power of an English adventuress, a Madame de Feuchères. He had settled on her his Château de Saint-Leu, together with very large sums of money.
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