But the contest in his own feelings had been severe and tempestuous. It was not only the choice between monarchy and liberalism, between the Bourbons and their enemies, that distressed him; but the necessity of forsaking a family to which he was bound by those ties of kindred, and loyalty, and affection, which it would be dishonor to violate, for another which he detested in fact, but to whose interests he was pledged by deliberate and formal acts, confirmed by sanctions, universally regarded as the most emphatic in the power of a man to give. But the restoration of peace rendered acquiescence in the new order of things necessary; the Duke de Bourbon gave in his adhesion to the government of Louis Philippe; his rights were confirmed, and he resumed the even tenor of his life, so fearfully interrupted. Only his relations with Madame de Feuchères seem to have suffered strange alteration. Towards her, though still affectionate, his manner was restrained and forced; his confidence reserved; the sound of her name even, appeared to strike him painfully. There was no open rupture between them, but it was evident that private quarrels were not infrequent. The duke's Venus had developed the latent virago qualities that are sometimes ingredient, as psychologists tell us, in the most seraphic tempers. These symptoms of dissension were apparent to all the inmates of St. Leu. Finally, the duke surprised two of his most attached domestics by the news that he intended taking a long journey, which, from the secrecy with which it was to be accomplished, bore more resemblance to a flight. From the whole household it was to be studiously concealed, but from no one more strictly than Madame de Feuchères. Pending its arrangements, some strange circumstances happened, which excited gloomy conjectures and apprehensions in the château. An inflamed eye, (l'œil en sang,) as to the cause of which, the duke, for some reason or other, first prevaricated, and afterwards inconsistently explained a strange mark of tenderness, though, by the way, if attributable to the lovely Baronne; a letter pushed secretly under the door leading from a private staircase into his chamber, which, when carried to the prince, threw him into a violent agitation; most of all, a desire which he expressed to Manoury, his valet de chambre, that he should sleep at the door of his room. Manoury, though a faithful servant, objected, like a true selfish Frenchman, on the ground of etiquette, saying, that it would appear very odd, and that such a duty fell to the lot of Lecomte, the valet de service. The duke did not insist, but the order was not given to Lecomte. He had been introduced into the château by Madame de Feuchères.

Everything was finally arranged for the departure of the duke. A million of francs, in bank notes, had been provided; a skilful plan of deception matured, to render delay or detection impossible; the 31st of August fixed upon as the day for carrying into execution the well-arranged movement; and the perplexed old prince hoped, on the first of September, to be well on the road towards Geneva, out of the clutches of his troublesome legatees and heirs en totalité. Once safely beyond the persecutions of Madame de Feuchères, and a few resolute strokes of the pen could undo the mischief he lamented. The 26th arrived; the morning was signalized by another scène between the duke and the baroness, mysterious and violent; but its effects passed off, and at dinner, amongst a circle of friends, the old man was gay and unrestrained. In the evening he played at whist, Madame de Feuchères forming one of the party; he was more than usually lively and affable, and at a late hour retired from the saloon, with the cheerful salutation, "A demain!"

His physician, the Chevalier Bonnie, and the valet, Lecomte, attended him in his chamber. He retired as usual; and to the question of Lecomte

"At what hour will your highness be called?" replied, with his usual tranquillity, "At eight o'clock."

The chamber of the Duke de Bourbon was on the second floor of the château. It communicated by a narrow passage with an ante-chamber. This ante-chamber opened on one side through a small dressing-room on the grand hall of the château; on the other upon a private staircase, leading below, to the floor containing the apartment of Madame de Feuchères, and her niece, Madame de Flassans; and thence to a corridor conducting to the outer court. Immediately under the duke's bedroom were those of the Abbé Briant, secretary to the baroness, and some domestics attached particularly to her service.

In this night of the 26th August, no unusual noises disturbed the inmates of St. Leu. The gardes-chasse took their customary rounds in the park surrounding the château, and found everything quiet and in order; within, a profound calm reigned throughout.

In the morning at eight o'clock, the punctual Lecomte knocked at the duke's door. There was no reply. Monseigneur is sound asleep," he

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said to himself; "it would be a pity to disturb him."

Twenty minutes after, he returned with the doctor, Bonnie; they passed through the dressing room, of which Lecomte kept the key, and knocked again at the inner door, which was bolted. Still no reply.

Alarmed at this strange silence, they roused Madame de Feuchères. She joined them in a moment or two, en déshabille; "when he hears my voice," said she, "he will answer." She herself knocked at the door, and called aloud: "Ouvrez, Monseigneur! ouvrez ! c'est moi! c'est moi!" Still no reply.

The alarm spread through the château; the whole household assembled at the fatal door; a bar of iron was brought; the panels broken in; Bonnie and the others entered.

The room was almost dark; the shutters were closed, but a wax candle, placed behind a screen, still burned on the hearth; by its faint light they saw that the bed was empty, and on further observation the Duke de Bourbon was discovered, apparently standing by the window, his right cheek leaning against the inside shutter, his head slightly inclined, in the position of a man who is listening.

They threw open the windows on the opposite side of the room; the light of the morning poured in, and revealed a frightful spectacle. The 'duke was not standing, but hanging-suspended from the bar of the shutters, by two handkerchiefs, one tied within the other; his head had fallen on his breast; his face was pale; his knees bent; his feet just touched the carpet. Succor was useless; he had ceased to live.

So dreadful a sight distracted the whole household. Madame de Feuchères was naturally in hysterics. There was presence of mind enough, however, on the part of somebody, to summon the authorities of St. Leu, to take judicial cognizance of so fearful a catastrophe. Before ten o'clock they had arrived, and the chamber of the unfortunate duke was converted into a tribunal of investigation. The state of the body was examined, Manoury, Bonnie, and Madame de Feuchères gave their evidence in due form, and after a protracted deliberation, the procureur-général, who, on the news reaching Paris, had received instructions from the king to attend in person upon the inquest, reported to M. Dupont de l'Eure, then keeper of the seals, as the result of his researches, mainly as follows: That the Duke de Bourbon had come to his death by strangulation; that there were no traces of violence on his person, or disorder in the furniture of the room; that the door leading into the chamber was bolted as usual; that the death of

the duke was his own act. Besides this summary, the procureur-général gave in detail the depositions of the witnesses, both as to the events of the morning of the 27th, and as to the state of mind of the duke previous to that date, and argued from the melancholy which he was said to have manifested, a certain evidence of suicidal intentions.

The obsequies of the last of the Condés were performed with a just solemnity. His heart was carried to Chantilly; and there the Abbé Pélier, his almoner, delivered a funeral discourse. The audience was large, and distinguished; a melancholy silence prevailed; and how startling was the impression, when the abbé, in a voice full of solemnity and assurance, declared, "that the Duke de Bourbon was innocent of his death in the sight of God!"

In fact, not only in the mind of this priest, the mourner and the eulogiser of an affectionate and benevolent benefactor, but in many others, especially in the inquisitive circles of Paris, behind this idea of suicide, so convincingly displayed by the court physicians, and magistrates, and lawyers, there lurked dark suspicions of crime-and undefined, vague conjectures of treachery and midnight murder. Sinister murmurs multiplied in all parts; they gained ground; the decision of the authorized inquest was reviewed and appealed from; at last it became the subject of legal investigation, in the proceedings instituted by the Princes de Rohan, to set aside the will of the Duke de Bourbon, on the ground of undue influence and coercion. M. Hennequin, in his brilliant arguments before' the court of Première instance, on behalf of the heirs-at-law, resumed the examination of the mystery, less in its bearings upon the civil claims of his clients, than as an act of justice to an illustrious name, stained with the reproach of a cowardly and ignominious death; for the purpose, too, of giving to the dread suspicions that enveloped this dark tragedy a definite form and expression, that might, perhaps, evoke from the darkness that sheltered them, the actors and instigators of the crime. This review, searching and ingenious, disclosed an array of facts and circumstances, which, though hardly sufficient to fix the charge of ascertained guilt, cast a deep shadow of suspicion, upon the principal figurante in the scenes we have already described.

The explanation of the Duke de Bourbon's death by the supposition of his suicide, had been assiduously upheld by Madame de Feuchères, from the moment of its fearful discovery. The door bolted from within; the silence that had reigned unbroken through the house during the whole of the night so fatal to its master; the spirits of the duke, shattered by the events of July, and, ever since, disturbed and unnatural; these were advanced as indisputable proofs of his having died by his own hand, a victim to the exaggerated forebodings and chagrins that had oppressed him. But the whole tenor of his character and life, it was argued, "au contraire," were opposed to this hypothesis. It is not common for old men to rush precipitately into the graves that wait for them at so small a distance; nor was there anything in the outward behavior of the duke to indicate the purpose of self-destruction. The journey for which he had made such elaborate preparations, the well-arranged plan of his departure, extending to the minutest details, it would be absurd to regard as only a ruse to cover the suspicion of his fatal intentions, especially as they were known but to two or three persons, and those the easiest to deceive by far less laborious a process. Besides, the old man's spirits, however affected by the shock of the three days, had gradually regained their calm and tranquillity, and on the very night of his death had been noticed as more than usually vivacious.

His leave-taking of his guests, that cheerful "A demain !" could it be that beneath this assured expectation of to-morrow, there lurked the dismal purpose of a stealthy suicide? Following him into his bed chamber, and examining the details of his behavior, as they were gathered from the state of things on the next morning, by a species of testimony ex necess tate rei ; and the notion of his suicide, however firmly a matter of belief before, seems, by imperceptible degrees, to vanish from the mind. Not one of the duke's ordinary habits was interrupted at this time. His watch he had wound up as usual. The candles he had put out, (with the exception of the bougie which burned on the hearth.) It was his custom to make a knot in his handkerchief on retiring, if he wished to be reminded of any engagement for the next day; and such a knot he had tied on this last night of his life, which was to know no morning. A strange attention to trifles on the part of a man determined upon death. It was evident, and admitted on all sides, that the duke had lain down on his bed; his movements from that time are unknown and unsupposed, saving such frightful conjectures as the imagination may form, of that silent, secret, midnight death, so strange, so unnatural, requiring so much arrangement, and caution, and time, relieved by no possibility of its having been resolved on in the heat of passion, or accomplished with a sudden violence. His own act, or the act of another, it was artful, deliberate, and circumspect.

The duke died-strangled between the shutters and the carpet; the room was found undisturbed, and the door bolted. But a simple experiment with a thin piece of tape, showed how 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 sleep

ing 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 that it tried to counterfeit? A still more insignificant circumstance became, in a review of the combined minutiae of the case, strikingly suspicious. The prince never used slippers-his feet were tender, and instead of slippers, he had a sort of stocking foot attached to his trowsers; nevertheless, a pair of slippers were 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 in the year, 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 Manoury just, that the authors of the crime, which he believed to have been committed, in repairing the disorder: they had made, thought 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 already been stated, was found hanging by two handkerchiefs, forming two rings, of which the upper was attached to the bar of the shutters, 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 this 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 skilfully and firmly had it been tied; but the maladresse of the prince was well known; he could hardly fasten the strings of his shoes. 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?

Bnt 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 the apartment of Madame de Feuchères, 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! In the morning, on the di covery of the catastrophe, was it to hide this terrible circumstance that Madame de Feuchères, instead of ascending by the private staircase, to which she was no stranger, and which would seem to have been 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 protege 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 funereal 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 !" Manoury, who heard him, advised him to confess whatever he might know. Lecomte was silent. Afterwards he tried to explain the meaning of these strange expressions, by attributing them to a fear of losing his place. But the question cannot fail to arise, might not these mournful exclamations have been the result of an 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 ancestor, combatted the idea of the felonious and 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 aleady narrated. The most august name in the kingdom was united with that of Madame de Feuchères, in this story of intrigue, almost of conspiracy, now given to the world in all the publicity of a reported trial, colored by the partial eloquence of a zealous advocate, with whose sympathies for his clients were blended certain political resentments, which found a safe opportunity of expression in the privileged circle of a court of justice. The connexion of the Duke d'Orleans with the mystery of St. Leu, was turned to account by the opposing partizans of the court, and gave point to many sarcasms, and not a few suspicious inquiries. How had it happened that the physician of the prince, Dr. Guerin, had not been called to the post-mortem examination? That it was left to the care of three surgeons, two of whom were bound to the interests of the palace by the closest relations? Why had M. de Broglie forbidden the insertion in the Moniteur, of the funeral oration of the Abbé Peliér at Chantilly?