Bassompierre having given him the assurance he demanded, he informed him that he came from Sedan, on behalf of the Duc de Bouillon, who had charged him to say that while the duke, as a soldier himself, could not help but commend the zeal and energy which M. de Bassompierre was employing in raising and equipping troops and overcoming the difficulties with which he had to contend, he wondered greatly what could be the motive which prompted him to all this activity. Could it be that he entertained some personal animosity against the Queen-Mother, to whom, he had always understood, he was indebted for many benefits, or had M. de Luynes placed him under some great obligation? The duke desired to point out to M. de Bassompierre that the Queen-Mother and the princes and nobles who supported her had not taken up arms to attack the King or the State, but to decide whether both should be governed by her who had ruled so well during his Majesty’s minority, or by three robbers who had seized the authority and the person of the King. He praised M. de Bassompierre’s resolution to “keep always to the trunk of the tree, and to follow, not the best and most just party, but that which possessed the person of the King and the seal and wax.” But to display such fiery ardour, such boundless activity; to exceed even the orders of the King in the rapidity with which he was pushing forward his troops; to employ his own money so profusely as he was doing in the cause of persons who had proved themselves so ungrateful to the Queen, their first benefactress, and would prove no less ungrateful to their friends; to be apparently intent on compassing the ruin of the party of the Queen, the consort of the late King, who had been so much attached to him; to assist “three pumpkins who had sprung up in a night”[132] to trample upon her, and thus to compromise his reputation and his honesty--for all this M. de Bouillon could see neither rhyme nor reason. After this long-winded preamble, M. Despence came to the point. The duke, he said, had no intention of suggesting to M. de Bassompierre that he should do anything contrary to his honour and duty; nothing was further from his thoughts. But, if he could see his way to delay for three weeks the junction of the army under his command with that of the King, which might be done without disobeying the orders he had received from his Majesty, who did not anticipate that he would be able to join him before then; if he would rest content with such troops as he found in garrison, and cease to amuse himself by levying everywhere at his own expense men to reinforce them, and, in short, abate a little of his ardour and animosity towards the party of the Queen-Mother, M. de Bouillon would without delay deposit the sum of 100,000 crowns in the hands of any banker whom he might be pleased to name, and no one but themselves would be the wiser.