easily that same bolt could be drawn and withdrawn by a person on the outside; and a few trials demonstrated the facility with which the assassin—if assassin there was—could have entered and escaped by this very door. The Duke’s habit in sleeping was to lie close upon the outer edge of the bed, so close that, for fear of his falling out, as children do sometimes, a blanket, folded in four, was placed underneath the mattress on that side to give it an inward inclination; but, in the morning, the bed was found depressed in the centre according to the custom of nine sleepers in ten. Had it been arranged by some hand careful of appearances, but ignorant of the very habits of that it tried to counterfeit? A still more insignificant circumstance became, in a review of the combined minutiæ of the case, strikingly suspicious. The prince never used slippers; his feet were tender, and he had a sort of stocking-foot attached to his trousers; nevertheless, a pair of slippers was always placed by his bed-room door, and, in the morning, invariably found in the place where they had been put. How happened it that, on this morning of all others, they should be found carefully deposited by the bed, as if they had been used by the Duke on retiring or rising? Was the supposition of Manowry just, that the authors of the crime, which he believed to have been committed, thought, in repairing the disorder they had made, that they were most ingeniously eluding suspicion by the exactness with which they consulted probabilities, and re-arranged the tell-tale furniture even to the smallest article?
The Duke, as has been already stated, was found hanging by two handkerchiefs, forming two rings, of which the upper was attached to the bar of the shutters, while the lower surrounded his neck. But it was universally known that his wound received in the attack of Berscheim, had so disabled his right arm as to render it difficult for him to raise it even as high as his head, much more, it was argued, to complete such an arrangement as that described. A chair was indispensable to assist him, in any event; but he was so infirm as not to be able to ascend the steps of a grand escalier without difficulty. Moreover, the knot in the handkerchief attached to the bar of the shutters was difficult to unloose, so firmly had it been tied; but the maladresse of the prince was well known—he could hardly fasten his shoe-strings. In this last moment of his life did his hand grow steadier, his limbs stronger, in the solitude of midnight and the presence of death?
But there was still another circumstance which must be added to the suspicious category. The position of the Duke’s chamber has been already described, and mention made of the secret staircase which led from the ante-chamber to the lower floor, communicating with Madame de Feuchères’ apartment and the entrance to the château. A door opened on this staircase from within. This door, the weight of evidence showed to have remained unfastened during the night of the 26th. Was it to hide this terrible circumstance that Madame de Feuchères, on the morning of the discovery, instead of ascending by the well-known private staircase, which would seem to be her most convenient route, half dressed as she was, carefully came round by the main staircase, and only regained her room by the secret passage?
The valet, Lecomte, who has been already mentioned as a protégé of Madame de Feuchères—whom the duke was unwilling to charge with the service of sentinel at his chamber door—who was the first to discover the death of his ill-fated master, contributed, in the sequel, less to the clearing up than the deepening of the mystery. His testimony was contradictory, and his behaviour suspicious. On the day of the funeral, when the body of the deceased Condé was exposed in the illuminated chapel, surrounded by solemn funeral symbols, Lecomte, with his fellow servants, was a witness of the spectacle. He could not restrain his emotions—the cry escaped him, “J’ai un poids sur le cœur!” “J’en ai le cœur gros!” Manowry, who heard him, advised him to confess whatever he might know. Lecomte was silent. Afterwards he tried to explain these strange expressions by attributing them to a fear of losing his place. But the question arises, might not these mournful exclamations have been the result of irrepressible remorse, quickened into utterance by a last sight of the lifeless victim?
Such were some of the interrogatories with which the advocates, no less of the rights of the heirs, than of the good name of the deceased, combatted the idea of the cowardly death of the last of the Condés. Nor did they fail to unfold, in all its complicated details of interest and expediency, and subtle management, the history of the forced legacy which has been already narrated. The most august name in the kingdom was coupled with that of Madame de Feuchères in this story of intrigue, now given to the world in all the publicity of a reported trial, coloured by all the partial eloquence of a zealous advocate.
But the suspicions of the legitimists did not quash the decision of the Courts. The Princes de Rohan failed in all their attempts to set aside the will of the Duke. The final decision was in favour of its validity; the young Duke d’Aumale was pronounced the rightful heir of the Condés; and Madame Feuchères was confirmed in her various possessions and expectancies. Mistress of an immense fortune, she repaired to Paris to enjoy its advantages at leisure. It is true that for some time after the catastrophe at St. Leu, her spirits were hardly equal to her good fortune. For fifteen nights at the Palais Bourbon, she made Madame de Flassans sleep in her chamber, and the Abbé Briant in the library adjoining, as though she feared the solitude and the images of terror which might chance to people it. But this passed away; and a gracious reception at Court placed her at once in a position of influence.
The Condé affair was soon forgotten at Paris, or remembered only by those whose business it is to preserve the record of events for the sake of future contingencies, personal, political, or public. But, after the fall of the Orleans dynasty, the old whispers of suspicion revived, and there were not wanting those who asserted their belief that a Royal personage had something to do with the assassination of the last of the Condés. But there