Towards the end of May, Bassompierre went to Rouen to make arrangements for the conduct of his case in the action which the d’Entragues were bringing against him, and which, on various pretexts, he had succeeded in delaying until now. He found, to his disgust, however, that the plaintiff had stolen a march upon him, for, though he applied in turn to all the chief advocates of the Parlement of Rouen, not one of them would undertake the case, the reason being that they had all been consulted by the other side, which, of course, rendered it impossible for them to hold a brief for the defence.
He returned to Paris and complained bitterly to Marie de’ Medici of the sharp practice of which the d’Entragues had been guilty. Upon which she said: “Mon Dieu! Bassompierre, the Procurator of the Estates of Nantes, who is so eloquent, is eligible to plead your cause, for he was formerly an advocate of Rouen. He is here now.” And she sent for him and ordered him to undertake the case, which he did very ably.
At the beginning of June, Bassompierre returned to Rouen, “accompanied or followed by over 200 gentlemen,” and accompanied, too, by the good wishes of the Queen, who did not confine her good offices to providing him with an advocate. She wrote to the Maréchal de Fervacques, the Governor of Rouen, “to assist him in all that he might demand of him”; she ordered her own company of light horse, which was in garrison at Évreux, to come to meet him and escort him to Rouen; she sent one of her gentlemen with letters recommending his cause to all the presidents and counsellors of the Parlement; and every other day she despatched a courier to ascertain how the case was proceeding.
All Normandy appears to have flocked to Rouen to attend this cause célèbre, and seldom had the old city been so gay.
“Numbers of ladies who were there, many strangers who came, and the band of nobles whom I had brought, made all the time I spent at Rouen, where I remained a month, pass like the Carnival, with continual banquets, balls and assemblies.”
There can be little doubt that, in this breach of promise, popular sympathy was with the faithless gallant rather than the injured lady. But Bassompierre’s friends were denied the pleasure of applauding his victory at the Palais de Justice, for, after the case had been in progress for some time, the d’Entragues, seeing that the day was likely to go against them, succeeded in obtaining an adjournment for six months, to enable the King’s Council to decide whether the Court was impartially constituted; their contention being that some of the judges were related to the defendant on his mother’s side.
Not long after Bassompierre’s return to Court, the post of lieutenant-governor of Poitou became vacant, and, as he was anxious to secure this office for his brother-in-law Saint-Luc, he solicited Concini’s good offices with the Queen, thinking, not unnaturally, that, after the service he had lately rendered him, the Italian would be only too ready to oblige him. Concini assured both Bassompierre and his brother-in-law that he would do everything in his power for them, and appeared delighted at the opportunity of discharging the obligation under which the former had placed him. Nevertheless, the post was given to Condé’s favourite, the Baron de Rochefort, at Concini’s earnest entreaty, the Queen told Bassompierre, as she herself preferred Saint-Luc.
So much for the favourite’s sense of gratitude! But this was not all:
“The Marquis d’Ancre told me the same day that he was in despair that the Queen had given that place to Rochefort, and he begged me to assure M. de Saint-Luc that he had done all he could in his favour, but that the authority of Monsieur le Prince had prevailed. I, who knew what the Queen had told me, replied that, when he wanted me to impose upon some indifferent third person, I was very much at his service; but that, when it was a question of deceiving my own brother-in-law, I begged him to employ someone else, since we were too nearly related.”
After this, Saint-Luc, as was only to be expected, was somewhat cold in his manner towards Concini, whereupon that worthy, persuaded that this was due to his brother-in-law’s influence, determined to be avenged and, says Bassompierre, “assisted by his wife, began to instill into the Queen’s mind the belief that I boasted of the kindness which she showed me, and that people were talking about it; and they told her that I was estranging her servants from her, and that I was turning everyone against her.”