public dishonour the daughter of Madame de Roquelaure, nor doom to the
scaffold or to civil death in foreign countries the nephew of Madame de
Soubise.

Friends of M. and Madame de Roquelaure tried to arrange matters. They
represented that it would be better to accept the marriage as it was than
to expose a daughter to cruel dishonour. Strange enough, the Duc and
Duchesse de Rohan were the most stormy. They wished to drive a very hard
bargain in the matter, and made proposals so out of the way, that nothing
could have been arranged but for the King. He did what he had never done
before in all his life; he entered into all the details; he begged, then
commanded as master; he had separate interviews with the parties
concerned; and finally appointed the Duc d'Aumont and the chancellor to
draw up the conditions of the marriage.

As Madame de Rohan, even after this, still refused to give her consent,
the King sent for her, and said that if she and her husband did not at
once give in, he would make the marriage valid by his own sovereign
authority. Finally, after so much noise, anguish, and trouble, the
contract was signed by the two families, assembled at the house of the
Duchesse de Roquelaure. The banns were published, and the marriage took
place at the church of the Convent of the Cross, where Mademoiselle de
Roquelaure had been confined since her beautiful marriage, guarded night
and day by five or six nuns. She entered the church by one door, Prince
de Leon by another; not a compliment or a word passed between them; the
curate said mass; married them; they mounted a coach, and drove off to
the house of a friend some leagues from Paris. They paid for their folly
by a cruel indigence which lasted all their lives, neither of them having
survived the Duc de Rohan, Monsieur de Roquelaure, or Madame de
Roquelaure. They left several children.