“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 Cœuvres, 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 Cœuvres, 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 Cœuvres’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 Cœuvres, 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.
“I found him,” writes Bassompierre, “walking in a garden with certain maîtres des requêtes, who were returning with him to Paris. He said to me: ‘Monsieur, you behold in me a man who goes to seek a grave in Paris. I have served the Kings to the best of my ability, and when they saw that I was no longer capable, they sent me to take repose and to attend to the safety of my soul, of which their affairs had prevented me from thinking.’ And when, a little later, I told him that he would continue to serve them and to preside at the Council as Chancellor, he replied: ‘My friend, a Chancellor without seals is an apothecary without sugar.”
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.