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: