第43章 ALMOST A LADY(8)

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?

It needs no great feat of imagination to picture what the effect of sucha discovery would be on a woman of Sophie's violent temper, or to conceive how little the matter of taking a life especially the life of a feeble old man she was used to bullying and mishandling--would be allowed to stand in the way of rescuing her large gains.Murder of the Prince was her only chance.It had taken her seven years to bring him to the point of signing that first will.He was seventy-four years of age, enfeebled, obstinate, and she knew of his plans to flee from her.Even supposing that she could prevent his flight, could she begin all over again to another seven years of bullying and wheedling--always with the prospect of the old man dying before she could get him to the point again of doing as she wished? The very existence of the second will was a menace.It only needed that the would-be heirs of the Prince should hear of it, and there would be a swoop on their part to rescue the testator from her clutches.In the balance against 2,000,000 francs and some halfdozen castles with their estates the only wonder is that any reasonable person, knowing the history of Sophie Dawes, should hesitate about the value she was likely to place on the old man's life.

The inquiry begun in September of 1830 into the circumstances surrounding the death of the Prince was cooked before it was dressed.The honest man into whose hands it was placed at first, a M.de la Hurpoie, proved himself too zealous.After a night visit from the Procureur he was retired into private life.After that the investigators were hand-picked.They concluded the investigation the following June, with the declaration that the Prince had committed suicide, a verdict which had its reward--in advancement for the judges.

In the winter of 1831-32 there was begun a lawsuit in which the Princes de Rohan brought action against Sophie and the Duc d'Aumale for the upsetting of the will under which the latter two had inherited the Prince de Conde's fortune.The grounds for the action were the undue influence exerted by Sophie.The Princes de Rohan lost.

Thus was Sophie twice `legally' vindicated.But public opinion refused her any coat of whitewash.Never popular in France, she became less and less popular in the years that followed her legal triumphs.Having used her for his own ends, Louis-Philippe gradually shut off fromher the light of his cod-like countenance.

Lacenaire, the notorious murderer-robber in a biting song, written in prison, expressed the popular opinion regarding Louis-Philippe's share in the Feucheres-Conde affair.The song, called Petition d'un voleur a un roi son voisin, has this final stanza:

Sire, oserais-je reclamer? Mais ecoutez-moi sans colere: Le voeu que je vais exprimer Pourrait bien, ma foi, vous deplaire.Je suis fourbe, avare, mechant, Ladre, impitoyable, rapace; J'ai fait se pendre mon parent: Sire, cedez-moi votre place.''

Sophie found little joy in her wide French possessions.She found herself without friends before whom she could play the great lady in her castles.She gradually got rid of her possessions, and returned to her native land.She bought an estate near Christchurch, in Hampshire, and took a house in Hyde Park Square, London.But she did not long enjoy those English homes.While being treated for dropsy in 1840 she died of angina.According to the famous surgeon who was at her bedside just before her demise, she died game.''

It may almost be said that she lived game.There must have been a fighting quality about Sophie to take her so far from such a bad start.Violent as she was of temper, greedy, unscrupulous, she seems yet to have had some instincts of kindness.The stories of her good deeds are rather swamped by those of her bad ones.She did try to do some good with the Prince's money round about Chantilly, took a definite and lasting interest in the alms-houses built there by the Great Conde,'' and a request in her own will was to the effect that if she had ever done anything for the Orleans gang, the Prince de Conde's wishes regarding the use of the chateau of Ecouen as an orphanage might be fulfilled as a reward to her.The request never was fulfilled, but it does show that Sophie had some affinity in kindness to Nell Gwynn.

How much farther--or how much better--would Sophie Dawes have fared had her manners been less at the mercy of her temper? It is impossible to say.That she had some quality of greatness is beyond doubt.The resolution of character, the will to achieve, and even theviraginous temper might have carried her far had she been a man some thirty years earlier in the country of her greater activities.Under Napoleon, as a man, Sophie might have climbed high on the way to glory.As a woman, with those traits, there is almost tragic inevitability in the manner in which we find her ranged with what Dickens called Glory's bastard brother''--Murder.