“Then,” he continues, “I took fifty Swiss, to whom I promised fifty crowns, to bring those two pieces into position for me; and they harnessed themselves to them in place of the horses, having first dug a trench beneath the wheels of each piece and lined it with stout planks, so as to prevent it from sinking deeper in the mud. We drew the first into position without being fired upon from the town; but, as we were occupying ourselves with the more distant one, and had drawn it close to the battery, and I was lending them a hand, the enemy fired a salvo at us, by which two Swiss were killed and three wounded, and I myself hit by a musket-ball in the right side of the abdomen. I thought that I was wounded to the death, and the Maréchal de Thémines, who was in the battery, thought so too. However, God willed that the quantity of clothes which the ball encountered (for it pierced five folds of my cloak and two folds of my furred _hongroline_, my sword-belt, and my coat-skirt) caused it to stop on the peritoneum without penetrating it, so that when the wound was probed the ball was found in the thick flesh of the belly, where they made an incision, and out it fell. I only kept my bed for one day, although my wound was a month in healing, by reason of the cloth which was within.” The following day, Praslin, who had replaced Bassompierre in command of the artillery, was also wounded by a musket-ball in the thigh, while directing the fire of the battery. But the ball did not injure the bone, and he was cured as quickly as his friend. Rethel surrendered a few days later, and Guise, after placing a garrison there, resolved to lay siege to Mézières, where Nevers himself commanded. But, before doing this, he decided to send for additional siege-guns, and, as it would be at least ten days before they could arrive, Bassompierre asked for leave to go to Paris, in order to negotiate the sale of his office of Colonel-General of the Swiss to Concini. The marshal, as we have mentioned, had offered him 600,000 crowns for the post; but Bassompierre had asked for another 50,000, which the other was not at the time inclined to give. However, he was evidently so anxious to secure it that it was very probable that he would be willing to reconsider his offer. The same evening he received very gracious letters from the King and Queen-Mother, who appear to have been under the impression that he was far more severely wounded than was the case, and another from the Maréchal d’Ancre, “who wrote me,” says he, “that, if I were trying to get myself killed, he would like to be my heir; and that, if I were well enough to come to Paris to conclude the matter of the Swiss, he would give me, instead of the 50,000 francs in dispute, 10,000 crowns’ worth of jewels at a goldsmith’s valuation.”