To be free, in a word, is not to do nothing, but to
be sole judge of what one shall do or not do. In this sense, what a
boon is liberty!" This practical freedom he possessed to the full,
when in August 1684 he accepted bondage to a spiteful monkey of a boy,
a dwarf with a huge head and a dreadful face, to whom he was to
impart, with tears of disappointment and humiliation, the rudiments of
national history. He was immediately responsible to the father of this
infant phenomenon, to Henry Jules, Duke d'Enghien, of whose "useless
talents, wasted genius, imagination which was a torment to himself and
others," Saint-Simon gives so copious an account. We have to think of
our delicate and timid La Bruyere now for years the powerless
plaything of this "unnatural son, cruel father, terrible husband,
detestable master, pernicious neighbour, without affection, without
friends."
But after two centuries of canonization of the Condes, it has now
become the fashion to denigrate them to an equal excess. The
traditional figure of the Grand Conde, Olympian and sublime, has been
exposed by pitiless documentary evidence.
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