Beauty and the Beast: The Final Chapter
The past few years had not been kind to Louis de Rohan, Prince de Guémené. For a man who had lived through the French Revolution, the Bourbon Restoration, the June Monarchy, the Second Republic, and the Third Restoration, time had finally caught up to him. It was first noticeable as early as 1858. Perhaps worn out by his exhausting time in power during the Second Republic and subsequent dismissal from prominence during the Third Restoration, Rohan seemed to lose interest in politics, showing up less frequently in the Chamber of Peers. Those who saw him in passing couldn’t happen but notice that the man who once towered over them now walked with his shoulders hunched, his eyes glazed, and his breathing coming out in deep sighs, as if every ounce of energy and willpower had been siphoned out of him.
For those paying particular attention, they may have noticed this sudden melancholy taking hold shortly after the passing of the Law on Inheritance, nothing but a coincidence to all but the most observant. Anyone who knew Rohan knew though that his entire focus during his later years was on his legacy, on ensuring that everything he had created and built up over the years was not destroyed upon his death. With the passing of that law, he was given the tool to ensure the continuation of his legacy, and with that complete, he had nothing else to strive for. With his purpose lost, he wandered aimlessly, unsure where life would next take him.
For nearly two years he lived in near isolation in his little corner of Paris at the Hôtel de Rohan-Montbazon, only leaving to visit his family or dearest of friends. Politics had lost its allure for him and there seemed little else for him to do. Managing the Rohan-Descombes Manufacturing Company increasing fell onto the shoulders of his second son, Henri, as he even lost interest in that venture. His dear wife Belle, who even in her sixties retained much of her famed beauty, attempted to comfort and guide him, seeking to draw him out of this stupor. Even she could not save him.
It was in 1860 that the first signs of something far more sinister began to surface within Louis de Rohan. One morning he woke up and wandered the Hôtel with a confused expression on his face. When asked by his wife what he was doing, he asked how he had gotten to Paris from Guémené, despite not having visited his familial estates in months. A few weeks later he awoke and scurried around the Hôtel before waking up his wife in a panic, frantically explaining that he could not find their children, despite the fact that they were all adults and had not lived with them for years.
These episodes continued, growing more numerous and more severe as the months went on. Rohan would endure periods of forgetfulness, losing track of where he was or who the people around him were. Belle was forced to accompany him at all times, otherwise he would wander off and get lost. She forced him to withdraw from public life and kept him away from others who might spread the word of his condition, even some of his most trusted friends. It was a secret she could not bear the world to know.
Rohan’s condition reached a turning point when his twin sons, Louis and Philippe, came to visit him and he mistook them for servants. This was not a situation born solely by his youngest (and most forgettable) of children. A few times Henri would attempt to speak with his father about the manufacturing company, only for his father to either act as if his son was an associate sent by Descombes or even forget he had a company altogether, if he happened to remember who Descombes was at all. His daughters left his presence more than once crying as he forgot their names or mistook them as guests of his wife. Even his eldest son, Beau, could not escape this, with his father going so far as to shake his hand when he saw him in uniform and thank him for his service in the French Army as if he was being introduced to some random soldier.
This was just the beginning. Forgetting where he was or who people were, even his own children, was concerning, but it reached a new height when Rohan seemed to lose all perception of time and lose himself in his own memories. One evening Belle found him in front of a mirror with a straight razor attempting to hack off his beard. When questioned about what he was doing, he frantically explained that the June Monarchy was about to fall and he needed to shave his beard so the mob wouldn’t recognize him when he attempted to escape Paris. At this point it was decided that he needed to be taken away from Paris before he publicly embarrassed himself, or worse, hurt himself or the ones he loved. The family moved their father back to the ancestral home at Guémené, hoping that it would spark some recognition in his mind and allow for some form of recovery. Instead it became an isolated prison where Louis could carry out the re-enactment of his life as though he was reliving it all over again.
Belle became increasingly disparaged with each new episode. One moment she would find her husband trembling in the corner of a closet, crying and begging for her to hide him from the revolutionaries, as though he was a child during the French Revolution. The next she’d find him writing a letter to la Marche congratulating him on his presidential victory, which she fortunately confiscated before he managed to send it out. His mind became a muddled mess as he became lost in his own memories.
As Rohan’s mind faded, so did his body. He often refused to eat, and his body became thin and frail. During his episodes he was even prone to injure himself, and on a few occasions Belle’s intervention stopped him from doing something dangerous. All mirrors had to be removed from the estate for his was prone to break them, injuring his hands and then walking through the glass without even noticing the pain. On a few occasions, he would even faint or lose consciousness for a moment, not that he ever even seemed aware of it.
Throughout it all, there remained but one beacon of hope. No matter how lost and confused he became, he would always calm in the presence of his wife, and would always recognize her, even if her name escaped him at times. As long as she remained by his side, she could pull him back from the brink, allowing him to retain even the slightest form of sanity. Belle, ever the duteous wife, clung to her husband desperately, never leaving his side as he ventured into territory she could not follow or understand. She was always there to guide him back to reality when he faltered, his beacon of light to remind him of who he was.
The moment he finally lost sight of his one trusted beacon was the signal that Rohan’s end neared. In January of 1863, thoroughly caught up in one of his episodes, he mistook his wife for an intruder, yelling at her and demanding she get out of his house. Her attempts to coax him back to reality fell on deaf ears, and in a fit of rage he smacked her, knocking her to the floor. For a moment there seemed a glimpse of recognition, but it was faint and he soon became lost in the murky depths of his mind once more. In an act of great irony, he threw his wife in the tower he had locked her up in decades ago, although thankfully he did not trap her in there or hurt her further. The next morning, having lost the last shred of who he was, Rohan was found by Belle dead in his bed, having passed away in his sleep. With his passing, it would take time to see if his legacy would truly live on without him and how his family would handle the loss. The once great prince, the Beast, now reduced to a shell of his former self, was gone.