One day, in the King’s cabinet, Bassompierre, in taking his handkerchief from his pocket, drew out with it a billet-doux he had just received from Marie d’Entragues, which fell to the ground and lay there unperceived by him. An Italian banker named Sardini picked it up, and the Marquis de Coeuvres having told him that it was his, he gave it him. Coeuvres read the letter and then sent a message to Bassompierre, asking him to meet him that night before the HÔtel de Soissons and to come alone, as he had something of importance to communicate to him. Bassompierre, not a little surprised, since he and the marquis were on far from good terms with one another, kept the appointment and found Coeuvres awaiting him, in company with a friend of his, the Comte de Cramail, although in his letter he had given him to understand that there was to be no witness to their meeting.

The marquis began by reproaching Bassompierre with “certain bad offices which he asserted that he had rendered him,” and then went on to say that, notwithstanding this, he esteemed him too much not to desire his friendship, and aspired to serve, rather than injure, him, in proof of which, although that morning a letter written to him by Mlle. d’Entragues had fallen into his hands, he had made no use of it, but sent it at once to the fair writer by the hand of Sardini. Bassompierre, believing that he was speaking the truth, “made him a thousand protestations of service and affection,” after which Coeuvres informed him that the King was aware that he had found a letter written by some lady to him and had demanded to see it, and asked Bassompierre to send him as soon as possible one which he had received from another woman, to enable him to satisfy his Majesty’s curiosity. Bassompierre complied with this request, which was an easy matter enough, as, like his royal master, he generally had more than one love-affair on hand, and, besides, was in the habit of carefully preserving all the epistles which he received from the fair. At the same time, he sent a message to Mlle. d’Entragues to apprise her of the mishap which had befallen her letter and to inquire if she had received it from Coeuvres.

Bassompierre reluctantly consented, and CrÉquy accordingly proceeded to Coeuvres’s house. The marquis, at first, flatly refused to give up the letter, declaring that Fortune had brought it to him to enable him to avenge himself on Bassompierre for the ill that he had done him. CrÉquy pointed out that, if he were so imprudent as to do this, Bassompierre would certainly call him out, in which case one of them would probably be killed, while the victor would be sure to incur the severe displeasure of the King. Coeuvres thereupon began to waver, and finally told him to come back early on the following morning, when he would let him know his decision. When CrÉquy returned, the marquis, who, Bassompierre believes, had, in the meantime, sent La Varenne with the letter to the King and received it back again, told him that he would himself take the letter to Mlle. d’Entragues, if this would satisfy the lady’s admirer.

“To this I agreed,” writes Bassompierre, “resolved, nevertheless, to fight with this trickster, though I was anxious first to get Antragues out of the affair.”

The marquis took the letter to the lady, and, shortly afterwards, Bassompierre received a message from his mistress, informing him that it was her good pleasure that he should be reconciled to Coeuvres, for which purpose he was to come to her house that afternoon at five o’clock, where he would find the marquis waiting to embrace him. Much against his will, he obeyed, and a formal reconciliation took place between the two gentlemen, who then separated, secretly hating one another more bitterly than ever. In the evening, as Bassompierre was leaving his lodging to go to the Louvre, the Grand Equerry, the Duc de Bellegarde, arrived and told him that the King, having learned that he had quarrelled with the Marquis de Coeuvres, forbade him, on pain of death, to call the latter out. Bassompierre replied, laughing, that it would be easy to obey his Majesty, as he and the marquis were now the best of friends.

Notwithstanding the royal command, Bassompierre was determined to fight the purloiner of his love-letter, though, as he did not wish Mlle. d’Entragues’s name to be mixed up in the affair, he had decided to allow two or three days to pass and then to quarrel with him on some other matter. A pretext was easily found, and CrÉquy, who, now that the letter had been recovered, had altered his views on the question of a duel between them, repaired to Coeuvres’s house as the bearer of a formal challenge. The marquis, however, had no desire to oblige the fire-eating Lorrainer; possibly, he thought that he might get the worst of the encounter, but, more probably, since he appears to have been brave enough, he feared the displeasure of the King. Anyway, he refused to see CrÉquy, although the latter called on two or three occasions; and, meanwhile, Henri IV, having been warned of Bassompierre’s bellicose intentions, again interfered, and, sending for him and Coeuvres, ordered them to be reconciled in his presence. He then told Bassompierre that he had gravely offended him by daring to call out the marquis in the face of his express command, and forbade him to come to the Louvre or to any place where the Court might be. His anger extended to CrÉquy, and, not only did he forbid him the Court, but even talked of depriving him of the command of the regiment of guards to which he had just been appointed. However, thanks to the solicitations of the ladies of the Court, the Queen interceded with the King on behalf of the offenders, and Henri IV, who had reasons of his own for wishing to keep his consort in a good humour, relented so far as to allow them to return. For some little time he pretended to ignore their presence, but he soon grew tired of this, and admitted them once more to his favour.

In May, Bassompierre went to PlombiÈres, the baths of which had been recommended by the doctor, as his thigh was still causing him a good deal of pain. He travelled thither accompanied by several of his friends from the Court, and an imposing suite, which included a band of musicians whose services he had engaged, and remained there three months, enjoying “all the amusements which a young man, rich, debauched, and extravagant, could desire.” His mother, his sister, Madame de Saint-Luc, his younger brother, who had assumed Jean de Bassompierre’s title of Seigneur de Removille, and a number of friends from Lorraine joined him there, and he appears to have passed a very agreeable time, to which a love-affair with a Burgundian lady, named Madame de FussÉ, contributed not a little.

About the middle of August, by which time he was completely cured, learning that Henri IV had set out at the head of a small army for the Limousin, where the friends of that incorrigible intriguer the Duc de Bouillon were threatening to cause trouble, and that there was a chance of seeing a little fighting, he returned to Paris to prepare to follow the King. On his arrival, he had a violent quarrel with Marie d’Entragues, and “broke with her entirely.” What was the cause of the rupture he does not tell us; possibly, the lady may have been seeking consolation for his absence in the devotion of some rival admirer; possibly, she may have heard of the attentions which he had been paying to Madame de FussÉ at PlombiÈres and had taken umbrage. Anyway, complete as it may have been at the time, it was soon healed.

After spending a couple of days with a merry party at the Comtesse de Sault’s chÂteau at Savigny, amongst whom he doubtless contrived to dissipate any inclination to melancholy which his breach with Mlle. d’Entragues may have caused him, Bassompierre set out for the South. At Artenay, he met the aged Chancellor, BelliÈvre, who, to his profound mortification, had just been directed by the King to surrender the Seals to Nicolas Brulart, afterwards Marquis de Sillery, though BelliÈvre was to remain Chancellor and head of the Council.

Leaving the mortified Chancellor to continue his journey to Paris, where he died a year later, Bassompierre took the road to OrlÉans, where he found the Queen, whose pregnancy had prevented her following her husband to the Limousin, and Mlle. de Guise, who, while he was at PlombiÈres, had married the Prince de Conti. From OrlÉans he proceeded to Limoges, which Henri IV had made his headquarters, and, though he was disappointed in his hope of seeing some fighting, since the rebels submitted without any attempt at resistance, he had no reason to regret his journey to the South, as he won at play more than 100,000 francs.

In November, he returned with the King to Fontainebleau, whither the Queen and the ladies of the Court had proceeded, and, shortly afterwards, followed their Majesties to Paris, where he and Mlle. d’Entragues appear to have taken an early opportunity of making up their quarrel.

In the early spring, Henri IV, with a small army and a powerful battering-train, set out for Sedan, to teach the Duc de Bouillon a much-needed lesson. That troublesome nobleman, however, finding that neither the French Protestants nor Spain were disposed to move a finger to assist him, prudently decided to sue for pardon, and surrendered his impregnable fortress before a shot had been fired against it. The terms he obtained from the sovereign whose authority he had so long defied were favourable in the extreme, no punishment being inflicted upon him beyond the occupation of Sedan for five years by a body of the royal troops under a Huguenot commander.

Having settled with the Duc de Bouillon, Henri IV wrote to Bassompierre, Guise, and Bellegarde, ordering them to join him. On their arrival they found the King making preparations for his formal entry into Sedan, which took place the following day. In the morning Bouillon presented himself before his Majesty, who read to him his abolition, to which the duke listened with becoming humility. But the moment it was handed to him his manner changed, and he became as haughty and arrogant as ever, and even had the presumption to alter the order in which the King had marshalled his troops for the procession through the town.

After remaining a few days longer at Sedan, Henri IV went to Busancy, whence he despatched Bassompierre to Paris, to inquire, on his behalf, after the health of his former consort, Queen Margot, “who had lost Saint-Julian Date, her gallant, slain by a gentleman named Charmont [sic], whose head the King had caused to be cut off in consequence,”[46] and to carry letters to his two chief sultanas, Madame de Verneuil and the Comtesse de Moret.[47]

Bassompierre, impatient to see Marie d’Entragues, went first to the house of her sister, Madame de Verneuil, where he hoped to find her, and was not disappointed. Having saluted the ladies and executed his commission, he had the imprudence to mention that he was going to call upon Madame de Moret, for whom he had also a letter from the King. That was quite enough to pique the curiosity of the marchioness, who at once determined to see the correspondence which the BÉarnais was carrying on with her rival, and asked Bassompierre to give her the letter. That gentleman naturally objected, but Marie d’Entragues joined her commands to the request of her sister, and he weakly allowed himself to be persuaded. Madame de Verneuil broke the seal, and having read the amorous epistle, handed it back to Bassompierre—presumably, it contained nothing of much importance, otherwise, she would have been quite capable of retaining

or destroying it—observing that in an hour he could get a seal made similar to that with which the letter was fastened, and that, when he had sealed it again, no one would suspect that it had ever been tampered with. Bassompierre, relying on this assurance, sent his valet de chambre with the letter into the town to get a replica of the seal made; but, as ill luck would have it, the man went to an engraver named Turpin, who happened to be the very same person who had made the original for the King. Turpin, recognising his handiwork and suspecting that something was wrong, seized the valet by the collar, with the intention of handing him over to the police. But the latter, who was a strong and active fellow, contrived to wrench himself free and hurried off to warn his master, leaving his hat and cloak, together with the King’s letter, in the hands of the engraver.

Bassompierre, much disturbed by this misadventure, hid his valet, who, he tells us, would have been hanged within two hours if he had been caught, and then went to call on Madame de Moret. Having decided that his best plan was to brazen it out, he told the countess that having been entrusted by the King with a letter for her, he had unfortunately opened it, in mistake for a poulet which a lady had sent him; that, through fear of being suspected of having acted intentionally, he had, instead of coming to her at once to offer his apologies, as he, of course, should have done, been so imprudent as to try and get a similar seal made, and that his servant, having by ill chance gone to the King’s engraver, the latter, his suspicions aroused, had retained the letter. If Madame de Moret wished to have it, she had only to send someone to explain the matter to Turpin, and no doubt the engraver would give it up. The countess believed, or pretended to believe, this not very probable story, and sent one of her servants to Turpin to claim her letter; but was informed that it was no longer in his hands, but in those of SÉguier, President of the Tournelle, or criminal court of the Parlement of Paris, to whom the honest engraver had deemed it his duty to transmit it without delay.

Here was a fresh complication and one which caused Bassompierre no little disquietude, as he did not know SÉguier personally, and the latter had the reputation of being a most austere magistrate, who would be certain to sift the matter to the very bottom. Resourceful though he was, he was for the moment at a loss how to act, but, finally, resolved to go and see Madame de LomÉnie, wife of Antoine de LomÉnie, one of the Secretaries of State, with whom he was on very friendly terms, and beg her to intervene in order to hush up this unfortunate affair, either by persuading SÉguier to surrender the letter, or by writing to her husband, who was on his way to Paris with the King, to ask him to give some plausible explanation to his Majesty.

This time Fortune was on his side. He found the Minister’s wife seated at her writing-desk and apparently very busy. She was engaged, she told him, in drafting a very important letter to her husband concerning a singular adventure. Bassompierre, having an idea that this singular adventure might well have some relation to his own, pressed her to tell him more, upon which the lady explained that an attempt had been made that morning to counterfeit the King’s seal; that the man who had been sent to the engraver had unfortunately succeeded in effecting his escape, but that the letter of which he was the bearer had been seized, and that the President SÉguier had just sent it to her, with the request that she would forward it to her husband, in order that he might lay it before the King, when perhaps they would be able to get to the bottom of the matter. And Madame de LomÉnie added that she would willingly give 2,000 crowns to solve this imbroglio.

Bassompierre, with a sigh of relief, offered to enlighten her for nothing, and proceeded to furnish her with the same explanation of the affair which he had already given Madame de Moret. Madame de LomÉnie accepted it, and, after having given him a good lecture, promised to smooth things over for him, on condition that he would go on the morrow to Villers-Cotterets, where the King and her husband had just arrived, and take with him a report of the matter which she would draw up. Bassompierre agreed readily enough, as may be imagined, and, having called again upon Madame de Verneuil to obtain her answer to the King’s letter, and also upon Madame de Moret, who wrote likewise to thank his Majesty, although she had not received the one intended for her, set out for Villers-Cotterets, where Henri IV laughed heartily over the adventure, of which he does not appear to have suspected the true explanation.

A few days later, Henri IV, in celebration of his bloodless victory over the Duc de Bouillon, made a sort of triumphal entry into Paris, where he was received with salvoes of artillery and loud acclamations from the populace. The effect of this ceremony, however, appears to have been somewhat spoiled by the extraordinary attitude assumed by the rebellious vassal whom he had just brought to heel, and who rode along bowing and smiling to the people who thronged the streets and the windows and roofs of the houses, for all the world as if he himself were the hero of the day and the object of all the acclamations.

“He [the King],” writes Bassompierre, “desired M. de Bouillon to march immediately before him, and this he did, but with such assurance and audacity, that it was impossible to decide whether it was the King who was leading him in triumph or he the King.”