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.