Bassompierre’s astonishment and dismay at this announcement can well be imagined. But he was above all things a courtier, and, aware that opposition to the infatuated monarch’s will would be worse than futile, he resolved to make a virtue of necessity, and proceeded to assure the King of his joy at being afforded an opportunity of showing his devotion to his Majesty, by cheerfully resigning to him what he valued more than his own life.

But let us allow him to continue his narrative of this singular interview:—

That day Bassompierre dined with the Duc d’Épernon, to whom he related what the King had said to him. D’Épernon was disposed to make light of the matter. “It is merely a caprice of the King,” said he, “which will pass as quickly as it came. Do not be alarmed about it; for when Monsieur le Prince understands what the King’s intentions are, he will not commit himself.” Bassompierre tried to persuade himself that such was the case, and, on the duke’s advice, said nothing to anyone else about the matter.

In the evening, as he and two or three other gentlemen were playing at dice with the King at a table placed beside his bed, the Duchesse d’Angoulême entered the room with her niece, whom she had brought, it appeared, in response to a message from his Majesty. The King immediately ceased playing and had a long and earnest conversation with the duchess on the further side of the bed. Then he called Mlle. de Montmorency and spoke to her also for a long time. It was evident that he informed her that Bassompierre had renounced his pretensions to her hand, and that he intended to bestow it upon the Prince de Condé, for when the conversation came to an end and the girl turned away, she glanced in her unfortunate suitor’s direction and shrugged her pretty shoulders.

M. de Praslin succeeded in persuading Bassompierre that there was still something to live for, and brought him that evening to the Louvre, where “everyone was at first astonished to see that in the space of two days he had become so thin, pale and changed as to be unrecognisable.”

A few days later, the Prince de Condé announced his intention of marrying Mlle. de Montmorency. The prince, who was by no means an amiable young man, had taken a dislike to Bassompierre, whose pretensions to the young heiress’s hand would, but for the intervention of the King, have most certainly been preferred to his own; and happening to meet his discomfited rival, said to him with obvious malice: “M. de Bassompierre, I beg you to come to my hôtel this afternoon and accompany me to Madame d’Angoulême’s, whither I propose going to pay my respects to Mlle. de Montmorency.”

“I made him a low bow,” says Bassompierre, “but I did not go there.”

It is probable that the loss of Mlle. de Montmorency’s dowry and all the advantages which his alliance with so illustrious a family would have brought him distressed Bassompierre a good deal more than the loss of the young lady herself.

Nor had he far to look for consolation, and “in order not to remain idle and to console myself for my loss, I sought diversion in making my peace with three ladies, with whom I had totally broken in expectation of marrying—one of them being Antragues.”

If, however, like a true courtier, he had been ready to bow to the caprice of his sovereign, and to make the best of the situation, his vanity had been wounded far too deeply for him to allow himself “to be led in triumph”—as he expresses it—by Condé, when that prince’s formal betrothal to Mlle. de Montmorency took place:

Two days afterwards, Bassompierre fell ill of tertian fever, and one morning, while he lay in bed, he received a visit from a Gascon gentleman named Noé, who had, or imagined he had, some grievance against him, and who had come to inquire whether he might have the honour of fighting a duel with him, so soon as his strength would permit. Bassompierre replied that he had enough and to spare whenever it was a question of giving another gentleman satisfaction, and, rising forthwith, ordered a horse to be saddled, dressed, and rode off to the “field of honour,” which M. de Noé had appointed at Bicêtre. It was hardly the kind of day which even a hale man would have chosen to indulge in one of these little affairs, as there was a thick fog, and the ground was two feet deep in snow. But he scorned to turn back, and at length reached the rendezvous, where he found his adversary awaiting him.

It had been agreed that, as Bassompierre was in no condition to fight on foot, the combat should take place on horseback; but just as it was about to begin, two Gascons, named La Gaulas and Carbon, with a third man called Le Fay, all of whom were apparently friends of Noé, came galloping up, with the intention of preventing the duel, and called out to that fire-eating gentleman: “You can meet some other time.”

Bassompierre, however, having put himself to so much inconvenience just to oblige M. de Noé, was highly indignant at the interruption, and, resolved not to return to Paris without striking at least one blow, shouted to his adversary to mount his horse, and rode towards him. Noé, who was as anxious to get at Bassompierre as the latter was to get at him, threw himself into the saddle, and though his friends endeavoured to intercept him, he contrived to evade them; and he and Bassompierre were about to cross swords when Carbon urged his horse against the flank of Noé’s with such force that he bore both the animal and its rider to the ground. Noé was soon in the saddle again, but the fog was now so thick that it was quite impossible for one man to recognise another, with the consequence that Bassompierre came near to killing La Gaulas, whom he mistook for Noé. This mishap put an end to the combat, and Bassompierre, who was feeling so ill that he could scarcely sit his horse, made his way to Gentilly, where fortunately he found some friends of his, who assisted him back to Paris.

One might suppose that, after this adventure, our gentleman would have been content to remain in bed for a day or two; but, since there happened to be a grand ballet at the Arsenal that evening, at which all the Court was to be present, and which he was particularly anxious to attend, he must needs array himself in all his bravery and go out into the snow and fog again. The result of this imprudence was that he fell dangerously ill and was at one time at death’s door; and the spring had come before he was about again.

CHAPTER XI

Early in May, the Court went to Fontainebleau, and Bassompierre followed it shortly afterwards. On his arrival, he found that the engineers had just begun to let the water into the canal which had recently been constructed there; and the King offered to wager a thousand crowns that in two days it would be quite full. Bassompierre took the bet and won it easily, as it was more than a week before the canal was full.

On May 17, the Prince de Condé and Charlotte de Montmorency were married at Chantilly, the wedding having been delayed until then owing to the necessity of awaiting the Papal dispensation for the marriage of blood relations. Shortly afterwards, the bridal pair joined the Court at Fontainebleau, but the young princess only remained there a week, and then went with her mother-in-law to the Château of Valery, near Sens, one of Condé’s country-houses.

One day, while the Court was at Fontainebleau, the King sent for Bassompierre and announced that he proposed to send him on a secret mission of the highest importance to his Majesty’s brother-in-law, Henri II, Duke of Lorraine. By his first marriage with Catherine de Bourbon, the Duke had had no children; but by his second marriage with Margherita di Gonzaga, at which, it will be remembered, Bassompierre had assisted in the quality of Ambassador Extraordinary, he had two daughters, the Princesses Nicole and Claude; and the chief object of the mission which he was now to undertake was to propose, on behalf of the King, an alliance between the elder princess and the Dauphin, and to employ all his powers of persuasion to induce the Duke to consent to it. These would be needed, for the Lorrainers, like the people of all small countries, were always exceedingly suspicious about the designs of their powerful neighbours; and, though the prospect of one of his daughters sharing the throne of France might flatter the pride of Henri II, his subjects would probably regard the affair in a very different light. However, the advantages to be derived from such an alliance were so great that the King was determined to spare no expense to bring it about, and, with the idea that corruption might succeed where other means might fail, he authorised Bassompierre “to offer pensions up to the value of 12,000 crowns to any private persons whom he should judge capable of assisting him in this affair.” Finally, “in order to encourage him to serve him the more zealously on this occasion, he offered to marry him to Mlle. de Chemillé[70] and to re-establish in his favour the estate of Beaupreau into a duchy and peerage.” “But,” continues Bassompierre, “I was so over head and ears in love just then, that I told him that, if he desired to do me any favour, I begged that it might not be by way of marriage, since by marriage he had done me so much injury.”

Henri IV was most anxious that Bassompierre should set out at once for Lorraine, and this the latter promised to do. But, on reaching Paris, he reflected that the marriage of the Duc de Vendôme, the King’s son by Gabrielle d’Estrées, which was to be a very splendid affair indeed, was to take place at Fontainebleau in ten days’ time, and that it would be a thousand pities to miss it, even if he had to go there in disguise. He therefore decided to postpone his departure until after the wedding and to spend the interval in Paris, confining himself, we may suppose, to the company of such of his friends as might be trusted not to reveal his presence there to the King, who, of course, imagined him to be well on his way to Lorraine. He soon had reason to regret having disobeyed his sovereign’s commands, for, during the ten days he spent in the capital, his usual extraordinary good fortune at play for once entirely deserted him, and he contrived to lose no less a sum than 25,000 crowns, which seems a somewhat exorbitant price to pay for the pleasure of attending even the most magnificent of weddings.

Having witnessed the ceremony, so carefully disguised that his identity would not appear to have been even suspected, he returned to Paris and started the same day for Lorraine, from which, after his mission had been accomplished, he had orders to proceed to Germany, to sound the Margrave of Baden-Durlach as to the attitude he was likely to assume in the event of a war between France and the House of Austria, for which Henri IV had long been making preparations.

The King had not failed to impress upon his emissary the importance of not allowing it to be suspected that he had come to Lorraine with any diplomatic object in view, and, faithful to these instructions, Bassompierre, instead of going at once to Nancy, proceeded to Harouel, where, in honour of his arrival, his mother kept open house, and he was visited by a great many of the nobles of Lorraine. At Harouel he remained for some days and then proceeded to Nancy, “just as if he had no other business there than to pay his respects to the princes and pass the time.”

On the morrow of his arrival, one of his servants came to complain to him that he had been chastised by a gentleman named Du Ludre, whom he had in some way offended. Bassompierre at once sent that gentleman a challenge to mortal combat, apparently forgetting, in his indignation at the affront which had been offered him in the person of his servant, that if Du Ludre happened to be an expert swordsman and were to kill or even wound him seriously, there would be an end to the mission with which the King had charged him. Happily, however, the gentleman in question turned out to be a pacifist, who, though ready enough to cane insolent lackeys, had no desire to cross swords with their masters; and, calling upon Bassompierre, he offered him so many excuses and apologies that, instead of fighting, the latter ended by embracing him.

This incident, trivial in itself, had, nevertheless, an important consequence, since no one was now likely to suspect a gentleman so ready to seek the “field of honour” of having come to Nancy on an important diplomatic mission.

However, in order to leave nothing to chance, he waited nearly a week, and then asked for an audience of the Duke, who was greatly surprised when he presented his credentials, and still more when he learned the object of his mission. Henri II was a timid and irresolute prince, always profoundly suspicious of the great Powers on either side of him, and his first question to Bassompierre was whether he were to understand that the troops which the King of France had lately assembled on the Lorraine frontier were intended to act against him, in the event of his being unable to comply with the wishes of his Majesty. Bassompierre hastened to assure him that they were assembled for a very different purpose, namely, to prevent the annexation of the duchy of Clèves by the House of Austria, a step which would be so detrimental to the interests of France that the King was determined not to permit it.[71] The prince, evidently much relieved, then said that the proposition which had just been made him was of such importance that he must have time to consider it and to consult his advisers, and inquired how long Bassompierre could give him. The latter replied that his Highness might take so long as he pleased, and said that he would go and visit some of his relatives in Germany and return for his answer in a fortnight’s time. He begged him, however, to refrain from admitting anyone to his confidence upon whose discretion he could not implicitly rely, as it was of the utmost importance that the matter should be kept secret. The Duke said that he proposed to consult Bouvet, President of Lorraine, to which Bassompierre, who was on friendly terms with the President, readily agreed.

In the course of the day, Bouvet came to visit Bassompierre and told him that he had never seen the duke in such perplexity before. He himself seemed not unfavourably disposed to the French alliance, and Bassompierre seized the occasion to hint that, if he could persuade his Highness to consent to it, he would not find the Very Christian King ungrateful. But the President, who was an honest man, indignantly repudiated such a suggestion, observing that “he was a good servant of his master, who was able to make him and all his family wealthier than they had any desire to be.” Bassompierre hastened to offer his apologies, and they parted very amicably.

Next day Bassompierre set out for Germany, accompanied by an old friend, the Count von Salm, whose sister was married to the Margrave of Baden-Durlach, to whom, as we have mentioned, he was also accredited. He was at pains, however, not to allow the count to suspect that his intended visit to the latter’s brother-in-law was other than a friendly one.

With this object he travelled leisurely, stopping at Strasbourg, Saverne and other places, to visit people whom he knew. At Saverne, where he had such a painful experience five years earlier, he was again entertained by the canons of the Chapter, but on this occasion appears to have risen from table in a condition to which no one could take exception. He made up for this moderation, however, a day or two later, at a supper-party to which he was invited by the Count and Countess von Hanau, relatives of Salm, where all the company, including apparently the hostess, got “terribly drunk.”

Having ascertained that the Margrave of Baden-Durlach was at one of his country-houses near Lichtentau, he and Salm proceeded thither and were very hospitably entertained. He refrained from saying anything about the object of his visit until the day of his departure, when, as the company rose from the dinner-table, he said, in a low voice, to the Margrave that he had a message of importance to deliver to him, at the same time giving him a significant look. The Margrave thereupon inquired, in a loud tone, whether M. de Bassompierre were proceeding direct to France after his return to Nancy, and, on being told that such was his intention, asked him to step into his cabinet, since, if he were disposed to do him a kindness, he had a little commission for him to execute there.

So soon as they were alone, Bassompierre showed the Margrave his credentials and informed him that he had been sent by his master to ascertain if he could reckon upon his support, in the event of a war between France and the House of Austria. The Margrave replied that the King could certainly count upon him, adding, however, that he by himself could do but little. If his Majesty would do him the honour of following his counsel, he would at once enter into communication with his relatives, the Duke of Würtemberg, the Margrave of Anspach, and the Landgraves of Hesse and Darmstadt, all of whom he would find very disposed to serve him.

Bassompierre now had an opportunity of showing that he had in him something of the stuff whereof successful diplomatists are made, and he did not fail to seize it. Although he had received no instructions whatever from Henri IV in regard to any of the princes mentioned, whose attitude the King had probably considered far too doubtful to justify him in disclosing to them his plans, he did not hesitate to assure the Margrave that he had been charged to visit them all, as well as the Elector Palatine, provided he could do so without exciting suspicion. Unfortunately, however, this condition could not be fulfilled, as the Duke of Würtemberg, whom he had intended to visit at Stuttgart, had gone to Anspach to attend the wedding of its ruler, and to follow him there would be too risky a proceeding; the Elector Palatine had gone to the Upper Palatinate to hunt, and he could find no pretext sufficiently plausible for approaching the Landgraves of Hesse and Darmstadt. He had, therefore, he continued, written to the King to explain the difficulties with which he had to contend and to ask for fresh instructions, and had received orders to confine himself to visiting the Margrave, and, if he found him as well-disposed towards the cause of his Majesty as the latter hoped and believed him to be, to request him to undertake the chief direction of his negotiations with the princes of Germany, and to advise him as to which of them would be most inclined to aid him, by what means they ought to be approached, what letters ought to be written to them, which of their Ministers it would be advisable to gain over to his interests, and so forth.

The Margrave, little suspecting that the young diplomatist before him was acting entirely on his own responsibility, and highly flattered by such a tribute to his importance, readily promised to undertake what was required of him, and proposed that his private secretary, Huart, who possessed his entire confidence, should accompany Bassompierre back to France, on the pretext of attending to some business affairs of his master there, and act as a means of communication between the Margrave and the French Government.

Very satisfied with the result of his visit to the Margrave, Bassompierre returned to Nancy, where he found despatches from Henri IV awaiting him, in which he was instructed to sound the Duke of Lorraine in regard to the Clèves affair. He had no difficulty in obtaining from the Duke an assurance that he would preserve the strictest neutrality; but on the question of the proposed marriage between his elder daughter and the Dauphin, the poor prince appeared quite unable to come to a decision. At length, after keeping Bassompierre waiting for nearly three weeks, he sent him, through the President Bouvet, a very flattering message, in which he informed him that the remembrance of the great services which his family had rendered the House of Lorraine, and the esteem which he entertained for M. de Bassompierre personally, had decided him that he could not do better than ask his advice as to the answer he should make to the King.

Bassompierre replied that it was impossible for him to act as the counsellor of a sovereign to whom he was accredited; but, at the same time, he would be very willing to submit to his Highness the different answers which it would be possible for him to make to his master’s proposition, and leave him to choose between them.

He then proceeded to draft a long and elaborate memoir, which occupies many pages of his Journal, wherein, notwithstanding that he had just expressly declined the honour of advising the Duke of Lorraine, he proceeded to give that prince some very sound counsel indeed. Space forbids us to attempt even a summary of this document, but, in the light of subsequent events, one portion of it is of real interest.

Combating the objection that the marriage of the Duke’s elder daughter to the Dauphin might lead, in the event of the extinction of the male line of the House of Lorraine, to the duchy being incorporated with France, Bassompierre, as a loyal son of Lorraine, boldly declared his opinion that such an occurrence would be wholly to the advantage of his compatriots, whose national customs and institutions would be respected by France as she had respected those of Brittany, while, like the Bretons, able and ambitious Lorrainers would find in the service of France opportunities for advancement which they could never hope to meet with in their own little country. If, on the contrary, the Duke were to reject the French alliance and give his daughter to a prince of the House of Austria, which, in a like eventuality, would regard Lorraine merely as a new province to be exploited for the benefit of the Spanish or Imperial Exchequer, or to some German or Italian sovereign of the second rank, whose descendants, brought up in a distant country, would have nothing in common with the people of Lorraine and would be powerless to protect them from the aggression of their powerful neighbours, their lot would be very different.

Time has abundantly justified what Bassompierre wrote, and it is not a little unusual to find so much sagacity and good sense concealed beneath so frivolous an exterior.

In conclusion, Bassompierre pointed out that there were four answers which the Duke of Lorraine might make to the proposal which he had received from Henri IV: (1) An absolute refusal, which the writer, of course, strongly deprecated; (2) A refusal based on the ground that the parties were not yet of marriageable age, accompanied by a promise not to entertain a proposal for his daughter’s hand from any other quarter, so long as the King of France continued in the same mind; (3) An acceptance, accompanied by a stipulation that the affair should be kept secret, until he had had time to gain the approval of his subjects and of his relatives, which he would undertake to do as soon as possible; (4) An unqualified acceptance.

This memoir was duly submitted to the duke, and, the following day, the President Bouvet came to see Bassompierre, and told him that his unfortunate master was in a pitiable state of uncertainty, now inclining to one decision and now to another. “I think,” said he, “that what you have proposed to his Highness has given him the means to decide, but you have more embarrassed him than ever; and I believe that, if you had given him one counsel, he would have followed it, because he wishes to follow all four, not knowing which to choose.” He was, however, of opinion that he would eventually choose the third, and anyway he had promised to let Bassompierre have his answer in two days’ time.

Bouvet added that whatever answer Bassompierre carried back to the King it would be a verbal one, since the proposal had been made verbally; besides which the duke entertained the strongest objection to committing his reply to writing.

Bassompierre then said that he had received express orders from the King that, in the event of the Duke giving an absolute or qualified acceptance, he was to hand him a written offer, signed by him on behalf of his Majesty; that the King had also instructed him to bring back a reply signed by the Duke; and that he could take no other message. “The affair is of importance,” he continued, “subject to disavowal; I am young and a new Minister, and, apart from that, a vassal of his Highness. I might easily be suspected of having added or taken away, suppressed or invented, something in the affair. For which reasons I desire that his letter and his seal should speak, and that I should be the bearer only.”

Bouvet replied that he feared that it would be very difficult indeed to persuade the timorous prince to consent to what was required of him. To which Bassompierre rejoined that, if the Duke persisted in his refusal to give him a written answer, the only alternative was for him to send Bouvet, or some other duly accredited agent, to Henri IV to acquaint him with his decision.

The next morning the Duke invited Bassompierre to play tennis with him that afternoon, and, on his arrival at the palace, led him into the gallery of the tennis-court and told him that he was “fully resolved to conform to the wishes of the King and accept the honour which he wished to do him”; stipulating, however, that he should be allowed time to dispose his subjects favourably to the idea of such an alliance and to overcome the objections of his relatives. And he requested Bassompierre to beg the King very humbly on his behalf to observe the most absolute secrecy in regard to the affair, until the time should come to reveal it.

Bassompierre had, however, all the difficulty in the world to get this decision committed to writing and signed by the Duke. The poor prince appeared convinced that, if this were done, some unauthorised use would be made of the document. He feared his subjects; he feared his relatives; above all, he feared the ill-will of the Courts of Vienna and Madrid; and he protested that he would prefer to die rather than the affair should become known. At last, however, he yielded, and at the beginning of September Bassompierre returned to France with his answer duly signed and sealed.

CHAPTER XII

We must here explain that this interesting little affair had not been developing at all in accordance with his Majesty’s anticipations. Condé had accepted with becoming gratitude the handsome pension which the King had bestowed upon him and appeared far more interested in his wife’s dowry than in her person; while the fair Charlotte, on her side, scarcely troubled to conceal her indifference to a husband who was shy, awkward, and close-fisted, and lacking in all those qualities calculated to appeal to the imagination of a young girl. Indeed, there can be no doubt that she preferred the company of the King, despite his grey hairs and his wrinkled visage, and she appears to have given the amorous monarch no little encouragement, though perhaps innocently enough.

But Condé, with all his faults, was an honourable man, and when he clearly understood the odious part which his royal “uncle” intended should be his; when he saw the King, usually so painfully neglectful of his person, powdered and scented and bedecked like the youngest gallant of his Court; when he learned that he was bombarding his wife with passionate sonnets, obligingly composed for him by Malherbe and other facile rhymesters; when he heard that the princess had stepped one night on to the balcony of her apartments and there unbound her hair and allowed it to fall about her shoulders to gratify a whim of her elderly admirer, who stood beneath “transported with admiration”; when, in short, he found that the King’s infatuation was the talk of Court and town, he began, as his Majesty expressed it, “to play the devil.” And, after several angry scenes, in which Henri IV entirely lost his temper, and all sense of dignity and decorum along with it, and Condé appears to have forgotten the respect which he owed to his sovereign in his resentment against the man who wished to dishonour him, the prince carried off his wife to the Château of Muret, in Picardy, not far from the Flemish frontier.

The lovelorn King followed his inamorata, and, dressed as one of his own huntsmen, and with a patch over his eye, stood by the roadside to see her pass; and, in the same disguise, penetrated into a house where she was dining, and when she appeared at a window, kissed one hand to her, while he pressed the other to his heart.

A few days later, Condé received a letter from the King, written in a strain half-coaxing, half-menacing, summoning him to Court, to be present at the approaching accouchement of the Queen. Etiquette required that the first Prince of the Blood should be in attendance on these auspicious occasions, and it was impossible for him to refuse. But he came alone. Henri IV was furious, and his anger rendered him so insupportable to those about him, that Marie de’ Medici herself begged Condé to send for his wife, promising to keep strict watch over her. Such was the King’s wrath that he could not trust himself to interview his kinsman personally, but sent for his secretary, Virey, and bade him tell his master that, if he declined to bow to his will, or attempted any violence against his wife, he would give him cause to rue it. He added that, if he had been still only King of Navarre, he would have challenged the prince to a duel.

After receiving this message, Condé decided to feign submission, and accordingly begged his Majesty’s permission to fetch his wife. This request, as we may suppose, was readily granted, and on November 25—the day on which the ill-starred Henrietta Maria was born—he set out for Picardy.

On the evening of the 29th, while Henri IV was playing cards with the Comte de Soissons—Monsieur le Comte, as he was styled—Bassompierre, Guise, d’Épernon, and Créquy in his private cabinet, word was brought him that a messenger had arrived from Picardy, with intelligence that Monsieur le Prince had early that morning left Muret in a coach with his wife, accompanied by his equerry the Baron de Rochefort, Virey, and two of the princess’s ladies. Condé had given out that he was bound on a hunting-expedition; but the messenger—an archer of the Guard named Laperrière—had ascertained from his father, who was in the prince’s service, that the party had taken the road to Flanders.

Meanwhile, the distracted monarch had sent to summon his most trusted counsellors, as though for an affair of State of the first importance; and, as each one arrived, he hurried up to him to inform him of what had occurred and to ask his advice.

The Président Jeannin had arrived at the same time as Villeroy, and the King demanded his advice also. The President was for strong measures, and said without hesitation that his Majesty ought immediately to send one of the captains of his Guards after Monsieur le Prince to endeavour to bring him back. If that could not be effected, then an envoy ought to be despatched to the sovereign in whose dominions he had taken refuge to demand that he should be surrendered, and, in case that was refused, to threaten war. In his opinion, there could be little doubt that he had gone to Flanders, to demand an asylum of the Archduke Albert, Sovereign of the Netherlands; but, since Condé was not personally acquainted with that prince, he did not suppose that the latter was privy to his flight, and, unless he were to receive express orders from Madrid to protect him, he would in all probability prefer to send him back, or, at any rate, order him to leave Flanders, rather than risk trouble with France.