“As she returned to her cabinet,” writes Bassompierre, “she said to me: ‘Bassompierre, if you had been a prince, I would have given you to-day a fine appointment.’ ‘Madame,’ I replied, ‘if I am not a prince, it is not because I should not have been very glad to be one. Nevertheless, I can assure you that there are princes who are greater fools than myself.’ ‘I should have been very pleased if you had been one,’ said she, ‘because that would have saved me from seeking for a suitable person for the post I speak of.’ ‘Madame, may I ask what it is?’ ‘To appoint a Colonel-General of the Swiss,’ said she. ‘And why, Madame, can I not be Colonel-General, if it is your wish?’ On which she told me that the Swiss had a convention with the King according to which no one but a prince could be their Colonel-General.” Bassompierre saluted her Majesty and withdrew, anathematizing the wretched convention which stood between him and one of the highest offices under the Crown, and wondering whether by any possibility the obstacle could be overcome. Of that there seemed but little chance, as time pressed, and perhaps by the morrow the post would have been filled. Fortune favoured him, however, for, as he was on his way to dinner, he happened to meet Colonel Gaspard Gallaty, a veteran Swiss officer in the service of France,[103] with whom he was on very friendly terms. To him he related what the Queen had just told him, when Gallaty said that he believed he possessed sufficient influence with his countrymen to persuade them to accept him as their Colonel-General, notwithstanding the convention. And he offered to set out at once for Switzerland to obtain their consent, and begged Bassompierre to return to the Queen and tell her that, if she wished to give him the post, the Swiss would consent. “She [the Queen] said to me, ‘I give you a fortnight; nay, I will give you three weeks, for this; and if you can obtain the consent of the Swiss, I will give you the post. Then I spoke to Gallaty, who asked me to obtain permission for him to go to his own country, saying that he would set out in two days’ time. And this he did, and, within the time that he had promised me he sent me a letter from the Cantons, who were assembled at Soleure, to authorise the levy which the King was demanding from them, by which they informed the King that, if it pleased him to honour me with this charge, they would accept me as willingly as any prince whom he might give them.” By the Queen’s orders, Bassompierre then communicated with Rohan, who was in Poitou, and, as he feared that it might be some little time before the Treasury saw its way to pay the large sum demanded by that nobleman for the surrender of his post, he himself offered to advance it; and on March 12, 1614, he took the oath as Colonel-General of the Swiss.