Bassompierre arrives at Fontainebleau and is most graciously
received by Henri IV--He falls in love with Marie d’Entragues,
sister of the King’s mistress--The conspiracy of the
d’Entragues--The Sieur d’Entragues and the Comte d’Auvergne are
arrested and conveyed to the Bastille, and Madame de Verneuil kept
a prisoner in her own house--Jacqueline de Bueil temporarily
replaces Madame de Verneuil in the royal affections--The King,
unable to do without the latter, sets her and her father at
liberty--Bassompierre becomes the lover of Marie d’Entragues--He is
dangerously wounded by the Duc de Guise in a tournament, and his
life is at first despaired of--He recovers--Attentions which he
receives during his illness from the ladies of the Court.
Towards the end of August, 1604, Bassompierre arrived in Paris, where
his numerous friends, he tells us, were so delighted to see him that it
was three days before they would permit him to continue his journey to
Fontainebleau, whither the Court had recently removed; and when he at
last contrived to get away, so many of them desired to accompany him,
that it required no less than forty post-horses to convey them.
At Fontainebleau he met with so warm a welcome both from the King and
the ladies of the Court, that he thought no more of returning to
Germany:
“The King was on the great terrace before the Cour du Cheval Blanc
when we arrived, and awaited us there, receiving me with a thousand
embraces. He then led me into the apartment of the Queen, his wife,
who lodged in the apartment above his own, and I was well received
by the ladies, who thought me not ill-looking for an inveterate
German who had spent a year in his own country. On the morrow the
King lent me his own horses to hunt the stag. It was St.
Bartholomew’s Day, August 24; and he himself would not hunt on a
day whereon he had once been in such great danger. On my return
from the chase I joined him in the Salle des Étuves, where we
played lansquenet.”
Henri IV lost no time in annulling the obnoxious decree concerning the
Saint-Sauveur property and restoring it to Bassompierre, who was thus
enabled to live “a most delightful life” at the Court, and indulge to
the full his inclination for lavish display, gambling, and love-making:
“I then fell in love with Antragues, and was also in love with
another handsome woman. I was in the flower of my youth, rather
well-made and very gay.”
The lady whom Bassompierre invariably refers to in his _Memoirs_ as
“Antragues,” without any prefix, was Marie de Balsac d’Entragues,
younger sister of Madame de Verneuil. Marie was quite as pretty as
Henriette--indeed, by not a few she was considered the prettiest woman
at the Court--and if she lacked something of the wit and vivacity which
made the reigning sultana so attractive, she was not without
intelligence. As one might expect in a child of Marie Touchet, she was
wholly devoid of moral sense. But she was neither mercenary nor
ambitious, or, at any rate, far less so than her sister; and several
exalted personages appear to have sighed for her in vain, including
Henri IV, who, like Louis XV, in later times, had not the smallest
objection to the presence of two or more members of the same family in
his seraglio.
At the time, however, when his Majesty appears to have made advances to
the younger sister, his relations with the elder had been temporarily
interrupted by the episode which is known as the Conspiracy of the
d’Entragues.
In the summer of 1604, acting upon a warning received from James I of
England, the French Government had caused one Morgan, an agent of Spain,
to be arrested in Paris, and documents found upon this person indicated
that he had relations of a highly suspicious character with François
d’Entragues, his daughter, Madame de Verneuil, and his stepson, the
Comte d’Auvergne. One fine morning, a party of the King’s guards arrived
at the Château of Malesherbes, where three moats and draw-bridges
always raised protected its lord, as he fondly imagined, from surprise.
Four of the soldiers, however, succeeded in gaining admission to the
château, disguised as peasant-women with butter and eggs to dispose of,
overpowered the sentries and admitted their comrades. D’Entragues was
arrested and carried off to the Bastille, and with him a voluminous
correspondence between the conspirators and the Court of Madrid,
containing proposals for the assassination of Henri IV, and a promise
signed by Philip III to recognise Henriette’s son as heir to the French
throne, in the event of the King’s death. The Comte d’Auvergne once more
found himself in the Bastille, while Madame de Verneuil was confined to
her own house and strictly guarded. D’Entragues and his step-son were
arraigned for high treason, convicted and sentenced to death; and
Henriette was remanded until further evidence could be procured. The
King’s advisers were urgent that the law should be allowed to take its
course; but Henri IV, though he had made a valiant attempt to overcome
his infatuation for Madame de Verneuil, and with the idea of driving out
fire by fire, had taken unto himself a new sultana, in the person of
Jacqueline de Bueil,[44] felt that he must have his Henriette back, and
all the more because she affected to scorn him and refused to sue for
his pardon. Dead though he might be to all sense of decency where his
passions were concerned, he felt that, if he cut off her father’s head,
he could scarcely again be her lover, and that d’Entragues’ life must
therefore be spared. And if d’Entragues were spared, he could not well
send his fellow-conspirator--the last scion of the House of Valois--to
the scaffold, though, as this was Auvergne’s second experiment in high
treason, he was even more deserving of death. And so d’Entragues and his
daughter were set at liberty; while Auvergne remained in the Bastille,
nor did he emerge from it until more than ten years later.
Early in 1605 we find the King again in amorous correspondence with the
woman who had been conspiring against him, entreating her to love him to
whom all the rest of this world compared with her was as nothing; and,
after keeping him at a distance for a little while, Henriette graciously
consented to accord him her favours once more. Henceforth, Jacqueline de
Beuil was merely retained as a refuge when the marchioness happened to
be spiteful and the Queen sulky.
In those days rough horseplay was much in vogue, and during the Carnival
of 1605, bands of young nobles rode through the streets of Paris, masked
and arrayed in glittering armour. When two of these bands met, they
charged vigorously and strove to unhorse one another, and though the
points of the lances they carried were carefully padded, and they
wielded heavy cudgels gaily decorated with crimson ribbons, instead of
swords, very shrewd blows and thrusts were exchanged. On one occasion,
Bassompierre, who was accompanied by his brother-in-law Saint-Luc, and
two of their friends, met another party, headed by the Duc de Nemours
and the Comte de Sommerive, who challenged him to a mimic combat later
in the day in the Place de Cimetière Saint-Jean, it being agreed that
both sides might bring as many supporters as they could get together.
Both parties repaired to the field of battle in considerable force, but
that of Nemours and Sommerive had the advantage in numbers.
Nevertheless, victory rested with Bassompierre and his friends, who
drove their opponents through the streets in disorder, and “he had the
satisfaction of seeing one of his rivals in the affections of Mlle.
d’Entragues soundly beaten before the eyes of that lady, who was
watching them from one of the windows of her house.” Nor was this all,
for a day or two later Mlle. d’Entragues gave the victor a rendezvous.
This _bonne fortune_ of Bassompierre, however, came very near to costing
him his life:
“The Tuesday following, which was the first day of March, in the
morning, the King being at the Tuileries, said to M. de Guise: ‘Ah!
Guisard, d’Entragues despises us all and dotes on Bassompierre. I
don’t speak without certainty.’ ‘Sire,’ replied M. de Guise, ‘you
have means enough to avenge yourself. As for me, I have none other
than that of a knight-errant. I will therefore break three lances
with him this afternoon in open field, in whatever place you shall
be pleased to appoint.’ The King gave us permission, and said that
it should be in the Louvre, and that he would have the court
sanded. He [Guise] chose his brother M. de Joinville for his second
and M. de Termes for third; while I chose M. de Saint-Luc and the
Comte de Sault. We all six went to dine and arm ourselves at
Saint-Luc’s lodging; and, as we always kept armour and caparisons
ready for all occasions, my friends and I wore silver armour, with
silver and white plumes and silk stockings of the same colours. M.
de Guise and his supporters wore black and gold, on account of the
imprisonment of the Marquise de Verneuil, with whom he was at that
time secretly in love. Then we repaired to the Louvre, preceded by
our horses and attendants.
“My friends and I, who were the first to enter the lists, placed
ourselves by the side of the old building; M. de Guise and his
seconds took up their station beneath the windows of the Queen’s
apartment. Our course was the length of the Salle des Suisses. It
happened that M. de Guise was mounted on a little horse called
Lesparne, while I was riding a big charger which the Comte de
Fiesque had given me. He took the lower ground, while I was on the
wall side, so that I towered over him, and, instead of breaking his
lance while raising it, he broke it while lowering it, in such a
way that, after splintering it for the first time against my
casque, he splintered it the second against my tasset; and the
lance penetrated my stomach and lodged in that great bone which
connects the hip and the loins. And there the lance broke again,
and a stump longer than a man’s arm remained attached to the thigh
bone. I broke my lance against his breastplate, and, though I felt
that I was mortally wounded, I finished my course, and they helped
me to dismount near the King’s private staircase, and _Monsieur le
Grand_ and the elder Guitaut aided me to ascend to M. de Vendôme’s
apartment, below the King’s chamber.”
Here someone, without awaiting the arrival of the surgeons, was so
ill-advised as to pull the broken stump of the lance from the wound,
with the result that part of the entrails came out with it; and, though
the surgeons when they came contrived to replace them, Bassompierre
seemed in desperate case:--
“The King, the Constable, and all the chief personages of the Court
stood around, many weeping, as they thought that I should not live
an hour. Nevertheless, I did not appear cast down, nor did I think
I should die. Many ladies were there and helped to dress my wound,
and, as I insisted on returning to my lodging, the Queen sent me
the chair in which she was carried about, for she was then
pregnant. The people followed me with many marks of sorrow. When I
arrived at my lodging, I lost my sight, which made me think I was
very ill, so that they made me confess and bled me at the same
time. Yet I did not believe I should die, and laughed all the time.
“So soon as I received my wound, the King ordered the tournament to
stop, and never permitted one afterwards. This was the only one in
open field which had taken place in France for one hundred years,
and they were never renewed.”
Youth and a splendid constitution saved him, and the attentions he
received from the ladies of the Court appear to have consoled him for
the pain which he had to endure:
“I cannot say how much I was visited during my illness, and
particularly by ladies. All the princesses were there, and the
Queen sent on three occasions her maids-of-honour, who were brought
by Mlle. de Guise to pass whole afternoons. This lady, who
considered herself obliged to assist in nursing me, as it was her
brother who had given me my wound, was there most of the time. My
sister, Madame de Saint-Luc, who, so long as I was in danger,
always slept at the foot of my bed, received the ladies, and, with
the exception of the day after I was wounded, the King came every
afternoon to see me, and partly also to see my pretty companions.”
After being obliged to keep his bed for about a fortnight, he was
allowed to get up and take the air in a chair, an object of sympathetic
interest to all the ladies of the Court and town. His wound healed
rapidly, and by Easter, though still somewhat lame, he felt sufficiently
recovered to challenge the Marquis de Cœuvres, brother of Gabrielle
d’Estrées, to a duel.