The body of a man who has been assassinated opposite Marie d’Entragues’s house mistaken for that of Bassompierre—Bassompierre wins a wager of a thousand crowns from the King—Marriage of the Prince de Condé and Mlle. de Montmorency—Henri IV informs Bassompierre of his intention to send him on a secret mission to Henri II, Duke of Lorraine, to propose an alliance between that prince’s elder daughter and the Dauphin—Departure of Bassompierre—He arrives at Nancy and challenges a gentleman to a duel, but the affair is arranged—His first audience of Duke Henri II—Irresolution of that prince, who desires to postpone his answer until he has consulted his advisers—Negotiations of Bassompierre with the Margrave of Baden-Durlach—He returns to Nancy—Continued hesitation of the Duke of Lorraine—Memoir of Bassompierre: his prediction of the advantages which Lorraine would derive from being incorporated with France abundantly justified by time—The Duke gives a qualified acceptance of Henri IV’s propositions—Difficulty which Bassompierre experiences in inducing him to commit his reply to writing.
Soon after Bassompierre’s recovery an incident occurred which brought him and his love-affairs rather more prominently before the public than he altogether cared about.
In the same street in which Madame d’Entragues and her younger daughter were then living, there lodged an Italian equerry of the Queen, named Camille Sanconi. This Sanconi was in love with his landlady, and finding her one fine night in the company of a rival admirer, he or his servants gave the latter several sword-thrusts, and then threw him into the street in his night-attire. The unfortunate man’s wounds were mortal, and he had scarcely managed to drag himself along for fifty paces, when he fell down dead, directly beneath the window of the room occupied by Marie d’Entragues.
“Some passer-by,” writes Bassompierre, “seeing the dead body, believed that it was I, on account of the spot where it lay, and came battering at the door of my lodging, saying that I had been assassinated at Madame d’Entragues’s house, and then thrown out of the window, and that my servants ought to go to succour me promptly, if I were still alive, or to bring me back, if I were dead. As chance would have it, I had left my lodging, in disguise, to visit a lady, a circumstance which seemed to my servants to afford such strong confirmation of this story, that they thoughtlessly rushed off to where the body which had been taken for mine was lying, and the more impetuous ones having thrown themselves upon it, prevented the more prudent from examining it closely; and all bore it away to my lodging. On the way thither they were met by other servants of mine who carried torches, by the light of which they perceived that the corpse was that of another man, upon which they carried it to the house of a surgeon, where the officers of the law soon came to take possession of it. This affair occasioned a rather great scandal, and my servants to become the laughing-stock of the town.”
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.”