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.